In this unit, you will learn about how industrialization impacted different groups in society. This activity will allow you to experience a particular role through a manufacturing simulation. By doing so, you will develop an understanding and appreciation of both the positive and negative effects of industrialization (and specifically factory work) depending on your job and social class.

In this activity, you’re going to make greeting cards in an assembly line. Before getting started, watch a clip of assembly line production, such as this one from I Love Lucy, or you might look for the slightly more up-to-date Drake and Josh episode, “I Love Sushi.”

Once you’ve watched the clip, your teacher will assign you a role within a factory and will give you the opportunity to practice making one greeting card before starting. Once you’re ready, there will be three rounds of card making. Start by imagining the following:

The year is 1845 and you’ve moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, where there are a number of factories. Each factory pays about the same amount to its workers (about 37 cents per day) for a 13-hour shift with 2 breaks (30-minutes each) per day. But your pay can be docked for cards that do not meet quality control protocols. So, the more you mess up, the less pay you and your team will earn. Note that each card takes about 2 cents to make, and they are sold to the store owners for 4 cents, for a profit of 2 cents a card.

Round 1

You will have 4 minutes to complete as many cards as you can. Your group’s supervisor will check to see that the cards are completed successfully, and the factory owner is free to “encourage” you to work faster. After the 4 minutes are up, your group’s recorder will tally the results (the number of cards that were successfully completed). Then, the cards will be delivered to the store owners, and they will decide how many more they want and from which factory.

Before moving into Round 2, the factory owner and recorder should tally their profits from Round 1.

Round 2

The factory owners are excited about the orders, but the profit margins are low, so the assembly line workers need to move faster this time. For this round, the workers will only have 3 minutes to fill the order, with the supervisor and factory owner ensuring efficient work. The factory owner and supervisor may decide to create rules for their workers, such as no talking while they’re working. Once again, results will be tallied by the recorder, and products delivered. The store owners can choose whether to stick with one factory or another and whether or not to place another order. The recorders should share how much they made after Round 2, and see how this compares to other groups.

Round 3

The factory owner needs more money—they want to build a new house. This time, workers will only have 2 minutes to fill the order, with the supervisor and factory owner ensuring efficient work. The supervisor and factory owner can create even more rules for their workers for this round. Once they’re done, results will be tallied and products delivered. Recorders should calculate final profits.

Finish the activity with a class discussion:

• What did you experience during the simulation?
• Did you have positive emotions, negative emotions, or both?
• Was there anything particularly difficult or easy about this simulation?
• How do you think the workers of the Industrial Revolution felt about being on the assembly line?
• Why do you think business owners used this method of production?
• If you had a production business, would you use an assembly line? If not, what else could you do?

The Industrial Revolution was a massive transformation in how people worked and lived. But how did this change happen so rapidly and effectively? One answer is that industrializers made use of financial and trading institutions that had been developing for several hundred years to support growing global trade. The result was a new economic system, capitalism. Capitalism was capable of supporting a large body of laborers, a very wealthy class of bankers and factory-owners, and everyone in between. This is a brief history of the origin of that system.

This article will introduce you to capitalism by giving you a brief history and a working definition. You will need this information in order to analyze the transformations in labor and class discussed both in this unit and in later periods, using the production and distribution frame. Because capitalism is the economic system that most characterizes both the global economy and your local economy today, you should find this information particularly usable in the future.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What two elements does the author use to define capitalism at the beginning of this article?
2. What are credit and interest, and why did they become more common in this period?
3. What is a bank, and how did the idea of a bank get to Europe?
4. What are bonds, and how did the English government get involved in issuing bonds?
5. How did joint-stock companies help stimulate trade?
6. How did joint-stock companies help stimulate empire?
7. What two elements did capitalist individuals and joint-stock companies combine in order to produce things and make profits?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Throughout this article, the author points out that capitalism was a major innovation, but they also point out that some elements of capitalism had been around for a long time. Viewed through the production and distribution frame, what was new about capitalism around 1750?
2. You heard a lot about industrialization in the last unit, and you’ve encountered some information about reform movements in this unit. How do you think capitalism helped create a need for reform movements in the Long Nineteenth Century?

People throughout history have had a sense of social and economic “classes”: peasants, merchants, intellectuals, and land-owning nobles, for example. However, industrialization created a new way of dividing people into classes, including a wage-earning urban working class (the proletariat) and a middle class (the bourgeoisie). Their lives were quite different, and as people became aware of their social class and this difference, they began to struggle against each other for rights and for power.

