In previous grades you’ve learned a little about economics and that economics deals with choices. We all make choices every day. We make choices about what to buy. We make choices about whether to save or spend money. You will learn in this chapter that economics is about more than just choices. Economics is the study of how individuals and societies use resources to produce goods and services. It is about competition and prices and trade. As you learn you will be working as an economist, someone who studies economics.

You have learned that there are different areas of social studies and different kinds of social scientists. You learned that geographers study geography and economists study economics. This chapter is about civics, another important area of social studies. Civics is the study of government and the role people play in government. But who studies civics??? Civicsers? Civicsists? It’s a little more complicated this time. Political scientists study civics! Politics is just another name for government. But wait, what is government? Government is a system that people use to provide order and make decisions. It is also a system for distributing power like the power to make laws and the power to enforce laws. It is also a system for regulating the conduct of people, or how people
behave.

Should water from the Great Lakes be used in other places? The question of “who owns the water?” and “should it be used to help other places in the country that need it?” is one that our nation has been wrestling with for years. You will be responsible for writing an opinion essay on this very topic. You will be introduced to the topic of decreasing water levels in the Great Lakes by watching two videos and reading a short passage. Finally you will compose an opinion essay on the public issue: Should water be diverted from the Great Lakes to other parts of the United States that need water?

The 6th grade MI Open Book Geography Text explores the five themes of geography, first by providing an introduction to the study of geography itself, then focusing in on a theme each chapter while studying a region of the world. The final chapters explore the themes in action in other regions.

Quite simply, “Geography” broken down means “to study the earth” and throughout your studies in the book, we are going to expand on this definition. If you were to go home and ask your parents about geography they may have studied in school, they might say when they were students they memorized the states and capitals, or major countries in the world. This is only one part of what geography really is however. To study geography is to study where we are in the world; what the world around us is like. It is the study of who lives there and why.

The landmass of North America lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic to the north, the continent of South America and the Caribbean Sea to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The land is rich in resources like coal, natural gas, oil, timber products, freshwater, and an abundance of plant and animal species. Renewable resources such as wind, water, biomass, geothermal and solar are widely used as well.

The area known as Latin America is made up of the region south of the United States, beginning at the river that separates the U.S. from Mexico, the Rio Grande’, and extending to the southern tip of South America, an area known as Cape Horn.

The region of North Africa and the Middle East lies at the continental crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. At this intersection of the world, all three continents meet here at the Mediterranean Sea. The region extends from the eastern border of Pakistan to the Atlantic coast of Morocco in the west. The region includes many diverse landscapes. It contains rugged mountains, vast deserts, spacious plains and is surrounded by numerous seas. In this unit, you will learn how geography impacts the way people live. You will also discover how culture impacts a person’s perspective.

In the introduction to this book you learned briefly about the five themes of geography, and previous chapters have covered the geographic themes of Movement (North America), Human/ Environment Interaction (Latin America), and Location (North Africa and the Middle East). This chapter will help you begin to think more about the theme of “place.” Geographers define the study of place as the conditions at a location, or more simply, a study of what it’s like there. If you look back at the chapters on North America, Latin America, and North Africa and the Middle East you’ll notice in the sections on physical geography that this question has really been answered.

Over seven billion (7,000,000,000) people live on planet Earth. South Asia has over 1,000,000,000 people alone. Geographers determine regions of the world differently, usually based on characteristics that an area shares, such as language, climate, religion or economic similarities. For our purposes, South Asia includes: India, Nepal,

Russia, with over 6.6 million square miles of varied climate and landscape, is the largest country in the world. It is nearly twice the size of the United States or Canada. Covering almost one-eighth of the Earth’s surface, it ranges from the Arctic Circle in the north, to the borders of China in the south, from Europe in the west to the Pacific Ocean to the east. It spreads through two continents and 11 time zones. The Ural Mountains, some of the oldest mountain ranges, stretch from the north to the south. Russia borders more countries than any other and has 12 major seas.

