This electrionic version of the National Standards for World History presents all elements of the printed edition except for:
1) Chapter 4, "Teaching Resources for World History"
2) appendix listing contributors and participating organizations,
3) charts and illustrations.
You may purchase the printed editions of the National Standards for World History, United States History, and K-4 History by writing to the National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA,
10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 761, Los Angeles CA 90024-4108.
The fax number is (310) 825-4723.
If you have comments on the standards please send them to the National Center for History or e-mail to:
history@lands.sscnet.ucla.edu.
Publication of the National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present could not be more timely. These standards address one of the major goals for education reform contained in the landmark legislation, Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in March 1994. This statute affirms that by the year 2000, All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter in the core academic subjects of the school curriculum, history among them. Heralding passage of this legislation by the Congress, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley announced, Final passage of the Goals 2000 legislation moves us one step closer to the day when we can assure every parent in America that their children . . . are receiving an education that is up to world class standards. It is a goal broadly supported by the American people, their state governors, their legislators in the United States Congress, and the two successive administrations of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Support for the development of internationally competitive national standards of excellence for the nation's schools was first voiced in the National Education Goals adopted by the nation's fifty governors in their 1989 meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia. The third of the six education goals adopted in that meeting identified history as one of five school subjects for which challenging new national achievement standards should be established.
In October 1992 President Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to achieving these goals, including the, establishment of world class standards [specifically to include history] and development of a meaningful national examination system . . . to determine whether our students are meeting the standards . . . , to increase expectations, and to give schools incentives and structures to improve student performance. That same year, the importance of national standards in history was again affirmed in Raising Standards for American Education, the report to Congress of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing, appointed by the Congress to advise on these matters under the co-chairmanship of Governors Roy Romer (D-Colorado) and Carroll A. Campbell (R-South Carolina).
It was in this robust climate of education reform that the National History Standards Project was born. Funded in the spring of 1992 by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Office of Educational Research and Impovement of the United States Department of Education, this Project sought to develop broad national consensus for what constitutes excellence in the teaching and learning of history in the nation's schools. Developed through a broad-based national consensus-building process, this task has involved working toward agreement both on the larger purposes of history in the school curriculum and on the more specific history understandings and thinking processes all students should have equal opportunity to acquire over twelve years of precollegiate education.
In undertaking this process, it was widely agreed that the History Standards, as finally drafted, would in fact mark a critical advance but not the final destination in what must be an ongoing, dynamic process of improvement and revision over the years to come. History is an extraordinarily dynamic field today, and standards drafted for the schools must be open to continuing development to keep pace with new refinements and revisions in this field.
This present publication, National Standards for World History , marks a major milestone in the development of standards of excellence for the nation's schools. It is the result of over two years of intensive work by hundreds of gifted classroom teachers of history; of supervisors, state social studies specialists, and chief state school officers responsible for history in the schools; of dozens of talented and active academic historians in the nation; and of representatives of a broad array of professional and scholarly organizations, civic and public interest groups, parents and individual citizens with a stake in the teaching of history in the schools.
The National Council for History Standards, the policy-setting body responsible for providing policy direction and oversight of the project, consisted of thirty members, including the present or immediate past presidents of such large-membership organizations directly responsible for the content and teaching of history as the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Council of State Social Studies Specialists, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council for History Education, the Organization of American Historians, and the Organization of History Teachers. In addition, members included the director and associate director of the Social Studies Development Center at Indiana University, supervisory and curriculum development staff of county and city school districts, experienced classroom teachers, and distinguished historians in the fields of United States and world history. To foster correspondence in the development of the United States history standards with the work under development for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in United States History, several participants in the NAEP Planning and Steering Committees were included in the National Council for History Standards. For similar reasons two members of the congressionally mandated National Council for Education Standards and Testing also served on this Council. Finally, the two directors of the National Center for History in the Schools, responsible for administering this project, served as co-chairs of the Council.
The National Forum for History Standards was composed of representatives from major education, public interest, parent-teacher, and other organizations concerned with history in the schools. Advisory in its function, the Forum provided important counsel and feedback for this project as well as access to the larger public through the membership of the organizations represented in the Forum.
Nine Organizational Focus Groups of between fifteen and twenty-nine members each, chosen by the leadership of their respective organizations, were engaged to provide important advisory, review, and consulting services to the project. Organizations providing this special service included the Council of Chief State School Officers the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Historical Association, the World History Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, the Organization of American Historians, the National Council for History Education, the Council of State Social Studies Specialists, and the Organization of History Teachers.
Three Curriculum Task Forces were formed, totaling more than fifty members, with responsibility for developing the standards for students in grades K-4, and for students in grades 5-12 in the fields of United States and world history. Composed of veteran classroom teachers from throughout the United States who were recommended by the many organiizations participating in thi project, and of recognized scholars of United States and world history with deep commitments to history education in schools, these groups have worked for many months in grade-alike writing teams and in meetings of the whole to ensure continuity of standards across all levels of schooling, elementary through high school.
