Home
Towards an interactive curriculum on European civilization for high school students
Be part of Europe, write an essay
What have European students in common to learn about Europe?
The innovation of this project lies in the fact that the programme for European civilization will not refer to a specific list of historical persons and events or to specific history schools books.
On the contrary, it will provide students and teachers the opportunity to discover on their own how scholars, reformers and artists from their region contributed to the process of exchanges that constitutes European civilization.
A dozen themes will be selected, which together should cover the major aspects of civilization in Europe during the past five hundred years or so and which connect with the disciplines being taught at the high school level.
Each one-word theme stands for an entire discipline and for a major thread in European civilization: for instance the lens, an object that every high school student knows from his contact lenses or her cell phone, stands for the turn towards empirical science and the extension of spatial dimensions to the microbial and the celestial level through microscopes and telescopes; the physics teacher may collaborate on this theme with the teachers of history and English.
We want to present students and their teachers with an opportunity to explore Europe as a network of exchanges: in culture and science, in politics and economy…
People in Europe have always corresponded and travelled to exchange their ideas and inventions. And they are still doing so. Every European is part of this ongoing network of European civilization.
We invite you to participate: do your own research, discover how your town or region is connected to Europe and write an essay on one of the proposed themes like the post, the lens, the portrait, the keyboard or the (secret) ballot, the map, the fossil, the passport, the architectual drawing, the fertilizer and the seventh day.
Contributions by students will be the beginning of an interactive website on the history of European civilisation, intended for students of upper secondary schools in Europe. Choose a theme, write for the site and be a part of Europe….and take meanwhile a look in the Essay Gallery
Related Websites:
 |
 |
 |
