MTEL History/Social Science (73) cheat sheet

Chronology: BCE dates count backward; 1 BCE precedes 1 CE and there is no year 0. Century X spans years (X−1)01 to X00, so the 18th century is 1701–1800.

A primary source is produced during the period under study by a participant or witness; a secondary source interprets or synthesizes primary evidence after the fact. A textbook remains secondary even when it quotes documents.

Corroboration: confidence rises when independent sources agree; disagreement requires checking provenance, purpose, audience, and date before judging reliability.

Contextualization means interpreting a source within its own political, social, and economic setting before applying present-day standards.

Periodization is a constructed framework; a valid period label should mark a durable change in politics, economy, society, or culture, not merely a single event.

Causation requires distinguishing long-term structural causes, short-term triggers, and enabling conditions; correlation alone does not establish causation.

Continuity and change should be compared across political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions; change can be uneven across regions and social groups.

Point of view: a source may be reliable about what it observed yet unreliable about why an event happened, so separate factual observation from interpretation.

Historical empathy explains past choices using the beliefs and constraints of the time without endorsing those choices.

Neolithic Revolution (~10,000 BCE): domestication of plants and animals led to settled agriculture, food surplus, occupational specialization, and social hierarchy.

River valley civilizations: Mesopotamia (Tigris–Euphrates), Egypt (Nile), Indus (Indus), and China (Yellow River); irrigation supported cities and centralized authority.

Classical empires: Han China, Maurya and Gupta India, Persia, Greece, and Rome used roads, coinage, law, and bureaucracy to integrate large territories.

Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade spread goods, Buddhism, Islam, technologies, and diseases; caravan routes and monsoon winds linked Afro-Eurasia.

Islam emerged in 7th-century Arabia; by 750 CE caliphates stretched from Iberia to Central Asia and preserved or translated Greek and Indian learning.

The Renaissance (14th–17th centuries) revived classical learning and humanism; printing after c. 1450 accelerated literacy and challenged papal authority.

The Columbian Exchange after 1492 moved crops, livestock, people, and pathogens between hemispheres; Old World diseases devastated Indigenous populations.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1750 with coal, steam, textiles, and factories; urbanization and wage labor expanded unevenly.

World Wars: WWI (1914–1918) and WWII (1939–1945); postwar decolonization and the Cold War (1947–1991) divided much of the world into US-led and Soviet-led blocs.

Colonial regions: New England (fishing, towns, Puritan influence), the Middle Colonies (diverse, grain), and the Southern Colonies (plantation staple crops, enslaved labor).

The 1776 Declaration invoked natural rights and consent of the governed; the 1781 Articles of Confederation created a central government without tax or commerce power.

The 1787 Constitution created a bicameral Congress, an Electoral College, and three branches; the 1791 Bill of Rights added the first ten amendments.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established judicial review; McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) upheld implied powers and federal supremacy.

The Civil War (1861–1865) centered on slavery and secession; the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (1865–1870) reshaped citizenship.

Reconstruction (1865–1877) expanded federal rights; the Compromise of 1877 ended it, followed by Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement.

The Gilded Age brought railroads, steel, oil, immigration, and inequality; Progressive reforms addressed labor, antitrust, and suffrage, including the 19th Amendment (1920).

The New Deal (1933–1939) expanded federal regulation and welfare through Social Security, the SEC, the FDIC, and labor protections; WWII mobilization ended the Depression.

Civil Rights Movement milestones: Brown v. Board (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956), Civil Rights Act (1964), and Voting Rights Act (1965).

Latitude measures north–south distance from the equator (0°) to the poles (90°); longitude measures east–west from the Prime Meridian (0°) to 180°.

Map scale: a representative fraction of 1:50,000 means one map unit equals 50,000 of the same units on the ground; large-scale maps show small areas in greater detail.

Projections distort shape, area, distance, or direction; Mercator preserves direction but exaggerates area at high latitudes.

Plate boundaries: divergent boundaries create spreading ridges; convergent boundaries produce subduction, mountains, and volcanoes; transform boundaries generate lateral faulting and earthquakes.

Climate controls include latitude, altitude, ocean currents, continentality, and prevailing winds; rain shadows create dry leeward slopes.

Population density equals population divided by land area; natural increase rate equals birth rate minus death rate per 1,000; doubling time is approximately 70 divided by annual growth rate (%).

Demographic transition: high birth and death rates give way to falling death rates, then falling birth rates, then low rates; stage two produces rapid population growth.

Urban land use includes central business districts, residential zones, industry, and edge cities; suburbanization and gentrification reshape population and housing.

Economic geography explains regional specialization through comparative advantage, resource distribution, trade routes, and agglomeration.

Core constitutional principles include popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, republicanism, and individual rights.

Federalism: delegated powers belong to the national government, reserved powers to the states under the 10th Amendment, and concurrent powers are shared; the Supremacy Clause makes federal law supreme.

Checks and balances: the president vetoes Congress; Congress overrides vetoes by two-thirds, confirms appointments, and impeaches; courts exercise judicial review; the Senate ratifies treaties.

Bill of Rights protections include 1st Amendment speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition; 4th Amendment search rules; 5th Amendment self-incrimination and due process; 6th Amendment counsel; 8th Amendment cruel punishment.

The incorporation doctrine applies most Bill of Rights protections to states through the 14th Amendment due process clause, as in Gitlow (1925) and Gideon (1963).

Electoral College: 538 electors, 270 needed to win; the House has 435 apportioned seats, the Senate 100 seats, and the census reapportions House seats.

Judicial review allows courts to invalidate laws violating the Constitution; precedent and stare decisis guide common law but can be overturned.

Civic participation includes voting, jury service, petitioning, campaigning, and interest-group activity; political parties organize coalitions and mobilize voters.

The public policy cycle includes agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation.

Scarcity forces choices; opportunity cost is the value of the best forgone alternative, while sunk costs should not affect forward-looking decisions.

Demand curves slope downward and supply curves slope upward; equilibrium price clears the market, with surpluses pushing price down and shortages pushing it up.

Elasticity measures quantity responsiveness to price or income; elastic demand means a large quantity change, while necessity goods tend to be inelastic.

GDP = C + I + G + (X − M); real GDP adjusts for inflation, and GDP excludes household production and informal activity.

Inflation is a sustained rise in the price level; CPI tracks a market basket; real interest ≈ nominal interest − inflation, and unexpected inflation hurts creditors.

Unemployment types are frictional, structural, and cyclical; unemployment rate = unemployed ÷ labor force × 100, and discouraged workers leave the labor force.

Fiscal policy uses government spending and taxation; monetary policy uses central-bank control of money supply and interest rates; expansionary policies aim to raise aggregate demand.

Comparative advantage means producing a good at lower opportunity cost; trade raises total output even when one country has an absolute advantage in everything.

Market structures: perfect competition (many firms, homogeneous goods), monopoly (one firm), oligopoly (few firms), and monopolistic competition (differentiated products).