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Transcript
Answers to questions for What Every Child Needs to Know about Western
Civilization***
***Please email or call me if you have any further questions. Thanks, Marcia
Lesson 1: Getting Started
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 1
1. Father Time was irritable because no one took time and the calendar that records it
seriously.
2.
3. This is the student’s own opinion
4. Again, the student’s own opinion.
Discussion Questions: page 2
1. Have them sort the cards by color, then count up the total for each color. For the
cards with multiple colors, add one point for each color represented. If two sides
have the same color, then give that color two points.
2. This story does not venture into Asia.
3. Answer is provided in the text.
4. Osiris was one of Egypt’s five most important gods. You will learn in chapter four,
why he is significant to the calendar story.
Lesson 2: Mesopotamia and the Beginning of Western Civilization
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 5
1. The most important job of the Sumerian priest was to watch, record and interpret
the movements of the heavenly bodies to identify the messages of the gods.
2. The Sumerian priests concluded that Lindsie and Evan were messengers from the
moon god.
3. The chief god of the Sumerians was usually the moon god; however, each citystate may choose any one of the seven heavenly bodies to be the city’s chief god.
Remember also that each god was worshipped one day each week.
Review: page 10
1. The Sumerian Priest is the first person on the Hats of History card because Sumer
is the oldest civilization.
2. The Sumerians gave us the first city, Uruk, the first writing, cuneiform and the
names of our days of the week have their origin in the worship of the seven
heavenly bodies.
3. For the Sumerians the very survival of their culture depended upon the priest
seeing and interpreting the messages of the gods and the people obeying and
fulfilling these commands or needs of the gods. Not to do could result in draught,
famine, floods, infertility or even the world returning to chaos.
Lesson 3: Mesopotamia Part II – Some Things Never Change
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 11
1. In contrast to the last visit in Mesopotamia where the priests where the equivalent
to king, religious leader and scientist, now under Babylonian rule, these roles are
divided into a king/priest and priests/scientists.
2. The Babylonian priests wanted Hammurabi to help them solve the disagreement
between the sun and the moon regarding the length of the year.
3. The Babylonians, like the Sumerians before them thought that the gods
communicated with the priests through the movements or changes of heavenly
bodies. The more striking the changes, the more powerful the sky god appeared
to the priest. The active cycle of the moon with its nightly changes,
disappearances and reappearances causes it to be viewed by many Mesopotamian
city-states as the most powerful god.
Review: page 17
1. The first great civilization to dominate Mesopotamia was Sumer.
2. They built the first city, Uruk in 3500 B.C.
3. Evans and Lindsie’s second stop took them to the year 1750 B.C.
4. Hammurabi’s Code was a set of 282 laws inscribed in stone about 1750 B.C. by the
Babylonians. The king/priest Hammurabi inscribed these laws on tall stones so
that people would read them and know what was required of them from their
gods.
5. The degree system of the Babylonians and their base sixty numbering system is
still used today for keeping time.
6. The origin of the names of the days of the week comes from the names of the five
planets that are visible to the naked eye and the sun and moon. Early cultures
thoughts these represented seven powerful gods that controlled different forces of
nature.
7. Both the Sumerian and Babylonians used cuneiform script for their written
language.
Lesson 4: New Ideas from Old Kingdom Egypt
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 19
1. The children’s wild ride down the pyramid interrupted a secret meeting of
Egyptian priest as they were studying the stars.
2. The young priest was thrown in jail because he had revealed some of the priests’
secrets about the stars.
3. Egyptian priests refused to share their knowledge about the star calendar, because
their knowledge gave them power and forced the agrarian and very religious
culture to rely on priests for information about the planting and harvest cycle and
when to celebrate important religious holidays.
4. The reappearance of the star Sirius after a seventy-day absence, and the annual
flooding of the Nile which usually coincided with the stars reappearance, marked
the beginning the beginning of the Egyptian New Year.
5. The date for the children’s visit to Hammurabi was 1750 B.C. To slide down the
pyramid they traveled back in time 700 years to 2450 B.C.
Review: page 24
1. The Egyptians created and were the first to use a solar calendar as early as the
building of the pyramids while every other great ancient culture of Europe and
Asia, Sumer, Babylon, Assyrians, Persians, Greece, Israel and Rome all used
lunar calendars. This Egyptian achievement was a huge contribution to the
western world.
