Social Studies

The MOSAICS Academy World History/Geography course is comprised of two classes, 6th grade World Geography and 7th grade Ancient World History, compacted and accelerated into a single learning experience covered in a single year.

Curriculum

The learning standards and benchmarks for both 6th grade World Geography and 7th grade Ancient World History are covered in a model curriculum, "World History for Us All."

From the home page of World History for Us All:

World History for Us All is a powerful, innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools.

World History for Us All:

• • offers a treasury of teaching units, lesson plans, and resources.

  • presents the human past as a single story rather than unconnected stories of many civilizations.

  • helps teachers meet state and national standards.

  • enables teachers to survey world history without excluding major peoples, regions, or time periods.

  • helps students understand the past by connecting specific subject matter to larger historical patterns.

  • draws on up-to-date historical research.

  • may be readily adapted to a variety of world history programs.

World History for Us All is a national collaboration of K-12 teachers, collegiate instructors, and educational technology specialists. It is a project of San Diego State University in cooperation with the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA. [1]

The World History/Geography course utilizes most of the following components of the World History for Us All curriculum: "History, Geography, and Time" and "Big Eras" 1-6. Each of the units is enhanced with a variety of videos and texts with supplement and clarify the concepts and content.

Please note: The months indicated in the syllabus are approximated based on previous years' schedules.

August

History, Geography, & Time

• Teaching Unit 0.1 Getting Our Bearings: Maps of time, space and history

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Describe three basic perspectives in relation to time, space, and history.

2.) Select and apply an appropriate perspective when given a specific historical topic.

3.) Understand and apply concepts of scale and proportion.

4.) Demonstrate mapping skills.

September

• Teaching Unit 0.2 Human history and big geography

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Differentiate among various flat world map projections in terms of their relative distortion of land shape and area.

2.) Identify the earth’s continents and describe alternative ways of naming them.

3.) Evaluate geographers’ opinions concerning the boundaries of continents and their relationships to each other and to bodies of water.

4.) Compare views of earth from different vantage points and identify several large regions as stages of world history

5.) Define continental drift and explain in general terms how global land masses came to be distributed as they are today.

6.) Analyze the relationship between vegetation zones, population distribution, and paths of interaction in historical time.

7.) Evaluate topographical features of earth in terms of their impact on the mobility of flora, fauna, and human beings.

Big Era One Humans in the Universe [13 Billion - 200,000 Years ago]

• Teaching Unit 1.1 The horizon of human history [13,000,000,000 - 200,000 years ago]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Explain why people possess an intrinsic need to understand both their and the world’s beginnings.

2.) Compare and contrast features of different creation myths, and analyze how these myths have satisfied the needs of people with different backgrounds to understand the origins of the world.

3.) Describe the order in which different components of the universe came into existence, according to the Big Bang Theory.

4.) Analyze the idea that people often understand the world through theories rather than absolute knowledge and that theories are based on the best knowledge available to people at a particular time.

• Teaching Unit 1.2 Human ancestors in Africa and beyond [7,000,000 - 200,000 years ago]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Construct a chronology showing significant developments in the evolution of hominid species and assess the significance of these developments.

2.) Compare ways in which the main ancestral groups related to Homo sapiens were similar to and different from one another. Also, compare humankind to its closest relatives among existing primates.

3.) Describe evidence from which scientists have gained knowledge about hominids, their evolution, and their ways of life. Also, recognize the tentativeness and changing character of this knowledge.

October

Big Era Two Human Beings Almost Everywhere [200,000 - 10,000 Years Ago]

• Teaching Unit 2.1 Human beings around the world [100,000 - 10,000 years ago]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Define the term biome and to explain how it is different from the term ecosystem.

2.) Describe features of the world’s biomes (various climate and vegetative zones) and to locate them on a map.

3.) Explain what factors may have led early humans to migrate to new biomes.

4.) Identify the skills needed by early humans to enable them to migrate to new biomes.

5.) Explain how humans are different from other mammals in their ability to move from one habitat to another.

• Teaching Unit 2.2 Language: What difference does it make? [200,000 - 40,000 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Explain the key differences between animal communication and human language.

