Which Cambridge Social Sciences Courses ?

Dear Colleagues ,

Here are a couple of questions related to figuring out which courses might be offered ...................

On Cambridge’s website it says that schools can offer “ any combination of subjects “ within a curriculum . There is also no reference to how many subjects , or what combination of subjects , must be successfully completed to earn a recognition of compeltion of a Cambridge curriculum program or the earning of any type of diploma . This brings up a few of questions for both the short and long term .

First , who determines ( a state / district / or school ) which , and how many , courses must be completed for recognition of completion of a Cambridge curriculum program and how it relates to a diploma ? Could a district / school determine that it wants to be a humanities school only and just require students to complete fine arts , English / literature / composition , and social sciences courses ? Or a science and technology school only requiring math , science , information technology , etc ?

Second , is it up to a state / district / school to determine the type of social science course(s) that will be taught ? For example , could they make the decision that only sociology was going to be taught ?

Third , with the only social science subjects in all the Cambridge curriculums being history , economics , sociology , psychology , and religious studies , can we assume that electives outside of advanced versions of these ( AP classes ) are gone ? If this is true , I guess in some ways this will make figuring out teaching allocations and scheduling easier .

Regards ,

Doug Rothschild

Which Cambridge Curriculum ?

Dear Colleagues ,

Here is the first of a couple of social science department specific questions to ponder about the upcoming move to the Cambridge system . If any of us go to meetings where these topics get addressed , please return to our blog and post comments about what you find out . So , here you go ...............

There are two Cambridge Secondary Level 2 curriculums for the 9 th and 10 th grade . The IGCSE and the “ O Level “ . Which of these will be implemented in the YUHSD ? While these curriculums generally offer the same categories of social science courses ( history , economics , geography , sociology , psychology , and religion ) , there are differences in course details . For example , the IGCSE history course ( the syllabus that we were looking a week ago ) starts with the early 1800 s . However , the “ O Level " syllabus is titled “ world affairs between 1917 and 1991 “ .

Regards ,

Doug Rothschild