2. The 282 laws given to a Babylonian king by the sun god was called Hammurabi’s
Code or the Code of Hammurabi.
3. Some great Sumerian achievements still appreciated by historians today are the
building of the first city, Uruk and the development of the first written language,
cuneiform. Cuneiform developed into a phonetic based language so that it could
record ideas, concepts and stories not just objects. The Babylonian used
cuneiform to write the first great piece of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. As
stargazers, the Babylonians developed the degree system that every geometry
student uses today. As mathematicians, their base sixty system is still used today
to tell time.
4. The first three key dates include Uruk, Sumer – 3500 B.C.; Old Kingdom Egypt –
2450 B.C. and Hammurabi in Babylon in 1750 B.C.
Lesson 5: Greeks in Egypt
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 25
1. Back in Egypt, 2000 years later, Lindsie and Evan discover that the Egyptian
priests were still closely guarding their secret knowledge of the stars.
2. More than likely, the priests were unwilling to share their knowledge of the stars
because this knowledge gave them power. People depended upon this knowledge
and the priests who held it.
3. In contrast to the Egyptians, the Greeks had developed a culture that highly valued
sharing and spreading knowledge. The Greeks wanted to spread the knowledge
of the accurate length of the year to everyone. This information was recorded and
stored in the great library of Alexandria. This library stood as a marvelous
testament of the Greeks love of knowledge and their desire to spread it throughout
the culture.
Review: page 32
1. The world’s first city was built around the year 3500 B.C.
2. Pyramids were being built at Giza during the Old Kingdom period. Lindsie and
Evan rode down the pyramids in the year 2450 B.C about 50 years after the great
pyramid of Kufu was built.
3. Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws in 1750 B.C.
4. The Greeks who ruled in Egypt impacted the world in a number of ways; they built
the greatest library the world has ever known and brought together some of the
finest scholars for university pursuits. They had the Old Testament translated
from Hebrew into Greek. The knowledge and learning the Greeks fostered in
Egypt was just a continuation of Alexander the Great’s dream to spread Greek
culture, learning and language throughout the known world, which was know as
Hellenizing.
5. The Ptolemaic Pharaohs were a line of Greek rulers in Egypt. When Alexander the
Great conquered Egypt, he set himself up as pharaoh. When he died, his kingdom
was divided between his generals. His general, Ptolemy, got the best of
Alexander’s kingdom in Egypt. Ptolemy’s name was passed down to each
succeeding Greek pharaoh in his line. The last Ptolemaic pharaoh and the last
pharaoh of Egypt was Cleopatra.
Lesson 6: The Roman Republic Learns from Egypt
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 33
1. In this chapter, Lindsie and Evan arrived in Rome by galley from Alexandria,
Egypt. Alexandria was the capital of the Ptolemaic pharaohs.
2. Besides Cleopatra, Julius Caesar brought with him from Alexandria the Greek
Alexandrian scholar Sosigenes because he knew how to establish an accurate
solar calendar. The Roman lunar calendar was in drastic need of reform.
3. Sosigenes was a great astronomer and mathematician. Like all scholarly Greeks of
his day, he lived in Alexandria so he could study and work at the great university
library of Alexandria, which was built by Cleopatra’s ancestors.
4. Prior to Caesar’s calendar reforms, the Romans were using a lunar calendar.
5. The Romans living in the year 46 B.C. called it the year of confusion as the length
of the year was altered by 80 days. The lengths of individual months were
changed and the calendar itself was no longer based on the cycle of the moon,
which everyone could understand. Peoples lives were probably significantly
impacted as bills and payments based on a year or a number of days in a month
would have required adjustment.
6. The Egyptians divided their solar year into twelve months of 30 days each. The
five extra days were tapped onto the end of the year as holidays to worship their
gods. Julius spread the extra five days throughout the months and robbed a sixth
day from February, so that the months alternated between 30 and 31, days except
the unlucky February.
Review: page 38
1. The Roman Republic lasted from 509 B.C. through 27 B.C. when Augustus Caesar
was declared Emperor.