2.) Relate the advantages of language to its short-range and long-range survival value.

3.) Construct a hypothesis based on evidence, and revise it in the light of new information.

November/December

Big Era Three Farming and the Emergence of Complex Societies [10,000 - 1000 BCE]

• Teaching Unit 3.1 Domesticating plants and animals [10,000 - 4000 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Explain how the shift to domestication first came about.

2.) Compare the life ways of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities (about 23,000 years ago) both with those of hunter-gatherers who relied significantly on wild grain (about 10,000 years ago) and with those of farmers (about 9,000 years ago).

3.) Assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift from a hunting/gathering to a farming/herding way of life.

4.) Describe the changes brought about by the shift to agriculture in humans' relations to the environment, to other humans, and to ideas.

5.) Articulate a concept of "progress" based on evidence.

• Teaching Unit 3.2 Farmers around the world [10,000 - 1500 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Locate on a world map places where farming occurred between 10,000 and 1500 BCE.

2.) Describe the characteristics of physical environments where settled farming communities developed between 10,000 and 1500 BCE.

3.) List plants and animals that were domesticated in different places around the world and relate them to specific locations.

4.) Describe how early farmers modified their environment.

5.) Give examples of archaeological evidence of farming from the Americas, Australia, and Afroeurasia.

6.) Trace the spread of agriculture in various locations across the globe.

7.) Describe some effects of farming on human societies.

• Teaching Unit 3.3 River valleys and the development of complex societies in Afroeurasia [4000 - 1500 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Describe major characteristics of the complex societies (civilizations) that emerged in Afroeurasia during this period.

2.) Compare the life ways of the earliest city-dwellers during the period of about 3500-2500 BCE with those of neolithic farmers.

3.) Describe the changes that occurred in early complex societies in human relationships to the environment, to other humans, and to ideas.

4.) Assess the advantages and disadvantages of life in complex societies compared to earlier Neolithic societies.

5.) Analyze primary source documents and assess their reliability as historical evidence.

January

• Teaching Unit 3.4 Migrations and militarism across Afroeurasia [2000 - 1000 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Compare key differences between the way of life and values of pastoral nomads and settled peoples.

2.) Examine the reasons for and consequences of the interactions between these groups.

3.) Infer characteristics of kingdoms that developed in the second millennium BCE.

4.) Describe the effects of migration and settlement on the development of languages.

• Teaching Unit 3.5 Early complex societies in the Americas [1800 - 500 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Identify the fundamental elements of Olmec and Chavín societies and describe their similarities and differences.

2.) Construct and evaluate an argument about the purpose of the monumental colossal heads that the Olmec built.

3.) Infer characteristics of ancient societies based on archaeological evidence.

February

Big Era Four Expanding Networks of Exchange and Encounter [1200 BCE - 500 CE]

• Teaching Unit 4.1 From the Mediterranean to India: Patterns of power and trade [1200 - 600 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Locate on a map the Iberian Peninsula, Anatolian Peninsula, Levant, Ganges, Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Red Sea, Aegean Sea, Persian Gulf, Khyber Pass, Nineveh, Babylon, and Jerusalem.

2.) Describe the impact that iron technology had on the Indo-Mediterranean region.

3.) Identify the Phoenicians and describe the impact of their trade on the Indo-Mediterranean world.

4.) Locate the Assyrian empire, and describe the ways in which Assyrians expanded and controlled their empire.

5.) Explain the relationship between the Phoenician trade network and the Assyrian empire.

6.) Define monotheism and its relationship to the Hebrews and the emergence of Judaism.

7.) Define and explain the significance of the caste system in India as it emerged in the first millennium BCE.

8.) List some similarities and differences in religious beliefs between Judaism and Hinduism.

• Teaching Unit 4.2 The expansion of complex society in East Asia [1200 - 300 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Compare early complex society in East Asia with those in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

2.) Categorize data about social class stratification, labor specialization, ancestor worship, and technology in the Shang and Zhou dynastic periods in China.

3.) Describe how pastoral nomadic groups in Inner Eurasia might have regarded early complex society in East Asia.

