While programs like PolyGlobal frequently push students to “think globally” our history curriculum doesn’t give us the education to do so. Currently, Perspectives on Modern World History, the sophomore history course, focuses mostly on Western and African history, with little focus on Southeast Asian and South American history. Meanwhile, our study of European history is limited to the age of revolutions.
Although I believe the curriculum does a good job of covering major revolutions, slavery, and colonialism, which are the most important topics for a one-year course, it lacks the time to explore Southeast Asian history in any meaningful depth. Additionally, the freshmen class of World Religions does not have enough value to keep due to its lack of depth in exploring religious traditions. Therefore, Poly should replace the freshman World Religions course with a broader world history class and then deepen that foundation with a second year of world history in the sophomore year.
Contextualizing historical events and global patterns is more important for understanding today’s world than studying religion, which plays a comparatively smaller role in modern global affairs. According to a Pew Research Center study from 2022, religious affiliations are falling throughout the United States and the world at large. The United States has, over the past 16 years, seen a 14% increase in the number of people who identify as “no religion.” In China, another global power, only 3% of its population says religion is important in daily life. In Canada, that number is 27%; in Russia, 16%; in Japan, 10%. Some of the most powerful countries in the world are increasingly shaped by forces unrelated to religion, making a year-long religion course less relevant to understanding modern global affairs.
While some conflicts can’t be understood without religious knowledge, I found that the World Religions course did not provide me with a solid or lasting understanding of religion. Other students corroborated my views. Sophomore Alex Pamon said, “The course does go deep into the religion to the point where I understand them.”
The unit on Islam exemplifies this: although we briefly learned about the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims, a distinction necessary to comprehend modern Middle East politics, the material was brief and surface-level, making it less likely to be retained.
Sophomore Sito Rodriguez shared, “The course does not give students the tools to link things you already know about these religions to stuff you learn in class.”
Part of the problem is World Religions’s heavy focus on case studies, which are short examples meant to introduce a single issue within a religion, provide a narrow glimpse of a religion rather than a broader view of the religion’s history, beliefs or internal diversity. In the Islam unit, for example, there are two case studies, one of which concerns women’s rights in Malaysia. Women’s rights are important worldwide, but to spend most of the three-week Islam unit on one specific case in one country prevents students from gaining an effective and accurate understanding of Islam as a global religion or women’s rights more broadly.
According to Upper School History Teacher Lawrence Zellner, who teaches and helped create the World Religions course, “One of the goals [of the case studies] is to help build empathy and understanding.”
However, without understanding the religions in more depth, this goal is null.
A two-year World History program on the other hand would allow for significant more depth and diversity in the curriculum. With a second year of World History, students could spend more time learning the histories of Southeast Asian countries as well as the histories of South and Central America.
Upper School History Department Chair Kristen Osborne-Bartucca stated, “I would love to see more classes on Southeast Asian history, but there’s never enough time to cover everything.” She also noted that opportunities for in-depth history lessons exist throughout the curriculum, including in sophomore World History units and in junior and senior electives such as Government and Politics, African-American History and Facing Global Challenges.
Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dr. Mares-Tamayo said, “In my perfect world, we’d keep expanding the ethnic studies curriculum we already have.”
By allowing students to dive deeper into the histories of different global regions, we can gain a deeper understanding and develop empathy for other cultures. A second year of world history supports all of these goals as students better understand the history of diverse peoples, helping us empathize globally. The current limitation of World History to one year does not provide enough time for covering all parts of the world or for covering significant events in depth. Ultimately, Poly should replace World Religions with an additional year of World History because a strong grasp of historical events and patterns is essential to understanding today’s world, whereas religion plays a comparatively smaller role in modern global affairs.
