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Historical
Interpretation
[HI]
1.
Students explain the central issues and problems
from the past, placing people and events in a
matrix of time and place.
2.
Students understand and distinguish cause, effect,
sequence, and correlation in historical events,
including the long- and short-term causal
relations.
3.
Students explain the sources of historical
continuity and how the combination of ideas and
events explains the emergence of new
patterns.
4.
Students recognize the role of chance, oversight,
and error in history.
5.
Students recognize that interpretations of history
are subject to change as new information is
uncovered.
6.
Students interpret basic indicators of economic
performance and conduct cost-benefit analyses of
economic and political issues.
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United
States History and Geography:
Growth and Conflict
Students
in grade eight study the ideas, issues, and events
from the framing of the Constitution up to World
War I, with an emphasis on
America’s role in the war. After
reviewing the development of
America’s democratic institutions
founded on the Judeo-Christian heritage and English
parliamentary traditions, particularly the shaping
of the Constitution, students trace the development
of American politics, society, culture, and economy
and relate them to the emergence of major regional
differences. They learn about the challenges facing
the new nation, with an emphasis on the causes,
course, and consequences of the Civil War. They
make connections between the rise of industrializa
tion and contemporary social and economic
conditions.
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8.1
Students understand the major events preceding the
founding of the nation and relate their
significance to the development of American
constitutional democracy.
1.
Describe the relationship between the moral and
political ideas of the Great Awakening and the
development of revolutionary fervor.
2.
Analyze the philosophy of government expressed in
the Declaration of Independence, with an emphasis
on government as a means of securing individual
rights (e.g., key phrases such as all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable
Rights.)
3.
Analyze how the American Revolution affected other
nations, especially France.
4.
Describe the nation as blend of civic
republicanism, classical liberal principles, and
English parliamentary traditions.
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8.2
Students analyze the political principles
underlying the U.S. Constitution and compare the
enumerated and implied powers of the federal
government.
1.
Discuss the significance of the Magna Carta, the
English Bill of Rights, and the Mayflower
Compact.
2.
Analyze the Articles of Confederation and the
Constitution and the success of each in
implementing the ideals of the Declaration of
Independence.
3.
Evaluate the major debates that occurred during the
development of the Constitution and their ultimate
resolutions in such areas as shared power among
institutions, divided state-federal power, slavery,
the rights of individuals and states (later
addressed by the addition of the Bill of Rights),
and the status of American Indian nations under the
commerce clause.
4.
Describe the political philosophy underpinning the
Constitution as specified in the Federalist Papers
(authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and
John Jay) and the role of such leaders as Madison,
George Washington, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur
Morris, and James Wilson in the writing and
ratification of the Constitution.
5.
Understand the significance of
Jefferson’s Statute for Religious
Freedom as a forerunner of the First Amendment and
the origins, purpose, and differing views of the
founding fathers on the issue of the separation of
church and state.
6.
Enumerate the powers of government set forth in the
Constitution and the fundamental liberties ensured
by the Bill of Rights.7. Describe the principles of
federalism, dual sovereignty, separation of powers,
checks and balances, the nature and purpose of
majority rule, and the ways in which the American
idea of constitutionalism preserves individual
rights.
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8.3
Students understand the foundation of the American
political system and the ways in which citizens
participate in it.
1.
Analyze the principles and concepts codified in
state constitutions between 1777 and 1781 that
created the context out of which American political
institutions and ideas developed.
2.
Explain how the ordinances of 1785 and 1787
privatized national resources and transferred
federally owned lands into private holdings,
townships, and states.
3.
Enumerate the advantages of a common market among
the states as foreseen in and protected by the
Constitution’s clauses on
interstate commerce, common coinage, and full-faith
and credit.
4.
Understand how the conflicts between Thomas
Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton resulted in the
emergence of two political parties (e.g., view of
foreign policy, Alien and Sedition Acts, economic
policy, National Bank, funding and assumption of
the revolutionary debt).
5.
Know the significance of domestic resistance
movements and ways in which the central government
responded to such movements (e.g.,
Shays’ Rebellion, the Whiskey
Rebellion).
6.
Describe the basic law-making process and how the
Constitution provides numerous opportunities for
citizens to participate in the political process
and to monitor and influence government (e.g.,
function of elections, political parties, interest
groups).
7.
Understand the functions and responsibilities of a
free press.
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8.4
Students analyze the aspirations and ideals of the
people of the new nation.