4.) Use primary accounts from the writings of Confucius to match what he thought about the role and historical significance of burial and sacrificial rituals during the Shang and Zhou periods.

March

• Teaching Unit 4.3 Migration and change in Africa south of the Sahara [1200 - 200 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Use textual, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to draw conclusions about history.

2.) Chart patterns of diffusion of ironworking technology in Africa.

3.) Weigh the validity of historical arguments using evidence.

4.) Examine the broad contours of the spread of agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara in the last millennium BCE and the first millennium CE.

5.) Weigh the costs and benefits of a society’s transition to agriculture.

6.) Document the role of African cities in long-distance trade networks.

7.) Explore the relationship between economic diversity and social stability.

• Teaching Unit 4.4 From the Mediterranean to India: An age of Greek and Persian power [600 - 200 BCE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Locate geographical features on a map:

a.) Land features: the Anatolian Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula.

b.) Regions: Indo-Mediterranea, the Levant, Macedonia, Syria, Bactria.

c.) Cities: Athens, Alexandria, Sardis, Susa, Babylon, Jerusalem, Antioch, Pataliputra.

d.) Rivers: the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus, the Amu Darya.

e.) Bodies of water: the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf.

f.) Mountains: the Hindu Kush, the Khyber Pass.

2.) Describe and explain the factors that helped integrate the Indo-Mediterranean region.

3.) Define and explain the concept of “empire”. Locate the major empires of the period and analyze their relative importance. Analyze major differences and similarities between these empires.

4.) Describe the basic teachings of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.

5.) Analyze the importance of trade expansion in this period.

April

• Teaching Unit 4.5 Giant empires of Afroeurasia [300 BCE - 200 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Demonstrate knowledge of the subject by answering a series of questions on Afroeurasian history between 300 BCE and 500 CE.

2.) Categorize and record information about Afroeurasia between 300 BCE and 500 CE.

3.) Demonstrate understanding of the historical significance of states during Big Era Four.

4.) Evaluate their own and peer work using rubrics.

• Teaching Unit 4.6 Empires and city-states of the Americas [800 BCE - 500 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Describe the characteristics of the empires and city-states of the Americas, 800 BCE to 500 CE.

2.) Make analytical comparisons between complex societies in the Americas and Afroeurasia.

3.) Make analytical comparisons between mathematical notation and calendar systems in the world.

Big Era Five Patterns of Interregional Unity [300 - 1500 CE]

• Teaching Unit 5.1 Centuries of upheaval in Afroeurasia [300 - 600 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Identify characteristics of empire.”

2.) Explain multiple causes for the fall of the Han empire.

3.) Research and evaluate the multiple causes for the fall of Rome.

4.) Describe Justinian’s attempt to recreate the Roman empire and why it failed.

5.) Describe the rise of the Gupta empire and its golden age.

6.) Give reasons for the success of pastoral nomads in Inner Eurasia Asia.

7.) Explain the role of pastoral nomads in the collapse of the Gupta empire.

• Teaching Unit 5.2 Afroeurasia and the rise of Islam [600 - 1000 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Locate the Arabian Peninsula and the bodies of water and landmasses adjacent to it. Identify important cities such as Jerusalem, Makkah (Mecca), Madinah (Madina), Damascus, Baghdad, Constantinople, Cairo, Cordoba, and Samarkand.

2.) Describe the basic beliefs and practices of Islam, including the Five Pillars and explain their relationship to Muslim life, culture, and civilization.

3.) Distinguish between the rapid expansion of territory under Muslim rule and the gradual spread of Islam among various societies.

4.) Analyze the relationship between the spread of Islam and the use of the Arabic language in scholarship and trade.

5.) Identify social and political institutions that emerged in Muslim society in response to religious practices, and give examples of diverse ways in which these institutions manifested themselves in different regional traditions.

6.) Relate the spread of Islam to the expansion of trade in Afroeurasia from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries CE.

7.) Compare primary sources and relate them to geographic information about interregional trade relations in Afroeurasia.

8.) Relate the spread of Islam to the expansion of urbanization in Afroeurasia from the seventh to the twelfth centuries CE.

