HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY - GENERAL OUTLINES AND SKILLS

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY - GENERAL OUTLINES AND SKILLS

HISTORY

At the end of the high school course, the student knows the main events and long-term transformations in the history of Europe and Italy, from antiquity to the present day, within the framework of the global history of the world; uses appropriately the vocabulary and interpretive categories proper to the discipline; knows how to read and evaluate different sources; looks at history as a significant dimension for understanding, through critical discussion and comparison among a variety of perspectives and interpretations, the roots of the present.
The starting point will be to emphasize the temporal dimension of each event and the ability to place it in the proper chronological succession, since teaching history is to propose the unfolding of interrelated events according to time. On the other hand, the second dimension of history, namely space, should not be neglected. Indeed, history involves a geographical dimension; and human geography, in turn, needs temporal coordinates. The two space-time dimensions must be an integral part of learning the discipline.

Making use of the basic vocabulary of the discipline, the student will rework and expound on the topics covered in an articulate way that is attentive to their relationships, grasp the elements of affinity-continuity and diversity-discontinuity between different civilizations, and orient himself or herself on the general concepts relating to state institutions, political and legal systems, types of society, and artistic and cultural production. In this regard, an adequate space should be reserved for the theme of citizenship and the Republican Constitution, so that, at the end of the five-year high school period, the student is well acquainted with the fundamentals of our constitutional order, as value explications of the historically relevant experiences of our people, also in relation and comparison with other fundamental documents (just to mention a few examples, from the Magna Charta Libertatum to the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), also maturing, also in relation to the activities carried out by educational institutions, the necessary skills for an active and responsible civic life.
It is useful and desirable to turn attention to civilizations other than the Western one throughout the course, devoting appropriate space, to give a few examples, to Indian civilization at the time of Alexander the Great's conquests; to Chinese civilization at the time of the Roman Empire; to pre-Columbian American cultures; to non-European countries conquered by European colonialism between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to arrive at a knowledge of the overall framework of relations between different civilizations in the twentieth century. Special attention will be devoted to the in-depth study of particular thematic cores peculiar to the different high school paths.
While not detracting from the overall frame of reference, adequate space may be reserved for activities that lead to evaluating different types of sources, reading historical documents or comparing different interpretative theses: this is in order to understand the ways in which scholars construct the narrative of history, the variety of sources used, the succession and contrast of different interpretations. The student will also accrue a method of study that conforms to the subject under investigation, enabling him or her to synthesize and schematize an expository text of a historical nature, grasping the salient nodes of interpretation, exposition and the specific meanings of disciplinary vocabulary. Attention, likewise, should be paid to the frequent verification of oral exposition, of which in particular it will be desirable to supervise accuracy in placing events according to the correct spatio-temporal coordinates, coherence of discourse and mastery of terminology.

GEOGRAPHY

At the end of the two-year course, the student will know the fundamental tools of the discipline and will have become familiar with its main methods, also drawing party from appropriate practical exercises, which will benefit, in this perspective, from the new techniques of reading and representing the territory. The student will know how to critically orient himself before the main forms of cartographic representation, in its various geographic-physical and geopolitical aspects, and will consequently have acquired an adequate awareness of the complex relationships between environmental conditions, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics and the demographic arrangements of a territory. In particular, he/she will know how to describe and frame in space the problems of today's world, relating the historical reasons of "long duration," processes of transformation, morphological and climatic conditions, distribution of resources, economic and demographic aspects of different realities in a multiscalar perspective.

SPECIFIC LEARNING OBJECTIVES

HISTORY

FIRST TWO YEARS.

The first two years will be devoted to the study of ancient and early medieval civilizations. The following thematic nuclei cannot be left out in the construction of the teaching paths: the main civilizations of the Ancient Near East; Judaic civilization; Greek civilization; Roman civilization; the advent of Christianity; Romano-Barbaric Europe; society and economy in early medieval Europe; the Church in early medieval Europe; the birth and spread of Islam; Empire and kingdoms in the early Middle Ages; seigniorial and feudal particularism.
The study of the various topics will be accompanied by a consideration of the nature of the sources used in the study of ancient and medieval history and the contribution of disciplines such as archaeology, epigraphy and paleography.

GEOGRAPHY

FIRST TWO YEARS

During the two-year course the student will focus on the study of the contemporary planet, under a thematic profile, by topics and problems, and under a regional profile, aimed at investigating aspects of Italy, Europe, continents and states. The following should be considered as main themes in the construction of the educational paths: landscape, urbanization, globalization and its consequences, cultural diversity (languages, religions), migration, population and the demographic question, the relationship between economy, environment and society, imbalances between world regions, sustainable development (energy, water resources, climate change, food and biodiversity), geopolitics, the European Union, Italy, Europe and its main states, the continents and their most relevant states. In addition to the basic knowledge of the discipline acquired in the previous cycle with regard to Italy, Europe and the other continents, themes-problems should be proposed to be addressed through some concrete examples that can consolidate the knowledge of fundamental and current concepts, to be then developed over the entire five-year period.

On an illustrative level, the student will describe and place on a cartographic basis, including through the exercise of reading silent maps, the main states of the world (with special attention to the Mediterranean and European area). This summary description will aim to provide a picture of environmental, demographic, political-economic and cultural aspects by encouraging comparisons and changes in scale. Also important in this regard will be the ability to account for the importance of certain fundamental factors for the settlements of peoples and the constitution of states, from a geohistorical perspective (existence or non-existence of natural borders, navigable waterways and communication routes, ports and transit centers, dislocation of raw materials, migratory flows, linguistic areas, spread of religions).
In the specifics of demographic aspects, the student will have to acquire the skills necessary to analyze the growth rates of populations, the flows of the great migrations of the past and present, the distribution and density of the population, in relation to environmental factors (climate, water resources, altitude, etc.) and social factors (poverty, education levels, income, etc.).
For this type of analysis, he or she will become familiar with the reading and production of statistical-quantitative tools (including graphs and histograms, which allow for summary and detailed readings capable of bringing out local specificities), and with the different representations of the land and their purposes, from the origins of cartography (a subject that lends itself more than ever to a relationship with history) to GIS.