History & Geography

About this course

Tenth grade narrows to the making of the modern world. American history begins in the Gilded Age and moves through immigration and Ellis Island, the Progressive Era and the churches that drove its reforms, the Spanish-American War, the First World War and the home front, Wilson's peace and its limits, the Great Migration, women's suffrage, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression and New Deal. World civilizations runs the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation, a full lesson on the Anabaptists as the radical wing of it, the Counter-Reformation, the Age of Exploration, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Terror, Napoleon, and the spread of Christianity into a world religion. Geography is regional and technical this year: the physical and political geography of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, plus the history of mapmaking, geographic information systems, strategic chokepoints, and rivers that cross borders and cause disputes. Government turns comparative, weighing presidential against parliamentary systems, federal against unitary states, and international bodies, with lessons on just war theory and on what "separation of church and state" has and has not meant. Economics is a serious microeconomics sequence covering elasticity, market structures, accounting, entrepreneurship, labor markets, the minimum wage debate, comparative advantage, and personal finance.

There are 180 lessons in 15 units of twelve, at about 50 minutes each. The last seven units go back over citizenship, American history, world civilizations, geography, government, economics, and culture at greater depth, adding imperial China, the West African kingdoms, the Mongol Empire, the Industrial Revolution, Tocqueville on voluntary associations, the Electoral College, and the printing press. Be aware that this second pass is not strictly new ground; a few subjects, notably money and inflation, supply and demand, the Renaissance, and the Byzantine Empire, are taught more than once from different starting points.

The writing has changed shape by this grade. Most lessons are four to seven paragraphs of continuous analytical prose that read more like a college survey text than a school textbook, with about half still using bold key terms and subheadings. There is no craft activity or worksheet; the work is reading closely and then answering the ten-question multiple-choice quiz, which grades itself. The course consistently presents more than one defensible position and says which questions are genuinely unsettled. The just war lesson traces Augustine and Aquinas and then gives the Anabaptist, Quaker, and Mennonite refusal of war its own respectful hearing. The minimum wage lesson lays out the case on both sides and states plainly that the evidence is mixed. The social issues lesson affirms the historic Christian teaching on marriage and on male and female, is direct that the church's record on race includes both the breaking of ethnic barriers and complicity in oppression, and urges your student to be a disciple rather than a partisan.

What the course covers

• The Gilded Age, Progressive reform, and the churches behind it
• World War I, the Great Migration, suffrage, and the Twenties
• The Great Depression and the New Deal
• The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Anabaptists
• The Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution
• Regional geography of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America
• Cartography, GIS, chokepoints, and transboundary rivers
• Comparative government, just war theory, and church and state
• Elasticity, market structures, accounting, labor, and personal finance
• World religions, media culture, and cultural discernment

What your student will be able to do

• Explain how industrialization, reform, and war reshaped America by 1940
• Trace the Reformation's branches and what set the Anabaptists apart
• Compare presidential and parliamentary systems and federal and unitary states
• Apply just war criteria and state the pacifist objection fairly
• Analyze a contested economic policy using evidence rather than slogans
• Read a region's physical geography and predict its political pressures

Scope and sequence

All 15 units of History & Geography for Grade 10, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 180 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 180 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.