The St. Christopher’s School history and social studies curriculum provides opportunities for students JK through 12 to acquire an understanding of their family, school, community, state, country, and world as they become aware of their role as responsible citizens in a diverse, interdependent, and changing world. The study of world geography, economics, civics, civilizations and eras around the world is the foundation of the curriculum. Current events remain an integral part of the program, allowing students to make connections with the world today and with the periods that they are examining. 

 

Dr. Andy Smith kicks off his “9/11 to Now” class for seniors with a film entitled 102 Minutes. The video collage chronicles destruction and bystander reactions as the World Trade Center tragedy unfolds, in scenes captured mostly by amateurs. A few days later, the Upper School History Chair holder segues to a “60 Minutes” segment that spotlights the heroic response of everyday people who stepped forward, individually and collectively, to support rescue crews. The program features an investment banker who ends her intense workday by collecting donations and manning a Ground Zero general store that distributes everything from boots to chocolate at no charge. Another vignette focuses on a group of former alcoholics and addicts who hauled 30,000 pounds of meat from Texas to set up a Ground Zero barbeque that fed 4,000 people a day.

Through these clips and visual images, hazy memories are made real for these seniors who were only preschoolers when the Towers fell. The stories recounted in the 9/11 video appeal to boys by making history come alive.  “The personal connection is what we build on as we move through the course in a variety of ways,” Smith explains. “It’s understanding history not only from the factual perspective, but also from a visceral one.”

 

“Boys are interested in how the characters in those stories live, think and feel,” said Upper School history teacher Hamill Jones ’00. “When they find a good or interesting story, boys are looking to make a connection to the characters, and in this case the characters happen to be real-life people.”

 

Students explore the issues that preceded the 9/11 attack, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, proliferating terrorist groups, and the ideology of intractable jihad between Islam and the West.

 

Demonstrating connections across time and place, identifying noble behavior in the face of senseless violence, and providing a multi-layered perspective of the pivotal events that shaped history are critical to imparting real learning versus rote recitation. Teachers in all divisions are making a much more intentional effort to provide context for the complicated state of our world by tying lessons to current events.

 

A tenth-grade World History study of the Middle Ages’ Bubonic Plague coincided with the Ebola crisis that dominated the news last fall. One assignment called for students to make public awareness signs to educate people on how to fight Ebola. In the process, students gained valuable insights on effective messaging. Initially, many students made signs heavy with text.  But after some research, they learned they needed another approach since more than half of their third-world target audience was illiterate. 

 

Tenth-grade World History emphasizes contemporary history post-World War II, a time when global awareness moved front and center. “What you’re seeing is more instructional time devoted to world history,” Smith said.  “It forces you to go around the world, places like China, India, and Africa.”

 

In that same vein, the coverage goal for the AP World History class, formerly the Vietnam War, now extends through the 2000 U.S. presidential election. 

 

“When you get to the ’80s, ’90s and beyond, it’s hard to be insular,” Smith said. “Take the Arab oil crisis—now all of a sudden our economy is being strangled by countries whose names half of us don’t know.”

 

 Almost any history lesson can invoke an empathetic response. Smith’s lessons cover David Walker, a free black abolitionist in the 1830s who advocated violent insurrection, and New England Puritan dissenter Anne Hutchinson, who believed that gender was not a predictor of God’s will.

 

Images like those in the 9/11 videos intensify response. Smith introduces Advanced Placement U.S. history students to Jacob Riis, who rocked the world with early photographs of inhumane immigrant slum life. Equally compelling is John Filo’s infamous shot of a woman screaming for help beside the body of a Kent State University student shot when the Ohio National Guard opened fire during student protests against the Vietnam War.  Smith asks his class, “What if that was your friend?”

 

In the Middle School, a sixth-grade geography class that formerly focused on country and capital memorization is now a thematic course that blends statistics, facts and ideas with images and videos. Renamed “Global Thinking,” the class helps students understand themes such as human rights, conflict, scarcity and sustainability. “We didn’t call it “Global Issues” because we don’t want to focus on improvement and potential solutions, not on what is wrong,” said teacher Matt Chriss.

 

Middle School history teacher Cliff Dickinson helps eigth grade students explore parallels between American colonists and descendants who harvested and destroyed vast forests to the current deforestation of Amazon rain forests.

In the “American History in the 20^th Century” class taught by Hill Brown ’85, every seventh grade boy receives a subscription to UpFront magazine, a collaboration of The New York Times and Scholastic Magazine designed specifically for teenagers. Brown says that empathy comes to the forefront in the study of the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, the plight of prisoners of the Second World War, and the Great Depression.  “Our seventh graders visit the Richmond Holocaust Museum, which brings that empathy to a different level,” Brown says.