COURSE DESCRIPTION     

 

This course is designed to provide experience and preparation for the GHSGT and EOCT tests at the end of the year. An emphasis is placed on interpreting documents and mastering a significant body of factual information. Topics include life and thought in Colonial America, revolutionary ideology, constitutional development, Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy, nineteenth-century reform movements, and Manifest Destiny. Other topics include the Civil War and Reconstruction, immigration, industrialism, Populism, Progressivism, World War I, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the post-Cold War era, and the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This course will fulfill t he United States history requirement for graduation.

 

In addition to the topics listed above, the course will emphasize a series of key themes throughout the year. These themes will include discussions of American diversity, the development of a unique American identify, the evolution of American culture, demographic changes over the course of America’s history, economic trends and transformations, environmental issues, the development of political institutions and the components of citizenship, social reform movements, the role of religion in the making of the United States and its impact in a multicultural society, the history of slavery and its legacies in this hemisphere, war and diplomacy, and finally, the place of the United States in an increasingly global arena. This course will trace these themes throughout the year, emphasizing the ways in which they are interconnected and examining the ways in which each helps to shape the changes over time that are so important to understanding United States history.