The drafting of the World History Standards required more than the usual collaborative effort that any standards project must mount. Acknowledgements and appreciation are therefore especially apt. The National Council for History Standards established an ad hoc World History Committee of experienced teachers and historians with expertise in various eras and areas of world history to draft a scaffolding for the writing of the standards. This devoted group, which met for three work sessions over a period of six months, was chaired by Michael Winston, Howard University and the Alfred Harcourt Foundation. The other members of the committee were: Joan Arno, George Washington High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; David Baumbach, Woolsair Elementary Gifted Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richard Bulliet, Columbia University; Ainslee T. Embree, Columbia University; Carol Gluck, Columbia University; Akira Iriye, Harvard University; Henry G. Kiernan, Director of Curriculum, West Morris Regional High School District, Chester, New Jersey; Colin Palmer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Richard Saller, University of Chicago; and Theodore Rabb, Princeton University.
Working from the Winston Committee's report was a group of experienced, knowledgeable, and dedicated classroom teachers and historians who have been in the forefront of efforts to teach and write a more balanced and inclusive world history. This group, the World History Curriculum Task Force, worked over two summers and in week-long sessions throughout these two academic years. They included: Joann Alberghini, Lake View Junior High School, Santa Maria, California; John Arevalo, Harlandale High School, San Antonio, Texas; Joan Arno, George Washington High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; David Baumbach, Woolsair Elementary Gifted Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Edward Berenson, University of California, Los Angeles; Margaret Binnaker, St. Andrews-Swanee School, St. Andrews, Tennessee; Jacqueline Brown-Frierson, Lemmel Middle School, Baltimore, Maryland; Richard Bulliet, Columbia University; Stanley Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles; Anne Chapman, Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio; Peter Cheoros, Lynwood High School, Lynwood, California; Sammy Crawford, Soldotna High School, Soldotna, Alaska; Ross Dunn, San Diego State University; Benjamin Elman, University of California, Los Angeles; Jean Fleet, Riverside University High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Jana Flores, Pine Grove Elementary School, Santa Maria, California; Michele Forman, Middlebury High School, Middlebury, Vermont; Charles Frazee, California State University, Fullerton; Marilynn Jo Hitchens, Wheat Ridge High School,Wheat Ridge, Colorado;Jean Johnson, Friends Seminary, New York, New York; Henry G. Kiernan, West Morris Regional High School District, Chester, New Jersey; Carrie McIver, Santee Summit High School, Santee, California; Susan Meisler, Vernon Center MiddleSchool, Vernon, Connecticut; Joe Palumbo, Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach, California; Sue Rosenthal, High School for Creative and Performing Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Heidi Roupp, Aspen High School, Aspen, Colorado; Irene Segade, San Diego High School, San Diego, California; Geoffrey Symcox, University of California, Los Angeles; David Vigilante, Gompers Secondary School, San Diego, California; Scott Waugh, University of California, Los Angeles; Julia Werner, Nicolet High School, Glendale, Wisconsin; and Donald Woodruff, Fredericksburg Academy, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
To all of these precollegiate and university members of the World History Curriculum Task Force we express great respect and admiration for their tireless efforts and good spirits in negotiating the choppy waters of world history. None of their efforts would have reached fruition without the very special involvement of Ross Dunn, who played a leading and indispensable role in coordinating the work of the World History Curriculum Task Force, led two of the drafting sessions, and acted as a gentle intellectual padrone in negotiating the many cross-currents that necessarily attend the writing of anything as ambitious as a framework for the study of humankind's entire history.
In the final drafting of National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present, a small group of people worked with Dunn in the summer and early fall of 1994: Joann Alberghini, Roger Beck, Anne Chapman, Jean Fleet, Jana Flores, Jean Johnson, Henry Kiernan, David Vigilante, and Donald Woodruff. The East Asian Curriculum Project at the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and The Council on Islamic Education greatly assisted this group as they drafted grade-level materials. The co-directors of this project believe that only rarely in the history of American education has such a group of good-spirited, gifted, and devoted teachers from across the country and teaching at every level of education from elementary schools to baccalaureate institutions accomplished so much for the teaching of history in the schools.
Our thanks go also to the many members of the National Council for History Standards, the National Forum for History Standards, and the Organizational Focus Groups who gave unfailingly and selflessly of their time and professional expertise during the more than two years of intensive work that went into the development of the standards. The Appendix presents the rosters of all these working groups. In particular, we salute those who read draft after draft under difficult deadlines throughout the spring and summer of 1994, and submitted substantive recommendations for revision that have contributed importantly to the completion of this volume.
Special appreciation is due also to the many school districts and administrators who time and again agreed to the release time that allowed the gifted teachers who served on the World History Curriculum Task Force to meet at UCLA for week-long working sessions throughout the school year in order to complete the development of the standards and of the grade-appropriate examples of student achievement of the standards.
As co-directors of this project, we express special appreciation, also, to the many thousands of teachers, curriculum leaders, assessment experts, historians, parents, textbook publishers, and others too numerous to mention who have sought review copies of the standards and turned out for public hearings and information sessions scheduled at regional and national conferences throughout these two years, and who have provided their independent assessments and recommendations for making these standards historically sound, workable in classrooms, and responsive to the needs and interests of students in the schools.
