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World Civilizations (History and the Social Sciences)

William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, writes in The Educated Child that: "...great books, poems, works of art and music are all part of a long conversation that echoes through the ages, embodying mankind’s greatest ideas and achievements." Most California students struggle even to maintain even "proficient" (i.e. barely adequate) reading levels, while The School of Choice teaches literature integrated with historical civilizations: Chinese, Indian, African, Greek and Roman; then Islamic, Medieval, Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment; and then, modern civilizations.

As students read, they master the vocabulary to appreciate what they are reading -- which helps them prepare for SAT success -- as they learn the grammar and writing to successfully contend with it. Students are assigned writing and research project assignments from seminar-based classes, which they discuss in writing workshops. These assignments are integrated with public speaking and debate, which, in turn, develop their communication and persuasion skills.

Students in the World Civilizations Program handle progressively more challenging materials: the readings are longer and more complex. (They have higher Lexile numbers, which measure sentence length and word frequency. Our library books are numbered.) Thus, we use progressive development to help students improve their skills before they advance to the next level and, ultimately, to the AP level.

World Civilizations I: Ancient and Early-Medieval Cultures

Where do humans come from? How did they live when people first recorded their thoughts and deeds? How did great empires rise and fall, and what did people achieve in those empires? What kinds of stories did those ancients tell their children? Some of these are stories which we still tell our children. What are the major credos of the world and why do people believe in them? What are the origins of human liberty, equality and democracy? How did people of different genders, races, religions and social classes treat each other? We encourage students to ask such important questions, and others, using reasoning, logic and historical facts from the ancient and medieval world.

Because The School of Choice takes a developmental approach, students begin by reviewing their cultural literacy in books for children such as The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and E.D. Hirsch’s What Every Sixth Grader Needs to Know. Without factual knowledge of core subjects, says Hirsch, students cannot advance questions themselves in the next phases of development. We then introduce the student to the logic of history as demonstrated by the Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Greek, Roman, Judeo-Christian, Islamic and Early Medieval Cultures. Student papers and oral presentations help students learn how to compare and contrast aspects of these civilizations and the great individuals who defined and lived in them.

In addition to history, students study mythology and religion, such as stories from Hamilton’s Mythology, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Aesop’s Fables, Siddhartha, Lives of the Caesars, Journey to the West and The Three Kingdoms. In addition, students read selections from The Bible, The Way, and other influential religious works neglected by the public schools. At the World Civilizations I level, students read mostly from age-appropriate secondary sources.

World Civilizations II: From the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic Wars

How did religion shape the lives of people and their kingdoms in the middle ages? How did Christianity clash with Orthodoxy, Islam, and American religious cultures and why did Islam displace Indian Buddhism? What were the origins of scientific and secular thought in the west and why was religion partially supplanted? How did religious tolerance, personal liberty, and economic freedom develop based upon divine right monarchies? How did the world’s two greatest revolutions, the industrial and the democratic, come about and what was their influence? What was the promise America held out to immigrants from around the world?

Roughly two-thirds of this course covers the history of the world from 1100 to 1850, and the final third covers the story of colonial and revolutionary America up to the conflicts of 1776 and 1812. In addition to a history textbook, students will begin to read supplementary materials (1200 Lexile books), and more original sources, such as Galileo, Shogun, The Children’s Crusade, The Prince, Locke’s Second Treatise, Franklin’s Autobiography, The Wealth of Nations the U.S. Constitution or Condorcet’s Progress of the Human Mind. Literature includes intriguing selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Moliere’s Tartuffe, or Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans.

World Civilizations III: America and the World from Industrialization to the Present

What is America’s place in recent world history? How did America and the world industrialize and build modern armaments? What new ideologies arose after the industrial revolution (e.g. nationalism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism and fascism) and what conflicts did those ideologies create between relatively new social groups? How did entrepreneurs and wage earners displace feudal lords and tenants, and how did a professional social class arise this century? How did men and women, blacks and whites, religious people and atheists begin to relate? How did warfare and diplomacy change with imperialist advances, world war, and then a cold war? What lessons, if any, does history teach us about the future?

This course will begin with a study of the U.S. Constitution, using The Federalist Papers, followed by studies of nineteenth-century American history: the Transcendentalist movement, western immigration and Indian displacement, the conflict over slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and America’s industrial success in the late nineteenth century. Students will survey world history from 1815 to the present with special attention to industrialization and professionalization, imperialism and world war, China, Japan and India, and the threat of the Cold War. Finally, World Civilizations III will cover American military predominance, social strife and social reform movements, the growth of government and the legacy of problems we must solve in the twenty-first century.

There is a wide variety of literature from this broad era, such as the non-fiction of Malthus, Spencer, Constant, San Simon, Thoreau, Emerson, Sumner, Marx, Hitler, Gandhi and Mao and famous novelists and poets like Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Goethe, Dickens, Shaw, Forster, Tolstoy, Orwell and Ayn Rand. Our teachers will help students approach and understand such literature.

