Final Portfolio

World History, although most commonly believed is only about things that happened in the past, is more than just stories of deceased people. I believe that world history is the study of things that affect the world and the future. In this school year, we have learned so much. As a class we explored many different topics, one that most interested me was the when we learned about social change. Through many different topics, we have studied how social change happens when people make a difference, or when they’re sick of what’s happening.

In the beginning of the school year we learned about the Age of Exploration. We began the unit by studying the Age of Exploration. As we were focusing on the Spaniards and how they were conquering different parts of the world. However controversial it may be, the Spaniards wanted a social change. Cortez and his men wanted to eradicate the “wrong ways” of the Aztecs, so they stood and decided to make a change. Although it was immoral and very fast paced, they made a social change. In class, we did a trial where the class was divided into different groups. We discussed as a whole and then the deliberations started. It was a very interesting jury, and one of the most engaging ones we had all year.

The religion unit is also something that supports the social change. In this unit, we explored many different religions and saw how they changed people who followed them. We did a benchmark in which we had to compare two or more religions. The religions I focused on were Judaism and Hinduism. I also studied how these two view the apocalypse and the hereafter. By doing research on these two religions, I was able to get a better understanding of them.

Another example of how social change makes a difference is during the revolution unit. Everyone in the class was expected to make a Digital Revolution Guidebook that compared two different revolutions. For my project, I did extensive research on both the revolution in Egypt and Cuba. Although the outcomes for these two revolutions are different, they both started with a similar cause. The people of Egypt were tired of having to follow a government that only seemed to bring them harm. The Cuban people were first against the ruling of Fidel Castro, however they received much more benefits than past leaders.

This leads to the final thing we learned about this year, colonialism. We explored the ideas of how colonialism can affect a group of people. For this benchmark I decided to focus on South Africa and how colonialism had affected their culture. This can be tied in with social change because of how the country was affected. Most people believe that with colonialism comes the change of an entire nation, however, the people of South Africa did not let that happen. They accepted bits and pieces of the change, but not the entirety of it.