Notes From Al Snapp on Ancient History:

What I'm doing: We began the year with the question: what are some serious challenges that face the world community? The consensus in both classes was that the most serious of these was the effect of world population on world resources and the best hope is the effect of education on changing perception about this impact, and/or changing behavior that reduces several troublesome prospects.

We then looked at the paleolithic/neolithic shift. We observed through readings and videos (The Hunters,The Africans) the difference in lifestyles of hunter-gatherer cultures, herder cultures, and simple agricultural communities. We've discussed the difference in impact on the natural resources and the interaction between human culture and resource use.

Then we looked at ancient Egyptian culture and Mesopotamina cultures. We've read a version of Gilgamesh that really makes the opening of the cedar forest a revealing episode. Students have read the chapter from The Forest Journey that deals with Gilgamesh's forest opening and it's very interesting to see students recognize the magnitude of the impact of agriculture as practiced in mesopotamia and the connections with the use of wood in Egyptian culture.

From these materials and discussions, students have gained a more informed sense of when some contemporary concerns first began to be part of the delopment of human cultures, and the acceleration of some of the impacts with large-scale agriculture based societies.

What helps is having materials available that provide clear information and guide understanding about this aspect of ancient cultures, and the ancient world. It also helps a great deal to be working with students who have already learned some of the vocabulary and the concepts of environmental education. It also helps to have colleagues eager and willing to try this additional material out and share experiences. Having Earth corps at work here as well as the Thornton Creek program and the indicators program. The work we did last year on integrating the 9th grade program particularly around the concept of population has been helpful and holds a lot of promise for the future.

As the year continues we'll keep developing these basic concepts and themes and see where earlier cultures had awareness of this aspect of human life on earth.