Last issue the Rank & File published an opinion story referring to the IB Topics curriculum change. After the issue was distributed to the community, we were informed by the history department that we misunderstood the situation. The staff apologizes for this misunderstanding and would like to present these statements as a consolation for this complication.
“We get a range of options from IB when they do curriculum revisions. There are prescribed subjects, which are really only three choices and are very specific. The three topics we got with the most recent revision were the move to global war before World War II, a comparative case study over Civil Rights in the United States and in South Africa and contemporary genocidal war specifically in Rwanda and Bosnia. Looking at those, one of the things we have to do with those choices is look at the compelling features but also how do they fit with the rest of the choices we make.
The Civil Rights choice was tempting because we have done a lot on American Civil Rights, but South Africa was going to be entirely new and was looking at what we can do within the other choices we have available to us.
We looked pretty seriously at the more contemporary subject on Rwanda and Bosnia and problem there was also finding similarities but on top of that, the accessibility of sources. This was a lot harder to do with these topics that are a lot more contemporary were there just is not as many sources in print or other media.
So when we looked at the move to global war, there was a wealth of sources out there it something that crosses over multiple regions, it’s something that you can look at from a bunch of different angles. This way they can look at and explore the topic and it doesn’t have to be completely dependent on EK’s. We do think this is an opportunity with the new curriculum to branch out.
We don’t have the choice to stay with the Arab-Israeli conflict with the revised curriculum. We didn’t discount that priority and want to make the course relevant but we also have to meet our own priorities and there is still a lot of connections we can make to the contemporary world with the content that we chose.”
–Wanlace Yates
“Every IB class goes through a curriculum revision every five years. So, for example, our Paper one topic used to be Mao’s China. We don’t really control that at all, that is a thing that comes from IB, and this is true for all subjects.
IB does this and we can debate whether or not this change is as good as others have been in the past. I ultimately believe, these revisions are good because they force us to change.
This revision had a lot more pertaining to a Paper two. It use to be that we had five choices of questions and they were very predictable. That’s not the case anymore. We have to restructure and change where we are going. For Topics, we are going to do the Paper one focusing on the practices of war in World War I and World War II dealing with totalitarian leaders focusing on Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo. Where I think this is interesting is, both in HOA and Topics were going to spend a lot of time talking about the evolution particularly in Asia, United States, Japan and China.
Now is it as sexy as the Middle East? No, and we can fully see that. But we believe it’s the best choice based upon what we are given and it’s a fairly thought out process. But what I would like to say about it is, the change is really super good for us as teachers because we don’t get stale. It forces up to keep vibrant and I think that’s why we have had the success we’ve had because our stuff isn’t stale.”
–Tim Kane
“I would like to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict, but I am also excited because I just don’t know that much what we’re studying. I hope that’s not freaky coming from a teacher but we have to learn it too and partly IB gives us a menu of things but we have to fit them all together. We have to and look at how does the Americas piece, fit into our Topics study. We could teach things that are totally separate from the United States, but we still have to connect it back to the history of America’s. If we lived in Switzerland it might not be that way.
So since we had to fit into the America’s, the 11th grade curriculum which is somewhat similar to what was previously studied but somewhat different, has a major focus on the first and second World Wars for the United States and Brazil. So partly it was how do we fit in what is required from IB into also keeping in mind the reality that we have to teach about the America’s so it can’t just be Middle Eastern focused or Asian focused.
So when the group of teachers created some sample EK lists, some of them are things that you all would know about like the Treaty of Versailles. But a bunch of it is like Japanese agreements that were made in the 1930’s.
On a selfish point of view I would love to keep the Arab-Israeli peace, but it would have meant that everything we taught in 12th grade would have been entirely disconnected from 11th grade, which is also not the point of a two year history course. It’s really suppose to have some overlap, and is really the goal of this course.”
–Matthew Axelrod