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Curriculum and Instructional Guide
Curriculum and Instructional Guide
Course Description: Contemporary World Geography introduces high school students to human geography. The content is presented thematically rather than regionally and is organized around the discipline’s main subfields: economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, and urban geography. Historical information serves to enrich analysis of the impacts of phenomena such as globalization, colonialism, and human–environment relationships on places, regions, cultural landscapes, and patterns of interaction. The course provides five specific themes that students explore to make connections between geography, history, populations, economics, and more around the world. These themes are, problems of economic development and cultural change, impacts of technological innovation on transportation, communication, industrialization, and other aspects of human life, struggles over political power and control of territory, explanations of why location matters to agricultural land use, industrial development, and urban problems, the role of climate change and environmental abuses in shaping the human landscapes on Earth.
The goal for the course is for students to become more geoliterate, more engaged in contemporary global issues, and more informed about multicultural viewpoints. They will develop skills in approaching problems geographically, using maps and geospatial technologies, thinking critically about texts and graphic images, interpreting cultural landscapes, and applying geographic concepts such as scale, region, diffusion, interdependence, and spatial interaction, among others. Students will see geography as a discipline relevant to the world in which they live; as a source of ideas for identifying, clarifying, and solving problems at various scales; and as a key component of building knowledge about the world, multicultural awareness, and environmental stewardship.
Key Ideas include things such as vocabulary, essential knowledge, places, historical figures
Course Concepts - The content and performance Social Studies standards are organized around the following guidelines:
ECO - Economics – Economics includes the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Students will understand how their economic decisions affect themselves, others, the nation, and the world as a whole. Students will be able to reconcile unlimited wants with limited resources. Students will understand the effects of economic decisions in daily living.
GEO - Geography – Geography includes the study of location, place, regions, movement and human interaction with the environment. Understanding the world and its delicate balance are essential to human survival. A geographic perspective allows better understanding of the past and preparation for the future.
HIS - History – History is an interpretation of events, people, ideas, and their interaction over time. In order for students to understand the present and make plans for the future, they must understand the past. Students will be able to understand, analyze, and interpret historical events, conditions, trends, and issues to develop historical perspectives.
CIV - Civics & Government – Citizenship entails an understanding of the nature of government and the unique qualities of a democracy including fundamental rights, structure, and the role of the citizen. Students will apply justice, equality, responsibility, and freedom to life. Students will understand and be able to describe various forms of government and analyze rights and responsibilities within each
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Ways to Infuse the Catholic Faith:
Catholic Social Teaching Themes:
Life and Dignity of the Human Person – The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. The Church believes that every person is precious, that people are more important than things and the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person.
Call to Family, Community and Participation – The Catholic Church tradition proclaims that the person is not only sacred but also social. Marriage and the family is the central social institution that must be supported and strengthened, not undermined. Our Church teaches that the role of government and other institutions is to protect human life and human dignity and promote the common good.
Rights and Responsibilities – Catholic tradition teaches that human dignity can be protected and a healthy community can be achieved only if human rights are protected and responsibilities are met.
Option for the Poor and Vulnerable – Catholic teaching proclaims that a basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. We are instructed in Matthew 25: 31-46 to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.
The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers – The Catholic Church believes that the economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation.
Solidarity – Catholic social teaching proclaims that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they live. We are one human family whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. Learning to practice the virtue of solidarity means learning that “loving our neighbor” has global dimensions in an interdependent world.
Care for God’s Creation –The Catholic tradition insists that we show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation.
These various themes can be interwoven into the units of this course. Some will lend themselves better to some topics than others. For example, emphasis on the needs of migrants, the poor, the displaced, and other vulnerable populations should be incorporated into Unit 2 materials, especially on the importance of care for migrants and other globally vulnerable populations.
Unit 1
How does the world that we live in reflect a “divine geography”?
How does the idea of the “City of God” reflect the reality of our lived situation?
What are the major sites of Catholicism?
Unit 2
What does the Catholic Church have to say on the changing natures of family structures?
How as Catholics can we reconcile the changes of modern life and the new issues that we are facing with our faith?
The Church has a very clear stance on the importance of care for migrants and the less fortunate around the world, how do we see these beliefs play out in practice? What would a Catholic immigration policy look like?
Unit 3
What is the difference between world religions? How does the Catholic Church see itself in the line of monotheistic traditions, and as different from other world religions?
How does the Church practice solidarity across racial, economic, and religious lines? What are examples of this principle in action?
Unit 4
The Church has a complicated history of political involvement, what are examples of the Church’s role in government in the modern day? Does the Church have a place in government in the modern day?
How would the Church decided international disputes between nations?
What is a “just war” according to the Church? Are there recent examples?
Unit 5
Why do people live in grouped communities? Does this reflect something about the nature of God and Man?
How is the practice and lived experience of the faith different in different parts of the world? Is there a difference between rural parishes and urban ones? How does the distribution of cities affect the Church?
Unit 6
Using Pope Francis’s encyclical, “Laudato Si” what is the role of humans in preserving the environment?
Is the Catholic approach to the natural world one that is rooted in environmentalism? What does the Church say about the nature of man’s relationship to the environment?
Economic development often goes along with declines in religiosity, how are we to understand the importance and role of the Church in a modern society that often does not reflect the Church’s eternal teachings?
Suggested Mentor Texts
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that tell you everything you need to know about Global Politics by Tim Marshall
Catholic Resources:
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