The Study of History at Arlington School

An Overview

The major focus of the study of history at Arlington School is the development of skills that enable our students to become life-long learners and contribute positively to their community, nation, and world.  These intellectual skills are essential to the students’ careful examination of and successful conclusion to the problems they will encounter in life.  It is though the practice of these skills that they come to more clearly understand themselves and their relation to their fellow inhabitants of the planet.   

In addition to the basic but complex skills of reading, writing, and listening, a good deal of the time spent in history class at Arlington addresses the development of good habits of leaning.  These habits include attentiveness, organization, critical thinking, collaboration, and reflection.  More specific skills that are practiced recurrently in the study of history include:

Understanding Cause and Effect

Making Comparisons

Understanding Maps

Reading Graphs

Thinking Chronologically

Interpreting Statistics

Recognizing and Comparing Points of View

Analyzing Primary and Secondary Sources

Making Generalizations

Identifying Values

Detecting Bias

Identifying the Main Idea

Hypothesizing

Making Inferences

Drawing Conclusions

The history classes at Arlington School take an individualized and developmental approach.  Students come to the school with a broad range of experiences and abilities.  What is common to all is that they can only learn from the place where they are.  Accordingly a major effort is made for students to come to understand what learning styles work best for them and to take a personal part in making decisions about their education. “Student as worker, teacher as coach” is the guiding aphorism. The goal is for students to learn how to learn and thus be able to teach themselves. Students are encouraged to work at a level just slightly beyond their comfort zone. The expectation is that they will, with practice, integrate the understanding that all learning comes from “playing the edge”.  Students are regularly presented with an assortment of assignments or activities from which they can choose what works for them. All history students are expected to take tests as a way to demonstrate their learning, but the form (e.g. “closed-book”, “open-book”, “notes only”) and timeframe of those tests varies. Students are also encouraged to develop independent projects or assignments by which they can develop their skills and demonstrate their learning.

This individualized approach notwithstanding, history students are also expected to practice working cooperatively and as a member of a group.  History class provides an opportunity for students to practice the essential skills of attending, listening, and collaborating in a workplace setting.

A goal common to all history courses at Arlington School is the coming to understand the larger significance of the great discoveries, conflicts, and ideas that continue to shape our world and our future.  In all our discussions and investigations three major questions recurrently present themselves: 1) How do the principles of justice and liberty evolve and manifest themselves in American and world societies? 2) How do geographic and economic factors effect the development of nations and communities? 3) What is our responsibility to ourselves, our community, our nation, and our planet?

Despite pressures from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that push us to the contrary, it has always been the philosophy of the history department of Arlington School that decisions about how much “content” to cover should follow the adage, “less is more”.  Our focus is on student mastery of skills and student achievement rather than the covering of a prescribed assortment of topics.  Be that as it may, the content of history classes at Arlington School does follow the scope and sequence of the Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework (August 2003).  Currently we follow the DESE’s “Pathway 2” so that in most cases students in grades nine and ten study United States History and students in grades eleven and twelve study World History or other electives.