Finally, we note with appreciation the funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the United States Department of Education to conduct this complex and broadly inclusive enterprise.
In this most contentious field of the curriculum, there have been many who have wondered if a national consensus could be forged concerning what all students should have opportunity to learn about the history of the world and of the peoples of all racial, religious, ethnic, and national backgrounds who have been a part of that story. The responsiveness, enormous good will, and dogged determination of so many to meet this challenge has reinforced our confidence in the inherent strength and capabilities of nthis nation now to undertake the steps necessary for bringing to all students the benefits of this endeavor. The stakes are high. It is the challenge that must now be undertaken.
Charlotte Crabtree and Gary B. Nash
Co-directors
"There is an old saying the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and eduction. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins that race." John F. Kennedy
Developing Standards in World History for Students in Grades 5-12
Significance of History for the Educated Citizen
Setting standards for history in the schools requires a clear vision of the place and importance of history in the general education of all students. The widespread and growing support for more and better history in the schools, beginning in the early grades of elementary education, is one of the more encouraging signs of the decade. The reasons are many, but none are more important to a democratic society than this: Knowledge of history is the precondition of political intelligence. Without history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been, what its core values are, or what decisions of the past account for present circumstances. Without history, we cannot undertake any sensible inquiry into the political, social, or moral issues in society. And without historical knowledge and inquiry, we cannot achieve the informed, discriminating citizenship essential to effective participation in the democratic processes of governance and the fulfillment for all our citizens of the nation's democratic ideals.
Thomas Jefferson long ago prescribed history for all who would take part in self-government because it would enable them to prepare for things yet to come. The philosopher Etienne Gilson noted the special significance of the perspectives history affords. " History," he remarked, "is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought ." History opens to students the great record of human experience, revealing the vast range of accommodations individuals and societies have made to the problems confronting them, and disclosing the consequences that have followed the various choices that have been made. By studying the choices and decisions of the past, students can confront today's problems and choices with a deeper awareness of the alternatives before them and the likely consequences of each.
Current problems, of course, do not duplicate those of the past. Essential to extrapolating knowledgeably from history to the issues of today requires yet a further skill, again dependent upon one's understanding of the past: differentiating between (1) relevant historical antecedents that properly inform analyses of current issues and (2) those antecedents that are clearly irrelevant. Students must be sufficiently grounded in historical understanding in order to bring sound historical analysis to the service of informed decision making.
What is required is mastery of what Nietzsche once termed "critical history" and what Gordon Craig has explained as the "ability, after painful inquiry and sober judgment, to determine what part of history [is] relevant to one's current problems and what[is] not," whether one is assessing a situation, forming an opinion, or taking an active position on the issue. In exploring these matters, students will soon discover that history is filled with the high costs of decisions reached on the basis of false analogies from the past as well as the high costs of actions taken with little or no understanding of the important lessons the past imparts.
These learnings directly contribute to the education of the public citizen, but they uniquely contribute to nurturing the private individual as well. Historical memory is the key to self-identity, to seeing one's place in the stream of time, and one's connectedness with all of humankind. We are part of an ancient chain, and the long hand of the past is upon us - for good and for ill - just as our hands will rest on our descendants for years to come. Denied knowledge of one's roots and of one's place in the great stream of human history, the individual is deprived of the fullest sense of self and of that sense of shared community on which one's fullest personal development as well as responsible citizenship depends. For these purposes, history and the humanities must occupy an indispensable role in the school curriculum.
Finally, history opens to students opportunities to develop a comprehensive understanding of the world and of the many societies whose traditions and values may in many ways be different from their own. From a balanced and inclusive world history students may gain an appreciation both of the world's many peoples and of their shared humanity and common problems. Students may also acquire the habit of seeing matters through others' eyes and come to realize that they can better understand themselves as theystudy others. Historical understanding based on such comparative studies in world history does not require approval or forgiveness for the tragedies either of one's own society or of others; nor does it negate the importance of critically examining alternative value systems and their effects in supporting or denying basic human rights and aspirations. Especially important, an understanding of world history can contribute to fostering the kind of mutual patience, respect, and civic courage required in ourincreasingly pluralistic society and interdependent world.
If students are to see ahead more clearly, and be ready to act with judgment and with respect for the shared humanity of all who may be touched by the decisions they as citizens make, then schools must attend to this critical field of the curriculum.
Definition of Standards
Standards in history make explicit the goals that all students should haveopportunity to acquire, if the purposes just considered are to be achieved. In history, standards are of two types:
1. Historical thinking skills that enable students to evaluate evidence, develop comparative and causal analyses, interpret the historical record, and construct sound historical arguments and perspectives on which informed decisions in contemporary life can be based.
2. Historical understandings that define what students should know about the history of their nation and of the world. These understandings are drawn from the record of human aspirations, strivings, accomplishments, and failures in at least five spheres of human activity: the social, scientific/technological, economic, political, and philosophical/religious/aesthetic. They also provide students the historical perspectives required to analyze contemporary issues and problems confronting citizens today.
