Industrialization and political revolutions combined in unexpected ways. Together, they created the potential for liberation and better working conditions. Yet not everybody could enjoy these benefits, and indeed, the world became a more complicated and difficult place for many. Reformers sought to expand the benefits of new, modern living to new communities. But in many cases, the promise of reform wasn’t realized for a long time, and in some cases it never succeeded.

This video introduces the transformations in how people worked and in social relations that resulted from industrialization, political liberalism, and nationalism. Labor, gender, and childhood changed in this era, and this video examines several reformers who tried to channel these changes into progress. This video will help you respond to the Unit 4 Problem: “How did the industrial revolution and political transformations contribute to transformations 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

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

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video.

1. What are three categories of identity and relationships that we take for granted today, and which were shaped by this era?
2. What social revolution in gender does the video feature, and what does the data tell us about its success or failure?
3. What roles did women play in the abolition of slavery in the Atlantic world?
4. What were some questions social reformers raised about the status and activities of children, according to the video?
5. What is a working class, or proletariat?
6. Did the abolition of slavery create a fair system of labor in the British Caribbean?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Pretend you were a reformer in the Long Nineteenth Century who wanted to fix one of the categories addressed in this video. What are some arguments you would make for capitalism? What about for socialism?
2. Did the reform movements of the Long Nineteenth Century resolve inequalities and injustices in the categories of race, class, and gender? If not, where do you see them in your society?

Changes to society are harder to view in the historical record than political or economic changes, but they are equally meaningful. In the Long Nineteenth Century, people’s identities and their relationships to each other shifted, often quite dramatically. Reformers tried to direct these shifts so that they benefited people. They fought for an end to the institution of slavery and better conditions for workers. They also sought to extend rights and improve conditions for women and children. However, these reforms were not always successful at improving lives, and reforms often did not get implemented for everyone.

This overview will introduce you to the core idea of identity and society through which scholars often understand how historical transformation affected people’s lived experiences. It will also familiarize you with two major sets of transformations in identity and society—labor, and childhood and gender—that you will need to understand in order to respond to the era problem.

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 is society?
2. How does the author define identity, and what does he mean when he says identity is not fixed?
3. What was the abolitionist movement, and did it succeed?
4. What kinds of reforms were labor reformers working for, according to the article?
5. According to the author, had political revolutions automatically led to expanded political rights for women?
6. Why did reformers want children to go to school, according to the author?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. How do you think the author of this article views the reformers discussed in this article? Do you think that affected how he wrote the article? Why or why not?

Modernity brought about three major transformations in relationships and identity in this period—labor, childhood, and gender. Or rather, people brought about these transformations as they created the modern world. Those people sought to improve living and working conditions and to shape the way society operated. Alone, they would have had little impact. Tied together in networks, however, they created significant change.

The purpose of this video is to explore changes in labor and society through the kinds of questions that the three frames make available to you. In particular, we will look at the spread and development of these changes through the work of networks of reformers.

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. What, according to this video, was the earliest international reform network concerned with?
2. What kinds of networks developed to help improve conditions and rights for wage-earners?
3. What earlier networks contributed to the struggle for women’s rights?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Networks are ways that humans connect and relate to each other, sharing ideas as well as things, often across societies. Why do you think international networks were so important to the work of reformers in this period? Why wasn’t it enough for reform to happen within each country or society individually?

This repeated activity should help you become familiar with a process for understanding unfamiliar words anytime you encounter them in the course.

Take out your vocab tracker and be sure to record new and unfamiliar words on it according to your teacher’s instructions.

Understanding vocabulary helps you access course content, become a better reader, and a better communicator. This word wall activity will help you begin to learn some of the key vocabulary from Unit 4.

In this activity, you’ll work with your class to create a word wall using the Unit 4 vocabulary.

Your teacher will assign a vocab card to each of you. Once you get yours, take a few minutes to look it up in the Unit 4 Vocab Guide and then examine the unit itself (click around and quickly skim the content) to see where in the unit your word might be most applicable. Then, add as many antonyms to your card for your word as possible. Your teacher will give you a limited amount of time to write antonyms. Then, the people with the most correct antonyms will put their words on the word wall first.

Your teacher may add some fun twists to this assignment, so be sure to listen closely for directions!

Each unit of the WHP course is guided by a Unit Problem. You’re learning a ton of stuff in this and every other unit, and it can be hard to keep track of what’s most important. It would be pretty easy to become obsessed with a detail that, although interesting and a great way to impress people at a party is relatively unimportant. This activity will help you stay focused! You’ll think about the Unit Problems, and then you’ll respond to them in writing. By keeping track of how your thinking changes throughout each unit, you’ll see how much you’re learning as you move through each section of the course.

