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From Ape to Astronaut

Drew Fortune

How do you begin your grand tour of world history? I start mine with a bit of movie magic—2001: A Space Odyssey. I play the first 10 minutes, where Australopithecus encounters a giant monolith. It’s a head-scratcher, an eyebrow-raiser, and my type of icebreaker in the first moments of the new class.

Those scenes do what good teaching should: they evoke emotions. They see apes learning to use bones as tools, and suddenly, we’re not just talking about history; we’re feeling the weight of a bone club in our hands. The monolith? Pure mystery. It symbolizes human progress, the unknown, or maybe just a big black rectangle. It all depends on the emotional response it triggers.

After the clip, we delve into an open-ended discussion. What could that monolith represent? How did the use of tools reshape our world? These questions open the door to various interpretations, fostering critical thinking and curiosity.

So, that’s my quirky kickoff for world history. I press pause right before the bone becomes a spaceship. By the time we reach the end of the course, we will return to what the bone becomes.

How do you start your classes?

  • What a wild and very cool way to start the school year. I remember seeing that opening sequence of that movie and beging totally perrplexed.  How do your students take to it,  ?

    I'll usually kick things off with the Danger of the SIngle Story. All of these years later, the message still feels relevant and like something I can refer back to and hold up as a theme throughout the course.

  • in reply to Adam Esrig

    It has always been an excellent guidepost/north star for what we try to do in class. I sometimes wonder how Stanley Kubrick wrote this lesson plan—using wonder and mystery and being okay with confusion.

    We use the monolith as a metaphor for knowledge and try to make history usable. By the time we reach the end of the Origins course, I bring in the Big History Projects "Looking Forward" section, and we use clips from the later part of 2001 to address current issues (AI, Space Race, Aliens, etc.). 

  • I do Alphonse, Day 1, Minute 1.

    IMO, it sets the tone of identifying real life thinking skills and being able to have a meaningful discussion.   And it's fun.

    I think for a few of my kids, it's the ONLY thing they learn all year Slight smile

  • in reply to Chris Scaturo

    That's also a good one that makes an appearance in the first few weeks for me. Of course... I have to do some pre-teaching on what the phrase "straw that broke the camel's back" means... but apart from that... Smile

  • in reply to Drew Fortune

    Sounds like you really hit paydirt with this one - taking a pretty abstract and perplexing piece of art and turning it into a theme for the year that works in early humans and collective learning. Definitely bring this back to the community to share resources and student reactions! Smile

  • I like that you circle back to your opening as you close the class,  . First impressions, interim learning, and reflection on what has evolved. Nice bow on a great course.

    I have started class in different ways.

    But my favorite is History as Mystery from BHP. How historians make sense of finding 180   Headless Roman Skeletons is a great way to introduce historical thinking, incorporate multiple disciplines, and set a hook for how the REAL study of history is exciting.