In our History curriculum there’s a strand called “Continuity and Change Through Time”. It’s the most far-reaching of the strands, as it seeks to highlight the patterns of change and critical differences across human societies and cultures throughout our history.
Grade 7 is comparing and contrasting highly structured societies with less structured, often chaotic ones. Our starting point for this discussion is the fall of the Roman Empire, a traumatic era in which Western Europe devolved into violence, starvation, superstition, and disease. With the loss of the well-maintained, highly organized Roman structures, much of society was left to fend for itself in a world that was, rather suddenly, much smaller and more terrifying.
A wonderful illustration of this transformation can found in a brilliant book: “A Street Through Time.” The premise of the book is rather simple. Take one “street” and show how it changed over the course of the last 12,000 years. The book begins with hunters of the last ice age and moves all the way into the modern era, all the whole showing the continuity and changes of human civilization through excellent attention to detail.
Check out the sample below, part of what the students have been looking at. The book is too big to fit entirely on the scanner…next time you’re in the SLS, stop by the History section and take a look!
