The Research Paper: Developing Historical Questions

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What Is It?

A way to teach students how to develop historical questions. This is the beginning of a multi-step research paper process that encourages sophisticated historical thinking.

Rationale

It’s no secret that high schools across the country are turning away from the decidedly “old-school” research paper in favor of shorter writing assignments or a variety of “new-school” technology based projects like blogs or webpages. While these types of assignments are great for building historical thinking skills, we firmly believe that the research paper has been around for a long time for a reason: it’s the best way to engage students in sophisticated historical reasoning and prepare them for the academic world beyond high school. We have developed a comprehensive process with clear steps that walk the students through the creation of a research paper. The first step is for students to create a context-based historical question, giving their research a solid foundation and focus.

Description

Our research paper process guides students using a system with a seven-part structure. In the first part, rather than simply asking students to choose a topic, we ask them to start with a topic of interest, narrow it down to possible subtopics, choose a subtopic, and develop an open-ended historical question to guide their research.

Teacher Preparation

Identify and model the qualities of good historical questions, as described in Handout 1, throughout the course (e.g. as lecture openings, test essays, class discussions, and at the beginning or end of structured debates). As they gain understanding, have students develop good questions as part of classroom activities. When the students seem to have grasped the fundamentals of historical writing, (i.e. thesis, claim, logic, evidence) begin the research paper effort.

Sequence in the Classroom
  1. Each student develops a list of subjects about which she is interested (e.g.     music, politics, arts, family life). The student then browses reference     sources such as textbooks and encyclopedias to identify broad topics of     interest.
  2. The student reads reference sources to establish the basic facts about the     broad topics (who did what, where, and when).
  3. The student narrows the broad topics into manageable subtopics for     which evidence (documents, images, etc.) is likely available.
  4. The student chooses the subtopic that interests her the most but keeps     other subtopics on a list in case the chosen subtopic does not have     sufficient evidence.
  5. The teacher models creating good historical research questions. Students     practice improving weaker historical questions using Handout 2.
  6. Students develop historical questions about their chosen subtopics. They     work in small groups to improve their questions.
  7. Students write a passage that identifies the historical context and the     historical question. These are turned in to the faculty member for     feedback before moving on to locating primary and secondary sources.     Remember: questions can and will change as the student does more     research.
Example

As part of preparing students for Step 7 of the process above, show kids Handout 3 so that they can see a completed template.

Common Pitfalls
  1. Some students will skip the preliminary research step. You can usually tell     that this happened when their topic description is lacking in detail and     specificity. This often results in overly broad questions that will confuse     students later. Don’t hesitate to send students back to Step 2 above and     reinforce the importance of following all the instructions.
  2. Some students will develop cultural history questions that may capture     their interest, but which are difficult to answer with clear evidence. An     example is: “What effects did popular music of the 1960s have on U.S.     foreign policy?” Many students choose this because they like the music of     the '60s, find the anti-war movement interesting, and assume there is a     connection between the music of the era and the choices the U.S. made in     Vietnam. However, if held to a strict standard of evidence and logic, only     the strongest students are going to be able to convincingly argue any     connection between the two. Although it can be a time-consuming     process, requiring students to edit and resubmit Step 7 until it works is     worth it over the long haul. Even slight changes in the wording of a     question will help students avoid dead-ends in their research and     ultimately write a better paper.
  3. Students can be drawn toward modern topics that veer into other social     science disciplines and lack a historical perspective. For example, a     student might come up with the question: “What is the status of women     in U.S. politics?” You might recommend an alteration of this question that     connects to the original topic: “What are the origins of the feminist     movement in the U.S.?” or “What were the effects of the women’s suffrage     movement?”
For more information

Fischer, David. Historians' Fallacies: Toward A Logic of Historical Thought. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1971.

Furay, Conal, and Michael J. Salevouris. The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2000.

Schmidt, John, and Jeffrey Treppa. Historical Thinker.

The Concord Review, an organization that publishes students’ history research papers.

Decoding U.S. Foreign Policy: The Iran-Contra Affair

Teaser

Through the lens of documents concerning the Iran-Contra Affair, this lesson enables students to examine how audience and purpose affect a document’s contents.

