September: Return to school and new resources
Tuesday 8 September 2020
Image from Foreign Affairs, Which Past Is Prologue? Margaret MacMillan
Back to school?
Many of you will be starting the new school year, or returning to school for the first time since lockdown – some with blended or remote learning and others back in the classroom with all students. For those of you doing the former, there are some suggestions for distance learning in this section of the site:
We hope that the student access facility of this site will also help in this situation; instructions for setting up access can be found on the main page of the site and also here.
We have also now set up an introduction section for students (Getting started: Students) which gives them an overview of the kinds of skills they will need for the IB History course and advice on how to develop key study (and revision) skills. This might be a good starting point for students who are new to the IB programme.
2. Developing study skills
This section looks at the key skills that you need as a starting point for any historical investigation. It includes help on finding relevant sources and gives tips on how to effectively read and take...
Other suggestions for activities that you might consider doing with new classes to introduce them to this subject can be found here:
Several of the themes under our TOK pages would also work well as an introduction to the study of history. These pages reflect on how current issues are linked to historical themes and questions. Here are a couple of our more recent posts:
On the same theme, Margaret MacMillan has written yet another article stressing the importance of drawing lessons from history. As she writes in Foreign Affairs, 'The history of the first half of the twentieth century demonstrates all too vividly that unchecked or unmoderated tensions can lead to extremism at home and conflict abroad. It also shows that at times of heightened tension, accidents can set off explosions like a spark in a powder keg, especially if countries in those moments of crisis lack wise and capable leadership.'
Which Past Is Prologue? (Foreign Affairs)
World leaders must heed the right warnings from history as the international order decays.
New resources:
In addition to creating the new skills section for students that we mentioned above, we have added new content sections to the site:
We are working on another case study for Paper 2: Topic 6 Early Modern Wars:
And we have other projects in the pipeline for the next couple of months:
- Marked essays
- Resources for the Spanish section (Hitler for Topic 10 and Cold War, Topic 12, Paper 2)
- Paper 2: Topic 4 Societies in Transition, and Topic 8 Independence movements
- Paper 3: Americas region, Section 5 Slavery and the New World
Interesting resources online
Taking advantage of the fact that many lectures are now online, it is worth keeping an eye on How To Academy which organises interesting talks on a range of topics. In this talk at the end of September Fredrik Logevall (Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School and Professor of History at Harvard University) discusses the 'real' John F Kennedy.
LIVESTREAM EVENT | The Real John F. Kennedy | Harvard Professor Fredrick Logevall in conversation with Matthew d'Ancona (How To Academy)
By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen. But who was the man behind the myth?
This article on Lebanon from History Today gives the context of French involvement in Lebanon to explain the reasons for Macron's intervention and the calls for a return to French rule following the catastrophic explosion in the capital in August.
100 Years of Greater Lebanon | History Today (www.historytoday.com)
The disastrous explosion in Beirut has prompted calls for French intervention in Lebanon. But the history of France's involvement in the region has been driven by the creation of proxy elites and the pursuit of its own interests.