The IB History Curriculum

[ibislife]

As my IB years are coming to an end, I am currently contemplating my experience. On most points, the IB curriculum is rigorous, yet flexible, and at least modestly intellectually demanding.

The Histroy course, however, is truly a black hole. I take the Europe option. So what's wrong?

1. Narrow scope. At my school we study 100 years of Europe (about 1890-1990), Mao, and some Cold War (only here, some American history is really studied.) Also, we mainly study wars. This is an implicit choice. We do not study much of international cooperation, or the seemingly interesting topic of states and minorities. Focus lies on political and military history, and other important themes like economic and social history are hardly studied at all.

2. Exam structure. What is Paper 1 really? It is frustratingly naive to try to turn high-school students into archive-diggers during 60 minutes of exam pressure. Also, the students weaker in English are probably more disadvantaged here than on any other history test. Ok, we have reading time, but that is far from enough to compensate for this.* Just skip this paper and asses source criticism through internal assessments instead...

I cannot see how Paper 3 is any more "Higher level" than Paper 2. Ok, maybe some more detailed knowledge is required, but then the more open-ended questions of P 2 require more skills.

My suggestions: Replace P1 by other essay-writing test. Make SL students take P3. Papers can differ between HL and SL, the HL test requiring more skills, such as unpacking of the title, structuring, and other things related to 14+ markbands. The tests could be split into different themes or years, e. g. P1 -- 1800-1900, P2 -- 1900-, P3 -- School's/nations'-self-righteous-agancies'/teacher's/students'/who-ever-in-charge's own choice (I like that there is some freedom.)

*Don't get me wrong. Of course students should know their English, and compensation as such can, and should, never be made.


But more importantly...
What thinkest thou?

[Panserborne]

But have you looked at the syllabus, or past exam papers? It sounds like you should blame your teacher for your not liking the scope, not the IB. There's the wars topic, and single party states, I suspect most people take these, but then there is a cold war topic, the relationship between states and minorities, and something about the colonialism.

In fact these last three seem the most interesting to me. But what teacher is going to teach about the legacy of imperialism in sub-Sahara Africa when he/she can simply go over Hitler and Stalin and WW2 for the zillionth time? That's a problem in my mind, at least. They have these great, fascinating options, but then who's going to take them when you are almost guaranteed to get the best/easiest marks you can by taking the "safe", typical topics? Fatal flaw. I'd be interested in knowing some world wide statistics of how many students actually answer each question, in each topic.

Regarding paper 1, I think you're largely right. Seems like a waste of time to me. The skills we're using aren't particularly interesting for me, not compared with the work done in answering the essay questions. And if the aim of paper 1 is to train us into little historians, then the IB should answer this: what historian has ever had to analyse and evaluate all these sources with that kind of time limit? Seems crazy to be writing the whole time. It's as if the skills we learn for paper 1 are used only for the exam, to be promptly forgotten and never used again. The thing I do like about paper 1: it's easy, at least for me, and I love anything that doesn't require much study/ study cannot be done. =)

[ibislife]

Nice to see that someone agrees

You're absolutely right that no one (or very few) will pick these risky questions. This applies to both students, wanting to go to a good uni, as well as teachers, who want to prepare the students well. My teacher(s) said that they would teach the "common" material, because of the safety (so I won't blame them in any way.)

Another issue would be that these things are hardly studied in any high school system. As a result, there is most likely a lack of good material for this level of education. Generally, history education is centered on fascism and wars, rather than social/economic change. Also, the questions are rather open-ended. Here are examples:

"For what reasons, and in what ways, did integration affect the role and status of women belonging to ethnic/racial minorities?" (Paper 2, May 2006)

This sounds like a research question for a group of professionals studying their national situation, rather than a 50-minutes exam question

In comparison, students can pick:

"Analyse the causes of [b]either[/b] the Spanish Civil War [b]or[/b] the Korean War" (same test)

You can't even compare! Why would anyone fairly results-oriented ever study for answering the former?

btw, are you thinking of answering the Scandinavian question on paper 3? Possibly, the IB encourages students to answer these lesser mainstream questions. Maybe the examiners will be generous?

[Panserborne]

You're a smart thinker, sounds like you could go places in history at university. Can't answer your question, because I only take SL History (4 HLs were just not for me=) )

[ibislife]

Thanks Panserborne Considering history, but I'll most likely end up in engineering or so.