Oceania is an area of the world that has some very unique characteristics. More than one third of the earth’s surface is comprised of the Pacific Ocean and Oceania . In addition to all those islands, Oceania also includes the smallest continent in terms of land size: Australia. You can look anywhere in Oceania and find strong cultural traditions, rich history, and strong geographic features that vary widely depending on where you go.

In the first six chapters of this book you studied a theme of geography and how it related to the region under study. In the last two chapters of this book you studied multiple themes and how they related to the regions. In this final chapter of the book you will put all five themes into practice by studying the most populous of the continents - Asia. More specifically, you will study the themes in practice in East Asia, which includes large countries in terms of land mass and population such as China and Mongolia, as well as smaller nations such as North and South Korea and Japan.

Using an inquiry based approach, Michigan high school students learn about World History from the fifth Era through today.

During the thirteenth century, the Mongols built an empire from scratch through remarkable feats of organization, planning, endurance, courage, slaughter, destruction, and terror. The empire was ruled by a combination of exploitation and protection of those conquered. The Mongol peace-keeping and encouragement of long distance communications, resulted in the widespread exchange of ideas, goods, and techniques, as well as in the spread of disease.

Today we live in a world that is extremely and irreversibly global. Our marketplaces offer seemingly limitless products from around the world. People utilize the Internet in order to connect to a body of collective learning previously unseen in history. This is in stark contrast to the origin of small hunting and gathering bands of Homo sapiens on the plains of East Africa. that existed close to 200,000 years ago. From these origins, Homo sapiens gradually migrated throughout the world. This lengthy journey culminated 14,000 years ago, with the human colonization of the last region of the earth, the Southern Cone of Argentina. At the end of this lengthy process of migration, the earth was divided into four distinct areas called world zones.

The Crusades began in 1096 and lasted until 1291. During two centuries of atrocious fighting between Christians and Muslims to control the Holy Land, the end result was the establishment of a bitter hatred between the two religions. From an exploration standpoint, however, the result was not as dismal. Crusading in the areas of northern and eastern Europe led to the expansion of some kingdoms and the creation of new political units. While religious fighting was occurring, traders moved into the area and started to profit economically from use of the land. When the Catholic Crusaders returned from the Middle East in the 12th and 13th Centuries, they brought back with them tales of new lands and peoples as well as cloth such as silk and foods such as sugar—all of which they had never experienced before.

Questions raised in this chapter: Why were African slaves used primarily for forced labor in the cotton and sugar plantations in the Americas? (Instead of indentured servants and or Native Americans) 2. Why was the Trans-Atlantic slave trade transformative to the economic way of life in the Americas? 3. How did African slavery in the New World differ fundamentally from past instances of slavery and other systems of labor in the same era? 4. How did the geography of the region dictate the role of slaves?

Drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, tar and feathering, the pillory, the wooden wheel, the rack - all were devices or methods used for torturing humans conjured up over the ages. But in 18th Century Europe, a new movement, a new set of ideas was sweeping through the continent. A new type of thought, of “enlightenment,” was engaging the philosophes -- French philosophers or thinkers. These thinkers applied methods of science to understand society and to make improvements in it. With the application of reason, the philosophes believed government, law, and society could be reformed. According to the philosophes, the role of punishment and torture should be questioned too.

The Industrial Revolution (ca. 1750-1900) may have involved fewer beheadings per capita than preceding political revolutions, but it was certainly transformative for people in all walks of life. In Europe, feudalism was a thing of the past, but without modern forms of transportation, the average person still had to rely on their local community for the production of food and durable goods. Prior to industrialization, most people lived as farmers; life revolved around subsistence agriculture. People worked the land with simple, homemade tools to grow their own food. Production of goods (clothing, for example) happened on a small scale, often within workers’ homes. Trade happened on a small scale within communities. Life expectancy was short, although it had increased at a slow rate since the Middle Ages. All of this, however, would change dramatically as the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain and caused sweeping changes around the world. This global event transformed how people worked, played, traded and traveled. It changed politics, economics, and family structures and continues to shape our world today.