History is integral part of our civilization and we are the product of the past, with foreseeable trends in the future. “History helps us understand people, culture and societies. History helps us understand change and how the society we live in came to be.” Peter Stearns
History is the key to understand essential factors that determine how a society operates, elections, economic crisis, military alliances, all of them have a reason behind that lies somewhere in the past. So we can safely say that the past shapes the present and also the future. As a result, the study of history is important to understand the development of a society with all its aspects: economic, politic, societal, etc. Whenever we study an event, from a political coup or democratic election results, economic development in one area or another, we have to look back to what happened earlier.
Social Studies start to be taught early on in Kindergarten and continues until high school and beyond.
Students must understand the connection between the past and the present and this understanding starts developing early on in K, and continue in more depth in the following years. By 4th grade, students study the history of their home state from Pre-Columbian society and continue in 5th grade with the development of the nation until 1850, with an emphasis on the people who were already here, when and from where others arrived, and why they came.
In the 8th grade, students learn about the ideas, issues and events from the emergence of our country as a democracy up to Industrial Revolution.
Then in high school, students study the major events that shaped the modern world, from the late eighteenth century through he present, including the cause and course of the two world wars.
The AP US History test administered by the College Board. covers topics from 1491 to present:
