Social Studies

In addition to valuing the traditional curricular goals of content knowledge, all Social Studies courses emphasize skill development in critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication, as well as the exploration of character and reflection.

Featured Course: Contemporary Global Challenges

This full-year elective explores complex contemporary issues and considers the challenges and opportunities that they present to the global community. Each year, the class will focus on three broad topics, ranging from such issues as forced migration, international human rights, and sub-state nationalism, to disruptive technologies, political participation and process, boundary and resource conflicts, and climate change. The course will prepare students to navigate, analyze, and critique the world through political, economic, and social lenses, articulate global knowledge and perspective with confidence and balance, and find meaningful and relevant connections between global studies and other areas of intellectual or personal endeavor as a more informed “global citizen”. Throughout the fourth quarter, students will engage in scholarly research, analysis, collaboration, and presentation to select the next three topics to be covered in the course the following year.