Historical thinking and understanding do not, of course, develop independently of one another. Higher levels of historical thinking depend upon and are linked to the attainment of higher levels of historical understanding. For these reasons, the standards presented in Chapter 3 of this volume provide an integration of historical thinking and understanding.
Criteria for the Development of Standards
The development of national standards in United States and world history presents a special challenge in deciding what, of the great storehouse of human history, is the most significant for all students to acquire. Perhaps less contentious but no less important is deciding what historical perspectives and what skills in historical reasoning, values analysis, and policy thinking are essential for all students to achieve.
The following criteria, developed and refined over the course of a broad-based national review and consensus process, were adopted by the National Council for History Standards in order to guide the development of history standards for grades kindergarten through 12.
1. Standards should be intellectually demanding, reflect the best historical scholarship, and promote active questioning and learning rather than passive absorption of facts, dates, and names.
2. Such standards should be equally expected of all students and all students should be provided equal access to the curricular opportunities necessary to achieving those standards.
3. Standards should reflect the ability of children from the earliest elementary school years to learn the meanings of history and the methods of historians.
4. Standards should be founded in chronology, an organizing approach that fosters appreciation of pattern and causation in history.
5. Standards should strike a balance between emphasizing broad themes in United States and world history and probing specific historical events, ideas, movements, persons, and documents.
6. All historical study involves selection and ordering of information in light of general ideas and values. Standards for history should reflect the principles of sound historical reasoning careful evaluation of evidence, construction of causal relationships, balanced interpretation, and comparative analysis. The ability to detect and evaluate distortion and propaganda by omission, suppression, or invention of facts is essential.
7. Standards should include awareness of, appreciation for, and the ability to utilize a variety of sources of evidence from which historical knowledge is achieved, including written documents, oral tradition, popular culture, literature, artifacts, art and music, historical sites, photographs, and films.
8. Standards for United States history should reflect both the nation's diversity, exemplified by race, ethnicity, social and economic status, gender, region, politics, and religion, and the nation's commonalities. The contributions and struggles of specific groups and individuals should be included.
9. Standards in United States history should contribute to citizenship education through developing understanding of our common civic identity and shared civic values within the polity, through analyzing major policy issues in the nation's history and through developing mutual respect among its many peoples.
10. History Standards should emphasize the nature of civil society and its relationship to government and citizenship. Standards in United States history should address the historical origins of the nation's democratic political system and the continuing development of its ideals and institutions, its controversies, and the struggle to narrow the gap between its ideals and practices. Standards in world history should include different patterns of political institutions, ranging from varieties of democracy to varieties of authoritarianism, and ideas and aspirations developed by civilizations in all parts of the world.
11. Standards in United States and world history should be separately developed but interrelated in content and similar in format. Standards in United States history should reflect the global context in which the nation unfolded; and world history should treat United States history as one of its integral parts.
12. Standards should include appropriate coverage of recent events in United States and world history, including social and political developments and international relations of the post-World War II era.
13. Standards in U.S. history and world history should utilize regional and local history by exploring specific events and movements through case studies and historical research. Local and regional history should enhance the broader patterns of U.S. and world history.
14. Standards in U.S. and world history should integrate fundamental facets of human culture such as religion, science and technology, politics and government, economics, interactions with the environment, intellectual and social life, literature, and the arts.
15. Standards in world history should treat the history and values of diverse civilizations, including those of the West, and should especially address the interactions among them.
Developing Standards in World History
Approaching World History
These standards rest on the premise that our schools must teach a comprehensive history in which all students may share. That means a history that encompasses humanity. In writing the standards a primary task was to identify those developments in the past that involved and affected relatively large numbers of people and that had broad significance for later generations. Some of these developments pertain to particular civilizations or regions. Others involve patterns of human interconnection that extended across cultural and political boundaries. Within this framework students are encouraged to explore in depth particular cases of historical change that may have had only regional or local importance but that exemplify the drama and humane substance of the past.
These standards represent a forceful commitment to world-scale history. Noattempt has been made, however, to address the histories of all identifiable peoples or cultural traditions. The aim rather is to encourage students to ask large and searching questions about the human past, to compare patterns of continuity and change in different parts of the world, and to examine the histories and achievements of particular peoples or civilizations with an eye to wider social, cultural, or economic contexts.
Periodization
Because the standards are organized chronologically, they must incorporate a system of historical periodization. Arranging the study of the past into distinct periods of time is one way of imposing a degree of order and coherence on the incessant, fragmented flow of events. Periodizing world history, that is, dividing it into distinct eras, is part of the process of making it intelligible. Historians have devised a variety of periodization designs for world history. Students should understand that every one of these designs is a creative construction reflecting the historian's particular aims, preferences, and cultural or social values.
A periodization of world history that encompasses the grand sweep of the human past can make sense only at a relatively high level of generalization. Historians have also worked out periodizations for particular civilizations, regions, and nations, and these have their own validity, their own benchmarks and turning points. The history of India, for example, would necessarily be periodized differently than would the history of China or Europe, since the major shifts in Indian history relate to the Gupta age, the Mughal empire, the post-independence era, and so on.