• Teaching Unit 5.3 Consolidation of the trans-hemispheric network [1000 - 1250 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Describe the impact of trade on selected societies in Africa, Asia, and Europe during the period from 800 to 1500 CE, and describe how regional trade relates to long-distance trade across Afroeurasia.

2.) Compare primary source accounts of trade goods, customs, and socio-economic effects of trade with secondary sources on trading societies.

3.) Analyze the connection between specific marketplaces and the trading zones of Afroeurasia as a whole.

4.) Analyze how selected technologies, ideas, and goods were disseminated among various regions of Afroeurasia.

• Teaching Unit 5.4 The Mongol Moment [1200- 1400 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1. Explain what features of the Mongols’ pastoral nomadic way of life were favorable to their creation of an empire.

2. Analyze the impact of the imperial conquests on both Mongol society and on the societies they conquered.

3. Describe the ways that Mongol actions promoted the exchange of goods and ideas within and beyond their empire.

4. Assess the significance of particular individuals and historical processes.

5. Analyze historical documents for reliability.

May

• Teaching Unit 5.5 Calamities and recoveries [1300-1500 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Identify calamities and recoveries based on “point of view.”

2.) Describe the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and the rise of the Ming Dynasty in China.

3.) Predict effects of increased contact between East Asia and Europe.

4.) Assess the impact of climatic change on European agriculture and population in the early fourteenth century.

5.) Identify major effects of the Black Death and draw evidence from primary source documents to infer how people across Afroeurasia responded to the Black Death.

6.) Use quantitative data to construct a graph that illustrates demographic change in Afroeurasia.

7.) Explain the relationship between events of the period and demographic trends.

8.) Assess the impact of Timur's conquests on Asia, and create a map to illustrate the geographic extent of Timur's empire.

9.) Evaluate the importance of the Bosporus and Dardanelles as both a link and a barrier between Europe and Asia.

10.) Detect and evaluate bias in primary source documents.

11.) Use a primary source document to construct a neutral account of the conquest/liberation of Constantinople.

12.) Use historical evidence to construct a hypothesis concerning elements of Europe's recovery from the calamities of this period.

• Teaching Unit 5.6 Spheres of interaction in the Americas [300 - 1500 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Identify and locate spheres of interregional exchange in the Americas.

2.) List examples of goods exchanged within spheres.

3.) Explain how goods were exchanged and transported over a wide geographic area.

4.) Describe theories about which spheres might have been linked through trade.

Big Era Six The Great Global Convergence [1400 - 1800 CE]

• Teaching Unit 6.1 Oceanic ventures and the joining of the continents [1400 - 1550 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Identify reasons why mariners undertook long-distance oceanic voyages both east and west during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and compare the Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish ventures.

2.) Evaluate what promoted, and what hindered, the novel sea voyages and their achievements during the period 1400 to 1550.

3.) Explain how, and with what results, Spain and Portugal turned the search for new sea routes into a grasp for empire in the sixteenth century.

4.) Analyze ways in which each side viewed the other in the encounters of Africans, Native Americans, and Asians with Iberians (Spanish and Portuguese) during and after the latter’s maritime expeditions of 1400 to 1550.

5.) Develop a toolkit for assessing the reliability of historical documents as evidence, and gain practice in its use.

• Teaching Unit 6.2 The Columbian Exchange and its consequences: biological, social, and cultural [1400 - 1650 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Analyze the causes and severity of Native American mortality rates from 1500 to 1650

2.) Describe the contributions of Afroeurasia and the Americas to the biological exchanges of plants, animals, humans, and germs initiated by the permanent linking of these two regions.

3.) Explain the consequences for global trade of linking America and Afroeurasia with each other.

4.) Evaluate the moral significance of a) massive die-off of American Indian populations in the period 1500-1650 and b) the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

5.) Assess documentary and numerical evidence for reliability, and explain reasons for serious disagreements among historians about the size of Native American populations before and after contact with newcomers from Afroeurasia.

• Teaching Unit 6.3 Rulers with guns: the rise of powerful states [1400 - 1800 CE]

  • Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1.) Describe the origins, transfer, and uses of gunpowder technology in warfare.

