SOCIAL STUDIES
ACADEMIC CONTENT
STANDARDS
for grade 10
The intellectual skills noted below are to be learned through, and applied to, the content standards for grades 9-12. They are to be assessed only in conjunction with the content standards in grades 9-12 and are not to be assessed in isolation.
Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills
In addition to the standards for grades 9-12, students demonstrate the following intellectual, reasoning, reflection and research skills:
Grades 9-12
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
- 1. students compare the present with the past, evaluating the consequences of past events and decisions and determining the lessons learned
- 2. students analyze how change happens at different rates at different times; that some aspects can change while others remain the same; that change is complicated and affects not only technology and politics, but also values and beliefs
- 3. students use a variety of maps and documents to interpret human movement, including major patterns of domestic and international migration; changing environmental preferences and settlement patterns; the frictions that develop between population groups; and the diffusion of ideas, technological innovations, and goods
- 4. students relate current events to the physical and human characteristics of places and regions
Historical Research, Evidence and Point of View
- 1. students distinguish valid arguments from fallacious arguments in historical interpretations
- 2. students identify bias and prejudice in historical interpretations
- 3. students evaluate major debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past, including an analysis of authors' use of evidence and the distinctions between sound generalizations and misleading oversimplifications
- 4. students construct and test hypotheses; collect, evaluate and employ information from multiple primary and secondary sources; and apply it in oral and written presentations
Historical Interpretation
- 1. students show the connections, causal and otherwise, between particular historical events and larger social, economic and political trends and developments
- 2. students recognize the complexity of historical causes and effects, including the limitations on determining cause and effect
- 3. students interpret past events and issues within the context in which an event unfolded rather than solely in terms of present day norms and values
- 4. students understand the meaning, implication, and impact of historical events while recognizing that events could have taken other directions
- 5. students analyze human modifications of a landscapes, and examine the resulting environmental policy issues
- 6. students conduct cost/benefit analyses and apply basic economic indicators to analyze the aggregate economic behavior of the U.S. economy
Students in grade ten study major turning points that shaped the modern world, from the late 18th century through the present, including the cause and course of the two world wars. They trace the rise of democratic ideas and develop an understanding of the historical roots of current world issues, especially as they pertain to international relations. They extrapolate from the American experience that democratic ideals are often achieved at a high price, remain vulnerable and are not practiced everywhere in the world. Students develop an understanding of current world issues and relate them to their historical, geographic, political, economic, and cultural contexts. Students consider multiple accounts of events in order to understand international relations from a variety of perspectives.
10.1 Students relate the moral and ethical principles in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, in Judaism and in Christianity to the development of Western political thought, in terms of:
- 1. the similarities and differences in Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman views of law; reason and faith; duties of the individual
- 2. the development of the Western political ideas of the rule of law and illegitimacy of tyranny, drawing from selections from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics
- 3. the influence of the U.S. Constitution on political systems in the contemporary world
10.2 Students compare and contrast the Glorious Revolution of England, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution and their enduring effects on the worldwide political expectations for self-government and individual liberty, in terms of:
- 1. the major ideas of philosophers and their effect on the democratic revolutions in England, the United States, France, and Latin America (e.g., biographies of John Locke, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Simón Bolívar, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison)
- 2. the principles of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights (1689), the American Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789), and the U.S. Bill of Rights (1791)
- 3. the unique character of the American Revolution, its spread to other parts of the world, and its continuing significance to other nations
- 4. how the ideology of the French Revolution led France to develop from constitutional monarchy to democratic despotism to the Napoleonic empire
- 5. how nationalism spread across Europe with Napoleon, was repressed for a generation under the Congress of Vienna and Concert of Europe until the Revolutions of 1848
10.3 Students analyze the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England, France, Germany, Japan and the United States, in terms of:
- 1. why England was the first country to industrialize
- 2. how scientific and technological changes and new forms of energy brought about massive social, economic, and cultural change (e.g., biographies of James Watt, Eli Whitney, Henry Bessemer, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur)
- 3. the growth of population, rural to urban migration and growth of cities associated with the Industrial Revolution
- 4. the evolution of work and labor, including the demise of the slave trade and effect of immigration, mining and manufacturing, division of labor, and the union movement
- 5. the connections among natural resources, entrepreneurship, labor and capital in an industrial economy
- 6. the emergence of capitalism as a dominant economic pattern and the responses to it, including Utopianism, Social Democracy, Socialism, and Communism
- 7. the emergence of the Romantic impulse in art and literature (e.g., the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth), social criticism (e.g., Charles Dickens' novels) and the move away from Classicism in Europe
10.4 Students analyze patterns of global change in the era of New Imperialism in at least two of the following regions or countries: Africa, Southeast Asia, China, India, Latin America and the Philippines, in terms of:
