Download the video, We the People

In this activity, you will explore the 17 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals and then pick one goal and one country to research further in order to take informed action. While this activity builds important research skills, more importantly, it shows you how in today’s world, a global community has banded together in the interest of making the world a healthier place to live in terms of climate, social justice, and overall economic and social equality. You will consider how our twenty-first-century communities and networks support these lofty goals, and then you will take action in support of one of these goals.

In this activity you will research six of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, pick the goal that seems most important to you, and then research a country that this particular issue has impacted. Finally, you will come up with a way to take informed action in relation to your chosen goal.

Start by watching We the People, a three-minute video about the UN’s goals.

Do you know what this video is about? If not, either your classmates or your teacher will fill you in about the UN Sustainable Development Goals: what they are, and how they were created. Now, it’s time to dig in more! Take a few minutes to review the UN’s 17 sustainability goals, found here: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. Then, take out the UN Sustainable Development Goals Worksheet and research six of the goals in a bit more depth, adding information about each one of the goals to the worksheet. When you’re done, answer the questions at the end of the worksheet.

Next, choose the goal that is most important to you, and then do some research about one of the countries the issue impacts the most. After you’ve gathered more information, come up with a realistic plan about what kind of action you can take part in to help your global community meet these goals. When you have a plan, get your teacher’s approval before moving forward. Once you have the go-ahead, it’s time to institute your plan! At some point, your teacher will ask you to share your plan and how it worked out with your class. This will include:

• The ways in which you took (or are still taking) action in light of the goal you chose.
• How taking action has impacted you.
• Whether participating in global action has made you feel like you are a more-involved member of a global community.

Humans are able to drastically alter the biosphere (the air, land, and water that make up the Earth) and some scientists seek to highlight this by calling the current epoch of geological time the Anthropocene, from the Greek root for human. Humans have changed the environment, particularly the oceans and atmosphere, through the burning of fossil fuels, which creates excess CO2. In addition, humans have produced nuclear power and artificial chemicals that further change the biosphere. Surviving these changes will take the commitment, innovation, and cooperation of a large portion of all humans on the planet.

Something that unites everyone on Earth is the place we live, Earth. If we impact the Earth as directly as many scientists suggest, and the name Anthropocene highlights, then we will need to cooperate to solve climate change and environmental deterioration. This reading introduces us to both the evidence for and problem of global climate change as it relates to human communities. It also illustrates how decisions and processes that started in the past have a very real influence on the present and even the future.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is the other geological name for the Anthropocene?
2. What does the graph “Human Influences on Global Temperature” (figure 2.1) illustrate?
3. Using the same reference, compare the period between 1880 and 1940 and that between 1940 and 2020. What do you notice?
4. What is the current rate of decline in the biodiversity of all sectors of the planet?
5. What do Three Mile Island (US), Chernobyl (Ukraine), and Fukushima (Japan) have in common?
6. According to the article, how long do many scientists believe we have left to address global climate change? How might we correct our ongoing impact on the environment?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. How does climate change influence human rights? Who is most affected by climate change?
2. Are different perspectives on climate change helpful or harmful? Both?

Human populations and the environment are connected in many complex ways. After growing relatively slowly for millennia, the human population exploded in the last two hundred years, beginning with the Industrial Revolution. Searching for jobs, people increasingly moved to cities. Life expectancy also grew, due to new medicine and advances in sanitation. Yet the growing population and our increased production also produced higher levels of pollution, a problem that affects us more than ever today.

Today, there are more human individuals than ever before, and yet our lives are more intertwined than ever. This article can guide you to consider the issues facing us in terms of population growth and environmental trends, including climate change. You can use this evidence to respond to the Unit Problem, by thinking about these trends in terms of shared (flattened) and different (lumpy or spiky) histories of population and environmental globalization. But also look at this as a usable history to consider what actions we should take today.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What have been the general trends in global population over the long span of human history?
2. What has been the trend in the past two hundred years in terms of the percentage of people living in cities?
3. How has industrialization changed atmospheric CO2 levels, and why does that matter?
4. What have been some health effects of fossil fuel use?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Does this article provide more evidence for a view of globalization as flattening (creating more connections and equality) or as spiky or lumpy (creating different experiences for different people)?
2. Given the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution, do you think this was overall a positive transformation in production and distribution, or negative? Provide evidence for your position.

