The First World War (1914-1918) came at the end of a complex era. The Long Nineteenth Century had seen the rise of democracies, increased economic production, and reforms, but also empire, racism, and terrible poverty. The years since the war have been similarly complicated. In the last century, we have seen another world war and a great deal of suffering. But there’s also evidence that things are getting better. What is the human experience of the century we have just lived through, and is this experience the same for everyone?

This video describes the last hundred years or so as an era of both progress and problems, with different experiences for different people. It asks you to think about how we should evaluate the twentieth century in terms of longer trends, and where that history leaves us today. This information should help you answer the Era Problem: What are the virtues and challenges of trying to tell one human history as opposed to human histories?

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. If you were looking back on the Long Nineteenth Century from the viewpoint of someone living in 1914, what would be the positive story of this era?
2. What are the are problems with this view, according to the video?
3. What are some positive aspects of history since the First World War?
4. What is one big problem with this positive view of the twentieth century?
5. What data supports the idea that things are getting better?
6. What are criticisms of this data?
7. How did the mid-twentieth-century success of Detroit turn into economic problems in the late twentieth century?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. This video argues that global inequality may be rising. At this point in the era, you may not have all the information to fully evaluate if this claim is true. But the question to challenge this claim would be: Why is global inequality a problem?

You, and all of us, are products of a long human history. Our histories are intertwined, but our ancestors took different routes to get us here. How connected are we today, and are we better off than they were? The last century brought many challenging experiences and witnessed suffering and inequality that still resounds in the world in which we live, but the benefits of this century have also improved life for many of us, if not all.

This overview will introduce you to three linked themes for the past century or so: whether or not things are getting better, whether the world experienced one global history or many separate histories, and to what degree globalization is bringing us together. Although the lessons in this era are organized somewhat chronologically, these themes run through all of them.

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 is the evidence the author gives for the argument that we are more connected to each other than we ever have been?
2. What arguments does the author use to suggest that even with these connections, we still live in an era of very different experiences?
3. According to the author, what is perhaps the biggest problem that we now face in the twenty-first century?
4. How have poverty rates changed in the past 100 years on both a global scale and on regional scales?
5. What is the value of having a single global history along with individual or family histories, according to the article?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Are there elements of your family, individual, or cultural history that have been important in shaping your personal story? What are they, and how might they be related to global history or the history of humanity?
2. Do you think people today (in your own lifetime) are becoming more closely connected, or more isolated? Explain your reasoning using evidence from the article or the course?

How can we understand the human experiences and histories of the last 100 years or more? Since the First World War, huge communities like empires have broken up, but transnational communities have come into being. We have become more and more productive, but this hasn’t benefitted everyone everywhere, and distribution remains unequal. We are more connected by networks than ever before, but many people feel more isolated and lonelier than ever. How is all of this a product of our long human history, and where will we go in the future?

The purpose of this video is to help you to filter the big transformations of this era through the three frames of the course. Each frame gives us a sense of both positive and negative change. But using different frames allows us to highlight diverse aspects of these experiences. These different views should guide you to support, extend, or contest the long narratives of human history as viewed through these three frames.

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 was the impact of the First World War, according to the video?
2. What have been some positive and negative patterns seen through the communities frame since the First World War?
3. What have been some positive and negative patterns seen through the production and distribution frame since the First World War?
4. What have been some positive and negative patterns seen through the networks frame since the First World War??

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Which of the patterns described in this video do you think will continue? Which will change? Which one pattern would you most like to change, and why?

The long nineteenth century transformed the world. Political revolutions, nationalism, industrialization, imperialism, and social upheaval all sent shockwaves of change through societies in every corner of the world. In 1914, the tensions surrounding many of these changes would send the world to war. In this mapping exercise you will identify some of the participants in the First World War and make predictions about what you think might have caused the war.

You’ll begin this activity by identifying several countries in the world of 1914 CE. You will locate these countries on a blank map and then make some guesses and predictions about how they participated in the war and what changes of the long nineteenth century might have caused the war.

Step 1

Remember, this activity is intended to introduce you to geography in this era. You aren’t expected to have all the answers.

With your teacher, brainstorm some of the ways that the transformations of the long nineteenth century might have led to the First World War.

Step 2

In small groups, select one of the columns of countries from the table on the worksheet. Label each of the countries on the 1914 Blank Map. When this is complete, each group should share their answers until all 20 countries are labeled on your maps.

