8th Grade US History....What's it all about?
You WILL be challenged this year in 8th grade Social Studies. But your classmates and I will be there every step of the way to master the content standards, to build upon your knowledge and 21st Century Skills, to gain new and insightful perspectives, and to make connections from the past to the present. We will be taking events that happened hundreds of years ago and connecting it to you.
Many of you will begin this class with the idea that History is static, meaning it doesn't change. However, History is more than a record of what happened. Winston Churchill provided perhaps one of the best summations of what "history" is saying, "History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days." History is messy. It is convoluted; chaotic even at times. History, therefore, requires interpretation and connection, which in turn requires us to look closer. The question becomes not what happened, or even why did it happen. The real questions is why did it happen that way. Winston Churchill also made the claim that, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Again, history requires interpretation and connection. Whose history are we telling? And from which vantage point is it being told? The course begins with a brief study of geography to give you enough tools to understand our first true unit. European Colonization and the economic, and social reasons for colonization will be main focus of that first unit. The idea of limited, self, and representative government, sparked by the Enlightenment will then be the prevailing theme of the course as "We" break up with England and "Never ever get back together (Taylor Swift)." The successes and failures of our new government will be analyzed and compared with present day, as will the addition of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Our year will end by connecting early sectional events in the development of our Nation (Slavery, State's Rights, Federalism) to the Civil War, and finally analyzing how our Nation's Reconstruction efforts shaped the 20th Century. By no means are these the only things we will be visiting. We will often be knocking out many content statements concurrently. |
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