The first unit of Grade 7 examines the geography and ancient history of Central and South Asia. In this unit, students work to answer three Essential Questions that prompt them to consider the influence of various factors — geography, belief systems, and leadership — on the development of society. Cluster 1 focuses on geography and the Essential Question, How does where you live influence how you live? After this introduction, students explore the diverse political, economic, social, and cultural developments and contributions of these regions. In doing so, they develop cross- cultural understandings that push back against colonial narratives of India as a “land of spirituality” or Central Asia as a “land of nomads.”
Cluster 2 grounds students in the ancient world of South Asia through a study of Harappan society and its artifacts. Here, students work to analyze and organize sources to support a claim about Harappan society. Cluster 3 starts with the later disintegration of that society and the Indo-Aryan migration to the South Asian subcontinent. This cluster focuses on the development of Hinduism and Buddhism in the ancient world. Students work to answer the Essential Question, How do belief systems reflect and influence society? These religions had an enduring influence on the political, cultural, and social development of South Asia. Through these lessons, students learn their ancient roots and come to understand that they evolved over time and continue to evolve today.
In Cluster 4, students study kingship and the Golden Ages of ancient South and Central Asia. By investigating the two great South Asian empires of the ancient world, the Maurya and the Gupta, as well as the accomplishments of the Islamic caliphates and local rulers that governed Central Asia, they consider the Essential Question, How much influence do leaders have over the success of a society? — a question that has important implications for civic life in the 21st century. As Cluster 4 continues, students learn about the Golden Ages of these regions, considering who and what contributed to making the intellectual and cultural achievements of these societies possible.
Unit 1 opens the second half of the two-year world geography and ancient history sequence that students began in the 6th grade. This year, students continue to build on their earlier social science skill development, as they consider what evidence from centuries past can tell us about the people and societies of the ancient world. Throughout the lessons, students practice the skills of analysis and historical thinking as they examine primary and secondary sources and engage with scholarship about ancient Central and South Asia. By working to understand historical developments, students gain a nuanced appreciation for how and why history unfolds, and how the interconnections between the regions (and the wider world) influenced them. This knowledge provides an important foundation for global understanding and citizenship.
Our unit on East Asia takes advantage of an abundance of historical texts, artworks and artifacts to introduce students to the ideas and values of early peoples in this region — monarchs, elites, and common people alike. As we gain insight into their perspectives, the myriad ways that East Asian societies encountered and influenced one another come into focus. A major theme of the unit is the investigation of features that diffused across the region to create a common substrate of East Asian culture, from ethical belief systems to written language, and from centralized administration to ideas about beauty. With its syncretism, East Asia offers a model of cultural toleration and selective borrowing that has shaped the region in profound ways. At the same time, each of its constituent cultures — for our purposes, chiefly China, Korea and Japan — has a distinctive identity worthy of study.
The unit opens with a spotlight on geography that emphasizes critical thinking. Students analyze maps and images to make inferences about how the environment has shaped human geography, and how people have altered their environment. The rest of the unit focuses on the early histories of China, Korea and Japan in sequence, though not in isolation. Overall, the goal for the unit is to show how the East Asian world was interconnected, but also how its cultures and histories developed in individual ways in response to local conditions and the creativity of the people. Many of these ancient choices still reverberate strongly in the cultures of the region today, and have parallels with practices in students’ own lives.
Cultural exchange and trade across the vast Eurasian steppes and mountains were practices that spanned millennia and drew in the whole of Asia, continuing into the present. For this unit, we will focus on the first millennium of travel on the Silk Routes, which includes the heyday of traffic during the 7th and 8th centuries. The content of these lessons connects the three prior Asia units in the curriculum (Units 6.2, 7.1, 7.2) and previews material from Units 7.4 (Southeast Asia) and 7.5 (Europe). Each of these regions was involved in bridging Asian cultures in ways that shaped their societies and brought social change.
The cluster begins with six lessons that orient students to what the “Silk Routes” were and the goods, people, and geographic features that a traveler or trader might encounter there. The next set of lessons involves a trade simulation and Inquiry Cycle in which students consider the question, What were the most important goods and ideas that moved on the Silk Routes? With Silk Route travel and contact came an exchange of ideas, religions, technologies, cultural forms and tolerance for different ways. In the last group of lessons, students investigate both ancient and current policies toward religious and ethnic diversity in China while asking, What happened over time to the Silk Road legacy of tolerance?
This unit addresses the geography and ancient history of three unique sub-regions of the world that, though distinctive, nevertheless share fascinating links and commonalities. Cluster 1 highlights millennia of Indigenous knowledge and scientific and technical innovation in the histories of the Pacific Islands region. It investigates how peoples of this region built sustainable and connected cultures across the vast distances of their unique oceanic territory. Cluster 2 focuses on Aboriginal Australian and archaeological/historical accounts of the peopling of the continent. It then looks at how people both in Australia and later New Zealand stewarded their land and water resources and described their environment in art and story. Cluster 3 introduces the agrarian and maritime states of Southeast Asia — chiefly Funan, Srivijaya, and the Angkorian/Khmer Empire — and discusses the role of geography, trade, human choices, and Indic influences in shaping their development. One and a half lessons also focus on the 20th century Cambodian Genocide and survival of Khmer culture, in fulfillment of the state’s legislation requiring the teaching of genocide in middle school, and elevating the creative history of an immigrant/refugee people in Massachusetts.
Throughout these lessons, geography is in the spotlight — even as the agency and ingenuity of people as historical actors is a central theme. People in each region defined unique relationships to the landscapes and seascapes that they called home. They also worked to cultivate and maintain them through sustainable practices, and expressed their relationship to them through artworks and stories. We sample those ideas here, in service of thinking about how we might solve problems connected to stewardship of land and water in our own times.
For the final unit of 7th grade, the spotlight shifts from Asia to Europe and in particular to ancient Greece and Rome. Focusing upon these societies at this point in the year gives students the foundation on government institutions and civic approaches that will support their learning in 8th grade Civics. Among other core topics, in this unit they learn about the origins of Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic, both of which (and especially the latter) provided roots for our own system of government. The Greeks and Romans generated, as well, important civic ideas regarding sharing power among branches of government (checks and balances), the fulfilling of one’s civic duty, jury duty, veto power, the potential of cities, and the role of public speaking (rhetoric). In recognition of this last point, students study orations and write and deliver their own oration on a problem of governance as a summative project for the unit. Practice Standard 1 — the demonstration of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions — is central throughout the lessons.