1.
Describe the country’s physical
landscapes, political divisions, and territorial
expansion during the terms of the first four
presidents.
2.
Explain the policy significance of famous speeches
(e.g., Washington’s Farewell
Address, Jefferson’s 1801
Inaugural Address, John Q.
Adams’s Fourth of July 1821
Address).
3.
Analyze the rise of capitalism and the economic
problems and conflicts that accompanied it (e.g.,
Jackson’s opposition to the
National Bank; early decisions of the U.S. Supreme
Court that reinforced the sanctity of contracts and
a capitalist economic system of
law).
4.
Discuss daily life, including traditions in art,
music, and literature, of early national America
(e.g., through writings by Washington Irving, James
Fenimore Cooper).
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8.5
Students analyze U.S. foreign policy in the early
Republic.
1.
Understand the political and economic causes and
consequences of the War of 1812 and know the major
battles, leaders, and events that led to a final
peace.
2.
Know the changing boundaries of the United States
and describe the relationships the country had with
its neighbors (current Mexico and Canada) and
Europe, including the influence of the Monroe
Doctrine, and how those relationships influenced
westward expansion and the Mexican-American
War.
3.
Outline the major treaties with American Indian
nations during the administrations of the first
four presidents and the varying outcomes of those
treaties.
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8.6
Students analyze the divergent paths of the
American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the
challenges they faced, with emphasis on the
Northeast.
1.
Discuss the influence of industrialization and
technological developments on the region, including
human modification of the landscape and how
physical geography shaped human actions (e.g.,
growth of cities, deforestation, farming, mineral
extraction).
2.
Outline the physical obstacles to and the economic
and political factors involved in building a
network of roads, canals, and railroads (e.g.,
Henry Clay’s American
System).
3.
List the reasons for the wave of immigration from
Northern Europe to the United States and describe
the growth in the number, size, and spatial
arrangements of cities (e.g., Irish immigrants and
the Great Irish Famine).
4.
Study the lives of black Americans who gained
freedom in the North and founded schools and
churches to advance their rights and
communities.
5.
Trace the development of the American education
system from its earliest roots, including the roles
of religious and private schools and Horace
Mann’s campaign for free public
education and its assimilating role in American
culture.
6.
Examine the women’s suffrage
movement (e.g., biographies, writings, and speeches
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller,
Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony).
7.
Identify common themes in American art as well as
transcendentalism and individualism (e.g., writings
about and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow).
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8.7
Students analyze the divergent paths of the
American people in the South from 1800 to the
mid-1800s and the challenges they
faced.
1.
Describe the development of the agrarian economy in
the South, identify the locations of the
cotton-producing states, and discuss the
significance of cotton and the cotton
gin.
2.
Trace the origins and development of slavery; its
effects on black Americans and on the
region’s political, social,
religious, economic, and cultural development; and
identify the strategies that were tried to both
overturn and preserve it (e.g., through the
writings and historical documents on Nat Turner,
Denmark Vesey).
3.
Examine the characteristics of white Southern
society and how the physical environment influenced
events and conditions prior to the Civil
War.
4.
Compare the lives of and opportunities for free
blacks in the North with those of free blacks in
the South.
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8.8
Students analyze the divergent paths of the
American people in the West from 1800 to the
mid-1800s and the challenges they
faced.
1.
Discuss the election of Andrew Jackson as president
in 1828, the importance of Jacksonian democracy,
and his actions as president (e.g., the spoils
system, veto of the National Bank, policy of Indian
removal, opposition to the Supreme
Court).
2.
Describe the purpose, challenges, and economic
incentives associated with westward expansion,
including the concept of Manifest Destiny (e.g.,
the Lewis and Clark expedition, accounts of the
removal of Indians, the
Cherokees’
“Trail of
Tears,” settlement of the Great
Plains) and the territorial acquisitions that
spanned numerous decades.
3.
Describe the role of pioneer women and the new
status that western women achieved (e.g., Laura
Ingalls Wilder, Annie Bidwell; slave women gaining
freedom in the West; Wyoming granting suffrage to
women in 1869).
4.
Examine the importance of the great rivers and the
struggle over water rights.
5.
Discuss Mexican settlements and their locations,
cultural traditions, attitudes toward slavery,
land-grant system, and economies.
6.
Describe the Texas War for Independence and the
Mexican-American War, including territorial
settlements, the aftermath of the wars, and the
effects the wars had on the lives of Americans,
including Mexican Americans today.
