Students asked about video assigned for homework on previous day. Short time for any questions and comments.
Q. What did the video say is a speculative bubble? Scaffold: Think of one of yesterday's words: speculation, which is a risky bet that one makes to achieve quick profits. What does any bubble do, like when you blow a bubble with some gum?
Review: What were some of the causes of the Great Depression? (End of WWI, farm prices drop, easy credit for consumers, inequality, stock market bubble.)
Project graph on the white board:
Q. What did the video say is a speculative bubble? Scaffold: Think of one of yesterday's words: speculation, which is a risky bet that one makes to achieve quick profits. What does any bubble do, like when you blow a bubble with some gum?
Review: What were some of the causes of the Great Depression? (End of WWI, farm prices drop, easy credit for consumers, inequality, stock market bubble.)
Project graph on the white board:
Source: Procedings of the National Academies of Science of the United States of America
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2765209/
Explanation of graph
GDP is a measure of the size of the overall economy. When it is above the 0 line it is growing. When it is below the line it is shrinking. Unemployment is measured in % on the left side of the graph, and Life Expectancy is measured in years indicated on the right side of the graph. Something to note however is that although it says unemployment peaked to just under 25% overall in 1932, for black people the unemployment rate was over 50% due to the intense racism and unequal opportunity during the period. As one black man named Clifford Burke noted: "The Negro was born in depression. It didn't mean too much to him, The Great American Depression. ... The best he could be is a janitor or a porter or shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man."
Q. What can this graph tell us about the Great Depression? Key takeaways to draw out: close correlation between drop in GDP after crash and onset of depression with sharp rise in unemployment. Also, the lag in time between initial drop in GDP and continued rise in life expectancy until 1933, which begins major decline over three years to low of 58 1/2 in 1936 a drop of approximately 5 years reached between 1933-1936. Why do you think GDP inversely tracks unemployment, which means they are like a mirror image or reverse copy of each other, but there is a lag in the drop in life expectancy?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2765209/
Explanation of graph
GDP is a measure of the size of the overall economy. When it is above the 0 line it is growing. When it is below the line it is shrinking. Unemployment is measured in % on the left side of the graph, and Life Expectancy is measured in years indicated on the right side of the graph. Something to note however is that although it says unemployment peaked to just under 25% overall in 1932, for black people the unemployment rate was over 50% due to the intense racism and unequal opportunity during the period. As one black man named Clifford Burke noted: "The Negro was born in depression. It didn't mean too much to him, The Great American Depression. ... The best he could be is a janitor or a porter or shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man."
Q. What can this graph tell us about the Great Depression? Key takeaways to draw out: close correlation between drop in GDP after crash and onset of depression with sharp rise in unemployment. Also, the lag in time between initial drop in GDP and continued rise in life expectancy until 1933, which begins major decline over three years to low of 58 1/2 in 1936 a drop of approximately 5 years reached between 1933-1936. Why do you think GDP inversely tracks unemployment, which means they are like a mirror image or reverse copy of each other, but there is a lag in the drop in life expectancy?
What do these photographs tell us about what people living during the Great Depression wanted? Who knows what "Stalked by Stork" is referring to?
Short lecture:
The Depression brought hardship, homelessness and hunger to millions of people in this country. It's effects were felt both in cities and in rural areas. In urban areas, many lived in shantytowns often derisively called Hoovervilles after President Hoover that consisted of temporary shacks, providing the only shelter people could afford. The shantytown is not only a thing of the past: today there are slums of shantytowns in within and on the outsides of cities all over the world, both in Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
Short lecture:
The Depression brought hardship, homelessness and hunger to millions of people in this country. It's effects were felt both in cities and in rural areas. In urban areas, many lived in shantytowns often derisively called Hoovervilles after President Hoover that consisted of temporary shacks, providing the only shelter people could afford. The shantytown is not only a thing of the past: today there are slums of shantytowns in within and on the outsides of cities all over the world, both in Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
"Hooverville" in Seattle, 1937
South Africa, 2001 image: http://www.jimhubbardphoto.com/
Every day the poor dug through garbage cans or begged. South kitchens, like the one whose image we saw yesterday, sprang up throughout the country. One man described the situation:
Student read aloud projected on white board:
"Two or three blocks along Times Square, you'd see these men, silent, shuffling along in a line. Getting this handout of coffee and doughnuts, dealt out from great trucks. ... I'd see that flat, opaque, expressionless look which spelled, for me, human disaster. Men ... who had responsible positions. Who had lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their families ...They were destroyed men."
That excerpt is taken from the book Hard Times: An Oral History of The Great Depression by Studs Terkel
Projected on white board: both Spanish and English edition book covers of Hard Times
Student read aloud projected on white board:
"Two or three blocks along Times Square, you'd see these men, silent, shuffling along in a line. Getting this handout of coffee and doughnuts, dealt out from great trucks. ... I'd see that flat, opaque, expressionless look which spelled, for me, human disaster. Men ... who had responsible positions. Who had lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their families ...They were destroyed men."