2.) Analyze the effects of firearms on the development of powerful, centralized states.

3.) Compare societies that made use of, or were affected by, gunpowder weapons in various parts of the world from 1400 to 1700 CE.

4.) Analyze the material and cultural impact of powerful monarchies based on gunpowder military expansion through visual analysis of royal portraits.

Historical Thinking Standards

The study of history...rests on knowledge of facts, dates, names, places, events, and ideas. In addition, true historical understanding requires students to engage in historical thinking: to raise questions and to marshal solid evidence in support of their answers; to go beyond the facts presented in their textbooks and examine the historical record for themselves; to consult documents, journals, diaries, artifacts, historic sites, works of art, quantitative data, and other evidence from the past, and to do so imaginatively–taking into account the historical context in which these records were created and comparing the multiple points of view of those on the scene at the time.

Real historical understanding requires that students have opportunity to create historical narratives and arguments of their own. Such narratives and arguments may take many forms–essays, debates, and editorials, for instance. They can be initiated in a variety of ways. None, however, more powerfully initiates historical thinking than those issues, past and present, that challenge students to enter knowledgeably into the historical record and to bring sound historical perspectives to bear in the analysis of a problem.

Historical understanding also requires that students thoughtfully read the historical narratives created by others. Well-written historical narratives are interpretative, revealing and explaining connections, change, and consequences. They are also analytical, combining lively storytelling and biography with conceptual analysis drawn from all relevant disciplines. Such narratives promote essential skills in historical thinking.

Reading such narratives requires that students analyze the assumptions–stated and unstated–from which the narrative was constructed and assess the strength of the evidence presented. It requires that students consider the significance of what the author included as well as chose to omit–the absence, for example, of the voices and experiences of other men and women who were also an important part of the history of their time. Also, it requires that students examine the interpretative nature of history, comparing, for example, alternative historical narratives written by historians who have given different weight to the political, economic, social, and/or technological causes of events and who have developed competing interpretations of the significance of those events.

Students engaged in activities of the kinds just considered will draw upon skills in the following five interconnected dimensions of historical thinking [2]:

Standard 1. Chronological Thinking

The student thinks chronologically:

Therefore, the student is able to:

A. Distinguish between past, present, and future time.

B. Identify the temporal structure of a historical narrative or story: Its beginning, middle, and end (the latter defined as the outcome of a particular beginning).

C. Establish temporal order in constructing historical narratives of their own: working forward from some beginning through its development, to some end or outcome; working backward from some issue, problem, or event to explain its origins and its development over time.

D. Measure and calculate calendar time by days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries and millennia, from fixed points of the calendar system: BC (before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord”) in the Gregorian calendar and the contemporary secular designation for these same dates, BCE (before the Common Era) and CE (in the Common Era); and compare with the fixed points of other calendar systems such as the Roman (753 BC, the founding of the city of Rome) and the Muslim (622 AD, the hegira).

E. Interpret data presented in time lines and create time lines by designating appropriate equidistant intervals of time and recording events according to the temporal order in which they occurred.

F. Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration in which historical developments have unfolded, and apply them to explain historical continuity and change.

G. Compare alternative models for periodization by identifying the organizing principles on which each is based.

Standard 2. Historical Comprehension

The student comprehends a variety of historical sources:

Therefore, the student is able to:

A. Identify the author or source of the historical document or narrative and assess its credibility.

B. Reconstruct the literal meaning of a historical passage by identifying who was involved, what happened, where it happened, what events led to these developments, and what consequences or outcomes followed.

C. Identify the central question(s) the historical narrative addresses and the purpose, perspective, or point of view from which it has been constructed.

D. Differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations but acknowledge that the two are related; that the facts the historian reports are selected and reflect therefore the historian’s judgement of what is most significant about the past.

E. Read historical narratives imaginatively taking into account what the narrative reveals of the humanity of the individuals and groups involved–their probable values, outlook, motives, hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses.