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8.9
Students analyze the early and steady attempts to
abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the
Declaration of Independence.
1.
Describe the leaders of the movement (e.g., John
Quincy Adams and his proposed constitutional
amendment, John Brown and the armed resistance,
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad,
Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd
Garrison, Frederick Douglass).
2.
Discuss the abolition of slavery in early state
constitutions.
3.
Describe the significance of the Northwest
Ordinance in education and in the banning of
slavery in new states north of the Ohio
River.
4.
Discuss the importance of the slavery issue as
raised by the annexation of Texas and
California’s admission to the
union as a free state under the Compromise of
1850.
5.
Analyze the significance of the
States’ Rights Doctrine, the
Missouri Compromise (1820), the Wilmot Proviso
(1846), the Compromise of 1850, Henry
Clay’s role in the Missouri
Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the Dred Scott v.
Sandford decision (1857), and the Lincoln-Douglas
debates (1858).
6.
Describe the lives of free blacks and the laws that
limited their freedom and economic
opportunities.
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8.10
Students analyze the multiple causes, key events,
and complex consequences of the Civil
War.
1.
Compare the conflicting interpretations of state
and federal authority as emphasized in the speeches
and writings of statesmen such as Daniel Webster
and John C. Calhoun.
2.
Trace the boundaries constituting the North and the
South, the geographical differences between the two
regions, and the differences between agrarians and
industrialists.
3.
Identify the constitutional issues posed by the
doctrine of nullification and secession and the
earliest origins of that doctrine.
4.
Discuss Abraham Lincoln’s
presidency and his significant writings and
speeches and their relationship to the Declaration
of Independence, such as his
“House
Divided” speech (1858),
Gettysburg Address (1863), Emancipation
Proclamation (1863), and inaugural addresses (1861
and 1865).
5.
Study the views and lives of leaders (e.g., Ulysses
S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee) and
soldiers on both sides of the war, including those
of black soldiers and regiments.
6.
Describe critical developments and events in the
war, including the major battles, geographical
advantages and obstacles, technological advances,
and General Lee’s surrender at
Appomattox.
7.
Explain how the war affected combatants, civilians,
the physical environment, and future
warfare.
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8.11
Students analyze the character and lasting
consequences of Reconstruction.
1.
List the original aims of Reconstruction and
describe its effects on the political and social
structures of different regions.
2.
Identify the push-pull factors in the movement of
former slaves to the cities in the North and to the
West and their differing experiences in those
regions (e.g., the experiences of Buffalo
Soldiers).
3.
Understand the effects of the
Freedmen’s Bureau and the
restrictions placed on the rights and opportunities
of freedmen, including racial segregation and
“Jim Crow”
laws.
4.
Trace the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and describe the
Klan’s effects.
5.
Understand the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and
analyze their connection to
Reconstruction.
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8.12
Students analyze the transformation of the American economy
and the changing social and political conditions in the
United States in response to the Indus-trial
Revolution.
1. Trace
patterns of agricultural and industrial development as they
relate to climate, use of natural resources, markets, and
trade and locate such development on a map.
2.
Identify the reasons for the development of federal Indian
policy and the wars with American Indians and their
relationship to agricultural development and
industrialization.
3.
Explain how states and the federal government encouraged
business expansion through tariffs, banking, land grants,
and subsidies.
4.
Discuss entrepreneurs, industrialists, and bankers in
politics, commerce, and industry (e.g., Andrew Carnegie,
John D. Rockefeller, Leland Stanford).
5.
Examine the location and effects of urbanization, renewed
immigration, and industrialization (e.g., the effects on
social fabric of cities, wealth and economic opportunity,
the conservation movement).
6.
Discuss child labor, working conditions, and laissez-faire
policies toward big business and examine the labor movement,
including its leaders (e.g., Samuel Gompers), its demand for
collective bargaining, and its strikes and protests over
labor conditions.
7.
Identify the new sources of large-scale immigration and the
contributions of immigrants to the building of cities and
the economy; explain the ways in which new social and
economic patterns encouraged assimilation of newcomers into
the mainstream amidst growing cultural diversity; and
discuss the new wave of nativism.
8.
Identify the characteristics and impact of Grangerism and
Populism.
9. Name
the significant inventors and their inventions and identify
how they improved the quality of life (e.g., Thomas Edison,
Alexander Graham Bell, Orville and Wilbur
Wright).
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