EDCK 6

BUILDING AND ENHANCING NEW

LITERACIES ACROSS THE
CURRICULUM

This is a property of
PRESIDENT RAMON MAGSAYSAY STATE UNIVERSITY
NOT FOR SALE
Major 8- World History 1 (Ancient and Medieval Era)
First Edition, 2021

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Course Overview

Introduction

The World History I provides the basic concepts, theories and historical developments like emergence
of societies and civilizations, rise of kingdom- empire states, formation of states, age of exploration,
expedition and colonization, and age of commercialization from pre-history up to 8th century C.E.

(CMO No. 75 s. 2017) Annex B Description of Major Courses Policies, Standards and Guidelines for
Bachelor of Secondary Education (course based )

Course General Objective:

At the end of the course, the students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the basic concepts, theories, and historical
developments like emergence of societies, civilization and rise of kingdoms; and
2. Apply critical and creative thinking through comparative analysis on the historical
development of societies from pre-history up to 8th century C.E.

Course Details:

• Course Code: Major 8

• Course Title: World History 1 (Ancient and Medieval Era)
• No. of Units: 3 units
• Classification: Lecture-based
• Pre-requisite / Co-requisite: None
• Semester and Academic Year: -
• Schedule: -
• Name of Faculty: Joven Ian M. Marquez
• Contact Details:
o Email: jovenianmarquez@prmsu.edu.ph
o Mobile Number:
o FB Account: Joven Ian Marquez
• Consultation
o Day: -
o Time: -
Learning Management System

The University LMS will be used for asynchronous learning and assessment. The link and
class code for LMS will be provided at the start of class through the class’ official Facebook
Group/Group Chat.
• Edmodo
• Google Classroom
• University LMS

Assessment with Rubrics

Students will be assessed in a regular basis thru quizzes, individual/group outputs using
synchronous and/or asynchronous modalities or submission of SLM exercises. Rubrics are also
provided for evaluation of individual/group outputs.

Major examinations will be given as schedule. The scope and coverage of the examination
will be based on the lessons/topics as plotted in the course syllabus.
World History 1- Ancient and
Medieval Era

Lesson 1
History in Different
Perspectives
Lesson 1

History in Different Perspectives

Introduction:

For this module, the students will explore various concepts on historical thinking skills and the
relevance of studying history in current milieu.

Specific Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the student should be able to:

1. Discuss various perspectives on history and historical thinking; and
2. Explain the relevance of studying history.

Lesson 1: Historical Perspectives

• Historical Thinking Concepts
• Definitions and relevance of historical thinking skills and perspectives

Lesson Proper

HISTORICAL THINKING CONCEPTS

To think historically, students need to be able to:

• Establish historical significance

• Use primary source evidence
• Identify continuity and change
• Analyze cause and consequence
• Take historical perspectives, and
• Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations.

Taken together, these concepts tie “historical thinking” to competencies in “historical literacy.” In this
case, “historical literacy” means gaining a deep understanding of historical events and processes
through active engagement with historical texts.

Historically literate citizens can assess the legitimacy of claims that there was no Holocaust, that
slavery wasn't so bad for African-Americans, that aboriginal rights have a historical basis, and that the
Russian experience in Afghanistan serves as a warning to the Canadian mission there. They have
thoughtful ways to tackle these debates. They can interrogate historical sources. They know that a
historical film can look "realistic" without being accurate. They understand the value of a footnote.

In short, they can detect the differences, as Margaret MacMillan's book title reads, between the uses
and abuses of history. “Historical thinking” only becomes possible in relation to substantive content.
These concepts are not abstract “skills.” Rather, they provide the structure that shapes the practice of
history.

Historical Significance

The past is everything that ever happened to anyone anywhere. There is much too much history to
remember all of it. So how do we make choices about what is worth remembering? Significant events
include those that resulted in great change over long periods of time for large numbers of people.
World War II passes the test for historical significance in this sense. But what could be significant
about the life of a worker or a slave? What about my own ancestors, who are clearly significant to me,
but not necessarily to others? Significance depends upon one’s perspective and purpose. A historical
person or event can acquire significance if we, the historians, can link it to larger trends and stories
that reveal something important for us today. For example, the story of an individual worker in
Winnipeg in 1918, however insignificant in the World War II sense, may become significant if it is
recounted in a way that makes it a part of a larger history of workers’ struggles, economic
development, or post-war adjustment and discontent. In that case, the “insignificant” life reveals
something important to us, and thus becomes significant. Both “It is significant because it is in the
history book,” and “It is significant because I am interested in it,” are inadequate explanations of
historical significance.