2. The Roman Republic was a model for the United States Government in its
separation of powers (checks and balances), its legal system, its representative
government and the ideas of natural law – the laws of the gods supersede the laws
of men.
3. The artistic endeavors of the Romans were greatly influenced by the Greeks.
4. The influence of the Greeks upon the Romans and other cultures was called
Hellenizing. Hellenizing was the spread of Greek language, learning and culture.
5. The man who wanted to Hellenize the world was Alexander the Great.
6. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Romans all used a lunar calendar. The Greeks
prior to their conquest of Egypt used a lunar calendar and so did the Jews.
7. The ancient Egyptians, over two thousand years before the Greeks set foot on their
soil, invented the solar/star calendar; this calendar proved to be so superior to the
lunar calendars used by everyone else around them.
Lesson 7: The Roman Emperor Wants Things
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 39
1. When Lindsie and Evan found themselves in Rome again, they had moved into the
era of history known as the Roman Empire, when Rome was ruled by an Emperor
rather than a senate as they had been during the republic.
2. Augustus Caesar was Julius Caesar’s grandnephew and legal heir.
Review: page 46
1. The Roman Republic lasted about 500 years from 509 B.C. to 30 B.C. The united
Roman Empire also lasted about 500 years from 30 B.C. to A.D. 476.
2. During the Roman Republic, Greek language became the international tongue
spoken throughout the Roman Empire. Having a common language would
facilitate the spread of Christianity. During the Empire when missionaries began
spreading the Christian Gospel, they could communicate in a common language
and get to remote parts of the Empire via Roman roads. They could travel there
safely because of Roman Peace. Having a unified peaceful country greatly
facilitated the spread of ideas. The ideas of Christianity spread across the entire
Roman Empire and beyond in just a few decades.
3. The statue of Alexander the Great made Julius Caesar cry on his twenty-fifth
birthday because he knew his own conquests paled in light of Alexander’s at the
same age.
4. Roman accomplishments included building a great empire. Empire building was
influenced by the previous cultures such as the Babylonians, Persians and Greeks
who, like Rome, built their wealth from the plunder and slave labor of those
conquered. But when the Romans stopped conquering they brought Roman
Peace. Roman Peace fostered learning, libraries, literature, the arts and great
architectural feats. Many Roman accomplishments, especially in the arts,
literature and architecture, were influenced by the Greek definition of beauty.
5. While the Romans embraced Greek culture, learning and language, Greek was the
Romans’ second language. Their native tongue was Latin. The great works of
Roman literature were written in Latin.
Lesson 8: Declining Rome Births a New Empire and a New Creed
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 47
1. In this chapter, Lindsie and Evan arrive outside Constantinople then on to Nicaea
which are located in the eastern half of the Roman Empire.
2. Our time travelers visited in the year A.D. 325.
3. Constantine and his chief architect were building a new Roman capital in
Constantinople because Rome was facing an ever-increasing threat from the
barbarians. In order to preserve the Roman capital Constantine moved it to a
strategic trade location in the East that was not threatened by barbarians.
4. The controversy about Easter revolved around when Christians should celebrate
Easter. Should the anniversary follow the Jewish Passover celebration that moves
through the days of the week, or should it be celebrated on Sunday, the day Jesus
rose from the dead?
5. The formula determined at the Council of Niceae for celebrating is as follows: The
first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox on March 21.
Review: page 58
1. Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople to avoid the barbarian threat
posed to the capital in Rome.
2. When Rome fell, the Roman Empire did not end because the eastern half of the
Empire, ruled from Constantinople, continued to thrive. It would even win back
some of its western territories from the barbarians during the later sixth century.
The Eastern Roman Empire continued for another thousand years until 1453. It
became known as the Byzantine Empire, taken from its capital city’s original
name of Byzantium, which Constantine changed to Constantinople.
3. The new capital of Constantinople is actually located right at the dividing line of
Europe and Asia. Constantinople is considered part of Asia Minor which is a part
of the Middle East on the Tools for Young Historian’s color band. Thus the
primary color for the Byzantine Empire is yellow, even though at the time of
Constantine and for other later emperors as well, countries in Europe and Africa
would be ruled by this great empire.
4. Constantine helped the spread of Christianity by ending religious persecution,
encouraging the building of Christian churches, exempting Christian churches
from taxes and convening the first worldwide council of churches.
