History/Social Studies

The History and Social Studies courses offered at Seton Catholic allow students the chance to challenge their higher level thinking skills. Students are exposed to World and United States History, Comparative Governments, Human Geography and World Cultures, all while accessing analytical, hypothetical, and synthesis levels of thinking. Three years of study are required in history or social sciences.

 

Grade Level: 9

Geography Alive! Regions and People creatively challenges students to use the tools of geography to view, analyze, and understand the world around them. The program’s case-study approach and seven Mapping Labs turn students into geographic thinkers. As a key benefit, building students’ content area reading skills is an integral part of the programs’ design. Students will be exposed to every continent and many different cultures and beliefs.

 

Grade Level: 9

The purpose of the AP Human Geography course is to introduce students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. Students learn to employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine human socioeconomic organization and its environmental consequences. They also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their research and applications.

 

Grade Level: 10

The purpose of the AP World History course is to develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts in different types of human societies. This understanding is advanced through a combination of selective factual knowledge and appropriate analytical skills. The course highlights the nature of changes in global frameworks and their causes and consequences, as well as comparisons among major societies. It emphasizes relevant factual knowledge, leading interpretive issues, and skills in analyzing types of historical evidence. Periodization, explicitly discussed, forms an organizing principle to address change and continuity throughout the course. Specific themes provide further organization to the course, along with consistent attention to contacts among societies that form the core of world history as a field of study

 

Grade Level: 11

The U.S. History courses are designed to provide students with the analytic skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in U.S. History. Students should learn to assess historical materials – their relevance to a given interpretive problem, reliability, and importance – and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship. The U.S. History courses will develop the skills necessary to arrive at conclusions on the basis of an informed judgment and to present reasons and evidence clearly and persuasively in essay format.

 

Grade Level: 12

The focus of study for this course is current world, national, state, and local issues as seen through the lenses of civics, economics, and geography. Students will read, discuss, present and write about current themes such as human rights, civic action and responsibility, globalization and the economy, environmental issues, and allocation of resources. The knowledge and skills students will gain in this course will prepare them for world citizenship and civic participation.

 

Grade Level: 12

Comparative Government and Politics introduces students to fundamental concepts used by political scientists to study the processes and outcomes of politics in a variety of country settings. The course aims to illustrate the rich diversity of political life, to show available institutional alternatives, to explain differences in processes and policy outcomes, and to communicate to students the importance of global political and economic changes. Six countries from the core of the AP Comparative Government and Politics course: China, Great Britain, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. By using these six countries, the course can move the discussion of concepts from abstract definition to concrete example, noting that not all concepts will be equally useful in all country settings.