Last winter, I made the fateful decision to jettison the textbook associated with my A.P. World History course and replace it with the Norton Anthology of World Literature. My motivation was many-fold, but it began with the fact that my students simply were not reading the textbook. My theory was that the literature assignments would prove more compelling and that they would provide my students with deeper insight into the cultures we study. So, a few weeks ago, this year’s A.P. World cohort and I embarked on the shakedown cruise for literature-as-history in the Clark Room.

For the most part, it is going well. The two major questions we need to work out – how will we use the literature to study history? and how will the students achieve the necessary mastery of the history itself – are coming into focus. The first question is easier, as anyone who has ever read literature knows it offers insight into the time and place in which it was created. The students read a segment of the Bhagavad-Gita for today’s class and then took part in a lively conversation about which stanza most fully captures the essence of the piece. I am satisfied that they emerged from that conversation with a stronger sense of ancient Indian culture than they might have gleaned from a textbook. They also emerged, though, with no specifics as to the actual history of that time and place; we are going after that with presentations in class (by me and by the students themselves), (other) primary source readings, a large number of videos (some assigned, some available, some mine, some others’), and a review book that the students have purchased. Through one unit – a whopping 5% of the course material – their mastery of that material is roughly on par with prior years. I will know more after we complete unit II, which is a much larger unit.

Overall – peaks and valleys, and the jury is still out to some degree.