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Description

This lesson challenges students to read internal official documents and personal accounts about the Iran-Contra Affair to learn more about it and U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.

Article Body

This lesson, part of the HERB collection at the American Social History Project, allows students to examine a series of primary source documents related to the Iran-Contra Affair and discuss the central issues surrounding these events. In addition to great background information for the teacher, there is a useful timeline and graphic organizer that help students access the content.

One of the strongest components of this lesson is the unique documents it uses. In addition to a document entitled “The C.I.A. Advises Nicaraguans How to Sabotage the Sandinista Government,” there are handwritten diary entries by Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger and internal communications within the CIA . With the aid of the document analysis form, students discover the differences between internal official documents and personal accounts thus allowing them to see how audience and purpose affect a document’s contents. This document analysis form also asks students to consider what each document reveals about the unfolding of the Iran-Contra Affair and U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Given that the creators have identified the approximate reading difficulty of each document, teachers can use this information to purposefully group students.

This is already a flexible lesson and we suggest teachers consider adding a summative assessment task that requires student writing. As is, the lesson includes a final discussion and guiding questions but no student product requiring that individual students show their understanding. This lesson could also serve as a great scaffold for a document-based essay on motivating factors in U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.

Topic
The Iran-Contra Affair
Time Estimate
90-minute period or more depending on how much experience the students have had before this lesson
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes

Students read the documents and complete a document analysis form. They don’t have a final written product for this lesson but one could easily be created.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Students examine a series of primary sources written during the time of the affair. Some of the documents are journal entries and others are internal memos. Each reveals another important piece about how much each party within the government knew about the events.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Document analysis form asks students to do this.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
Approximate reading levels for documents are included to help teachers differentiate instruction.
Repeated use of a graphic organizer for all documents so students use the same process for each new document.
Lessons detail how to model skills such as a “read aloud” and “decoding the text.”

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes
Graphic organizer and modeling help students learn.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes
Students discuss the essential questions of the lesson. However, creating a written assessment that would assess students more on an individual basis would be relatively easy.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes
A challenging lesson, you may need to tailor it for your students.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

Using Non-Linguistic Representations to Strengthen Historical Thinking

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The classes at the urban San Diego charter school where I teach are not tracked. As a result, 100% of the juniors on campus are enrolled in AP U.S. History. With a relatively large number of English Language Learners, the challenge is to design a rigorous college-level course that helps students master historical thinking and specific content. I have found that encouraging students to use and produce non-linguistic representations results in deeper thinking and better understanding.

Teaching World History: An Idea Guide

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Question

What are some good websites in terms of looking for culminating projects/assessments for 10th-grade World History?

Answer

You ask a good question, but, unfortunately, not one that is easily answered. Currently, there are not very many culminating world history assessments on the Internet. Part of the issue may stem from the fact that many instructional sites focus more on lessons and activities than they do on assessments (with the exception of released standardized exams from states such as New York or California). Since there are not many sites devoted to world history projects, teachers must do a bit of searching to find assessment ideas. Before doing so, however, it may be helpful to think about what type of culminating assessments might be particularly well suited to world history courses. One of the challenges of teaching a global world history course is developing final assessments that are on the right scale. Since world history units typically include several regions and centuries, end of unit, semester, or year projects should allow students to show what they have learned about connections between particular events and larger global patterns. In what follows, I suggest types of culminating assessments that would work at the unit, semester, or course levels. Where possible, I have included some web-based examples of these types of assessments.

Timeline Projects

Timelines are often a staple in history classrooms. In world history with its large temporal scale, having students organize and interpret historical time can be very useful. Smaller classroom assignments based on timelines can be scaled up to be end of unit or course assessments. For example, world history teacher Sharon Cohen writes about the challenging concept of change over time in this short article. She ends with a description of an annotated timeline activity that could easily be adapted into a culminating assessment. In this activity, students have to determine the particular significance of world historical events within a given time period or over several time periods. Instead of placing pre-determined events onto a timeline, students use evidence and their own historical judgment to choose events that they then argue are the most significant for a global pattern in world history (e.g., the impact of technology and demography on people and the environment). Teachers can assess students on their ability to correctly place events in time as well as evaluate how they link the events to the larger global pattern.

