Humanities

Bridging Space and Time

Hollywood has released a film about the birth of Facebook. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest by population — more than five hundred million people. And the social networking website has not yet celebrated its seventh birthday. What has that got to do with learning humanities at De La Salle in 2010? Well, digital technologies are transforming all our lives at an astonishing pace. Our students are busy being born into this new age and, perhaps, taking it for granted. Mobile phones, ipods, computers can provide terrific opportunities to enhance learning, provided we are in charge, not just passive, distracted consumers in a virtual world. That makes our subjects more relevant than ever. Year 7 brought new experiences and challenges for our students in 2010. For most it is the first time they have studied History and Geography as separate subjects. Students brought to this their curiosity, intelligence, skills, values and existing understanding of their world. We teachers aimed to introduce students to other real worlds, in time and space. We studied not just local neighbourhoods and family histories, but investigated life in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome, mastered mapping and wondered at the human impact on endangered species. Skills developed, values clarified, understanding grew. The journey continued for our older students. Year 8s learnt about change, and cause and effect for Europeans living a thousand years ago. They met da Vinci, Copernicus and Martin Luther, (and some visitors in armour) recognizing their achievements and how they helped their own and later generations find and make their own identity. They investigated a plethora of natural disasters from bushfires to tsunamis, seeking smarter ways to plan for trouble. The Year 9s focused on some key issues in Australian History, particularly the blood, sweat and tears of a world war and its impact on our new nation, and the struggle of the first Australians to gain equal rights. In Geography we looked at sustainability for Australia, analysing needs for energy, water and the issue of climate change. Our Year 10 historians met survivors of Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, whilst the geographers engaged in fieldwork in Westernport Bay. The VCE students grappled with the Vietnam War, American Civil Rights, Revolutions, Renaissance Cities, Political Studies and Philosophy. Aaron Sorkin, the writer of The Social Network, gives the audience three different versions of the Facebook story. If De La students have learnt their Humanities well, they should be equipped to make sense of a world with different truths, to be empowered critical thinkers in any career, to act with empathy and understanding, and memory and vision. Mr Chris Fleming Humanities Coordinator