We believe that as teachers work toward a more integrated study of world history in their classrooms they will appreciate having a periodization design that encourages study of those broad developments that have involved large segments of the world's population and that have had lasting signficance. The standards are divided into eight eras of world history. The title of each era attempts to capture the very general character of that age. Note that the time periods of some of the eras overlap in order to incorporate both the closure of certain developments and the start of others. The beginning and ending dates should be viewed as approximations representing broad shifts in the human scene.
Era 1. The Beginnings of Human Society
Era 2. Early Civilizations to 1000 BCE
Era 3. Classical Traditions, Major Religions, and Giant Empires, 1000 BCE-300 CE
Era 4. Expanding Zones of Exchange and Encounter, 300-1000 CE
Era 5. Intensified Hemispheric Interactions, 1000-1500 CE
Era 6. Emergence of the First Global Age, 1450-1770
Era 7. The Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Era 8. The Twentieth Century
Historical Understanding
History is a broadly integrative field, recounting and analyzing human aspirations and strivings in various spheres of human activity: social, political, scientific/technological, economic , and cultural. Studying history - inquiring into families, communities, states, nations, and various peoples of the world - at once engages students in the lives, aspirations, struggles, accomplishments, and failures of real people, in all these aspects of their lives.
Through social history, students come to deeper understandings of society: of what it means to be human, of different and changing views of family structures, of men's and women's roles, of childhood and of children's roles, of various groups and classes in society, and of relationships among all these individuals and groups. This sphere considers how economic, religious, cultural, and political changes have affected social life, and it incorporates developments shaping the destiny of millions: the history of slavery; of class conflict; of mass migration and immigration; the human consequences of plague, war, and famine; and the longer life expectancy and rising living standards following upon medical, technological, and economic advances.
Through political history, students come to deeper understandings of the political sphere of activity as it has developed in their local community, their state, their nation, and in various societies of the world. Efforts to construct governments and institutions; the drive to seize and hold power over others; the struggle to achieve and preserve basic human rights, justice, equality, law, and order in societies; and the evolution of regional and world mechanisms to promote international law are all partof the central human drama to be explored and analyzed in the study of history.
Through history of science and technology, students come to deeper understandings of how the scientific quest to understand nature, the world we live in, and humanity itself is as old as recorded history. So, too, is the quest to improve ways of doing everything from producing food, to caring for the ill, and transporting goods, and advancing economic security and the well-being of the group. Understanding how scientific/technological developments have propelled change and how these changes have altered all other spheres of human activity is central to the study of history.
Through economic history students come to deeper understanding of the economic forces that have been crucial in determining the quality of people's lives, in structuring societies, and in influencing the course of events. Exchange relationships within and between cultures have had major impacts on society and politics, producing changing patterns of regional, hemispheric, and global economic dominance and permitting the emergence in the 20th century of a truly international economy, with far-reaching cons equences for all other spheres of activity.
Through cultural history, students learn how ideas, beliefs, and values have profoundly influenced human actions throughout history. Religion, philosophy, art, and popular culture have all been central to the aspirations and achievements of all societies, and have been a mainspring of historical change from earliest times. Students' explorations of this sphere of human activity, through literature, sacred writings and oral traditions, political treatises, drama, art, architecture, music, and dance, deepen their understandings of the human experience.
Analyzing these five spheres of human activity requires considering them in the contexts both of historical time and geographic place. The historical record is inextricably linked to the geographic setting in which it developed. Population movements and settlements, scientific and economic activities, geopolitical agendas, and the distributions and spread of political, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic ideas are all related in some measure to geographic factors. The opportunities, limitations, and constraints with which people have addressed the issues and challenges of their time have, to a significant degree, been influenced by the environment in which they lived or to which they have had access, and by the traces on the landscape, malignant or benign, irrevocably left by those who came before.
Because these spheres are inextricably interwoven in the real lives of individuals and societies, essential understandings in world history often cut across these categories. Thus, to comprehend the forces leading to the Iberian Conquest of Mesoamerica in the 15th and 16th centuries, students must address the economics of the interregional trading system that linked peoples of Africa, Asia, and Europe on the eve of the European overseas voyages; the political and religious changes initiated with the rise of centralized monarchies of Spain and Portugal; and the major technological innovations that the Portuguese and Spanish made in shipbuilding, navigation, and naval warfare and the influence of northern Europe, Muslim, and Chinese maritime technology on these changes.
Similarly, understanding the consequences of the Iberian Conquest of Mesoamerica demonstrates how change in any one of these spheres of human activity often had impact on some or all of the others. The many consequences of the Iberian military victories included, for example, the founding of Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires in the Americas; the worldwide exchange of flora, fauna, and pathogens following the Columbian encounter, the social changes wrought by the subjugation and enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the devastating demographic effects caused by the introduction of new disease microorganisms into the Americas, the forced relocation and enslavement of some 10 million Africans in the European colonies, the changes in religious beliefs and practices that followed the introduction of Christianity into the Americas, and the economic and social effects of the infusion into the European economies of the vast gold and silver resources of the Americas. These many effects demonstrate the complexity of historical events and the broadly integrative nature of history itself. They also affirm, once again, the unique power of history to deepen students' understanding of the past, and of how we are still affected by it.