Mapping Projects

Culminating projects that allow students to make spatial connections between different regions can also be very useful in a world history course. One way to do this would be to have students create an annotated map of a particular region (such as Africa or Asia) or of the world. For example, a lesson in the Cold War unit in the World History for Us All online curriculum asks students to create an annotated map of the Cold War and its impact on “Third World” countries. Students then choose one of those countries to investigate in depth by creating a poster and short presentation. The poster includes a timeline and information on the consequences of the Cold War on cultural, political, and economic developments within the country. With minor modification, this lesson idea could certainly be used as a final project for a Cold War unit. World historian Deborah Smith Johnston suggests having students draw annotated “mental maps” of the world or a particular region as pre- and post-assessments for world history courses. See hereProjects Based on Illustrative Cases of Global Patterns In another answer on this site, I wrote about the value of using case studies to teach world history. A culminating project that allows students to dig deeper into a particular case (e.g., nation, event, person, commodity, object) can engage students and allow the teacher to assess how students apply the case to larger patterns studied in a particular unit or course. For example, the New York State Education Department suggests a project where students assume the role of a representative of a nation applying to the United Nations for assistance. Students must research the historical context and current conditions in the country that led to a particular political, economic, or social issue. In doing so, students would be able to demonstrate how they can connect what they have learned across a semester or year of world history to the current conditions in one country.

Good Starting Places for Project Ideas

The World History for Us All website contains full units and lessons for every era of world history. Although not every unit contains a final project, there are some that do. As mentioned above, many lesson ideas can be extended to develop culminating projects. Teacher sites can be helpful for project and lesson ideas. There is a social network on Twitter (#SSChat) that has a strand for world history educators. Here you can browse archives for project ideas or join the group and ask other teachers for suggestions. Most importantly, as you develop good world history project ideas, you should post them so that this question will not be so hard to answer in the future!

Memoirs v. Tapes: President Nixon and the December Bombings

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Annotation

Memoirs v. Tapes consists primarily of a web-published essay on the Nixon White House Tapes from between October 1972 and February 1973. These tapes were released from the Nixon Library as recently as 2008 through 2010, making them quite new to the public. As a text-heavy resource, and in consideration of the complexity of the questions the content raises, it is likely best used with high school students.

The essay is divided into seven sections and an accompanying appendix. The key issue under discussion is the position of Nixon and Kissinger on the 1972 Christmas bombing of North Vietnam. Nixon's memoirs state that he only reluctantly agreed to Kissinger's eagerness to bomb North Vietnam. In contrast, Kissinger notes that while he was pro-bombing, Nixon generally agreed with him, rather than only coming to the decision at a point of supposed necessity. Most sections of the website are accompanied by audio clips of the actual decision-making conversations; maps; documents such as letters, address drafts, and cables; and video clips.

The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum recognizes that the audio clips can be difficult to understand. As a result, they have prepared a short list of tips to help listeners get the most from the sources. In addition, each audio clip has an accompanying log link. The log lists, in bullet form, the topics of conversation covered in the clip.

The conclusion offers a set of five questions to consider after having perused the site and its resources. The questions, such as "What role did the convening of a new Congress play in December 1972 decisions about ending the war?," are, as noted previously, likely most appropriate for high school classrooms. However, it is possible that they may also be of use in middle school, depending on the engagement and ability levels of students.

Finally, the appendix offers suggested readings, as well as additional documents, audio and video clips, and photographs which may be of interest.

The Road to Pearl Harbor

Teaser

Explore the rise of animosity between the U.S. and Japan through primary source documents and related classroom activities.

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Description

Explore the rise of animosity between the U.S. and Japan through primary source documents and related classroom activities.