F. Appreciate historical perspectives - the ability (a) describing the past on its own terms, through the eyes and experiences of those who were there, as revealed through their literature, diaries, letters, debates, arts, artifacts, and the like; (b) considering the historical context in which the event unfolded–the values, outlook, options, and contingencies of that time and place; and (c) avoiding “present-mindedness,” judging the past solely in terms of present-day norms and values.

G. Draw upon data in historical maps in order to obtain or clarify information on the geographic setting in which the historical event occurred, its relative and absolute location, the distances and directions involved, the natural and man-made features of the place, and critical relationships in the spatial distributions of those features and the historical event occurring there.

H. Utilize visual, mathematical, and quantitative data presented in graphs, including charts, tables, pie and bar graphs, flow charts, Venn diagrams, and other graphic organizers to clarify, illustrate, or elaborate upon information presented in the historical narrative.

I. Draw upon the visual, literary, and musical sources including: (a) photographs, paintings, cartoons, and architectural drawings; (b) novels, poetry, and plays; and, (c) folk, popular and classical music, to clarify, illustrate, or elaborate upon information presented in the historical narrative.

Standard 3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation

The student engages in historical analysis and interpretation:

Therefore, the student is able to:

A. Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions by identifying likenesses and differences.

B. Consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past by demonstrating their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears.

C. Analyze cause-and-effect relationships bearing in mind multiple causation including (a) the importance of the individual in history; (b) the influence of ideas, human interests, and beliefs; and (c) the role of chance, the accidental and the irrational.

D. Draw comparisons across eras and regions in order to define enduring issues as well as large-scale or long-term developments that transcend regional and temporal boundaries.

E. Distinguish between unsupported expressions of opinion and informed hypotheses grounded in historical evidence.

F. Compare competing historical narratives.

G. Challenge arguments of historical inevitability by formulating examples of historical contingency, of how different choices could have led to different consequences.

H. Hold interpretations of history as tentative, subject to changes as new information is uncovered, new voices heard, and new interpretations broached.

I. Evaluate major debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past.

J. Hypothesize the influence of the past, including both the limitations and opportunities made possible by past decisions.

Standard 4. Historical Research Capabilities

The student conducts historical research:

Therefore, the student is able to:

A. Formulate historical questions from encounters with historical documents, eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries, artifacts, photos, historical sites, art, architecture, and other records from the past.

B. Obtain historical data from a variety of sources, including: library and museum collections, historic sites, historical photos, journals, diaries, eyewitness accounts, newspapers, and the like; documentary films, oral testimony from living witnesses, censuses, tax records, city directories, statistical compilations, and economic indicators.

C. Interrogate historical data by uncovering the social, political, and economic context in which it was created; testing the data source for its credibility, authority, authenticity, internal consistency and completeness; and detecting and evaluating bias, distortion, and propaganda by omission, suppression, or invention of facts.

D. Identify the gaps in the available records and marshal contextual knowledge and perspectives of the time and place in order to elaborate imaginatively upon the evidence, fill in the gaps deductively, and construct a sound historical interpretation.

E. Employ quantitative analysis in order to explore such topics as changes in family size and composition, migration patterns, wealth distribution, and changes in the economy.

F. Support interpretations with historical evidence in order to construct closely reasoned arguments rather than facile opinions.

Standard 5. Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making

The student engages in historical issues-analysis and decision-making:

Therefore, the student is able to:

A. Identify issues and problems in the past and analyze the interests, values, perspectives, and points of view of those involved in the situation.

B. Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances and current factors contributing to contemporary problems and alternative courses of action.

C. Identify relevant historical antecedents and differentiate from those that are inappropriate and irrelevant to contemporary issues.

D. Evaluate alternative courses of action, keeping in mind the information available at the time, in terms of ethical considerations, the interests of those affected by the decision, and the long- and short-term consequences of each.

E. Formulate a position or course of action on an issue by identifying the nature of the problem, analyzing the underlying factors contributing to the problem, and choosing a plausible solution from a choice of carefully evaluated options.

F. Evaluate the implementation of a decision by analyzing the interests it served; estimating the position, power, and priority of each player involved; assessing the ethical dimensions of the decision; and evaluating its costs and benefits from a variety of perspectives.