Historical Thinking
Beyond defining what students should know - that is, the understandings in world history that all students should acquire - it is essential to consider what students should be able to do to demonstrate their understandings and to apply their knowledge in productive ways.
The study of history involves much more than the passive absorption of facts, dates, names, and places. Real historical understanding requires students to think through cause-and-effect relationships, to reach sound historical interpretations, and to conduct historical inquiries and research leading to the knowledge on which informed decisions in contemporary life can be based. These thinking skills are the processes of active learning.
Properly taught, history develops capacities for analysis and judgment. It reveals the ambiguity of choice, and it promotes wariness about quick, facile solutions which have so often brought human suffering in their wake. History fosters understanding of paradox and a readiness to distinguish between that which is beyond and that which is within human control, between the inevitable and the contingent. It trains students to detect bias, to weigh evidence, and to evaluate arguments, thus preparing them to make sensible, independent judgments, to sniff out spurious appeals to history by partisan pleaders, and to distinguish between anecdote and analysis.
To acquire these capabilities, students must develop competence in the following five types of historical thinking:
Chronological thinking, developing a clear sense of historical time - past, present, and future - in order to identify the temporal sequence in which events occurred, measure calendar time, interpret and create time lines, and explain patterns of historical succession and duration, continuity and change.
Historical comprehension, including the ability to read historical narratives with understanding, to identify the basic elements of the narrative structure (the characters, situation, sequence of events, their causes, and their outcomes); to develop historical perspectives - that is, the ability to describe the past through the eyes and experiences of those who were there, as revealed through their literature, art, artifacts, and the like, and to avoid "present-mindedness" judging the past solely in terms of the norms and values of today.
Historical analysis and interpretation, including the ability to compare and contrast different experiences, beliefs, motives, traditions, hopes, and fears of people from various groups and backgrounds, and at various times in the past and present; to analyze how these differing motives, interests, beliefs, hopes and fears influenced people's behaviors; to consider multiple perspectives in the records of human experience and multiple causes in analyses of historical events; to challenge arguments of historical inevitability; and, to compare and evaluate competing historical explanations of the past.
Historical research capabilities, including the ability to formulate historical questions from encounters with historical documents, artifacts, photos, visits to historical sites, and eyewitness accounts; to determine the historical time and context in which the artifact, document, or other record was created; to judge its credibility and authority; and to construct a sound historical narrative or argument concerning it.
Historical issues-analysis and decision-making, including the ability to identify problems that confronted people in the past, to analyze the various interests and points of view of people caught up in these situations; to evaluate alternative proposals for dealing with the problem(s); to analyze whether the decisions reached or the actions taken were good ones and why; and, to bring historical perspectives to bear on informed decision-making in the present.
Integrating Standards in Historical Understanding and Thinking
Chapter 2 presents the standards in historical thinking, largely independent of historical content in order to specify the quality of thinking desired for each. None of these skills in historical thinking, however, can be developed or even expressed in a vacuum. Every one of them requires historical content in order to function, a relationship made explicit in Chapter 3, in which the standards integrating historical understanding and historical thinking are presented for all eight eras of world history for grades 5-12.
Figure 1 illustrates the approach taken to integrate historical thinking and historical understandings in the standards. The example is drawn from Era 3, "Classical Traditions, Major Religions, and Giant Empires, 1000 BCE-300 CE." As illustrated, the five skills in historical thinking (the left side of the diagram) and the three historical understandings students should acquire concerning Aegean civilization (the right side of the diagram) are integrated in the central area of overlap in the diagram in order to define (immediately below) Standard 2A: What students should be able to do to demonstrate their understanding of the achievements andlimitations of the democratic institutions that developed in Athens.
Pages 10 and 11 provide a further illustration of this same standard, presented this time in the format in which the standards are stated (Chapter 3). The selection is again drawn from Era 3, "Classical Traditions, Major Religions, and Giant Empires, 1000 BCE-300 CE ." As illustrated, the standard first presents a statement defining what students should understand: "The democratic institutions and cultural achievements of Aegean civilization and the interrelations that developed between Hellenism and the cultural traditions of Southwest Asia and Egypt, 600-200 BCE."
The standard next presents a statement (2A), identifying the first understanding contained in Standard 2. The five statements in the shaded box specify what students should be able to do to demonstrate their understanding of the achievements and limitations of the democratic institutions that developed in Athens. Each statement illustrates the integration of historical thinking and understanding by marrying a particular thinking skill (e.g., comparing) to a specific historical understanding (e.g., Athenian democracy and the military aristocracy of Sparta). The particular thinking skill is further emphasized in the bracketed words following the statement (e.g., Compare and contrast). The particular thinking skill is not the only one that can be employed but is a particularly apt one. Finally, each component of Standard 2A is coded to indicate in which grades the standard can appropriately be developed.