Article Body

Four separate lessons make up this unit on “The Road to Pearl Harbor.” Like most lesson plans from EDSITEment—a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities—this unit is full of rich primary source material and a wide variety of related classroom activities. The unit is guided by four questions, designed to help students understand the long run-up to military conflict between the U.S. and Japan. Reflecting those questions, the unit is divided into four lessons: exploring the growth of U.S./Japanese hostility during World War I and after, looking at American foreign policy during the Sino-Japanese Conflict in the 1930s, examining the Japanese “Southern Advance” of 1940 and 1941, and finally, highlighting the failures of diplomacy that ultimately led to war. The unit does an excellent job of representing historical contingency—revealing how the bombing of Pearl Harbor was actually the product of decades of history. Further, it will help students understand the multiple causes of Japanese aggression—from Japanese imperial ambition to U.S. foreign policies. Each lesson comes with a brief but complete historical background essay embedded with hyperlinks to primary sources, clear and concise suggestions for student activities, worksheets, and ideas for formal and informal assessment. And the interactive timeline tool is an excellent resource that pairs nicely with other aspects of the lessons. There are some things to watch out for, though. Many of the primary sources are long and will need to be carefully selected or vigorously edited, depending on your students’ reading level and persistence. The assessments are only roughly outlined, meaning that teachers will need to fill in the details and establish their own grading criteria. Additionally, while lessons range in length from 1–2 class periods to 3–4 class periods, they collectively require fairly extensive class time—roughly two weeks; consequently, they will most likely need to be used selectively. However, this unit is still an excellent resource. By picking and choosing from among the activities, carefully selecting documents, and further developing one or two assessments, teachers can adapt the lesson to their particular needs.

Topic
The Road to Pearl Harbor: The United States and East Asia, 1915-1941
Time Estimate
Variable
flexibility_scale
1
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
Significant historical background is provided for each of the four individual lessons that constitute the larger lesson plan.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Students read primary documents and there are multiple opportunities for writing.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Students are asked to read source information carefully enough to be able to put it to use in assignments.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes
Directions are brief and clear. Teachers must design necessary supports.

Propaganda and World War II

Teaser

Help students understand wartime propaganda with this excellent lesson plan.

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Description

Students compare World War II propaganda posters from several countries and then choose one of several writing assignments to demonstrate what they’ve learned.

Article Body

In this lesson from HERB—a website produced by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning—students learn how to examine posters as primary sources and work with them to write essays. In addition to a collection of wartime propaganda posters, the site includes a brief essay providing historical context, as well as a well-designed “propaganda poster analysis worksheet” that students can use to explore the meaning of each document.

After work in small groups that includes each student analyzing a poster, students demonstrate their understanding through different kinds of writing assignments. These range from considering the historical time and events the poster sits within, to comparing two posters, to fiction writing.

The strength of this lesson is the collection of documents it brings together. Posters from the United States, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union give students insight into the propaganda machines operating in each country during the Second World War. Because each document is visual in nature, it is a good lesson for struggling readers and English Language Learners. The group structure is also a strength as students have the opportunity to analyze a single poster, but also to look for patterns across several posters.

The HERB website can be navigated several different ways: by collection, by historical era, or by approximately 70 different teaching activities.

Topic
World War II
Time Estimate
Variable
flexibility_scale
3
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
A brief historical background to U.S. propaganda during the period is provided, but additional background may be necessary for teachers to feel fully prepared.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Students show their understanding through writing.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Requires close reading and attention to source information?

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
The poster analysis worksheet is an essential tool.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
Because the sources are visual, they are useful for a number of audiences.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

This is partly dependent upon the choice of writing assignment. No criteria are included.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes
Directions are brief and clear. Teachers must design necessary supports for own writing assignments.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

Puerto Rico Encyclopedia/Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico

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Annotation

Visitors to this site will find more than 1,000 images and dozens of videos about the history and culture of Puerto Rico. The work of dozens of scholars and contributors, the Puerto Rico Encyclopedia reflects the diverse nature of the island: a U.S. territory, a key location for trade in the Caribbean, a Spanish-speaking entity with its own distinct culture, and a part of a larger Atlantic world. Funded by an endowment from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fundación Angel Ramos, the site is a key product from the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. It provides users with all content in both English and Spanish. Educators will find the site easy to navigate and conveniently categorized by themes; within each topic, appropriate subtopics provide an in-depth examination of Puerto Rican culture and history. Of particular interest to U.S. History teachers are the images and information found under History and Archeology. Here, teachers and students can explore a chronological narrative of the island's history and role at specific moments in U.S. and Atlantic history. Other sections worth exploring are Archeology (for its focus on Native American culture), Puerto Rican Diaspora (for its look at Puerto Ricans in the U.S.), and Government (for a detailed history on Puerto Rico's unique status as a free and associated US territory). Educators in other social science courses will also find valuable information related to music, population, health, education, and local government. In all, 15 sections and 71 subsections provide a thorough examination of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico Encyclopedia's bilingual presentation also makes it a good site for integrating Hispanic culture into the U.S. History curriculum, as well as helping to bridge curriculum for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the classroom.

