US History: Industry

Industry covered a lot of ground. We looked at the movement of people from farms to cities, as well as people moving from other countries to America. We also looked at the explosion of new inventions, the sudden abundance (and cheapness) of manufactured commodities and conflict between workers and owners. It was seismic cultural shift.

As it happens, one of my all time favorite movies explores all these themes (although in England) so we all watched North and South. How did I watch a 3+ hour Victorian epic with this constellation of ages? I fast forwarded the part before Milton and explained the essentials of what happened. I intended to fast forward more of the "grownups talking" parts, but as we (or I) got sucked in, I found I skipped less and less! Here is nice clip:



It's available on Instant Watch on Netflix, although be sure you get the BBC Victorian drama instead of the 1984 Civil War series!

I am also thinking of showing the older kids part of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which has many similar themes about class struggle as well as an elegant solution: "Between the Head and the Hands must be the Heart." I have to go back and see if there is any objectionable content, however.

I had asked the kids to come up with their own hands on activities, and they did: Klenda and Zorg demonstrated a monopoly. Klenda was selling oranges to Zorg at increasingly higher prices. Zorg, at a certain point, would refuse, and Klenda would wait until he got too hungry to refuse. Interestingly, as he began to run out of money (he was using his actual bank), she lowered her price just enough to so that he could afford it if he spent almost all of his money.

That was instructive to me because the only thing I had told them about a monopoly was that if only one person had an item, they could charge a higher price - everything else they deduced for themselves through experience. Also, I learned never to play Klenda at Monopoly!