Use the Unit 4 Problem Notebook Worksheet to respond to the prompts as best as you can. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

Access “Share of the Population Living in Extreme Poverty”

This activity is the first of two designed to guide you through the steps of making predictions with data. The following process will help you learn to identify the shapes of graphs and give you some practice with predictions. Evaluating these sample predictions will provide you with models for coming up with your own in the next Making a Prediction activity. The ability to evaluate data is an important skill—for history class and in life—because it enables us to use and apply the information we encounter in our world every day.

In this three-step activity, you will begin by examining a simple line graph and completing a matching activity. Next, you will evaluate several example predictions about the future of poverty and identify the different components of a prediction.

Step 1

There are two main practices that can help you make predictions using charts. First, you can examine the scale and shape of the chart itself to make predictions about how the shape will change if you extend the scale. Second, you need historical information about the chart’s topic. This information— gained from research besides the chart—will help you predict how the trends on the chart might change or stay the same.

Begin by looking over the Making a Prediction Part 1 worksheet. Look at the “How Funny YouTube Videos Are” chart. Based on the chart, as well as your own experience, predict what the line would look like if the timeline were extended to 8:00 a.m. Draw the extended graph. Be prepared to explain why your prediction is correct.

Step 2

Your teacher will place you into small groups to work on Step 2 of the Making a Prediction Part 1 worksheet. With your group, match the graph shapes with the given descriptions. (Note: Some descriptions match more than one chart.) Be prepared to share your responses with the class.

Step 3

Remain in your group to complete Step 3 of the Making a Prediction Part 1 worksheet, which shows a line graph as well as several predictions based on it.

With your group, evaluate the given predictions about the future of poverty. Identify and cross out any predictions you think are very unlikely to occur. Discuss and vote on which of the remaining predictions you think is most likely to take place. Next, work with your group to complete the three discussion questions and your explanations.

Open these five charts in your internet browser:

• Chart 1 – Child Labor in Italy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour-in-italy
• Chart 2 – Incidence of Child Labor in the UK: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour-in-the-uk?time=1851..1911
• Chart 3 – Incidence of Child Labor in the United States: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour-in-the-united-states-1890-1930?time=1890..1930
• Chart 4 – Global Incidence of Child Labor, 2000 to 2012: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/02/ourworldindata_child-labor-global-post-2000.png
• Chart 5 – Share of Children in Employment, 1994–2016: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour?tab=map&year=latest

Children have historically been an important part of the workforce all around the world. During the Industrial Revolution, reform movements sprung up to regulate child labor. In the twentieth century, many countries took steps to drastically decrease the number of working children. However, today, there are still about 265 million children working. The charts in this exploration examine the entangled histories of industrialization and child labor, our less-than-perfect present, and geographical differences in child labor.

Demographers and data researchers work hard to collect good data. It’s tough work—not as tough as children working in a coal mine, but still. Despite their efforts, we rarely have complete data for anything. This is particularly obvious in the case of child labor data. You’ll need to learn to see gaps in data—sometimes what’s missing can tell you just as much as what’s there. The charts in this data exploration will help you evaluate changes in child labor over time, but they will also help you evaluate how useful incomplete data can be for understanding historical and future trends.

Your teacher will let you know if there is an overall question to hold in your mind as complete your three reads of the article.

Preview – What Do We Have?

Fill out the Read 1: Preview section of the Three Close Reads for Data worksheet as you complete your first close read. Remember—this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – What Do We Know?

For this read, your goal is to understand the “story” the chart is telling by identifying its arguments and evaluating its presentation of data. You will decide what claim or claims this chart is making and what evidence is being used to support those claims. Do you think the data is reliable? Is the chart misleading in any way? By the end of this read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How are Charts 1, 2, and 3 similar? How are they different?
2. Chart 1 shows a spike, when child labor in Italy started rising again instead of falling. Why do you think this spike occurred? Why don’t we see a similar spike in the UK or US?
3. Charts 1 and 3 show really dramatic decreases in child labor. Why does Chart 2 not show this sort of dramatic decline?
4. What does Chart 4 measure? Why do you think the percentages are so much higher than at the ends of Charts 1, 2, and 3?
5. Is there anything missing from Chart 5?
6. Why do you think Chart 5 lists “no data” for wealthy countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere?
7. There’s a lot of data missing from the “global” information in Charts 4 and 5. What impact does this have on our understanding of child labor?

Making Connections – What Does This Tell Us?

The third read is really about why the chart is important, what it can tell us about the past, and how it can help us think about the future. At the end of this read, respond to the following questions:

1. Why does this chart matter? What do these charts about child labor tell us about human communities since the Industrial Revolution? What do they tell us about the way humans produce things?
2. Using these charts, make one prediction about how child labor will change in your lifetime. What evidence from the charts supports your prediction? What evidence challenges it?