What makes a great world history textbook? Thorough scholarship and an engaging story
Glencoe World History is a full-survey world history program authored by a world-renowned historian, Jackson Spielvogel, and the National Geographic Society. Experiencing world history and understanding its relevance to the modern world is the goal of this program. The program addresses the importance of motivating students and engaging them in meaningful learningâ learning that links the past with issues confronting young people today.
Glencoe World History addresses student learning on many levels and encourages the reader to become actively involved with the beautifully presented content.
High School History from beginning of man through 2004 all crammed into one year of study, a-g university approved textbook. My opinion, this is exactly why the majority of kids hate history and a good deal of what is wrong with our educational model. We spend an entire year on the 350 years of "US History" but the exact same amount of time covering the entire world's history and even then, the second half of the book covers from WWI through present with a lot of US History in it (and there's a lot in the first section too). I am doing Ancient World History with my middle-schooler as well and we took an entire year to get from beginning of planet through about 400CE. That was lovely, interesting, informative, and thought-provoking. This couldn't even be bothered to tell you that Henry the VIII had 6 wives and that it was his wanting a divorce from his first that led to the split with the church and the founding of the Church of England which is kind of a big deal for that country. That is just one of the hundreds of issues I had with this book. There was very little cause and effect going on and even less cultural appreciation or understanding. It was names and dates with some dry, boring facts. We can get that from the internet. What we need is to teach our children the hows and whys and make it interesting for goodness sake! I have a mild interest in history and this bored me to tears. I homeschool and wish we had better options of high school history. Why should the middle school grades get wonderful texts and the high school years be filled with things that suck the life and fun out of learning?
This textbook grows on you after a while. I really like the quotes and snipits of primary resources that are located throughout the book. For the most part it is organized chronologically. There's a great regents review section at the front of the NY edition.