5-12 - indicates the standard is appropriate for grades 5-6, as well as for all higher levels, from grades 7-8 through grades 9-12.
7-12 - indicates the standard is appropriate for grades 7-8 through grades 9-12.
9-12 - indicates the standard is best reserved for students in grades 9-12.
Finally, the shaded box under the subhead "Students Shall Be Able to" is supplemented with examples of student achievement of Standard 2A appropriate for grades 5-6, 7-8, and 9-12.
Questions Concerning These Standards:
Q: Do these standards require that Era 3 be taught at all three levels, grades 5-6, 7-8, and 9-12?
A: No. The local school curriculum will determine when Era 3 is to be taught, whether at grades 5-6, 7-8, and/or 9-12. Once that curriculum decision is made, teachers can enter these standards to determine which ones are appropriate for their students, and how the standards they select are related to others within a well-articulated curriculum in history, grades 5-12.
Q: Are teachers expected to give equal time to all the standards (for example, standard 1A, 1B, and 1C) developed for each era?
A: No. Priority should be given to the Core Standards in each era - that is, to those standards that most directly support students, understanding of the two to four major historical developments of the era, described in the introduction to each era in Chapter 3 under the title, "Giving Shape to World History." A second group of standards - the Related Standards - go beyond the core to expand, enhance, and enrich students basic understandings of the era.
Figure 2 (on page 13) illustrates the relationships among the Major Developments, Core Standards, and the Related Standards for Era 4. The Core Standards identify the understandings that all students should have equal opportunity to investigate and acquire. The Related Standards offer teachers a range of important opportunities to deepen or extend students' understandings. For example, teachers can select from among these Related Standards to pursue a particular topic in greater depth (e.g., feudal Europe); to respond more fully to students' interests in a particular region of the world (e.g., Mesoamerica); or, to follow the narrative history of a particular region over successive eras, even though it may not be included among the Core Standards in a particular era of world history (e.g., Southeast Asia).
The designation of any standard as Core or Related is a reasoned judgment, reflecting the agreements broadly supported in the national consensus-building process through which the World History Standards were developed. Individual states and local school districts might choose to modify these particular recommendations when developing their curriculum frameworks.
Q: Are high school teachers expected to teach all Core Standards identified as appropriate for grades 9-12?
A: No. These standards assume that schools will devote three years of study to world history sometime between grades 5 and 12. Therefore, an era will probably be studied in some depth during at least one earlier school year (e.g,. grade 8). In that case, the more numerous standards deemed appropriate for grades 9-12 will, in part, have already been addressed in an earlier grade, and the emphasis can be turned in the high school world history course to those standards judged not to be appropriate for the earlier grades. Again, these are matters of well-designed, articulated curriculum planning within the jurisdiction of local schools.
Q: Does the thinking skill incorporated in a particular standard limit teachers to that one skill?
A: No. Within the shaded box, each standard highlights a particularly important thinking process. However, it is understood that good teaching will incorporate more than a single thinking skill to develop these understandings.
Q: Does the particular thinking skill identified in the standard limit the instructional approaches teachers might adopt to develop these outcomes with students?
A: No. To take one example, the third bulleted component of Standard 2A from Era 3 (page 10), - Describing the changing political institutions of Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, and analyzing the influence of political thought on public life, - can be developed through any number of teaching approaches. For example, teachers might select one episode from the time of the Persian Wars when Athens faced invasion (480 BCE) and the Assembly voted upon a bill proposed by the Athenian general Themistocles for the defense of Athens. In this case, students might:
Recount or create a flow chart of the procedure for passing a bill in 5th-century BCE Athens.
Prepare a speech such as Themistocles might have delivered before the Athenian Assembly setting forth the plans for the evacuation and defense of Athens, and conduct a mock session of the Assembly to debate the proposal.
Consider the roles of people from different classes in Athenian society such as women, children, the elders, landowning males under the age of 50, slaves, and those who had been ostracized or disenfranchised. Analyze who was allowed to participate in the democratic process under Athenian law at this time, and how each group would be affected by the Assembly's decision on the proposed evacuation.
In short, these standards are intended to open possibilities, not to limit teacher's options for engaging students in lively activities within what has been called the "thinking curriculum."
Q: Won't these bulleted standards each require a separate lesson or sequence of lessons, and doesn't the total teaching load therefore far exceed the total number of teaching days available, even over three years of instruction?
A: No. Good teaching, it should be emphasized, will often develop two or more of these bulleted standards in a single lesson or sequence of lessons. The standards appearing as individual statements in the shaded boxes are intended to signify desired outcomes of instruction and not to prescribe a particular teaching plan. Teachers will creatively design their own instructional plans, integrating related understandings in a variety of ways to accomplish these ends.
