|
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 human substance of the past.
These standards represent
a forceful commitment to world-scale history. No attempt 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 for World
History
As in United States History,
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. Historians have devised a variety of periodization designs
for World History to make it intelligible. 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 significance. The standards are divided
into nine 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 and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples, 4000-1000
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: An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Era
8: A Half-Century of Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
Era
9: The 20th Century Since 1945: Promises and Paradoxes
|