World Civilizations IV: Advanced World and Eurpean History

Ninth and tenth graders may choose from a variety of electives to suit their individual interests: Modern Asian, Continental, British or Hispanic literature and history, or Comparative Religion. To supplement Language Arts classes, electives in Journalism, Website production, Drama, or Speech and Debate are available. Students who qualify may begin to take AP courses, particularly those in European or World history.

The AP European History course, which can serve as an elective in the University of California's A to G requirements, teaches students the roots of their own society in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. Students learn vital political trends from the rise and fall of absolute monarchy in Aristocratic society to the challenge of political revolutions and the rise of entrepreneurial society led by Liberal politicians, to its demise in the warfare and professional specialization of the twentieth century. Students see the rise of European naval power and the fall of colonial territories, the rise of women's rights and the fall of prejudice, the enfranchisement and enrichment of the working classes. They learn of the terrible slaughters and of beautiful artistic achievements that make them who they are.

The AP World History course, which meets the A to G history requirements for tenth grade history, teaches students to read and write about the great themes of world history: the ebb an flow of liberty, gender, struggles of race, class and gender, the impact of warfare, trade and technology, and the growth of religion and culture. It covers all civilizations from the past to the present, but makes European culture no more than thirty per cent of its content. Students learn to make the broadest comparisons between civilizations at similar or dissimilar times. They learn diversity by seeing it around them, by knowing times when other civilizations were superior. They understand what is borrowed in their own culture and what is original.

Grade Eleven

Eleventh graders will take either American history or AP American History courses alongside either advanced literature and composition or AP Literature and Composition. These courses are designed to hone students’ analytical reading and writing skills to help them gain commanding SAT and SAT II writing scores this year.

The AP American History class summarizes the entirety of American history We begin with the age of exploration to understand European motives and means for colonization. Then we compare and contrast the American colonies' geography, socio-economic structure and politics. We analyze the reasons why the American Revolution was successful and why America chose its Constitution. Then the class looks at the important economic, social and religious changes in Ante-bellum America, showing why the Civil War was virtually inevitable. Afterwards, we consider laissez-faire capitalism's impact upon social structure, involving disputes between labor and capital, the growth of suburbs and the marginalization of the American farmer and Indian. We consider Progressive and New Deal regulation alongside the development of American Globalism in the twentieth century, culminating in the victories over fascism and communism. Finally, The course outlines social structure and social protest in the post-war world, giving emphasis to the welfare state, Civil Rights victories, environmentalism, feminism, civil rights and politics.

Grade Twelve

Seniors study philosophy and the social sciences -- the most abstract levels of understanding of human nature. American politics or AP American Politics are required, and students may choose from electives in economics (microeconomics and macroeconomics with AP options), AP Psychology, AP Geography or AP World History. Simultaneously, seniors study essays, biography, journalism, political philosophy and literary criticism in Language and Composition or AP Language and Composition courses.

The "AP Government and Politics: Comparative" course teaches students to understand United States politics in light of differences with foreign countries. They study both major players like Russia, France, China and Great Britain and diverse third world societies like Mexico or Nigeria. They learn that political authority rests upon different sources of justification and that it serves different types of interests in each nation. They see how class, gender and race effect political beliefs that may be indigenous or externally influenced. They see how the individual stands against the state and how society may or may not be reflected in political institutions. They study political change and stability, peace and warfare. Students learn to synthesize great explanatory theories of their own based upon comparative analysis of actual institutions.

The "AP Government and Politics: United States" course teaches students the basis of power in the United States today. Though it starts with analysis of the US Constitution, students can expect analysis of the roles of the three branches of government plus outside forces like the media, corporations, parties, PACs, etc. The course openly asks if government remains a public servant or if its bureaucracy has become a special interest which manipulates political beliefs for its own ends. In the face of vast manipulative power, civil rights have evolved but ever are at risk of destruction.

The AP Macroeconomics course, which fulfills requirements for graduating seniors in the University of California's A to G requirements, teaches students vital practical lessons about the nature of our economy as a whole. Students understand headline news making facts and theories about inflation and unemployment, understanding these phenomena through knowledge of the supply and demand for both money and real goods. Students practice making economic policy decisions by analyzing past policy decisions. They learn economic models that teach them analytical thinking and applied mathematics.

The AP Microeconomics course, which fulfills requirements for graduating seniors in the University of California's A to G requirements, teaches students vital practical lessons about the nature of both businesses and consumers. Students learn how to allocate resources within firms and how firms grow to become competitive enterprises, monopolies, oligopolies etc. They see how regulation affects business pricing and performance. They learn consumer buying patterns and preferences and come to understand the basics of international trade. They learn analytical thinking through economic models and mathematical problem sets.

The AP Psychology course helps students to understand their own subjective experience and that of their peers better. They cover vital topics like the stages of development, education, memory, reasoning, socialization, the biology of the brain, etc. Our course emphasizes a debate over the great theories of behavior-Freudian, Behaviorist, Humanist-and shows both normal and abnormal psychological insights. Students learn research methods to do minor observations and analysis of behavior and to write insightful term papers which teach them creativity. Of course they must also know their facts for a multiple choice exam.