Primary Source Evidence

The litter of history —letters, documents, records, diaries, drawings, newspaper accounts and other
bits and pieces left behind by those who have passed on — are treasures to the historian. These are
primary sources that can give up the secrets of life in the past. Historians learn to read these sources.

But reading a source for evidence demands a different approach than reading a source for information.
The contrast may be seen in an extreme way in the difference between reading a phone book — for
information — and examining a boot-print in the snow outside a murder scene —for evidence. When
we look up a phone number, we don’t ask ourselves, “who wrote this phonebook?” or “what impact
did it have on its readers?” We read it at face value. The boot print, on the other hand, is a trace of the
past that does not allow a comparable reading. Once we establish what it is, we examine it to see if it
offers clues about the person who was wearing the boot, when the print was made, which direction the
person was headed, and what else was going on at that time.

A history textbook is generally used more like a phone book: it is a place to look up information.
Primary sources must be read differently. To use them well, we set them in their historical contexts
and make inferences from them to help us understand more about what was going on when they were
created.

Continuity and Change

Students sometimes misunderstand history as a list of events. Once they start to understand history as
a complex mix of continuity and change, they reach a fundamentally different sense of the past.

There were lots of things going on at any one time in the past. Some changed rapidly while others
remained relatively continuous. One of the keys to continuity and change is looking for change where
common sense suggests that there has been none and looking for continuities where we assumed that
there was change. Judgments of continuity and change can be made on the basis of comparisons
between some point in the past and the present, or between two points in the past, such as before and
after Confederation in Canada. We evaluate change over time using the ideas of progress and decline.

Cause and Consequence

In examining both tragedies and accomplishments in the past, we are usually interested in the
questions of how and why. These questions start the search for causes: what were the actions, beliefs,
and circumstances that led to these consequences?

In history, as opposed to geology or astronomy, we need to consider human agency. People, as

individuals and as groups, play a part in promoting, shaping, and resisting change.
People have motivations and reasons for taking action (or for sitting it out), but causes go beyond
these. Causes are thus multiple and layered, involving both long-term ideologies, institutions, and
conditions, and short-term motivations, actions and events. Causes that are offered for any particular
event (and the priority of various causes) may differ, based on the scale of the history and the
approaches of the historian.

Historical Perspectives

Understanding the foreignness of the past is a huge challenge for students. But rising to the challenge
illuminates the range of human behaviour, belief and social organization. It offers surprising
alternatives to the taken-for-granted, conventional wisdom, and opens a wider perspective from which
to evaluate our present preoccupations.

Taking historical perspective means understanding the social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional
settings that shaped people’s lives and actions in the past. At any one-point, different historical actors
may have acted on the basis of conflicting beliefs and ideologies, so understanding diverse
perspectives is also a key to historical perspective-taking. Though it is sometimes called “historical
empathy,” historical perspective is very different from the common-sense notion of identification with
another person. Indeed, taking historical perspective demands comprehension of the vast differences
between us in the present and those in the past.

Ethical Dimensions

Are we obligated to remember the fallen soldiers of World War II? In other words, what
responsibilities do historical crimes and sacrifices impose upon us today?

These questions are one part of the ethical dimension of history. Another part has to do with the
ethical judgments we make about historical actions. This creates a difficult paradox. Taking historical
perspective demands that we understand the differences between our ethical universe and those of
bygone societies. We do not want to impose our own anachronistic standards on the past. At the same
time, meaningful history does not treat brutal slave-holders, enthusiastic Nazis, and marauding
conquistadors in a “neutral” manner. Historians attempt to hold back on explicit ethical judgments
about actors in the midst of their accounts, but, when all is said and done, if the story is meaningful,
then there is an ethical judgment involved. We should expect to learn something from the past that
helps us to face the ethical issues of today.

References/Additional Resources/Readings

https://historicalthinking.ca/historical-thinking-
concepts?fbclid=IwAR2BWmOLOVhFTaRXsTgFL6cRzKaUinV_47A-W-3a-yIbFnZ0bgIxvIkgv8Q

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-
does-it-mean-to-think-historically

https://phi.history.ucla.edu/nchs/historical-thinking-standards/1-chronological-thinking/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2020.1712550
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