Studying History at Guido de Brès

 

For us, the Guido de Brès community, history is part of God's self-revelation, the on-going part.  So we are historically-minded people who rejoice that history is at the same time the LORD'S Plan of Salvation.  He has done great things in the past and He will continue to direct history and to govern it, that is bring human history to its fulfillment.

 

Thus history as a subject has always had an important place in the curriculum at Guido de Brès.  In fact, when it was possible, world history was compulsory in both senior years.  At the present time history is mandated in the tenth grade, and that is a 20^th (and 21^st!) Century Canadian History.  Grade eleven students are offered a more specialized Canadian History course, and can also chose World History to AD 1600.  In the final year the story is completed, AD 1600 to the present, and that World History is taught at two levels, college and university. Another course in grade twelve, taken to be history by students but actually stressing literature, is Classics.  (Greece and Rome)

 

All the History courses at our school have these stated General Aims:

 

1.      Understand and appreciate in the light of Scripture the aspirations, needs, values, and cultures of a variety of communities in Canada and in the world, historical and contemporary.

 

2.      Develop a sense of the flow of history, which demonstrates the interplay of continuity and change: graduation, cataclysm, causation, and chronology are all relevant here.

 

3.      Realize the blessings and responsibilities that they have as Christians and citizens within the heritage and society to which they are privileged to belong.

 

4.      Extend their knowledge of humanity and of the religious, social, political, economic, and cultural facets of human history and contemporary society.

 

5.      Develop the abilities to use cognitive skills to research, analyze, synthesize and communicate information in a variety of contexts, and utilizing available technologies.

 

6.      Acquire knowledge of historical and present societies, in the form of facts, concepts, and generalizations, viewing these communities by their own criteria.

 

7.      Gain a better understanding of the causes of conflicts and disharmony, and realize their calling to be peacemakers.

 

8.      Develop confidence in themselves as rational, responsible, and God-dependant individuals who also can deal with problems in academic and everyday life.

 

9.      Appreciate the need for political and legal authority to ensure order, protect minority and individual freedoms, and exercise social justice.

 

10. Understand that life is an integrated experience, that humans are driven by a "spirit of times" that influences every aspect of the creation, evolution, and transmission of culture, values and traditions.