1. All students will demonstrate knowledge of the sources of ideas and processes concerning the rise of modern Europe by explaining the following

• challenges of forming a government
  
• the reasoning behind major historical figures' views on the ideal form of government including Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Louis XIV, Montesquieu, Plato, Queen Elizabeth I, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft
  
• concepts of autocracy and democracy
  
• the development of the Western political ideas of the rule of law and illegitimacy of tyranny, drawing from selections from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics
  
• events of the French Revolution and how they led to the rise of democracy
  
• the principles of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights (1689), the American Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789), and the U.S. Bill of Rights (1791)
  
• the influence of the U.S. Constitution on political systems in the contemporary world
  
• Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna and the Revolutions of 1848
  
• agricultural revolution, cottage industry, capitalism, and the rise of factory system
  
• events that triggered the rise of the Industrial Revolution, communism/ socialism and its effects in England, Germany and France
  
• the growth of population, rural to urban migration and growth of cities
  
• the evolution of work and labor, and effect of immigration, mining and manufacturing, division of labor, and the union movement
  
• the emergence of the Romantic impulse in art and literature and the move away from Classicism in Europe
  
• the motives behind European Imperialism: political, economic, exploratory, religious and ideological
  
• the independence struggles of the colonized regions of the world
  
• the role of political and economic rivalries, ethnic and ideological conflicts, propaganda and nationalism in mobilizing civilian population in support of "total war"
  
• causes and outcomes of World War I
  
• the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders, the terms and influence of the Treaty of Versailles and Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
  
• the shifts in the geographic and political borders of Europe and the Middle East
  
• the location of the colonial rule of such nations as England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Portugal
  
• the influence of World War I on literature and art
  
• the widespread disillusionment that resulted in a void that was later filled by totalitarians
  
• events before and during World War II
  
• the role of appeasement, nonintervention (isolationism) and the domestic distractions in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II
  
• the identification and location of the Allied and Axis powers; the major turning points of the war, the principle theaters of conflict, key strategic decisions; and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions
  
• the political, diplomatic and military leadership during World War II
  
• the Holocaust
  
• the establishment and work of the United Nations
  
• ultimately formulate an opinion as to what degree European Modernization should be praised or condemned.

2. All students will demonstrate an understanding of the Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union by explaining the following

• the daily life of peasants, intellectuals, the clergy and the nobility in Tsarist
  
• basic tenets of Marxist theory
  
• events of the Russian Revolution that led to Lenin and the Bolsheviks taking power
  
• how the Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States affected the course and outcome of World War I
  
• the importance of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan
  
• the causes of the Cold War, with the free world on one side and Soviet client states on the other
  
• Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union and the connection between economic policies, political policies, the absence of a free press and systematic violations of human rights
  
• failures of the Soviet economy that led to reforms in the 1980s.

3. All students will examine the degree to which life improved for Chinese, Japanese, and Asian Americans during the modern era by explaining the following

• the 1937 Rape of Nanking and other atrocities in China
  
• the major events in China under communist rule
  
• the Chinese Civil War, the rise of Mao Tse-tung, and the subsequent political upheavals in China
  
• compare and contrast Japanese and American education
  
• basic tenets of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism
  
• major events in the rise of modern Japan
  
• main principles of Japanese business management
  
• reasons why various Asian groups emigrated to the United States.

4. All students will understand the major historical issues and legacies in the Modern Middle East by explaining the following

• key periods in Middle Eastern history
  
• similarities and differences between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism
  
• key events in Middle Eastern state formation
  
• colonialism's effect on state formation in the Middle East
  
• demographic data on nine Middle Eastern countries
  
• importance of oil in the Middle East
  
• goals of the 1979 Iranian revolution
  
• how Jewish immigration into Palestine between 1918 and 1948 affected each group
  
• effects and outcomes of the United Nations response to key events in the Arab-Israeli conflict
  
• history of eight Jewish Israeli and Palestinian groups and their various perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

5. All students will learn about the history and diversity of Africa in order to know its heritages, ethnic groups, and challenges as it interrelates with the global community by being able to explain the following

• three heritages of Africa: Western, Arabic and Indigenous
  
• diversity in Africa pertaining to the economy, religion and ethnic groups
  
• explain Nigerian perspectives on colonial rule as a case study
  
• challenges faced by African countries after independence
  
• major historical events that led to the development of apartheid in South Africa
  
• which African traditions have had an influence on American traditions.

6. All students will study Latin American diversity, history, resources and cultural connections to the United States in order to formulate original conclusions that can be made about modern Latin America and be able to explain the following

• social hierarchies of four periods of Mexican history
  
• eight rural Mexican perspectives on migration to the United States neighborhoods and environment
  
• four aspects of life in Mexico City: history, culture, neighborhoods and environment
  
• reasons Latin American groups emigrated to the United States
  
• demographic data-annual per capita income, language, religion, ethnicity, literacy, urban and rural population of eighteen Latin American countries
  
• resource use in the rainforest from the perspective of Brazilian interest groups
  
• graph Latin American immigration patterns.