- 1. the rise of industrial economies and their link to imperialism and colonialism (e.g., the role played by national security and strategic advantage; moral issues raised by search for national hegemony, Social Darwinism and the missionary impulse; material issues such as land, resources and technology
- 2. the location of the colonial rule of such nations as England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and the United States
- 3. imperialism from the perspective of the colonizers and the colonized and the varied immediate and long-term responses by the people under colonial rule
- 4. the independence struggles of the colonized regions of the world, including the role of leaders and the role of ideology and religion (e.g., Sun Yat-sen's role in the establishment of the Chinese Republic)
10.5 Students analyze the causes and course of the First World War, in terms of:
- 1. the arguments for entering into war presented by leaders from all sides of the Great War and the role of political and economic rivalries, ethnic and ideological conflicts, domestic discontent and disorder, and propaganda and nationalism in mobilizing civilian population in support of "total war"
- 2. the principal theaters of battle, major turning points and the importance of geographic factors in military decisions and outcomes (e.g., topography, waterways, distance, climate)
- 3. how the Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States affected the course and outcome of the war
- 4. the nature of the war, the human costs (military and civilian) on all sides of the conflict, including how colonial peoples contributed to the war effort
5. human rights and genocide, including the Ottoman government's actions against Armenian citizens
10.6 Students analyze the effects of the First World War, in terms of:
- 1. the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders, the terms and influence of the Treaty of Versailles and Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, and the causes and effects of U.S. rejection of the League of Nations on world politics
- 2. the effects of the war and resulting peace treaties on population movement, the international economy, and shifts in the geographic and political borders of Europe and the Middle East
- 3. the widespread disillusionment with prewar institutions, authorities, and values that resulted in a void that was later filled by totalitarians
- 4. the influence of World War I on literature, art, and intellectual life in the West (e.g., Pablo Picasso, the "lost generation" of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway)
10.7 Students analyze the rise of totalitarian governments after World War I, in terms of:
- 1. the causes and consequences of the Russian Revolution, including Lenin's use of totalitarian means to seize and maintain control (e.g., the Gulag)
- 2. Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union and the connection between economic policies, political policies, the absence of a free press, and systematic violations of human rights (e.g., the Terror Famine in Ukraine)
- 3. the rise, aggression, and human costs of totalitarian regimes (Fascist and Communist) in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union noting their common and dissimilar traits
10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of the Second World War, in terms of:
- 1. the German, Italian, and Japanese drives for empire in the 1930's, including the 1937 Rape of Nanking and other atrocities in China and the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939
- 2. the role of appeasement, nonintervention (isolationism), and the domestic distractions in Europe and the United States prior to the outbreak of World War II
- 3. the identification and location of the Allied and Axis powers; the major turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key strategic decisions; and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions with emphasis on the importance of geographic factors
- 4. the political, diplomatic and military leadership (e.g., biographies of Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower)
- 5. the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European Jews, its transformation into the Final Solution and the Holocaust resulting in the murder of six million Jewish civilians
- 6. the human costs of the war, with particular attention to the civilian and military losses in Russia, Germany, Britain, United States, China, and Japan
10.9 Students analyze the international developments in the post-World War II world, in terms of:
- 1. the economic and military power shifts caused by the war, including the Yalta Pact, the development of nuclear weapons, Soviet control over nations of Eastern Europe, and the economic recovery of Germany and Japan
- 2. the causes of the Cold War, with the free world on one side and Soviet client states on the other, including competition for influence in such places as Egypt, the Congo, Vietnam, and Chile
- 3. the importance of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan which established the pattern for the postwar American policy of supplying economic and military aid to prevent the spread of communism and the resulting economic and political competition in arenas such as Southeast Asia (i.e., Korean War, Vietnam War), Cuba, and Africa
- 4. the Chinese Civil War, rise of Mao Tse-Tung, and the subsequent political upheavals in China (e.g., the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square uprising)
- 5. how the forces of nationalism developed in the Middle East, how the Holocaust affected world opinion regarding the need for a Jewish state, the significance and effects of the location and establishment of Israel on world affairs
- 6. the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the weakness of the command economy, burdens of military commitments, and growing resistance to Soviet rule by dissidents in satellite states and the non-Russian Soviet republics
- 7. the establishment and work of the United Nations, the Warsaw Pact, SEATO, and NATO, Organization of American States and their purposes and functions
10.10 Students analyze instances of nation-building in the contemporary world in two of the following regions or countries: the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and other parts of Latin America, or China, in terms of:
- 1. challenges in the region, including its geopolitical, cultural, military, and economic significance and the international relationships in which it is involved
- 2. the recent history of the region, including the political divisions and systems, key leaders, religious issues, natural features, resources, and population patterns
- 3. the important trends in the region today and whether they appear to serve the cause of individual freedom and democracy
- 10.11 Students analyze the globalization of the economy, the information, technological and communications revolutions (e.g., television, satellites, computers) and the rise of popular culture