Using history as the basis for a new curricular approach

This article by me will appear in an upcoming edition of The Bridge, an international magazine dedicated to improving schools in the Middle East and North Africa:

As a historian, I believe history is one of the most crucial subjects taught in schools. Some believe history should be taught because it helps define a person’s relationship to the world, to be taught what makes a particular state and its people unique, because there are lessons about the past that we must understand to hopefully not repeat mistakes and more.  My belief is a bit different in that I think history is, and should be, fun.  I love a good story and history is a narrative story built upon evidence that is interpreted in different ways.  Historians debate about historical events constantly and it is this active engagement in the subject that makes it relevant. Through the teaching and learning of history, we are hopefully teaching skills, both academic and practical and as such, perhaps it should be more central to the curricula of schools.

History is an excellent subject on which to build cross-curricular units of study.  Some schools teach each subject in a very detached, narrow manner as has been done for hundreds of years. Many modern studies indicate that students learn more, develop better skills and retain knowledge when they are able to make connections between subjects and their content.  These studies may be found in the International Journal of Science Education, in the research of Peter Westwood and more.  Using an era of historical study in the school’s curriculum as a basis for the construction of a cross-curricular unit can help students learn, can empower teachers to explore new methods of instruction, can assist schools in reaching students who struggle in traditional learning environments and may help make classrooms more student-centered and less teacher-centered.

Several years ago I found myself pontificating on the importance of the Assyrian, Egyptian and Persian Empires to a 6^th grade class in a country outside the United States. Whoever had written the curriculum was clearly not familiar with the needs of modern students or how to engage them.  The curriculum dictated that the students learn various dates and the names of rulers, have a brief overview of the borders of the empires in question and finally to give a few reasons for their rise and fall.  In short, students were to know ‘the facts’ and then move on to the next unit.  At no point were the students to engage in any research, questioning, debate, to review these empire’s contributions to art, literature, architecture, mathematics or anything else.  On top of all this, my students were primarily using English as a second or third language, so they found the imported textbook an actual impediment to learning because of the wording.  After a long, frustrating week of suffering for both me and the kids, I re-wrote that particular curricular unit, without permission, leading to fun, learning and new relationships between me and the students.

For Egypt, we now learned about why civilizations rise, leading to a study of science and the Agricultural Revolution.  What makes plants grow?  What plants grow best and which provide the most food?  Let’s grow some beans and test our various hypotheses regarding food production in the ancient world.  While our plants are growing, let’s try to understand about ancient religions.  What were the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians and how did that affect their lives, art and architecture?  What is the connection between religion and agriculture? 

The Egyptians in various periods build pyramids.  What kind of mathematics does one need to know to build a pyramid?  Geometry?  Angles? Volume?  What is the formula for volume for a pyramid?  How can one measure without a ruler?  If we are going to build a plaster pyramid, how do we determine how much plaster, water and other materials are needed? If we are going to build a mold for our plaster pyramid, then how will we construct the mold?  What materials will be needed?  Building a pyramid and decorating it connected us to art and architecture.

Ancient civilizations had music, poetry, hymns and fictional literature. While our beans were growing and our plaster pyramids were drying in their molds, we conducted research in the library with the help of the school’s librarian. We learned to use various databases and texts to find ancient Egyptian literature, including the Hymn to the Aten, supposedly written by Akhenaten, a pharaoh.  Students enjoyed composing their own poetry, or hymns if you like, to things and people that they felt were important.  Some musically inclined students were able to add music and instruments to their works and one team made theirs into a rap song.  Students peer-edited their works, helping each other with meter, rhyme, punctuation, spelling and more.

What made ancient Egypt successful?  The Nile?  Surrounded by deserts?  The rich agricultural land of the Delta? The annual flood?  We were able to integrate geography into our lessons, learning about how food, governments, weather and other factors affected animals, people and governments and how these changed over time.  Meanwhile, the beans were growing and the pyramids came out of their molds.

Using an historical topic as the basis of a multi-disciplinary, multi-curricular study was a huge success and was repeated for the Persians and Assyrians.  Not only was it age appropriate, it appealed to students who were good at mathematics, others who appreciated science, students who had difficulty with language but excelled at music and arts and everyone was presented an opportunity to shine, learn and be successful.  Skills in research, presenting, mathematics, arts and others were utilized, repeatedly, throughout the year.  Thanks to modern social networks, some of my students from all those years ago remind me often that they still keep some of their constructions from those lessons, which I completely appreciate.

It is important that a school’s curriculum is engaging, useful, relevant, skills oriented and also coordinated.  Knowledge and skills should build on each other.  Now that your students understand the importance and practical use of volume, expand the use of volume formulas and geometry in the next units, coordinating with the math and science departments who all work together in planning units.

Studying the French Revolution?  Build a guillotine and discuss the physics behind this apparatus.  Read some Enlightenment philosophy and/or the Tale of Two Cities for some of the background or experiences of people in the Revolution; study symbols, like flags, and discuss the importance of this in art, music and literature.  Have a debate on the success or failure of the Revolution at various time periods after 1789.  Integrate geography into your lessons to understand the differences between the needs of the cities, the countryside, the coasts and issues of language and religion that were involved.  The metric system was implemented in France in this period; build a Revolutionary mathematics component to your study.  Incredibly rich and interesting art and music developed in this period and deserve integration into your whole-child, whole-school approach to learning.  Make learning fun, relevant and skill oriented.