The Plow that Broke the Plains

http://newdeal.feri.org/nchs/lesson01.htm

Description: Explain the effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl on American farm owners, tenants, and sharecroppers. Examine how the New Deal Resettlement Administration documented and dramatized the Dust Bowl. Analyze this documentary film focusing on the elements of script, music and visual imagery. Standard 11.6.3

Author: Robert Gabrick White Bear Lake Schools, White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Barbara N. Markham, Padua Academy, Wilmington Delaware

Lesson ID: 1063

Tuskegee Tragedy

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/BHM/tuskegee_quest.html

Description: Imagine that you're a poor person living during the hard economic times of the Great Depression. Your government offers you free medical care. Sounds good. But what if the real reason you're approached is because you have a disease. But instead of giving you medical care, the doctors are really just watching what happens when this disease goes untreated. Suppose a miracle then happens and a treatment is found for your disease. Instead of giving you the new medicine, the doctors continue the experiment of watching the disease go untreated. Years pass, some of your friends who were also in the study die, some pass the disease to their wives and children. Standard 12.10 Compare this real event with other issues of government control such as concentration camp experiments, abortion and gun control.

Author: Tom March, Knowledge Network

Lesson ID: 1143

TVA: A Construction Controversy

http://newdeal.feri.org/classrm/clastva2.htm

Description: The controversy surrounding the Tennessee Valley Authority was profound and complicated. It raised constitutional, economic, social, philosophical and ethical issues. Once students become familiar with the facts and the issues by reading and studying the material in the collection and other material you provide, they will be in an excellent position to debate these issues.

Author: Stanlee Bimberg, Bank Street School

Lesson ID: 1144

Understanding the Times -- The 1930s

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/97/depress/lesson2.html

Description: Come to grips with what conditions were like in the 1930s through these group activities. Divided into seven groups of 4-5 students, six groups will research the experience of a group of people affected by the Great Depression using interviews and other resources on the American Memory site. Groups will include, but not be limited to: children, laborers, the moneyed, migrants, farmers, and artists. The seventh group will become experts on the New Deal measures and will communicate with the other six groups to see how the legislation affected these people during the depression. After researching and advising, the New Deal students compose dialogues, soliloquies, letters or fictional memoirs from the viewpoint of an administrator of one New Deal program. Standards 11.6.3 and 11.6.4

Author: American Memory Project, Library of Congress

Lesson ID: 1162

Understanding the TVA Documents

http://newdeal.feri.org/classrm/clastva3.htm

Description: This activity takes you through 10 key doucments related to the building of the Tennessee Valley Authority. These guided reading activities help you zero in on the controversies surrounding the positions of each writer.

Author: New York Times, Bank Street School

Lesson ID: 1163

Unhappy Returns of Social Security

http://209.217.49.168/vnews.php?nid=489

Description: The Social Security Act was the centerpiece of the New Deal social programs. Yet, when the first monthly benefit checks were mailed in 1940, few could have predicted its growth from just over 200,000 beneficiaries to a roll of over 43 million - about one beneficiary for every 3.4 workers in the economy. The concept behind Social Security was not only to mandate retirement saving throughout the life of the worker, but to pay a guaranteed income in retirement - not from returns on capital investments, but from the pockets of the younger workers. Social Security is destined to fail under the pressure of demographics that increase the ranks of the recipients faster than "contributors" can keep up. This lesson explores the origin of Social Security, its path toward self-destruction, and the reason why, after almost 60 years, Congress is seeking to reform it. Standards 11.6.4, 12.3.1, 12.3.3, and 12.3.2 economics

Author: Harry Dolan, The Freeman

Lesson ID: 1166