Combined Studies Course (CSC)

In the spirit of the Ninth Grade Program, the Combined Studies Course (CSC) weaves together the study of English and history, as in the Ancestry Project, to emphasize the reading, writing, and research skills that they share.

The CSC curriculum demonstrates how easily the line between literature and history can blur or disappear when students compare Kreon's government described by Sophocles in Antigone with Aristotle's understanding of the State; explore the French and Russian revolutions as background to reading Orwell's Animal Farm; or read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice while also studying the Holocaust.

CSC sections meets during two adjacent periods, and each section is taught by an English teacher and a history teacher working as a team to coordinate teaching methods, content, skills development, and homework. Thanks to a consistent emphasis on sentence structure and paragraph unity, all sophomores practice writing persuasive prose as they explore and respond to a wide variety of historical and literary texts.