<p>Hereshoping, my son’s public school never had a paper or project that was worth 90% of the grade either. Nor were they ever asked to write on “minor” parts of history.</p>
<p>Good to know! Not in these parts–it’s all too common. :)</p>
<p>“If I knew then what I know now” I never would have thought moving to this state was a good plan in terms of public education!</p>
<p>Personally, I think it’s a great assignment. I would have been very pleased had my son gotten this assignment in his AP Euro class. I don’t love the 90%-of-grade part, but that’s realistic in terms of making this a pseudo-college course. </p>
<p>The assignment is a decent pseudo-college assignment: it is focused, it is researchable from primary sources or contemporary secondary sources from the materials available to the students, and it requires them to connect small, apparently mundane things to large historical themes. It is something that isn’t plagiarizable from Wikipedia (or anything else). That’s a much more sophisticated project than most of what my kids did in their AP classes, which mainly involved looking at a couple of survey books and regurgitating what was said about something “important” – i.e., learning facts and conventional interpretation, not method.</p>
<p>Immigration and the rise of right-wing/nationalist parties.</p>
<p>In college courses I took - there was a midterm, a final and one to three papers each piece worth about 1/3 of the grade - though final might be more and paper(s) less. Per semester - so a two semester course would have minimally two papers. I don’t mind the topic - especially if they can relate it to history and do some primary research. My son isn’t doing AP Euro, but he did write a paper for APUSH on transportation improvements in the 19th century. He actually found a 19th century book full of rates for various canal and train routes. It was some biggish fraction of the final quarter’s grade. Definitely not 90% though!</p>
<p>I truly don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t love this assignment. The issue, as I interpret it, is to take some event/trend of the past 50 years and explain how it fits in to the stream of European history. As I see it, this is instruction at its best. In order to make a good paper, a student must have a good sense of general European history, including long-term trends, must be able to do deep research on a particularly arcane issue, and must be able to tie it all together.</p>
<p>In other words, the student must be able to think! What a novel concept.</p>
<p>The 90% doesn’t bother me. I think it adds real drama and motivation. It’s very British in flavor. You get one opportunity to demonstrate your depth and breadth of learning.</p>
<p>This is an old thread, but had I been around to respond to the OP, I might have suggested the rise and fall of organized crime in Europe, why organized crime gets footholds and why it goes into decline. That would give the student a chance to talk about the rise of the Russian mafia in light of what we know of the history of, say, the Sicilian mafia. One can bring in economic pressures, the need for and rise of vigilanteism in a weak political system, and the like.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s a good college assignment–after the student has learned context. Not a third quarter high school euro assignment for 90% of the grade. When, exactly, did this kid get a chance to acquire “depth and breadth of learning” as a 15/16 year old? Middle school?</p>
<p>HH:</p>
<p>Clearly, you and I have different expectations of high school students. If the student has taken AP European history, I would expect such knowledge and, if not, I would expect the student to acquire it.</p>
<p>Perhaps I misunderstood: I thought the student was presently taking AP Euro.</p>
<p>HH:</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter. I would have been capable of this, and most of my children were certainly capable of this. The organized crime example I gave was a real one from #4.</p>
<p>As I said, I have different expectations of high school students than you do. That’s pretty clear.</p>
<p>I’d be curious to know why this is so clear to you; is your observation based just on my comments in this thread, or on something else?</p>
<p>I was trying to figure out, too, why you didn’t like the assignment, hereshoping. I agree with Tarhunt, obviously (since I said so a couple days ago). I think by this point in AP Euro the kid should have enough context to handle it. (Especially if, as I imagine, the teacher gets some input on whether a topic looks promising or not, and probably has some suggested topics to offer to students having touble.)</p>
<p>Also, how can you say “It’s a great college assignment” as if that was a bad thing for an AP course? They’re supposed to be college-equivalent. This is the one of the few times when I’ve heard about a teacher doing something in an AP course that really is college-equivalent.</p>
<p>AP Euro is supposed to be a college level course. I don’t have any problem with the level of the assignment.</p>
<p>Trace the return of art collections and bank accounts to Jewish survivors and descendants of the Holocaust. Although each story is tiny, the pattern is large and it connects with the broad sweep of history. It involves several countries, as the money was often sent to Swiss banks, who lost the account files.</p>
<p>“Perhaps I misunderstood: I thought the student was presently taking AP Euro.”</p>
<p>Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think the student (op) graduated since he asked the question in May of 2006. But these are GREAT topics! I hope current students are taking notice.</p>
<p>Or, track the story of the restoration of Torah scrolls that the Nazis shelved, planning to someday build a “Museum of Dead Peoples” for all to see. In recent years, these scrolls have been painstakingly restored and delivered to newfound Jewish congregations all over the world, including cities in Eastern Europe where synagogue life was extinguished during the end of the 20th century. Not funny, but deep.</p>
<p>ldmom06, you’re right! Groenvald revived the thread this month!</p>
<p>Our public school has the following history sequence: 6th-Canada and Mexico (actually geography); 7th-U.S. History; 8th-U.S. History; 9th-African and Asian Studies.</p>
<p>This means that the above hypothetical student, at this time in his school career, would be called upon to demonstrate a breadth and depth of understanding of Modern European History after having had three quarters of this one and only European History course.</p>
<p>Even though my son had what we used to call “Ancient History” in ninth grade at his new school, and I have no problem believing your kids are so brilliant that they probably spend their spare time reading history just for fun, for my kid–who spends his spare time either playing video games with the guys, or doing stuff with his girlfriend–I’m happy he will still have fourth quarter to learn those boring facts about history, and write essays about *major *events, trends and themes instead of demonstrating his profound insights into it by writing a 10 page research paper about minor part of the past fifty years.</p>
<p>Hereshoping:</p>
<p>It is not anyone’s fault that your son is not capable of writing this paper. It is also not our fault that you seem to have passed on the idea to him that history is about “learning those boring facts.”</p>