Changes in social organization are, in many ways, harder to understand than industrialization or political revolutions. This article describes how these two trends helped to create new social classes in the Long Nineteenth Century, how people grew to feel like they were part of a class, and how some reformers tried to change how the working class lived. This will provide evidence for you to respond to the Unit Problem which asks about how industrialization and political transformations changed the way people worked, lived, and learned.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What are the two classes that were most impacted by industrialization and what was the impact?
2. What is class consciousness?
3. What does it mean to say that class is a social construct?
4. What was life like for the urban proletariat in the Long Nineteenth Century, according to the author?
5. What was life like for the bourgeoisie in the Long Nineteenth Century, according to the author?
6. What did Karl Marx believe was the natural relationship between the classes, and what did he argue would eventually happen?
7. How did the middle classes come to view the working classes, according to the author, and how did that shape their view of themselves?
8. How did the Marx’s ideas enter politics in this period?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. This author describes the rise of two new (or enlarged) social classes over the course of the Long Nineteenth Century, and argues that they had pretty different lives. Do you think reality was that simple? In other words did these two classes lead entirely different lives? If not, what might be missing from this analysis? If so, what evidence convinces you?

This quick skill-building activity is intended to help you understand what is being asked of you when you’re presented with historical prompts, particularly those you’ll encounter in assessment prompts such as document-based questions (DBQs) and long essay questions (LEQs).

In this activity, you will revisit the process of how to parse a prompt. Remember, parsing a prompt is the process of analyzing a string of words—that is, trying to figure out what something is saying and asking!

Take out the Question Parsing Tool and write down the following prompt at the top of the tool: In the period 600 B.C.E. to 600 C.E., different factors led to the emergence and spread of new religions and belief systems, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity. Develop an argument that evaluates how such factors led to the emergence or spread of one or more religions in this time period.

Now, follow the tool directions. Be prepared to discuss your answers with the class!

The long nineteenth century saw the decline of some exploitative labor systems. Serfdom, slavery, and indentured servitude gradually diminished—not everywhere, and not rapidly, but overall. In their place, industrialization and capitalism created a class of workers who were paid wages for their labor. Was this an improvement? How did these workers experience the new economy, and how did they react? Those are the questions we look at in this article.

This article will help you respond to the Unit Problem by introducing the rise of the proletariat as one of the key transformations in the ways people lived and worked during the long nineteenth century. It will also help you think more critically about the impact of industrialization as the most important change within the production and distribution frame narrative for this era.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the article, industrialists owned the means of production under industrial capitalism. What are the means of production, and how did controlling them make industrialists powerful?
2. Why did industrialists begin to hire women, and what were their experiences?
3. What were conditions like for workers overall?
4. What is the proletariat?
5. How, according to the author, did workers begin to organize into alliances like unions, and what were their principal tactics?
6. Why, according to the author, was there less union organizing in the colonies?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Does the author of this article seem more sympathetic towards workers or towards industrialists? Do you think their sympathies change how you understand this article?
2. This article defines and describes the proletariat class. Looking around your world today, do you think there is still a proletariat? If so, has it changed at all since the nineteenth century? How?

Living and working conditions were not good for most of the industrial working class. Homes were crowded and unsanitary, factories were dangerous, disease spread in packed cities, and children received little or no education. Reformers tried to improve these conditions by urging changes to laws and policy. Often, improvements were slow, but they laid the groundwork for later twentieth-century movements that had greater success.

This article connects the rise of the proletariat that you learned about in earlier articles to the conditions in which they lived and worked. It also explains the development of reformers who helped to improve these conditions. Together, this information should help you to respond to the Unit Problem: “How did the industrial revolution and political transformations contribute to changes in the way people worked, lived, and learned in the long nineteenth century, and how did all of these changes together help to create the world we live in today?”

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What inspired different groups of social reformers beginning in the United States and Britain, in the long nineteenth century?
2. How did Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s experiences as abolitionists lead them to become advocates for the rights of women?
3. What were some important outcomes of the investigation into the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company?
4. What did Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle reveal to many Americans, and what was one result of their outcry?
5. Jacob Riis wrote about terrible conditions in New York’s Tenements. To what reforms did his book contribute?
6. Stephen Smith connected unsanitary conditions to the spread of typhus and cholera. What kinds of reforms resulted from work like his?
7. What kinds of reforms, across this period, affected children’s lives in particular?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. This article identifies the United States (and in particular New York City) and Great Britain as centers for this type of social reforming in the Long Nineteenth Century. Why do you think people living in these places often led reform movements?

Ottilie Baader was the daughter of a factory worker. She received a few years of schooling, but she spent the majority of her life as an industrial worker. Her experiences inspired her to use her education to become a leader of labor reform movements.

