COURSE DESCRIPTION:

AP World History is a college level course requiring that students “develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts in different types of human societies” (College Board, 2007. Through use of appropriate analytical skills, primary and secondary sources, students will evaluate selective factual knowledge to increase this understanding. This course will examine how societies have changed over time and through contact with different cultures and how they have stayed the same. It will define the causes and consequences of these changes. Students will interpret global events/issues and compare major societies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. European history does not exceed 30% of the total course. The United States is included based solely on its interactions with other societies during the colonial period, the Revolutionary War, its expansion, and global interactions during the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century.

 

This course covers the chronological period beginning with prehistory (approximately 8000 B.C. – A.D. 600) and continuing through the present time. The outline of the periods covered is as follows:
                       

Foundation of course:                         6 weeks

circa 8000 B.C. – A.D. 600       

            A.D. 600 – 1450                                   7 weeks

            1450 – 1750                                        6 weeks

            1750 – 1914                                        6 weeks

            1914 – the present                               6 weeks

 

OBJECTIVES:

1.      To teach the dynamics of change and continuity across world history periods covered in this course, and the causes and processes involved in major changes of these dynamics.

2.      To provide students with an understanding of the interaction between humans and the environment which are affected by the following: population growth and decline, disease, migration, patterns of settlement, agriculture, and technology.

 

3.      To guide students to an understanding of the development and interaction of cultures including religions and belief systems, philosophies and ideologies, science and technology, the arts and architecture.

 

4.      To teach changes in functions and structures of states and political identities (political culture), expansion, and conflict including, including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization).

5.      To provide students with an understanding of the creation, expansion, and interaction of economic systems including: agricultural and pastoral production, trade and commerce, labor systems, industrialization, capitalism and socialism.

 

6.      To guide students to an understanding of the development and transformation of social structures including: gender roles and relations, family and kinship, racial and ethnic constructions, social and economic classes.