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VIA prepares students to become creative problem-solvers and effective citizens. By studying diverse societies, students can understand why the world works the way it does, and the continual influence and interrelatedness of one society to another. Through creative writing assignments, seminar-style discussions, debates, skits, artistic projects, presentations, and engagement with varied sources, students will investigate the politics and culture of past societies to develop solutions for current problems.
World History (Grades 9-10)
In this two semester integrated World History and Humanities course, students will begin by exploring the Western tradition while learning how to develop and use key questions as historians, philosophers, art historians, and theologists to probe significant aspects of human identity, social order, morality, and beauty. Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece and Rome, and the European Middle Ages will serve as the backdrop in the first semester to students debating moral issues in front of the class, working in groups designing a government, finding meaning in a painting or treatise, or presenting a new historical interpretation. Along the way, the focus will always be on expanding student analytic, creative, and expressive skills in order to work toward a better society of their own. Beginning in the second semester, the course will introduce students to the study of religious experience and the philosophical underpinnings of religious thought and practice in both Eastern and Western world religions, as well as several indigenous cultures around the world. Using a multidisciplinary lens of philosophy, history, and literature (including sacred texts), we will seek to understand and appreciate the means and ways of different religious traditions. By the end of the semester, students will possess a much greater sense of the richness of human belief world- wide.
Modern European History
In this integrated history course, students will encounter and analyze the major political, economic, social, and cultural forces that have shaped the modern Western world over the last seven hundred years. The struggles for personal freedom, national identity, and international order will be the guiding themes along with the development in art and philosophy that have given expression to these struggles. Students will develop tools of expression as well through research projects and presentations that will give them direction in shaping the modern world.
AP Modern European History
In this course, students will become historians as they engage with primary sources and secondary studies to form their own interpretations of European History from the Renaissance to the present. The course requires extensive preparation, student participation and outside reading, and analytical essays. Frequent seminar discussions, reading assignments, take-home essays, group projects, and in-class exams will allow them to grapple with the major events of the modern world: the dramatic shifts of the Reformation, the tempestuous voyages of the Age of Exploration, the great upheavals of social and industrial revolutions, the conquering ambitions of Napoleon and Hitler, the hot and cold wars of the twentieth century, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. How should history remember these acts?
AP American History
This class summarizes the entirety of American history. Students begin with the age of exploration to understand European motives and means for colonization. Students then compare and contrast the American colonies' geography, socio-economic structure and politics. Students analyze reasons why the American Revolution was successful and why America chose its Constitution. The class then studies important economic, social and religious changes in Ante-bellum America, showing why the Civil War was virtually inevitable. Afterwards, the students consider laissez-faire capitalism's impact upon social structure, involving disputes between labor and capital, the growth of suburbs and the marginalization of the American farmer and Indian. Students consider Progressive and New Deal regulation alongside the development of American Globalism in the twentieth century, culminating in democratic victories over fascism and communism. Finally, the course outlines social structure and social protest in the post-war world, giving emphasis to the welfare state, Civil Rights victories, environmentalism, feminism, civil rights and changing partisan politics.
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