Who Controls the Past Controls the Future.Who Controls the Present Controls the Past.

This spring, our interdisciplinary studies in world history, literature, philosophy and art will move from a focus on 20th century political and social change to a dialogue about the 21st century economic and environmental future of humanity.

Students are charged with long-term research and scholar/warrior re-teach projects on countries that are not covered in textbooks. We take our cue from Howard Zinn's book The Future of History, who notes:

If you can control history, what people know about it, if you can decide what's in people's history and what's left out, you can order their thinking. You can order their values. You can in effect organize their brains by controlling their knowledge. The people who can do that, who can control the past, are the people who control the present. The people who would dominate the media, who publish the textbooks, who decide in our culture what are the dominant ideas, what gets told and what doesn't...

We should have history that does reflect points of view and values, in other words, history that is not objective. We should have history that enhances human values, humane values, values of brotherhood, sisterhood, peace, justice and equality.

Below is the (soon-to-be hyperlinked) list of political & social history project topics:

KOJO - Ghana
STEPHANIE - Croatia

ZACHARY - Chile
BRITNEY - exploring
SAIF - Cuba
MICHAEL - North Korea
SHANNON - Nepal
NATALIE - Philippines

EDWIN - Colombia
SOPHIA - South Africa

HOWARD - Mexico
KADIJAH - East Timor
DAPHNE - Brazil
JOHNNIEA - Portugal
CHRISTOPHER - Belgium
ROSE - Argentina
DANIELLE - Sierra Leone
LAURA - Costa Rica
ALEXANDER - Czech Republic
UNIQUE - Poland

NAHTAHNIEL - Israel
DAVID - Tajikistan
IVETTE - Afghanistan
SHIZA - Germany
ANDREW - China