5. The Nicene Creed is the statement of faith drafted at the Council of Nicaea
convened by Constantine to settled several disputes among church leaders. One
of these disputes involved the person of Jesus Christ. This creed states that Jesus
is equal to God, of the same essence as God and as such is God. Catholics,
Protestants and Orthodox Christians embrace this creed.
6. Augustus Caesar and Constantine were similar in that they were both emperors
who ruled at significant points in Roman history; Augustus at the beginning of the
Empire, Constantine when the Empire was reunited. Both fostered religion and
both affected the calendar. But Augustus and Constantine were different in that
Augustus was a polytheist (worshipping many gods) and Constantine converted to
monotheism (worshipping one God), specifically Christianity. Augustus reigned
at the period of history known as Pax Romana (Roman Peace), Constantine ruled
during the period known as the Decline of the Roman Empire. Augustus ruled
from Rome, a primarily Latin-speaking city. Constantine ruled from
Constantinople, a primarily Greek-speaking city.
Answers to questions for What Every Child Needs to Know about
Western Civilization
Lesson 9: A Learned Monk in Dark Times Changes the Face of History
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 59
1. In the first part of chapter seven, Lindsie and Evan found themselves back in
Rome.
2. The year was A.D. 525.
3. Dionysius Exiguus was a learned monk who calculated the date of the birth of
Christ. He suggested that historians use this date to determine the dates of all
other events of history.
4. Dionysius wanted to calculate the birth of Christ because he wanted to change how
historical events were reckoned in relationship to the number of years either
before or after the Era of Diocletian.
5. The Roman ruler Diocletian, who had ruled prior to Constantine, was responsible
for the last great persecution of Christians. Constantine ended this persecution
in A.D. 313. For Dionysius, a historian himself, it was terribly offensive to
reference a ruler who endeavored to wipe out Christians and their faith every time
he referred to a historical event or person.
Review: page 68
1. Christian monks’ contributions to Western Civilization included copying and
preserving classical and biblical manuscripts, spreading Christianity to the British
Isles and other parts of the world, and building monasteries that provided food for
the poor, care for the sick and shelter for the traveler.
2. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire caused the Dark Ages in Western
Europe.
3. The tribes that conquered the Western Roman Empire were called barbarians
because they did not speak Greek, their standards for culture differed from Greek
ideals and their economies often depended on plundering other people groups.
4. In monasteries, monks prepared, copied and illustrated manuscripts in a room
called the Scriptorium.
5. Saint Patrick was the missionary that brought Christianity to Ireland, and Saint
Augustine brought Christianity to England. Missionary monks from both Ireland
and England would later bring Christianity to the Franks and other barbarian
tribes in Western Europe.
Lesson 10: An Enlightened King and a Scholarly Friend Make Big Changes
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 69
1. The second half of Chapter 7 has Lindsie and Evan arriving in Aachen where
Charlemagne’s palace was located in what today is Germany.
2. The date in Calendar Quest for their visit with Charlemagne is 801 A.D. In our
companion guide, we use 800 A.D. as this is the year Charlemagne was
crownedby the pope and it is easier to remember.
3. Charlemagne was king of the Franks and was crowned by the pope emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire.
4. Charlemagne was the ruler that historians generally credit for implementing and
spreading the Christian era dating system calculated by Dionysius; however, how
he accomplished this is not exactly known. In Calendar Quest the noblemen’s
children who did not apply themselves to their studies were given the assignment
to copy an announcement implementing Dionysius’ dating system.
5. Answers to this question may be unique to each student.
Review: page 80
1. Charlemagne and his court dramatically impacted Europe by bringing a
renaissance, a rebirth of learning to Western Europe 500 years before the Italian
Renaissance. Through the Carolingian Renaissance, as historians call it,
education was made available to peasant and noble children alike, major
improvements were made in the copy practices of the Scriptorium, the volumes of
manuscripts increased due to new grammar rules and an improved Latin script,
and scholarly Latin was established. Charlemagne and his court would also
greatly impact future ruling houses of Western Europe through the system that
developed out of Charlemagne’s rule known as feudalism.
