Introduction

Course Purpose:

San Dimas High School’s Advanced Placement World History course is the new College Board college-level survey class that introduces students to world civilizations and cultures. Course curriculum, materials, and expectations are designed to prepare students for the rigorous three-hour World History A.P. exam. Highly motivated and talented students have the opportunity to earn college credit by passing this exam on May 12, 2003. All student enrolled in the class are expected to take the exam. If the student chooses not to take the exam, they will lose the extra grade point earned for an A.P. course per district policy.

Why take an AP Course?

Course Description:

The purpose of the AP World History course is to develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts, in interaction with different types of human societies. The course highlights the nature of changes in international frameworks and their causes and consequences, as well as comparisons among major societies. The course emphasizes relevant factual knowledge deployed in conjunction with leading interpretive issues and types of historical evidence. Focused primarily on the past thousand years of the global experience, the course builds on an understanding of cultural, institutional, and technological precedents that, along with geography, set the human stage prior to 1000 C.E.

Rather than focusing on continents or states, we study cultural regions or civilizations. Periodization or how we structure past eras forms the organizing principal for dealing with change and continuity. Themes provide further organization to the course, along with constant attention to contacts among societies that form the core of world history.