The value of teaching American history to expat students is a topic of debate among Shanghai's international schools. While some educators see it as culturally relevant, others find it to be more burdensome, especially for students who don’t hold U.S. passports or don't plan on going to college in the States. We examined four schools on the diversity of nations studied, perspectives taken in the classroom and sources used in the curriculum, while exploring this question: through which lens is social studies being taught—the American point of view or the international community’s?

Inside the Classroom

The schools surveyed were Shanghai American School, Fudan International School, Concordia International School of Shanghai and Western International School of Shanghai. All schools offer a base track of freshman or sophomore level world history, where every nation has a fair chance of taking center stage in the classroom. However, beyond the initial offering of World History 101, the path forks. Some offer immersion into a course that has been directly imported from a U.S. classroom, from the first shot of the Revolutionary War to the fateful bullet that concluded the Kennedy administration. Others dip into humanities, economics and international relations. At all schools, it is up to the students whether or not to pursue exclusively American social studies subjects.

For Tom Marling, Deputy Principal and IB Diploma Program Coordinator at Western International School of Shanghai, the U.S. is a prevalent subject when dealing with modern history and globalization. He says, “America’s influence and power in the world today and over the last two centuries is of great significance.” However, he adds that it's up to the discretion of educators whether or not to present it directly. More often, it is used in a thematic context.

“For example, in Grade 9 Humanities there may be a unit dealing with ‘Economics,’" said Marling. “Of course, the influence of the U.S. economy would be studied, but in the overall context of ‘Economics.’”

A Flexible Curriculum

Given the name of Shanghai American School one might ask, is it the school’s prerogative to insist that students graduate with an education in U.S. affairs? According to Tonya Parham, head of the Social Studies Department, only 45 percent of the population at SAS actually hold U.S. passports. So while taking U.S. history is an option for all students to consider, it is by no means necessary.

“We give our students a choice in order to honor the international nature of our student population,” said Parham. “We recognize that some of our students will not be going to America for university. Many will be going to Europe or Australia or even staying here in China, so they have the option of taking regular U.S. history or several other world history courses.” In fact, the required learning is more reflective of the school’s host country than students’ home countries. In 9th grade, students are required to take Asian history—a pan-continental perspective on China, Japan and the Koreas.

Another school has pioneered an extracurricular experience for students to draw connections between both nations that bookend the Pacific. Concordia is planning a project where students will travel to the U.S. to work with the Montana Historical Society. There, they will use their language skills to translate over 100 recently discovered documents from the 1800s written in traditional Chinese characters.

“Each student working on this project will be putting together pieces of history that nobody has had prior to this,” said Chris Carter, a social studies teacher at Concordia. “These kids are doing original research.”

Concordia has also forged an inter-disciplinary route between departments. New courses have been designed to fuse world history and science into one, called “Big History” in the catalog. Don’t be fooled by its playful name—the course has been developed in collaboration with experts at the University of Michigan and the support of Bill Gates.

By the Book

Perhaps more important than the ratio of U.S. to world history in classes is the perspective used to teach the curriculum. The approach of teaching history by using competitive narratives is embraced by all of these schools. Materials used to teach students to “see history from the standpoint of others” includes primary source articles, secondary source articles and documentary media.

The schools vary on their emphasis of the use of a standardized textbook. At SAS, U.S. history is taught by the book—the same one used in American classrooms. At Concordia, the textbook is seen as more of a supplementary tool. For Fudan and WISS, there are no mandated textbooks and therefore use is limited.

“I don't believe in teaching from a textbook,” said Rajesh Kripalani, Head of the Social Studies department at Fudan International School. “I leave the veracity of historical truth for my students to determine through the study of diverse sources.” Mark Johnson, the Instructional Facilitator of Concordia’s Social Studies department, agrees that students should “use other sources to flush out the personal biases of an author.”

There is no questions that the degree of influence and wealth that the U.S. has on the world stage is changing. For those of us who collectively discuss and regurgitate these matters from the desks of an international school classroom, the multinational nature of the group guarantees a diverse range of perspectives. And whatever perspectives may be lacking, a thoughtful selection of source materials can make up for. So while it’s up to each student to decide whether or not to develop an expertise on American history, chances are, they’ll graduate with at least an informed opinion on it.

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