SOCIAL STUDIES 8 COURSE OUTLINE 2013-2014
Overview and Rationale
Grade 8 students will examine issues related to contact between societies with differing worldviews. They will explore elements of worldviews and how these views are expressed by people living in different times and different places. Through this inquiry, students will reflect that the past has had an effect on the present. Examples will be drawn from Japan, Renaissance Europe and Spanish and Aztec societies. Grade 8 students will learn how intercultural contact between societies leads to significant change and alters each society’s worldview.
Current Events
September – June
Throughout the year students will have the opportunity to discuss and engage in current affairs, issues and concerns of a local, national, and global nature. Current events will be a part of each unit and students may be required to complete assignments related to events discussed in class as they relate to worldview.
Unit A: Renaissance Europe: Origins of a Western Worldview.
This unit will answer the following questions:
1. What is the Renaissance?
2. Why and how did the Renaissance worldview spread beyond the borders of
Europe?
3. Why did the Renaissance worldview have such a long-lasting influence on other
countries and cultures?
4. Why did the European rather than the Aboriginal worldview become the
dominant way of looking at things in the American continents?
At the conclusion of the unit students will:
□Demonstrate an appreciation of how Renaissance Europe formed the basis for the worldview of the Western world, and a willingness to consider differing beliefs, values and worldviews.
□Explore, examine and reflect upon the factors that shaped the worldview evolving in Western Europe during the Renaissance.
□Recognize how beliefs and values are shaped by time, geographic location and societal context.
□ Develop and demonstrate skills of various dimensions of thought, communication, research and inquiry and social participation.
Unit B: The Aztecs: Worldviews in Conflict
This unit will answer the following questions:
1. In what ways did the intercultural contact between the Aztecs and the Spanish affect each society’s worldview?
2. Did their different worldviews mean that conflict was inevitable between the Aztecs and the Spanish?
3. What factors contributed to the dominance of the Spanish over the Aztecs?
4. To what extent does pre-present-day Mexico reflect the experience of Spanish-Aztec contact?
At the conclusion of the unit students will:
□Demonstrate an appreciation of how a society’s worldview influences its choices, decisions and interactions with other societies.
□Demonstrate an appreciation of how Aztec and Spanish identities and worldviews were affected by intercultural contact, and recognize how rapid adaptation can radically change a society.
□Explore, assesses and reflects upon how the Aztecs were affected by the Spanish worldview.
□Recognize how beliefs and values are shaped by time, geographic location and societal context.
□Develop and demonstrates skills of various dimensions of thought, communication, research and inquiry, and social participation.
Unit C: Japan: From Isolation to Adaptation
This unit will answer the following questions:
1. How did Japan’s geography shape people’s beliefs and values?
2. In what ways did the isolation policy of the Edo period and contact with other
cultures during the Meiji period affect the Japanese identity?
3. What impact did contact with Western cultures have on the Japanese worldview?
4. What tensions can occur when a society must adapt to rapidly changing
circumstances?
5. How can different cultures learn to appreciate and benefit from each other?
At the conclusion of the unit students will:
□Demonstrate an appreciation of the roles of times and geographic location in shaping a society’s worldview, and how this can foster the choice to remain an isolated society.
□Demonstrate an appreciation of how models of governance and decision making reflect a society’s worldview, and how this shapes individual citizenship and identity.
□Demonstrate the ability to analyze the effects of cultural isolation during the Edo period.
□Demonstrate the ability to analyze the effects that rapid adaptation had on traditionally isolated Japan during the Meiji period.
□Recognize how beliefs and values are shaped by time, geographic location and societal context.