Upper School Update
A New Look at Ancient History The student as boxer, not fencer. The fencer's weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer's is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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n Marcus Aurelius’ view, the student is not a passive recipient of knowledge. This principle also holds true in Fay’s Upper School, where eighth graders are immersed in a rigorous yearlong ancient history course that challenges them to take an active role in the process of historical discovery. Fay history teacher Dan Blanchard has taught Ancient Greek and Roman History to eighth graders for six years now, and this year, history department chair Bruce Chauncey has joined him in presenting the course to every student in the eighth grade. Ask Dan and Bruce about the primary goal of Ancient History, and their answer does not emphasize content— though, of course, they aim to have students walk away with a solid understanding of Greek and Roman political and military history and its impact on the modern day. Rather, their focus is on having students build the skills of a historian—the ability to read and synthesize primary materials, think critically, research effectively, and write and speak persuasively.
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“This is a historical methodology course,” Dan explains, “and in order to help students fully understand how to investigate a historical question, we decided to narrow the content.” For this reason, Dan and Bruce have chosen to use primary sources almost exclusively instead of a traditional textbook. The reader that students receive in September is deceptively thin, but the readings are dense, and the table of contents reflects a classical “greatest hits”: Homer, Plutarch, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Thucydides, to name a few. Over the course of the year, students learn about the Greco-Persian Wars, the Spartan and Athenian constitutions, Alexander the Great, and the rise and collapse of the Roman republic, all from the perspectives of historical contemporaries. During a class this fall, for example, eighth graders were hard at work on an essay about Spartan culture. “We presented the students with a question about Spartan culture and how it changed as a result of a leader named Lykurgus,” Dan explains. “They read a song from the period called ‘Death is Victory,’ in which the ethics, values, and beliefs of Spartan culture are expressed. Students had to find evidence from the song to support their assertions about Spartan culture, in addition to evidence from other primary sources.”
The relatively short length of the readings— as with the song, for example—gives students the opportunity to practice the “close reading” that enables them to identify and analyze key information as they posit arguments and generate supporting evidence.