History and the Social Sciences

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future. Robert Heinlein, science fiction writer

At the Academy of St. Joseph, we study history as part of a larger constellation of social science disciplines. Our students study geography (to learn the nature of our physical world); demography (to learn about the various people who inhabit the world); sociology (to learn how societies work); government (to learn how people implement a social contract); and history itself. Our curriculum links students to the world close to them and the world far from their own experience. Our history curriculum integrates reading, writing, and presentation skills so that students can develop, communicate, and explain their ideas. 

The Lower School curriculum is based in large part on developing reading and analytical skills and learning about important events and actors in history. The fourth grade curriculum provides a major focus on history, science and technology, and the changing demographics of New York State.

The Upper School History curriculum is based on the following major areas of inquiry:

• Fifth grade: world geography, human origins in Africa, migration, and settled societies in  Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Egypt, and Greece.
• Sixth grade: the Rloman Empire in ascendancy and decline, medieval Europe, African empires, meso-American societies, and Europe’s efforts at exploration, trade, and conquest, with a focus on Portugal, Spain, the Nethrlands, and France.
• Seventh grade: United States history from English colonization through Reconstruction.
• Eighth grade: United States history after Reconstruction through the twentieth century.