FDR's Second Inaugural Address

Video Overview

David Kennedy questions Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inaugural address. What, he asks, were FDR's intentions in making his speech? What are the key lines that reveal his intentions? What changes did he make to U.S. politics and society, and were they in keeping with the ideas in this speech?

Video Clip Name
Kennedy1.mov
Kennedy2.mov
Kennedy3.mov
Video Clip Title
The Document
What is FDR doing?
FDR as Visionary
Video Clip Duration
4:06
2:29
3:30
Transcript Text

Well, the document that I have here in front of me is a copy of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inaugural address—delivered in January 1937; and it happens to be the first presidential inauguration that took place in January. Since George Washington’s time down to the '30s inaugurations happened in March and that was changed to January, so that’s a kind of historical factoid that gives this a little bit of interest. But this document, as much as any single document can, reminds us of what the New Deal was all about, what its relationship to the Great Depression of the 1930s was, and what its implications were for this society going forward. And I think as much as any single document can reveal, it shows us what Franklin Roosevelt’s deepest intentions were, what his highest priorities were, what his agenda was in the period of the 1930s.

So this is 1937. He’d come to power—come to the presidency three years earlier in 1933, when the unemployment rate was 25%—the most god-awful economic crisis that ever struck this society. Here he is being re-inaugurated for a second term four years later. Quite obviously and not surprisingly, as any president would do under the circumstances, he's bragging a bit about the things he accomplished during his first term; drawing the contrast between how bad things were when he took office and how much better they are now. He goes through a little bit of a list of the specific things that are better: unemployment is down and gross national product is up and so on and so forth. Then he says, kind of summarily, he said, “Our progress out of the Depression is obvious.” That’s the kind of summary statement of what he’s talking about. And he says again, further on the same note, he says, “We have come far from the days of stagnation and despair.”

Now so far this is standard presidential boilerplate on any situation, who wouldn’t—under the circumstances—pat himself on the back for the things he’s accomplished in the preceding four years. But then he says something absolutely extraordinary in the annals of presidential addresses, especially inaugural addresses. It’s a sentence that when I first read it just leapt off the page at me for its surprising quality and for its explanatory quality. After having just gone through this little recital of how things are better now than they were, he says, “Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster.” Now wait a minute, what’s he saying? Prosperity’s returning, we’re better off, the Depression is lifting, we’re going ahead on a much more confident basis than we were; but this—these “symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster.” The sentence doesn’t explain itself, you really have to know what the context was and know something about Roosevelt’s ultimate intentions, and ultimately the consequences of what he tried to accomplish and did accomplish in the 1930s.

That single sentence—"such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster"—is such a shock and such a surprise. If you read it all carefully you realize, why would he say that at the moment of his own greatest self-congratulation upon being reelected/reinaugurated? So I think if you can get students to focus on that sentence: Why would a president in that moment in that particular circumstance say such a thing? What could be on his mind that he would so apparently undercut his own agenda on this occasion? I think what explains it—where the answer lies is in that immediately subsequent passage about the third of the nation. So there’s a way to connect something that’s quite surprising about "prosperity is a portent of disaster" with something that is maybe a little bit familiar, which is the "I see one third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." So you can put those two together and I think it’s a very effective teaching combination.

When I teach this document, I usually asking the class—before I’ve asked them to read the whole document—I ask them if they’ve heard the phrase “I see one third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.” As time goes by, I suppose, fewer students have ever heard it at all, but most of them usually have had—it’s got some echo in their brains someplace, they’ve heard it or a version of it someplace or other.