In this video, scholar Eman M. Elshaikh introduces the Green Revolution, which refers to agricultural technology transfers aimed at reducing world hunger, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. The set of policies and aid initiatives also had a political element within the context of the Cold War. Aid from the US was linked to the belief that extreme poverty and hunger might turn populations to communist political movements. Debate continues over the benefits and costs of the programs, based on disagreements about sustainability, US corporate benefits, and whether the Green Revolution actually made things measurably better in the long run.

This video will give you a clear sense of the aims, specific policies, and some of the results of the Green Revolution, which included technology transfer and aid packages especially in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis by Eman M. Elshaikh is especially relevant to the Unit 9 Problem of whether the process of globalization has been “flat” or “lumpy.” The video should help you consider the frame narrative of production and distribution in the context of what Elshaikh introduces as the political side of food.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. Why did the US State Department official William Gaud coin the term “Green Revolution” in 1968, and what was he contrasting it to?
2. Eman M. Elshaikh refers to a common saying in the US State Department in the Cold War: “Where hunger goes, communism follows.” What does this mean, and how did this concern help launch the Green Revolution?
3. How did the Green Revolution differ in different regions in its adaptation and its results?
4. What were some of the methods and results of the Green Revolution?
5. What are some of the critiques of the Green Revolution?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How was the Green Revolution political? How do you think food can be political? Can you connect the policies and impacts of the Green Revolution to the frame narrative of production and distribution? Is there any way for this kind of food aid and technology transfer to not be political?
2. There is still ongoing debate about the policies and the legacy of the Green Revolution, and some new policies and technologies have continued to emerge in ways that are similar to the Green Revolution. Based on the video and your understanding of geopolitics in the Cold War and today, how do you think we can best measure whether it was a success?

Humanity has faced many diseases throughout history. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people looked to history for lessons about how to end—and prevent—pandemics. There are few better lessons than those learned from the eradication of smallpox. The worst disease that has ever afflicted humanity, smallpox is also the only one we’ve ever eradicated. Dr. Larry Brilliant lived this history as part of the global campaign to end smallpox. In this video, he tells the long history of humanity’s battle against smallpox and how the world finally found the will to defeat its old foe at the end of the twentieth century.

This video will help you understand how diseases like smallpox spread as humans became more interconnected. But you will also learn that humanity spread knowledge about how to fight this disease through those same connections. The information in this video will provide you with evidence to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of globalization. It also provides evidence about how technology and innovations change and how those changes reshape the world.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. According to Dr. Larry Brilliant, what made smallpox the worst disease in history?
2. What is variolation?
3. Who created the first smallpox vaccine? According to Dr. Larry, how did that person discover and test vaccines?
4. What was ring vaccination?
5. According to Dr. Larry, what was the most important factor in eradicating smallpox?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. After watching this video, what do you think is the single most important step that humanity could take to prevent another pandemic?

Make sure you have the UP Notebook worksheets that you partially filled out earlier in the unit.

This is a continuation of the UP Notebook activity that you started in this unit. As part of WHP, you are asked to revisit the Unit Problems in order to maintain a connection to the core themes of the course. Because this is the second time you’re working with this unit’s problems, you are asked to explain how your understanding of the unit’s core concepts has changed over the unit. Make sure you use evidence from this unit and sound reasoning in your answers.

Fill out the second table on your partially completed worksheet from earlier in the unit. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

Many people think of famines as natural disasters. But in truth, most famines have been man-made disasters. John Green explains that people starve because they can’t get access to enough food, not because there’s not enough food for them to eat. Human societies distribute food, often unfairly and unequally. Most famines in recent history have happened in the Global South. They often start with droughts or weather events, but people die during famines because they don’t have access to food. John Green explores several devastating famines in which a variety of governmental policies killed millions.

This video provides you with evidence at the global level to respond to the Unit Problem and evaluate the impacts of globalization. Globalization can bring more food to more people in more places as long as humans make the choices to make that happen. This video should help you understand the role you might be able to play in making sure all people have access to food.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video.

1. According to John Green, what causes famine?
2. Where do most famines occur and why?
3. Why were British railroads a mixed blessing in India?
4. According to John Green, how does liberal economic theory not only help cause famines, but also make them worse?
5. How can John Green’s arguments be interpreted as in support of globalization?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How can the evidence in this video be used to make arguments both in support of and against globalization?
2. Does this video give any evidence that would support the idea of either a “lumpy” or “flat” world?

