"We Are Our History" is a quote by the renowned author and intellectual James Baldwin. We will consider how our collective historic past intersects with our own personal origin stories. We will investigate how the triumphs and challenges of the past shape the world we must face today.
When considering the stories passed down to us as history we must allow for the perspective of the storyteller. The same events may look different from the viewpoint of royalty and that of a serf, from victor and conquered, from intellectual and uneducated. There is a natural bias in the storytellers recounting of facts. In this class we will discuss and analyze American history while trying to understand the point of view of the tellers and the way our own viewpoint affects the way we interpret what we hear or read.
The class will address crucial turning points in American history, using both firsthand accounts by people who were there and later analyses by historians who studied them. After reading about these events we will write and debate about them, always considering the causes - governmental action, individual action, environmental imperatives, or inevitability.
This trimester, we'll consider whose land ours was (and should be), the nature of the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, and the compromises and rights that make up the Constitution, which is the framework of our government. This trimester will take the story of our nation up to about 1798. This class will not only help you become an active historian, but it is a great class for those of you concerned about the essay, punctuation, reading comprehension and the U.S. History sections of the competency exam because we'll be working on those skills. Students will read an article, answer questions, join a class discussion, take careful notes and write and revise an essay. We will watch excerpts from the video series 500 Nations (about Native American history), Africans in America and Liberty and read selections from assorted texts. We’ll identify historic patterns and examine the seeds of our modern society from its pre-colonial and colonial foundations.