20th Century World History 12

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Big Ideas

Grandes idées

Nationalist movements can unite people in common causes or lead to intense conflict between different groups.

The rapid development and proliferation of technology in the 20th century led to profound social, economic, and political changes.

The breakdown of long-standing empires created new economic and political systems.

Curricular Competencies

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Students are expected to be able to do the following:

Use historical inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions

Key skills:
- Draw conclusions about a problem, an issue, or a topic.
- Assess and defend a variety of positions on a problem, an issue, or a topic.
- Demonstrate leadership by planning, implementing, and assessing strategies to address a problem or an issue.
- Identify and clarify a problem or issue.
- Evaluate and organize collected data (e.g., in outlines, summaries, notes, timelines, charts).
- Interpret information and data from a variety of maps, graphs, and tables.
- Interpret and present data in a variety of forms (e.g., oral, written, and graphic).
- Accurately cite sources.
- Construct graphs, tables, and maps to communicate ideas and information, demonstrating appropriate use of grids, scales, legends, and contours.

Assess the significance of people, locations, events, and developments, and compare varying perspectives on their historical significance at particular times and places, and from group to group

Key questions:
- What factors can cause people, places, events, or developments to become more or less significant?
- What factors can make people, places, events, or developments significant to different people?
- What criteria should be used to assess the significance of people, places, events, or developments?
Sample activities:
- Use criteria to rank the most important people, places, events, or developments in their current unit of study.
- Compare how different groups assess the significance of people, places, events, or developments.

(significance)

Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence

Key questions:
- What criteria should be used to assess the reliability of a source?
- How much evidence is sufficient in order to support a conclusion?
- How much about various people, places, events, or developments can be known and how much is unknowable?
Sample activities:
- Compare and contrast multiple accounts of the same event and evaluate their usefulness as historical sources.
- Examine what sources are available and what sources are missing and evaluate how the available evidence shapes our perspective on the people, places, events, or developments studied.

(evidence)

Compare and contrast continuities and changes for different groups at particular times and places

Key questions:
- What factors lead to changes or continuities affecting groups of people differently?
- How do gradual processes and more sudden rates of change affect people living through them? Which method of change has more of an effect on society?
- How are periods of change or continuity perceived by the people living through them versus how they are perceived after the fact?
Sample activity:
- Compare how different groups benefited or suffered as a result of a particular change.

(continuity and change)

Assess how underlying conditions and the actions of individuals or groups affect events, decisions, and developments, and analyze multiple consequences

Key questions:
- What is the role of chance in particular events, decisions, or developments?
- Are there events with positive long-term consequences but negative short-term consequences, or vice-versa?
Sample activities:
- Assess whether the results of a particular action were intended or unintended consequences.
- Evaluate the most important causes or consequences of various events, decisions, or developments.

(cause and consequence)

Explain different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, and events by considering prevailing norms, values, worldviews, and beliefs

Key questions:
- What sources of information can people today use to try and understand what people in different times and places believed?
- How much can one generalize about values and beliefs in a given society or time period?
- Is it fair to judge people of the past using modern values?
Sample activity:
- Explain how the beliefs of people on different sides of the same issue influence their opinions.

(perspective)

Make reasoned ethical judgments about controversial actions in the past or present, and assess whether we have a responsibility to respond

Key questions:
- What is the difference between implicit and explicit values?
- Why should one consider the historical, political, and social context when making ethical judgements?
- Should people of today have any responsibilities for actions taken in the past?
- Can people of the past be celebrated for great achievements if they have also done things today considered unethical?
Sample activity:
- Assess the responsibility of historical figures for an important event. Assess how much responsibility should be assigned to different people, and evaluate whether their actions were justified given the historical context.
- Examine various media sources on a topic and assess how much of the language contains implicit and explicit moral judgements.

(ethical judgment)

Content

Students are expected to know the following:

authoritarian regimes

Sample topics:
- Chile and Pinochet
- Cambodia and Pol Pot
- Cuba and Castro
- Soviet Union from Lenin to Gorbachev
- North Korea and the Kim dynasty
- China and Mao
- Germany and Hitler
- Italy and Mussolini

civil wars, independence movements, and revolutions

Sample topics:
- Soviet Union, 1917–21
- China, 1945–49
- decolonization
- Iranian Revolution
- guerilla warfare in Central and South America
- Vietnam, 1945–75

human rights movements, including indigenous peoples movements

Sample topics:
- women’s movement toward equality
- US civil rights movement (segregation and desegregation)
- struggle against apartheid
- Latin-American workers’ movements

religious, ethnic, and/or cultural conflicts, including genocide

Sample topics:
- cultural genocide of indigenous peoples
- genocide in Armenia, the Holocaust, in Cambodia, in Rwanda
- separatist movements (e.g., Quebec, Basque, Catalan, Ireland)

global conflicts, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War

Sample topics:
- evolution of military technology (e.g., machine gun, to nuclear weapons, to drones)
- arms race
- militarism
- espionage

migrations, movements, and territorial boundaries

Sample topics:
- post-World War I Middle East
- Palestine/Jewish settlement
- suburbanization of the United States and Canada

interdependence and international co-operation

Sample topic:
- UN peacekeeping missions

social and cultural developments

Sample topics:
- changing role of women:
  - suffrage
  - pay equity
  - “second-wave” feminism of the 1960s
- consumerism/capitalism:
  - 1920s boom
  - 1950s suburbanization and car culture
  - scarcity of goods in post-World War II Soviet satellite states
- globalization:
  - change from nation state to internationalism
  - European Union supranationalism
  - free trade
  - World Trade Organization

communication and transportation technologies

Sample topics:
- propaganda in democratic and totalitarian regimes
- social and cultural impact of the automobile
- role of media in shaping response to international conflicts
- role of television and radio in creating mass culture

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