Historically, most of the energy consumed by humans has been generated by the sun in one way or another. We get energy from plants in the form of food, directly from the sun through solar power, and via fossil fuels. In this video, substitute host Stan Muller discusses these sources of energy and describes how humans will continue to use up this energy as populations increase and energy sources become scarcer. Stan explores some of Alfred Crosby’s ideas in discussing humans and their relationship to energy.

This video will provide you with evidence to respond to the Unit Problem and evaluate how our increasing use of energy has driven globalization, and how globalization has in turn sped up our consumption of energy.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. How does Stan define energy? Where does most of our energy come from?
2. What were the first two major energy technologies that humans discovered?
3. Does Stan think that coal is a nineteenth-century technology? Explain your answer.
4. Why don’t we use more nuclear energy?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Do you think the history of energy use is a story of progress? Why or why not?
2. How would the society in which you live change if we suddenly lost access to energy from fossil fuels?

The benefits of the Industrial Revolution came at a high cost to the environment. In response to increased pollution, lowered life expectancy, and the influence of romanticism, the modern environmental movement was born. Since then, a key conflict has dominated environmentalism: conservation versus preservation, mixed use versus full protection. This article explores the important trends, debates, and people involved in the environmental movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

As human societies have grown more resource intensive and interconnected, our impact on the environment has grown more significant. But people have also noticed and acted to address threats to the environment. This article provides evidence for how people across the world have responded to environmental damage during the last two centuries. This evidence will help you respond to the Unit Problem, which asks whether globalization is flat or lumpy. As you read, ask yourself: who is most affected by environmental degradation? Does anyone benefit?

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What intellectual and artistic movement rejected the Enlightenment idea that humans could control nature?
2. Give at least two examples of environmental destruction and/or poor living conditions during the Industrial Revolution.
3. Explain the difference between preservation and conservation.
4. What is the EPA and why has it been the subject of debate?
5. What is the Greenbelt Movement?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Take some time to consider the “pop quiz” from the beginning of the article. Choose an answer. What evidence from this article challenges or supports your answer? Is your answer different after reading the article?
2. We all live in the same world and breathe the same air. So, is environmental degradation evidence for a “flat” world? Is there anyone who is hurt more by or benefits more from the exploitation of the environment? Who?

Throughout the course, you have been pushed to see the ways in which we can make history “usable.” In other words, how can we take what we’ve learned about the past and apply it to today, or even to the future? In this activity, you will use what you’ve learned in the course to make some predictions about what will be happening in the world in 2050 in terms of community, networks, and production and distribution. This will help you continue to practice your skill of making the past relevant and useful.

What will the world be like in 2050? The UN predicts that by 2050, there will be 9.8 billion people on the planet (as compared with 7.7 billion in 2021). What happens when we add 2 billion people to the Earth? In this activity, you’ll predict what the future will be like in various categories and make recommendations for how to prepare for what will be happening in the world in 2050.

First, as a whole class, brainstorm topics that might be problematic when we have 2 billion more people in the world. As we know from our studies of CCOT and causation, things could go in many different directions! After your class has come up with a list, get into small groups and pick one of the issues from the list to focus on.

Take out The World in 2050 worksheet and fill out the organizer to reflect the state of your particular issue in 2050 in relation to each of the course frames. Once you’ve determined what your chosen issue will be like for each of the frames, make recommendations for how the world should most appropriately handle the issue. Make one recommendation for what the world can do now to try to prevent the issue from materializing, and then a second recommendation about what to do if it does materialize. Be creative, but also realistic in making your recommendations. Be prepared to share your ideas with the class.

In this essay, author Jeff Spoden demonstrates the ways in which control over natural resources has continued to fuel violent conflict in the twentieth century and into the current era. World Wars I and II are both connected to resource control, as are the conflicts related to decolonization. Spoden also explains how wealthy countries, including former colonialist powers, can continue to dictate policies to former colonies that are extractive, which is sometimes referred to as “neocolonialism.”

This article on the control and conflict over natural resources should help you extend the frame narrative of production and distribution. Spoden explains how these processes are shaped by political and military factors, and how the most important conflicts of the twentieth century were fueled by conflicts over control of natural resources. The essay should help you address the Unit 9 Problem on globalization, uncovering how “lumpy” inequalities persist from the colonial to the “neocolonial” period. Spoden provides frameworks to understand conflicts of the past century, and what type of conflicts might develop in the future.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why, according to the author, do some scholars believe that future wars may be fought over access to water?
2. According to Spoden, how were the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century related to resource control?
3. How did resource access and control make the decolonization process violent as well?
4. Although direct colonial rule largely ended in the decades after World War II, how have former colonial powers continued to influence and control resources and economies of former colonies?
5. What are some more recent examples that Spoden uses to illustrate direct military intervention in the name of resource control?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. Do you think conflicts over natural resources will become more or less frequent and violent in years to come? What are some aspects of the globalization process that might make these conflicts more common and more violent? What are some factors that could potentially help prevent or reduce the violence of conflict over natural resources?

