Remember remember the 5th of November

November 5, 2011
while it has little to do with IB history, I couldn’t resist commemorating Guy Fawkes Day. Even in places where the day does not contain burnt effigies or fireworks, the Gunpowder plot has become known, due largely to the sci-fi film V for Vendetta, which brings...

Khrushchev: the Berlin Crisis and beyond

October 26, 2011
After watching a video on the Berlin Wall one of my students commented that the Americans didn’t need any more propaganda than the wall to show the difference between communism and democracy. In a recent post I remarked that August was the 50th anniversary of...

55 and counting

October 17, 2011
1956 was an incredible year for the Eastern European bloc. In this year Khrushchev delivered his famous – or notorious – Secret Speech and Poland and Hungary responded with revolutionary actions with possibly disastrous consequences. When examining the...

ToK linkage

October 6, 2011
I recently read Schiff’s “Cleopatra” and it created an amazing lesson for me. The majority of the book is about historical inquiry and the lack of data available on the woman herself. This lack, however, has not prevented people from forming an image...

reflections on the last exam session in history

September 13, 2011
Now that it is mid September most northern hemisphere schools are starting up and teachers are fine tuning their lesson plans and reviewing last year’s results. In the southern hemisphere, EE are safely away to the examiners and teachers are preparing for the IB...