Ottilie Baader’s biography provides unique insights into the life of a factory worker, giving you some perspective to frame your thinking about the Unit 3 problem: How was the Industrial Revolution experienced differently by people around the world? By using the production and distribution frame, you will be able to think critically about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution on smaller and larger scales.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. When was Ottilie Baader born, and how old was she when she began school? What did she learn there?
2. When did Ottilie begin working, and why? What were her days like at that age?
3. What was Ottilie’s job in the wool factory like?
4. Why did Ottilie become a labor organizer around 1871?
5. How does the artist use design to depict Baader’s life as a factory worker, but also her attempt to change her condition?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. What evidence does Ottilie Baader’s story provide about industrialization as an engine of change in people’s lives?
2. How does it support, extend, or challenge what you have already learned about the impact of the Industrial Revolution?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

In this lesson, you learn about child labor and the efforts made by the British Parliament to enact legislation to improve working conditions for factory workers—especially children. This activity will allow you to take on roles in a re-enactment of the parliamentary inquiry into child labor that took place during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. By doing so, you’ll be able to develop an understanding and appreciation for the impact of industrialization on children, as well as the significance of the legislation that improved their treatment and position as workers. In addition, you’ll research areas of the world where child labor is still used today. Armed with that information, you’ll craft legislation that might help change these practices today.

In this activity, you’ll read the Sadler Report (a report on child labor practices submitted to the British Parliament in 1832) and take on roles in a simulation to write and debate child labor laws. Then, you will then apply this knowledge to research and craft laws about the issue of child labor in the world today.

Part 1

First, think about any local or national laws that affect you as a minor (which is usually defined as anyone under the age of 18, but in some cases refers to those under the age of 16). Then, have a discussion about these laws and how they might protect minors.

Part 2

Now, you’re going to take part in a simulation that will help you better understand what child labor was like in the 1800s. This simulation will mimic a parliamentary hearing that occurred during this time in history. To mimic this hearing, you will each be assigned a role in society, and you’ll have to write legislation based on that role to present to Parliament for a vote.

Your teacher will either choose three students or ask for student volunteers to read the Sadler Report aloud. One student will play the role of Michael Sadler, the member of Parliament (MP) who led the inquiry into child labor. A second student will be assigned the role of Michael Crabtree, a factory worker who began working at the age of eight. A third student will be Thomas Bennett, a factory worker who supervised many of the children in the factory and whose own children worked at the factory. As these students read the excerpts from the Sadler Report, everyone else in the class will take notes based on the following roles: members of Parliament, child factory workers, adult factory workers whose children also work at the factory, factory owners, and union members. Think about the following questions as you listen to the reading of the Sadler Report and take notes on these roles.

1. If you think about what you’re hearing from the point of view of an MP, what do you think life is like for children who work in the factory? What might be the best form of legislation to pass to help child workers? Also, many MPs might have a financial stake in factories, so how might these MPs respond to legislation that might affect child labor in factories?
2. From the points of view of child and adult factory workers, what were the working conditions like in the factories? At what age did many children begin working in the factory? How long was their work day? What were the punishments for poor work or falling asleep on the job?
3. If you were a factory owner, why would the hiring of child labor and the long working hours be necessary?
4. Finally, from the perspective of a union member, how might a union and collective bargaining benefit you and other workers like you?

Part 3

Once the reading of the Sadler Report is done and everyone has taken notes, your teacher will break the class into five groups with four or five students in each group, and assign each group one of the roles (child factory workers, adult factory workers, factory owners, union members, and MPs).

Each group will then discuss the notes you all took during the reading of the report and use the worksheet to craft one or two pieces of legislation to protect child laborers. However, you’ll also be writing the legislation based on your assigned role. Think about how your assigned role would write legislation to protect child laborers. For example, if you are a factory worker, you would obviously want laws to help improve working conditions. But if you are a factory owner, you might want to create legislation with minimal protections for laborers because more regulation generally means less profit.

Use the guiding questions on the worksheet to help you craft your legislation. Each piece of proposed legislation should have a brief introductory paragraph outlining the reforms that should be made. After this introduction, your group should craft a bulleted list of proposed legislation that would help your particular group. Your group should be able to justify your proposed legislation with evidence from the Sadler Report.

Next, you’ll arrange the class to resemble a Parliamentary debate. The MPs will sit at the front of the class. The workers and union members will sit on one side of the room facing the MPs, and the factory owners will sit on the other side of the room, also facing the MPs. Each group will then present their proposed laws to the MPs. The members of Parliament are allowed to ask questions of each group. Then, the MPs will present their laws to the class.