The Dakota Access Pipeline brings local and global priorities and needs into direct conflict. The Standing Rock Sioux never gave permission for this pipeline to cross their land, potentially causing major environmental damage and certainly disturbing their history and their ability to provide for themselves. One of the people who articulates Sioux opposition to this pipeline is historian and activist LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, also known as Tamakawastewin.

This period is sometimes described as experiencing “globalization” and a “flattening” of experience around the world, but some scholars have suggested that globalization is “lumpy” because of its unequal impacts among different communities and people. How has globalization affected people within their own communities, and how are they responding to it? This biography will provide some evidence to help answer that question by focusing on the biography of a leader of a movement to preserve Indigenous American rights to land and resources.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Who is LaDonna Brave Bull Allard?
2. Why did Sioux people oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline?
3. What other battle was fought in this territory?
4. What metaphor does LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, or Tamakawastewin, use to talk about the Dakota Access Pipeline?
5. How did the artist use this metaphor and the connection between the battle of Whitestone Hill and the anti-DAPL protests to express the sentiments voiced by LaDonna Brave Bull Allard?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, students should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in the course. On the bottom of the tool, have them record what they learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what they’re learning in the course more broadly. To help them make these connections, you might ask:

1. How does this biography of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about how different communities have experienced globalization in the contemporary era?
2. Does the story of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard provide evidence that globalization is flat or lumpy? How?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

Water control or “hydraulic engineering” has long been a central aspect of the ability of humans to survive in large settlements. John Green introduces the elaborate water management efforts of the Maya and Khmer classical societies. He connects the supply of fresh water for sustenance and ceremonial importance to the legitimacy (acceptance by the people) of the rulers and the stability of society as a whole. This essential connection between water control and social stability is important to us today. We are in the midst of a worsening water crisis in which a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.

In this video you’ll learn about two important examples of water control: the classical cultures of the Maya and the Khmer people, centered in modern-day Mexico and Cambodia respectively. Think about the frame narrative questions of community, and how resource use and especially water, shaped the communal identity of people in these two societies. How does this relate to resource management and the climate crisis today? Compare the fate of these societies to the current ecological crisis, and consider how this awareness may impact our sense of global community. Can you connect this to previous lessons in this unit?

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What is water control, or “hydraulic engineering”? Why is this important?
2. The Maya culture, which flourished between 250 and 900 CE was not ideally located in terms of access to fresh water. How did the rulers and people ensure their survival?
3. What happened to Maya society as a result of sustained droughts, and why?
4. The Khmer culture flourished between 802 and 1327 CE in what is today Cambodia. They built extensive reservoirs and water works. Where were their most important series of temples constructed, and how do they relate to water control?
5. How do water control issues continue to present challenges to people today, and what advantages do we have that might possibly prevent the same kind of societal collapse presented in this video?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How do issues of water management and water control connect to issues of globalization? In what ways do you think water access reflects the “lumpy” or “spiky” aspects of globalization? How does the broader ecological crisis of climate change reflect a potential “flattening” of globalization?
2. Can you relate to the issues of resource management of ancient societies in your daily life? How do these issues play out in the world around you? As a global society, our beliefs about natural phenomena like weather are generally not as faith-based as those of our ancestors, and legitimacy of rulers is not routinely tied to earthquakes, volcanoes, or the weather. But consider how a society’s response to a hurricane, an earthquake, or a water crisis might still lead to a crisis in political legitimacy even today. What would that look like?

History is all about narratives, and those narratives are created from a particular perspective. In this course, frames are used to tell three stories of the history of the world—the story of communities, the story of production and distribution, and the story of networks. In this activity, you will tell the history of the world from a frame of your choosing. This will reinforce the concept that all historical narratives are presented through a particular lens, and it will also give you an opportunity to think about the history of the world from the perspective or topic that is most interesting to you. We hope that doing so will be both memorable and motivating.

In this activity, you will create a frame of your own and you will be tasked with presenting the history of the world from that particular frame. What are frames and why do we use them? Think about this and discuss your ideas with your class.

