Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources HS History/Soc Sci Progression for humanities kid?

Hi! My dc's are HG and oriented to the humanities (history, English, writing) and social sciences. As we face HS, I could use advice on a sequence of courses. I looked at a typical 9th grade text in World Geography for HS, and it was really lite (ironic spelling intended). Here are the landforms of North America (2-3 pages); here is the climate (2-3 pages), and here are two examples drawn randomly from 10,000 years of history showing how people adapt. Now let's move on to South America!

I am not kidding. Not.

So looking at higher-level HS, would a Modern World History course be a good bet? Or should we (as homeschoolers, we have the option) chuck the standard survey text offerings and just go for in-depth studies -- e.g., a year on the two World Wars or comparative revolutions or something more college-y?

Or should we dive into the AP world of European History?

I'd value ANY experiences!

Hmmm-- well, I feel your pain here. My DD14, now a HS senior, has really struggled some with the "liteness" of such coursework during middle and high school. She's a virtual school student, so I "see" the classes more than most parents do... though they aren't technically homeschooling in that I have no choice/control over curriculum decisions or assessments or anything like that.


Here's what she DID do, and then I'll explain what I think she should have done differently instead:

Year 1:

geography course
economics (combo)
Honors English 9

Year 2:
Honors World History
Honors English 10
Honors English 11

Year 3:
Honors US History (reconstruction-through-modern era)
Honors American Govt
AP English Literature

Year 4:
AP US history
AP English Composition


Also know that we regularly 'vacation' at one of the best repertory theater festivals on the planet, and DD has seen ~80% of Shakespeare's complete canon. She also spent 3 weeks in Europe during Year 3-- with me, as well as on a school tour group (with the AP Lit teacher).

Okay-- my commentary is that this was more or less not a bad plan-- except for two things:

A) My daughter LOATHES economics. With a PASSION. OMG. I so wish that I'd signed her up for AP Art History that year instead of that combo in year 1. In addition to the otherwise good Econ class, that geography class was a total mess, and we ALL hated it (the teacher included).

B) Forget "honors" on the social studies side-- we'd have been SO much happier if she'd done AP World History and AP US History and AP Am. Govt. It's not that the classes were bad as honors offerings... just.... shallow. English, we really saw a huge difference between honors and AP, and I'm seeing the same thing now with US History-- the AP course offers a lot more wiggle room for deeper understanding and thinking and writing about topical ideas.


I also wish that she'd doubled up English right from the get-go, and done Honors 9&10, then 11&12, then the AP classes as singles. She is sad that she didn't get to take "Brit Lit" which is the traditional Honors 12 curriculum.
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That said, I feel that the original idea of progressing from WORLD history-- that is, from prehistory through the post-Colonial era-- is a great set-up to understand US History and American Government particularly well.

I also found that the pair of AP English courses are pretty well constructed, and while some assignments are more like busy work than anything else, there IS good content there, and sufficient reading to really sink teeth into, as well as student CHOICE of reading materials which can be used to add still more to the depth of things. For example, my DD chose things like Toni Morrison, Upton Sinclair and Anton Chekhov for "independent" assignments and analysis. The difficulty was definitely beyond what was required by the course, but it was not a problem to go a little further like that. This can't really be said for a lot of "honors/college prep" coursework, IMO.

I am not much help but I feel your pain. My son is currently in 9th grade Honors Global for Social Studies. What is Global you ask? Umm.. a little bit of not very much. My son complains about it bitterly. And it's really not a necessary class for college admission. But at our H.S. it is required for all freshman.

I'd leave World History to college. It's just too large a subject to do a worthwhile job of in high school, particularly in AP, where they're going to cut you off with ~9 weeks to go in order to prep for the AP exam.

AP European History (Reformation to WWII) changed my entire worldview. Public school history classes that are stories of "us" are loaded with propaganda, with actors often reduced to heroified caricatures. European History isn't about us, so it's presented in a balanced way. The actors become human. Once you see historical people as something like yourself, it makes the study of history far more compelling.

I never had much interest in the subject until I took this class my senior year. I'm currently reading US Grant's memoirs, plus The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History.

Thank you, everyone! So very helpful, and I really appreciate it!

FWIW, in the meantime, I took a look at online college offerings of the Coursera etc. type. These are (IMO and IME, when I've looked at courses in my field) often not as rigorous as real college courses, but they provide something like 1/4 to 1/2 of a college course, and so are intellectually serious in a way that I am finding (and thank you for confirming) the HS classes are not.

Two I found that look especially good, in case it's helpful to others. (My thinking is that these might, with a college textbook, constitute a good standalone course OR might supplement a HS AP or Honors course):

Coursera Welcome to the Modern World: Global History Since 1760 -- 13 lectures, taught by a UVa historian, with each week covering a span of time globally and thematically

Learner.org (this was new to me, but it's the Annenberg Foundation) Bridging World History -- 26 thematic units, including lesson plans. Columbia lists this course as a resource for college students in history, so I take some comfort as to the quality. The lessons I looked at were good but doable for an intellectual HS kid.

Keep a close watch on anything MOOC-- I have been pretty underwhelmed by those, myself. It's not that they are not good, because they could be... it's just that it's such a mixture of levels of students and the message board postings associated are often a really messy aggregation of off-topic, rudimentary (to the point of generating face-palm moments), etc. WAY WAY 'biased' postings abound, and often the "moderation" there is minimal if it is done at all.

Great Courses has some interesting things, but I've found that with great materials like that, it's still necessary for my DD to have a discussion component. If I have wished for one thing over and over again throughout the years, it's that she would have an 'adult' suit to crawl into, and an intellectual group of individuals to hang out with and discuss literature and the humanities with-- she eventually gets frustrated with even me on this score. While I'm a polymath and a person with passionate interest in history and literature, I'm simply not an expert in those areas the way that I am in the sciences.

I think that much depends on learning style there-- but the problem with the social sciences is that it is very difficult to generate novel/deep understanding and analysis without a variety of perspectives feeding into your thinking about the subject. With contemporary events, of course, that's easy enough to gain-- but with historical ones, it requires learning to evaluate sources for bias, and being able to ferret out dissenting viewpoints (and not so easy to do in some areas of world history where 'revisionism' has followed events).


I think you're on the right track in thinking of the Coursera, etc. as a supplement alongside a college textbook. That's the kind of strategy that we've used most successfully with our DD.

One word of warning, though-- HG+ kiddos can eventually outstrip that level pretty rapidly. It's only taken DD14 about 2 years to get to a point where she's chafing at that lower-level undergraduate delivery level, and then it gets a LOT harder for a non-expert to help with continued learning/resources.

I sure wish that my dad (a genuine Shakespeare scholar) were still alive to help her.