The Origin Of Ancient Greek Polis And Exploring The Teaching Of Greek History In Senior High School

Historian Hengzhe Chen once said:"if you don't read Chinese history,you don't know what is great;If you don't read western history,you don't know what backwardness is."The ancient Greek civilization was not old and did not exist for long,but it became the source of western civilization.Ancient Greek civilization was glorious because it gave western civilization three main cultural genes:democracy,humanity and rationality which made western civilization different from others.On the basis of previous studies,American scholar Huntington w listed eight characteristics of western civilization:1.Classical heritage,namely ancient greco-roman culture,2.Catholic and protestant culture,3.European language,4.Separation of spiritual authority from secular authority,5.Rule of law,6.Social pluralism,7.Representative system,8.Individualism.^[1]Therefore,learning ancient Greek civilization,especially the democratic system,is very helpful for high school students to understand the growth logic and political system of western civilization in the future.China via understanding the West to understand itself,and learning from the"others"can better help China introspect its own development.Nowadays,the democratic system has become the mainstream of world politics.Therefore,learning about the democratic system of the ancient Greek city of Athens can help high school students better understand the current political pattern and characteristics,and stimulate students to reflect on the current political system.Either version of history textbooks,involves the content of the"democracy"in ancient Greece,are as the west political system beginnings appear in the text books,laid the foundation of knowledge for the students to understand western political civilization,which should be given attention,but in text books,the narration about"polis"only describe the basic characteristics,concept,or property.The insufficient elaboration on how the city-state formed,how it developed and why it gave birth to a unique democratic system are not conducive to the formation of students'knowledge framework and historical logic.In the process of teaching,teachers should think about how to explain the profound influence of ancient Greece on the western world when students without the framework of ancient Greek history.In addition,by comparing the river civilization with the ocean civilization,the democratic system with the monarchy system,teachers can help students to establish a"big view of history",understand the diversity and difference of civilizations,feel the outstanding achievements of civilization,and help students to form an open mind and broad vision.This paper will reorganize the knowledge related to ancient Greek city-state and democratic system,and supplement the less detailed part in the textbook,so as to make the clues of western democratic politics clearer.This paper analyzes the city-state problem in the course of"Democracy in Ancient Greece",and discusses how to better integrate the city-state knowledge into the teaching process by grasping the context of city-state formation and development through relevant academic research results and teaching materials.The thesis is mainly divided into five parts:the introduction part mainly contains the reasons for the topic selection,research significance,literature review,research methods.The first chapter analyzes and compares the curriculum requirements and specific contents of"ancient Greek democracy"in different versions.The second chapter mainly expounds the rise and development of the city-state from the aspects of its definition,formation reasons,main characteristics and influence.The third chapter will discuss how to combine the context of city-states'rise and development with the content of high school textbooks to make the whole knowledge framework clearer.The fourth chapter is on the basis of the first three chapters of the research and discussion,combined with the requirements of the curriculum standards,three-dimensional goals to design the"ancient Greek democracy"lesson.Chapter five will summarize the previous four chapters.