That excerpt is taken from the book Hard Times: An Oral History of The Great Depression by Studs Terkel
Projected on white board: both Spanish and English edition book covers of Hard Times
Have each student count 1, 2 or 3 out loud to determine who gets what excerpts from Hard Times. All 1s get Dorothe, 2s get John and 3s get Kitty. Each student will take turns reading their protagonist, while their partner speaks the question from Turkel. When finished the other student will read and their partner will read Turkel's question. At the end, they will discuss among each other what they thought of the passages, what if any feelings were evoked, and whether they can relate today to these people and their past struggles.
After 10 minutes of partnered students reading each other their interviews, and then responding, class discussion begins. Some prompt questions:
What was it that insulated Kitty McCulloch from the worst effects of the Depression?
What do you make of the mother in John Beecher's story? Why do you think she threw the milk against the wall instead of giving it to her baby?
In Dorothe's recollection, how does she compare her childhood with those of her children growing up in the Depression? In the history of the United States, is it generally true that subsequent generations have higher standards of living than the ones preceding them? Are there other exceptions?
What was it that insulated Kitty McCulloch from the worst effects of the Depression?
What do you make of the mother in John Beecher's story? Why do you think she threw the milk against the wall instead of giving it to her baby?
In Dorothe's recollection, how does she compare her childhood with those of her children growing up in the Depression? In the history of the United States, is it generally true that subsequent generations have higher standards of living than the ones preceding them? Are there other exceptions?
Short lecture
The Dust Bowl
Life in rural areas was very difficult, but unlike those who lived in cities, people out in the country might have been able to grow food for sustenance - to live. With high debts and low crop prices however, many farmers would lose their land during the Depression. About 400,000 farms were foreclosed on between 1929 and 1932.
Compounding the socioeconomic problems brought on by the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, a severe drought struck the United States interior during the early 1930s. Poor farming practices in the decade before including inefficient and wasteful plowing techniques had destroyed the prairie grasses that served to keep the top soil down on the ground. Eventually, wind storms would blow dust from the middle of the country many miles East, even as far as New England. By the end of the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of migrants referred to as Okies (originally after Oklahomans but used pejoratively, as a slur, against all those who moved from ruined farmland) would try to find work elsewhere.
Map projected on white board
Q. Where were people moving to escape the Dust Bowl?
The Dust Bowl
Life in rural areas was very difficult, but unlike those who lived in cities, people out in the country might have been able to grow food for sustenance - to live. With high debts and low crop prices however, many farmers would lose their land during the Depression. About 400,000 farms were foreclosed on between 1929 and 1932.
Compounding the socioeconomic problems brought on by the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, a severe drought struck the United States interior during the early 1930s. Poor farming practices in the decade before including inefficient and wasteful plowing techniques had destroyed the prairie grasses that served to keep the top soil down on the ground. Eventually, wind storms would blow dust from the middle of the country many miles East, even as far as New England. By the end of the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of migrants referred to as Okies (originally after Oklahomans but used pejoratively, as a slur, against all those who moved from ruined farmland) would try to find work elsewhere.
Map projected on white board
Q. Where were people moving to escape the Dust Bowl?
In her oral history with Studs Turkel, Dorothe Bernstein mentioned the long-term unemployed men who would travel along the railroads in search of work or simply food. They would establish a loose community and shared a hidden language that helped them to navigate the difficult and sometimes dangerous journeys they went on. Eventually a set of symbols would be used by them to communicate messages to each other: where to get food, where to seek shelter, what to avoid, etc.
Projected on white board:
Projected on white board:
Homework, A & B:
A) 1. Read short excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Link:
http://home.earthlink.net/~copaceticcomicsco/GrapesofWrath.html
A) 2. Come tomorrow prepared to discuss both the mood of the reading created by the author, and the speaker's attitude toward "the great owners."
Words to make sure are understood before they read: serf, dispossessed, goaded, Hooverville (review), accumulates, repression.
Check In:
B) Finalize both your additional two questions for the interview and make a decision as to what person over 70 you are going to interview. It does not have to be your grandparent or a relative. You might be surprised how many people will be happy to speak with you and give you great answers.
A) 1. Read short excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Link:
http://home.earthlink.net/~copaceticcomicsco/GrapesofWrath.html
A) 2. Come tomorrow prepared to discuss both the mood of the reading created by the author, and the speaker's attitude toward "the great owners."
Words to make sure are understood before they read: serf, dispossessed, goaded, Hooverville (review), accumulates, repression.
Check In:
B) Finalize both your additional two questions for the interview and make a decision as to what person over 70 you are going to interview. It does not have to be your grandparent or a relative. You might be surprised how many people will be happy to speak with you and give you great answers.