2. There were many things about Charlemagne’s rule that were unique. He fostered a
renaissance of learning in the middle of the medieval period of history. He had a
large centralized government that provided security and safety to people of his
domain. He made education available to the poor. He was a great reformer of
churches and monasteries. Charlemagne and his twelve knights was the model
from which the fanciful tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
were written.
3. The Byzantine emperors and their subjects were insulted when Charlemagne was
crowned emperor of the Roman Empire because the Emperor of the Byzantine
Empire viewed himself/herself as the emperor of the Roman Empire. (Remember
the Roman Empire continued another thousand years after the fall of Rome as the
Byzantine Empire.)
4. Alcuim contributed much to the Carolingian Renaissance. He was Charlemagne’s
minister of education. Charlemagne’s educational, scriptorium, and church
liturgy reforms were masterminded by Alcuim. The development of scholarly
Latin, new grammar rules like upper and lower case letters, and cursive Latin
known as Carolingian script were invented by Alcuim.
5. Feudalism was the name of the governmental system that grew up out of people’s
need for safety and protection from Vikings and other raiding tribes after the
strong centralized government of Charlemagne came to an end.
6. The answer is already provided in the text.
Lesson 11: A Renaissance Pope Fixes a “Small” Problem
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 81
1. Parents, don’t miss the opportunity to emphasize how important Rome has been to
the development of Western Civilization. You may also want to go to a globe and
make sure your children can easily find this noteworthy city.
2. In the year 1582 Pope Gregory XIII modified the Julian calendar that had been in
use for 1600 years.
3. The Julian calendar needed reform because it said that the solar year was
approximately 14 minutes longer than it actually is. This difference, accrued over
1600 years, amounted to a ten-day difference between the calendar and the actual
revolution of the earth around the sun. As a result, the calendar said that the
Spring Equinox was occurring ten days too soon. This was bad for farmers and
bad for the Church who scheduled its Easter celebration using the date of March
21, which during Julius Caesar’s time was the Spring Equinox.
4. To resolve this problem, Pope Gregory cut ten days from the calendar of 1582, and
Christopher Clavuis devised a new formula to amend the difference between the
calendar and the solar year by eliminating 3 leap days in every four hundred
years. His formula stated: if the century year was equally divisible by 400, then a
leap day would occur in that year, but not in the other century years. Previously,
all of the century years were leap years.
5. People were not happy about losing ten days as it could disrupt things like taxes,
rents, salaries, bill due dates, etc…
6. Throughout the Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance, monks were some of
the most learned individuals in Western Europe.
Review: page 94
1. Some significant events taking place during the Renaissance include; invention of the
movable type printing press, the flood of Greek manuscripts from the Byzantine
Empire that crumbled in 1453, the competition between city-states that paid for and
spurred the arts, the Protestant Reformation, the beginning of Europe’s wars of
religions, and the beginning of modern science. See the stickers for additional
answers.
2. A variety of smaller city-state governments ruled Italy during the Renaissance. Kings,
popes, or groups of nobles ruled some. Others were run as a republic and were ruled
by a group of powerful merchants. These various forms of city-state governments
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
differed from the feudal system of the Middle Ages in that, the feudal system was
based on land ownership, while the power of the Renaissance city-states was money.
There is much that can be learned about how people’s religious beliefs can be abused
by powerful leaders to accomplish their own ends. If those powerful political leaders
also happen to be leaders of the church terrible abuses can occur, such as in the case
of the sale of indulgences.
When Martin Luther wrote a long letter to Pope Leo X defending his beliefs; he
challenged the Catholic Church’s teaching about the authority of the pope and the
basis by which people go to heaven. His ideas were so radical; Pope Leo called him
a heretic and excommunicated Luther from the church. Being condemned as a
heretic could result in death during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and
throughout the eighteenth century.
During the Renaissance, astronomy gave birth to modern science. Men like
Copernicus, who were brave enough to challenge the ancient Greek texts of Aristotle
and Ptolemy, and the teachings of the church that had adopted the Greek idea of an
earth-centered universe, paved the road for modern science. Then Galileo showed
through observational evidence that indeed the earth was not the center of the
universe. This idea that traditional teachings about the universe could be tested and
should have observational evidence to support them was radical, even heretical,
during the Renaissance, but it gave birth to modern science and not long after, the
scientific method.