Once all groups have presented their laws, the MPs will vote on which law or laws will be passed. The MPs will also have to explain their reasoning for choosing these laws. Your teacher will then present the legislation that was actually passed by Parliament after the British government called for a more official inquiry into child labor practices with witnesses testifying under oath.

Part 4

Now, your teacher will break the class into new groups to research areas of the world that continue to use child labor. A good place for you to begin your research is the website Our World in Data. This research should include information on the following topics:

• What nations or regions of the world still have a high incidence of child labor?
• What is the age range for these child workers?
• What types of work are these children performing?
• Are these children paid for their work? If so, is it the same as adult workers? If not, why aren’t they being paid for their work?
• Why is child labor still used in these parts of the world?

Once your group has completed your research, you’ll craft two or three laws that might help reform these child labor practices. Once all groups are done, you’ll present these laws to the class. Finally, you’ll vote on the best laws and have a discussion about why these laws were chosen as the best. To extend this activity, your teacher might have you send these laws to your state representatives to inform them of these practices and ask what they can do to help remedy this situation globally.

In this activity, you’ll use the historical thinking practice of contextualization to understand how and why ideas about childhood began to change during this period. People today generally think of childhood as a distinct stage in the development process to becoming adults; however, this is actually a relatively recent way of thinking. By contextualizing this period, you’ll understand why these changes took place in the nineteenth century, and how they prompted industrial societies to see child labor as problematic in a way previous societies had not.

Claim testing, causation
You will use your claim-testing skills to determine the best information to use to answer the prompt and contextualize the changes that occurred regarding child labor. You’ll also examine the time period in which these changes occurred to determine what historical events or processes caused these reforms to take place.

In this activity, you will use the event cards to complete the Contextualization Tool, which is included in the Contextualization – Child Labor worksheet. Then, you’ll use the information from your completed tools and evidence from the article “Child Labor” to write a response that answers the following question:

What historical context related to the time period, location, and culture changed people’s ideas about childhood and child labor in industrialized societies?

First, look at the pictures and read the passage below:

Imagine you’re 8 years old and living in the nineteenth century. But instead of getting up and getting ready to go to school, you are getting up to go to work. At 4:00 AM! If you were a boy, there was a good chance you were headed off to a coal mine, where you would put in 13 hours or more. Coal mines were extremely dangerous and unhealthy with cramped passages, toxic coal dust, and explosive coal gas. And if you were a boy or girl who lived in the city, you were probably headed off to a textile (clothing) factory, also very unhealthy and dangerous. Now, that might sound awful—and to be clear, it was—but before the second half of the nineteenth century, the concept of “childhood” didn’t really exist. Children were expected to contribute to the economic well- being of the family. For most of human history, that meant helping secure and produce food. After the Industrial Revolution, it also meant mine or factory work to earn a meager wage for your family, but a nice profit for the mine or factory owner.

Next, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Contextualization – Child Labor worksheet. By now you should be becoming more familiar with the Contextualization Tool. Remember that contextualization is often about situating an event in its temporal (time period), spatial (location), and cultural setting. Also, remember to follow all the worksheet’s directions.

First, write the dates and locations where child labor occurred in industrialized countries (c. 1750 to c. 1914, mainly in Europe and North America), and then divide the event cards into broad and narrow context.

You’ll share your broad and narrow context decisions with the class by placing your event cards on the funnel on the board. Be sure to share your reasons for categorizing your event cards as broad or narrow context. You’re allowed to move any event cards that you think were placed incorrectly by the prior group, but you must provide justification for doing so. After your group has moved any of the previous group’s event cards, place two of your event cards that are not already up on the funnel and explain your reasoning to the class. Then, return to your group to answer the remaining questions on the tool.

Finally, use your descriptions of broad and narrow context from the tool and information from the “Child Labor” article to write a one-paragraph response to the question posed at the beginning of this activity:

What historical context related to the time period, location, and culture changed people’s ideas about childhood and child labor in industrialized societies?

Your teacher will collect your completed worksheets and responses to assess how your contextualization skills are progressing.

Children worked in pre-industrial societies, but it was usually work done in their home and with their families. Industrialization, however, created a demand for cheap labor, and children seemed to fit that need quite well! And for parents who needed the money, it was an addition to household income. Slowly, some reformers began to demonstrate that children and society suffered from child labor. They began to demand reforms. But these reforms, as usual, had their limits.