Step 3

Examine the 1914 Blank Map you just labelled. Select five of the countries you identified and guess which side of the First World War it fought on (Allied Powers, Central Powers, or Neutral). Next, you should make a prediction of which country you think suffered the highest casualties during the war, including a 1-2 sentence explanation for your prediction. Finally, annotate one part of the map with a transformation of the long nineteenth century that helped cause WWI.

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 Era 7.

In this activity, you’ll work with your class to create a word wall using the Era 7 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 Era 7 Vocab Guide and then examine the era itself (click around and quickly skim the content) to see where in the era 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 era of the WHP course is guided by an Era Problem. You’re learning a ton of stuff in this and every other era, 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 Era Problems, and then you’ll respond to questions about them in writing. By keeping track of how your thinking changes throughout each era, you’ll see how much you’re learning as you move through each section of the course.

Use the Era 7 Problem Notebook Worksheet to respond to the prompts as best as you can. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

Open these three charts in your internet browser:

• Chart 1 – World Population Growth, 1700–2100: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/06/2019-Revision-%E2%80%93-World-Population-Growth-1700-2100.png
• Chart 2 – Population Growth Rate, 1950–2015: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-growth-rates
• Chart 3 – Population Projection by the UN, 2015–2100: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/un-population-projection-medium-variant

There are a lot of us on this planet—more than ever. We can make educated guesses about how many people there were in the past and how many people there will be in the future, but the further we go in either direction, the less sure we are. While our population continues to increase, the rate of that increase started to slow down in the 1960s. Populations in some parts of the world are shrinking, while in others they are rising. Predicting the future of these trends is incredibly important to the future of our planet and societies. Can data help us?

If your teacher has assigned the Project X final presentation, you will be asked to make a claim about the future and to support your claim with data. This data exploration provides you with an example of what that task might look like. The attached article provides some insights into the sorts of factors that influence population growth. Because it involves making predictions—rather than just recording data about the past—this data exploration might be a little more complicated than others you’ve done. You might want to pay special attention to the attached Data Introduction article, as it will guide you through some of the more complicated stuff.

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. As a reminder, 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. According to Chart 1 and 2, when did the global population increase at the highest rate?
2. According to Chart 1, if we lower the global growth rate of the human population over the next century, will the global population decline?
3. Why do you think the makers of Chart 1 believe that the global population will continue to grow even if we slow the rate of growth? Do you agree?
4. According to Chart 2, in what regions has the population growth rate decreased the most since 1950? Where has it increased the most?
5. On Chart 2, if you select the Chart button at the bottom, you can see population growth rates as a line graph for individual countries and regions. Try comparing Africa and Europe. What do you notice? Do you agree with the predictions in the chart?
6. According to Chart 3, which three countries had the largest population in 2015? Which will have the largest populations by the year 2100? When compared with the information in Chart 2 on population growth rates, what does this tell you about the relationship between total population and population growth rates?
7. Do you trust the predictions in these charts? Do you think we can reliably predict what populations will look like in 100 years using data about the past? Why or why not?

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 tell us about the future of human communities? What do they tell us about how we produce and consume resources? Can population predictions help us understand anything about global inequality in the future?
2. Using these charts and a chart from a previous data exploration, make a new prediction about how human communities will change in your lifetime. What evidence from the charts supports your prediction? What evidence challenges it?

Understanding and evaluating data is increasingly useful in everyday life. The data explorations and activities you’ve completed in Project X have prepared you for that. But now, we’re asking you to go a step further. It’s time to put all that knowledge to work. In this final presentation, you’ll make a prediction about the future of your topic using the charts and sources you collected in the research activity. This provides you an opportunity to use your data literacy skills to craft an argument rooted in historical context. This final presentation also lets you showcase all the hard work you’ve completed in Project X, and gives you the opportunity to offer a course of action for the future.

By now, you’ve had plenty of practice reading and evaluating data. In this activity, you’ll use your new skills to create a five-minute presentation as the final for Project X. Your teacher will provide you direction on the presentation format.

Here’s the good news: You’ve already done a lot of work on your final project! The data explorations introduced you to a bunch of charts on a wide range of topics. The four activities you completed before this one have given you the tools you’ll need to make your presentation. The two Making Predictions activities prepared you to make and evaluate your own predictions. You selected a topic that is meaningful to you and of world-historical significance. Finally, you conducted research and collected a set of charts and other evidence to support your predictions. You’re ready for this!

Before you begin work on your presentation, carefully review the Final Presentation Checklist to make sure you understand the requirements for the presentation. Your teacher will let you know the schedule for the Final Presentation. Be excited to show off your hard work!