Family discussion: Answers will vary.
The answer for these types of questions will be a reflection of your family’s
worldview and specifically what your family believes about truth and sources where
it may be found.
Lesson 12: The American Colonies Have No Say
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions: page 95
1. Lindsie and Evan found themselves back in North America in ------2. This part of the calendar story took place during the Colonial American period.
3. King George II adopted the Gregorian Calendar in the year 1752.
4. There are really three factors involved in understanding why the colonies continued
to use the Julian calendar another 170 years before adopting the Gregorian
calendar:
First, the English colonies had no say in determining the calendar they would use.
When King George issued a decree it was their job to obey as loyal British
subjects. England used the Julian calendar so the colonies used the Julian
calendar.
Second, when a Catholic pope made the reforms of the Gregorian calendar in
1582, an English monarch and parliament had been Protestants since the 1530’s.
When Pope Gregory XIII made his calendar reforms, the division between
Catholics and Protestants had been growing for decades, and before1582 had
resulted in actual wars. These wars, often called the wars of religion were being
fought in many parts of Europe.
Thirdly, during this period of history, political power, religion, and science were
still much intertwined. Though the pope was scientifically correct, for a
Protestant nation to admit that was difficult. Adopting his calendar changes could
easily be confused with acknowledging the pope’s authority and the religious
teaching of the Catholic Church.
5. A loyalist was someone who remained loyal to England even as the colonists were
fighting for independence.
Review: page 110
1. During the American Revolutionary War George Washington was the commanderin-chief of the Continental Army. Through his personality and strength of
character, he led his troops in a series of victories that resulted in the colonist
winning independence. Over the course of that hard fought war, he never failed
to remind the troops that he was fighting for the ideas that people should be free,
not enslaved to anyone, free to govern themselves and to enjoy the rights and
liberties of a free people.
2. Colonies founded on the basis of religious freedom included Plymouth,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
3. The founders of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maryland where all established
by those who had been persecuted for religious beliefs and opinions that differed
from those in authority. The Puritans of Massachusetts were persecuted by the
Anglican Church of England; the founders of Rhode Island were driven out by the
Puritans of Massachusetts because they criticized Puritan leadership and believed
in a separation of church and state for the purpose of religious liberty; Maryland
was founded for religious freedom for Catholics who had received terrible
persecution from the Anglican leadership in England.
4. The “city on the hill” comes from the writings of John Winthrop, one of the leaders
on the Massachusetts Bay colony who believed that they were a missionary
community that would provide a model, especially for the Anglican Church, of
true Christian life.
5. Tensions between the colonists and the British began to significantly grow in the
1750’s when England began to tax the colonists to pay for their war with the
French and the Indians. This was the beginning of a series of tax laws enacted by
the English Parliament without the colonists being represented. Colonists
protested with slogans like, “No taxation without representation.”
6. In an effort to show that the colonist’s revolution was a just war, the Declaration of
Independence was written as a message to the world describing the colonist’s
reasons for going to war against England. The justness of their cause was based
on the ideas that individual have rights and governments have obligations to treat
their citizens with respect and to protect their God given rights. If the government
does not protect these rights then the people have the right and responsibility to
change or end the government and establish one that will respect and protect the
rights of the people.
7. The idea of a social contract came from John Locke, one of the great thinkers from
the Enlightenment. He wrote that a social contract is what happens when rulers
rule with consent of the people they governed. Natural laws are another idea
talked about during the Enlightenment. However, this concept of a natural law
was not invented during the Enlightenment; this idea goes back to the Greeks and
the Romans. Natural laws dictate that people behave in certain ways, and the
most just and successful governments are organized according to the laws of
nature.
Chapter 13: The People Have a Voice
Reading Comprehension Discussion Questions:
1. In the year 1955, a resolution was brought before the United Nations to have its
members adopt a new calendar called the World Calendar. The White House sent
a letter to the United Nations stating that it would not support efforts to change
the Gregorian Calendar as these efforts would conflict with people’s religious
beliefs.
2. The rabbi, ---- and the ---- talking with President Eisenhower in the Oval Office
represented concerns of the Jewish, Islamic and Christians religions
3. In order to eliminate the changing of dates and days of the week for each New
Year’s calendar,