This article demonstrates changes in the experiences of childhood, and attitudes towards children, in some societies during the long nineteenth century. This is one of the social transformations described in the Unit Problem, and this article will help you to respond to that problem. The actions of reformers will also help you to understand the shape and limits of networks of reformers in this era as you evaluate the networks frame narrative that has been given to you.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the author, what was Lewis Hines’ contribution to the child labor reform movement?
2. Why did formal child labor increase, especially in Europe and the United States, during this era?
3. What was the moral objection to child labor?
4. How and why did labor unions argue against child labor?
5. Once child labor was outlawed, what did children usually end up doing?
6. How did reforms in child labor impact areas in colonized Asia and Latin America?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. What do Matthew Crabtree’s testimony and Louis-René Villermé’s brief report tell you about child labor? Do they give you enough evidence to make an argument against child labor? If you were making an argument to outlaw child labor, is there any additional evidence you would want?
2. What does this article tell us about how reformers communicated to the public? What networks and communication technologies did reformers use to spread information about child labor conditions?

In this unit, you’re examining changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, such as the rise of the proletariat class. This activity will introduce you to some economic theories that gained popular support amid industrial transformations in the late nineteenth century. The simulation will help you make foundational comparisons between economic systems.

Causation, comparison
You’ll be drawing comparisons between the principles and practices of economic systems. While considering the benefits and drawbacks of each system from the point of view of different groups in society, you’ll also be establishing causes for socialist-inspired reform movements and socialist revolutions.

In this activity, you will play two separate rounds of rock-paper-scissors. This quick simulation should help you reflect on principles of equity and fairness, as well as help you understand capitalism and socialism.

Round 1

You’re going to play rock-paper-scissors. Your teacher is going to give you some treats to use as part of the game (don’t eat them until your teacher tells you to!), and for each game you lose, you have to give your competitor one of your treats. If you win, you can collect one treat. However, if you run out of treats, you have to sit down. Start by pairing up with someone in your class and continue to play until your teacher tells you to stop.

Once time is up, as a class, tally how many of you ended up with lower, middle, and upper ranges of treats. Now, turn your treats into your teacher, take a couple of minutes to reflect, and answer the Round 1 questions on the Economic Systems Simulation Worksheet.

Round 2

Your teacher will redistribute the treats. This round, you can choose to keep your treats and have them later, or, you can play another round of the game and try to get more. Your teacher will start the timer, and once time is up, again tally how many in the class ended up with lower, middle, and upper ranges of treats, including anyone who chose not to play. Then, answer the Round 2 reflection questions on the worksheet. Be ready to discuss your answers with the class.

After you’ve had a class discussion, complete all of Part 3 of the worksheet. Again, be prepared to discuss your responses with the class. Make sure to ask questions if you are at all confused about the differences between capitalism and socialism, but by now, you’ve probably figured it all out! Your teacher will collect your worksheet to review your answers.

Capitalism and socialism are the two principal economic theories—and systems—that operate in our world today. In this video, John Green describes how they came into being and what principles that are important to each system.

This video is a review of capitalism, but you will learn a few new ideas and make some new connections. More importantly, it will introduce you to socialism, an economic system that we have been hinting at but haven’t really explored until now. These two systems will form the backdrop for our exploration of production and distribution for the rest of this course, so you should learn them well now! (That means that this information will help you to evaluate the production and distribution frame narrative for this course).

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you want the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video.

1. How, according to John Green, did industrial capitalism change production?
2. What are some features of capitalism as a cultural system, according to John Green?
3. What were some short-comings of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century?
4. Where did socialism begin as an “intellectual construct”, according to John Green?
5. What did revolutionary socialist Auguste Blanqui believe?
6. What were Karl Marx’s main arguments as presented in this video?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. John Green says that Karl Marx raises the question of whether capitalism is natural and good, or whether we need to check and control it for our own well-being. What kind of evidence would we use to answer that question for our own society?

This activity asks you to practice your claim- and counterclaim-making skills. This will help you improve your ability to make strong, evidence-backed claims, using what you have learned about the key features of capitalism and socialism.

Claim testing
In many ways, claim testing is really shorthand for “making and testing claims.” In this activity, you will practice your claim-making skills.

This is a quick activity where you’re asked to make two claims and one counterclaim about which economic system is most beneficial to the greatest number of people.

Take out the Making Claims – Capitalism and Socialism worksheet and come up with two claims about why the economic system you selected benefits the most people. Using course materials, find two pieces of evidence that support each of your claims. Once you’ve written your two claims and provided supporting evidence, write one counterclaim that relates to one of your claims. You should also find two pieces of evidence to back up your counterclaim.

Be prepared to share your claims at the end of the class. Note that most if not all of these claims are comparative claims. Historical claims often relate to historical thinking practices such as causation, CCOT, and comparison. You should consider the types of historical claims you want to make when you respond to a particular type of historical question.