For example, in the teaching approaches just considered - creating a flow chart, conducting a mock meeting of the Athenian Assembly, and analyzing the political roles of people from different classes of Athenian society - the first and second activities contribute directly to achieving the first of the five bulleted standards and the third activity contributes directly to achieving three of them: the first (describing the changing political institutions of Athens and the influence of political thought onpublic life); the fourth (explaining class divisions of Greek society and the social and political roles of major classes); and the fifth (analyzing the place of women in Athenian society). Teachers seeking to make the most of their instructional time will therefore probably select the third activity over the least productive activity of creating a flow chart, and thereby snare the proverbial two - or three! - birds with a single stone.
Ensuring Equity for All Students
The purposes of the national standards developed in this document are threefold: (1) to establish high expectations for what all students should know and be able to do; (2) to clarify what constitutes successful achievement; and (3) most significantly, to promote equity in the learning opportunities and resources to be provided all students in the nation's schools.
Standards in and of themselves cannot ensure remediation of the pervasive inequalities in the educational opportunities currently available to students. The roots of these problems are deep andwidely manifested in gross inequities in school financing, in resource allocations, and in practices of discriminatory "lower tracks" and "dumbed down" curricula that continue to deny large sectors of the nation's children equal educational opportunity.
What the national commitment to high achievement standards for all students can do is to serve as an engine of change: (1) defining for all students the goals essential to success in a rapidly changing global economy and in a society undergoing wrenching social, technological, and economic change; and (2) establishing the moral obligation to provide equity in the educational resources required to help all students attain these goals.
As for resources, if students are to achieve the understandings and thinking skills specified in the World History Standards, they must have equal access to well-prepared history teachers and to engaging, balanced, accurate, and challenging curricular materials. For these reasons the success of Goals 2000 and of the systemic educational reform program it has launched requires the provision of high quality professional development in world history and in pedagogy for teachers who are not prepared to teach the content or thinking skills presented in this document. Equally important, all students must be provided with the best available textbooks and other curricular materials in world history.
As Robert Hutchins said many years ago: "The best education for the best should be the best education for all." Every child is entitled to and must have equal access to excellence in the goals their teachers strive to help them achieve and in the instructional resources and opportunities required to reach those ends. Nothing less is acceptable in a democratic society; no commitment is more essential to meeting the challenges - economic, social, and ethical - confronting this nation in the years ahead.
Providing Adequate Instructional Time for History
In developing these standards, the National Council for History Standards kept in mind the purposes of Goals 2000, the national education reform program supported by President Clinton, the nation's governors, and the Congress. Developing the internationally competitive levels of student achievement called for in this reform movement clearly cannot be accomplished by limiting the study of world history to one year (or less) over the eight years of middle and high school education. Excellence in history requires the instructional time to pursue an era in some depth and to engage students' active learning through the higher processes of historical thinking.
For these reasons it is important that the schools devote no less than three years of instruction to world history over the eight years of students' middle and high school education, grades 5-12.
Currently, fourteen states provide two or more years of world history and six of these states provide three years, though under a variety of curriculum plans. In formulating national standards for excellence, the Council argued, we should not be setting our sights lower than those states that have already committed three years of instruction to this field.
Accommodating Variability in State and Local Curriculum Plans
Because schools today vary widely as to when and how they offer their courses in world history, the Council sought a flexible approach to history standards which would accommodate localvariability rather than impose a single national curriculum on the nation's schools. Already illustrated on pages 10-11 of this chapter, this approach required converting each standard to appropriate achievement expectations for students at three levels of schooling: grades 5-6, grades 7-8, and grades 9-12. The purpose here is not to suggest that all eras in world history be taught at all three levels of schooling. Rather, the purpose is to provide teachers, parents, and students with examples of appropriate achievement on standards for whatever historical eras their local school or school district has determined should be studied at that grade level. Deciding when these eight eras in world history should be studied, whether in grades 5-6, 7-8, or 9-12, is a curriculum decision, and should remain under local or state control.
Thus, under Florida's state course of study, world history is developed in relation to United States history over three successive high school years - grades 9 (birth of civilizations through the 18th-century democratic revolutions); grade 10 (through World War I); and grade 11 (from 1848 until today). In addition, Florida begins a three-year sequence in history with grade 3 in which students are engaged in humanities-enriched studies of significant developments of the ancient world, the middle ages, and the Renaissance. Teachers of grade 9 following this course of study will draw upon the world history standards developed for eras 1 through 6; teachers of grade 10 will draw upon the world history standards developed for era 7; and teachers of grade 11 will draw upon the world history standards developed for eras 7 and 8.
In California, by contrast, where the state framework suggests concentrating upon the study of the early eras 1-3 in world history in grade 6, eras 4-6 in grade 7, and eras 7-8 in grade 10, teachers following this plan will turn to the standards in a different way. Teachers of grade 6 will turn to the standards developed for the ancient world. Teachers of grade 7 will selectively draw upon these same standards in their initial review but will concentrate upon the standards developed for eras beginning with the fall of the Roman and Han empires and continuing through 18th-century world history. Teachers of grade 10 will again selectively draw upon the standards for the earlier eras in their initial reviews, but will concentrate upon the standards developed for the 19th and 20th centuries of world history. In all cases, teachers will focus within any of these eras upon the standards developed for their particular grade level, whether for grades 5-6, 7-8, or 9-12.