At this point in the course, you probably feel pretty comfortable with the three course frames: communities, networks, and production and distribution. Now, it’s time to create a new frame of your choosing, and then tell the history of the world via that frame. For example, you may want to talk about the history of the world from the perspective of sports. Or maybe from the perspective of food...or music...or art—the list goes on and on. Be creative and have some fun with your frame.

Although the frame itself is your choice, there are a few requirements for this activity. Your frame narrative must have the following elements:

1. Description/definition of the frame.
2. Why you chose the frame.
3. Frame narrative that describes the history of the world, and highlights at least three important time periods in history for your chosen frame, and what changed across those time periods. You can create your own periods based on your topic, but your frame should span the following periods:
   • The long nineteenth century (1750–1914).
   • Era of global conflict (1914–1945).
   • Cold War and globalization (1945–present).
4. Historical evidence that’s used to support the frame narrative.
5. Prediction of what will happen with this frame in the future, supported using historical evidence and what you know about the frame to date.
6. Be creative!

Your teacher will give you direction about the format for what you turn in. Be sure to look at the Build Your Own Frame Checklist before you get started so you have a clear understanding of the goals you’re trying to meet with this activity.

Graded essay scored on the WHP Writing Rubric

Download the Sentence Starters worksheet (optional)

In this final activity in the writing progression, you’ll edit one of your own essays. This is, in many ways, the ultimate editing task. It can be hard to self-edit, as it’s difficult to see your own writing errors. Also, you’re being asked to use the entire rubric to evaluate your essay, instead of just one or two rows. This will help prepare you for your culminating writing assignment in the course, and will also help you be a better writer in general.

In this final activity in the writing progression, you’re going to examine your own essay against the WHP Writing Rubric, and improve it based on what you find. Start by taking out your graded Unit 8 DBQ, the WHP Writing Rubric, and the Sentence Starters worksheet, if your teacher makes it available. You will have feedback to use in this process—either from your teacher or your peers, depending on how your essay was graded. Keep in mind that this feedback is intended to supplement the most important part of the self-editing process: your review of your essay against the WHP Writing Rubric. Review your graded essay, then follow the directions on the Writing – Self Editing worksheet.

First up is the Claim and Focus row of the rubric. Identify the major claim in your essay, and then rewrite the claim to improve it. Next, pick one area of focus you could have done better and write an edited version of that on your worksheet.

The second step is revising for use of analysis and evidence. First, add additional evidence to your essay. Then, find one analysis statement you could improve upon (you might even add a new sentence if you found an instance where you didn’t analyze evidence you used) and provide the original and rewritten statements on the worksheet.

Third, look at the organization of your essay and improve one area of the essay where it could be better. This might mean adding a transition sentence or even rearranging some text. Write your suggestions for improving organization on the worksheet.

Fourth, look at how you did in terms of language and style, and improve upon one area in the essay where you could have done better. Even if you didn’t make obvious errors, essays can almost always benefit from more precise language or domain-specific vocabulary to make them even stronger.

Finally, examine how well you applied WHP concepts in your essay and find one area that you can improve upon in terms of that rubric criteria. Add your revised text or your addition to the worksheet.

Note: If you feel you’ve done the best you possibly can on any particular part of your essay, write a statement pointing out the features of your writing—connected to specific rubric criteria—that made it exemplary.

Once you’re done, be prepared to discuss your revision process with the class!

DBQ Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which globalization since the Second World War has benefited everyone.

This DBQ is the final writing assessment for the course. It is the exact same prompt you encountered early in the course in DBQ 0. This DBQ will show you how much you have grown in your ability to use a range of texts to construct an evidence-based, well-structured explanation or argument. Answering this DBQ now will give you a true sense of what you’ve learned and accomplished during the course.

Today, you are going to take the final DBQ assessment for the course. Do your best—you’ll very likely see a lot of growth since you first encountered this same DBQ at the beginning of the year.

Take out the DBQ and follow the directions. You may want to review the WHP Writing Rubric to remind yourself of the criteria you are aiming for in your writing.

In order to improve your writing skills, it is important to read examples—both good and bad—written by other people. Reviewing writing samples will help you develop and practice your own skills in order to better understand what makes for a strong essay.

Your teacher will provide sample essays for this unit’s DBQ prompt and provide instructions for how you will use them to refine your writing skills. Whether you’re working with a high-level example or improving on a not-so-great essay, we recommend having the WHP Writing Rubric on hand to help better understand how you can improve your own writing. As you work to identify and improve upon aspects of a sample essay, you’ll also be developing your own historical writing skills!