So then I explain this is a speech that Roosevelt gave in the midst of the Great Depression, what do you think he was talking about? Again, not without reason, most students will say, “Well, he’s talking about all those people who are unemployed and having such hard times during the Depression.” And I say, “Well, fair enough, but now let's read the rest of the speech and see what he’s really talking about.” Then when they hit that sentence, if I give them the space and if I tee them up properly, that when they get to that sentence—“Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster”—that does bring them up short. They say, “Wait, what’s he talking about here? How could any president undercut his own self-congratulation for the return of prosperity?” I make the point that what follows this is this lyrical litany about the one third of the nation, and that’s his real objective. This goes to a deeper point, it seems to me, and it goes to the point of putting to rest that idea that the New Deal was just whatever Roosevelt threw at the wall, whatever stuck became the New Deal.

I believe, and I think this document goes along way to making the case, that Roosevelt had a vision, and it’s proper to call him a visionary. In fact, in my reading of the evidence he had this vision before the Depression ever happened. You can see this in his private correspondence in the 1920s [and] in his prior political career, that the major thing he wanted to accomplish if he ever got the chance was to make American society more secure, less risky, and more inclusive. To bring more people into the mainstream of American life and to reduce elements of risk that perpetually over the previous century had brought people into the mainstream and then ejected them from it again. Life was unstable for so many people, for millions of people. That’s what he wanted to change, and the New Deal put in place a series of structural reforms that accomplished a lot of that objective.

[The New Deal put in place a series of structural reforms that accomplished a lot of that objective.] The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—which gave federal guarantees to bank deposits—at a stroke ended the century-old or more practice of panicked runs on banks when times got tough. Banks failed—between 1931 and 1933, over 5,000 banks failed in this country. Between 1933 and the end of the 20th century, probably fewer than 500 banks failed, I don’t know the exact number but in that order of magnitude. Why? Because the FDIC imparted a measure of stability, predictability, risk reduction to banking. Glass-Steagall Act, which is actually where the FDIC legislation is embedded as well, separated investment from commercial banking. It made the day-to-day operations that the average citizen dealt with a different beast from the big investment banking houses like Goldman Sachs and Lehmans Brothers and so on and so on. Which for a long time, until the opening years of the 20th [21st] century, protected the core banking system from the speculative and risky activities that go on in the investment banking business.

The Home-Owners Loan Corporation, which became the Federal Housing Authority, created a system of private insurance overseen by the federal government that stabilized mortgage lending and made that a lot less risky. Its that structural reform which actually built suburbia and built the Sun Belt in the decades after World War II because mortgage money was so much more available than it had been earlier. It [also] changed the terms on which people could buy homes—it changed them drastically. So we went from a society in which only about 40% of citizens owned their own homes as the Great Depression opened, to a society in which about 60% of Americans owned their own homes by 1960. So it didn’t take, it took about a generation for this to work its effects.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is another New Deal era reform that brought a measure of transparency and open information/accessible information into stock market trading. Again, that did a lot to dampen—not eliminate entirely—but to dampen a lot of the speculative fevers that had driven Wall Street up and down and sidewise over the preceding century. So its no accident, it’s absolutely no accident, that in the 70 years or so after the New Deal this society saw no economic crisis even remotely approaching the scale, volatility, and explosive character of the Great Depression of the '30s.

The Great Depression of the '30s is a unique event, and it’s a singular event in its severity, but it’s in a family of events that go back into the 1830s; there’s centuries worth of these kinds of severe economic shocks to the system. The New Deal put a very substantial end to that for the remainder of the 20th century at least. That was not an accident, that was part of a conscious design on Roosevelt’s part to remake the society, bring new institutions into being, reduce risk, bring elements of security into the lives of millions of citizens and institutions and economic sectors like banking, investing, and so on. That didn’t just happen; it was part of a conscious political program. And it seems to me this speech, this second inaugural address, is about as succinct and pointed a piece of documentary evidence that you can find that makes that case.

All of these things were part of a very coherent, unified program to make life less risky. It was—it became less risky for millions upon millions of people in the two or three generations following the 1930s. So we see here a glimpse, you might say, into Roosevelt’s deepest ideological agenda when he tells us prosperity might be a portent of disaster because his reform agenda is not yet accomplished.

The U.S. House of Representatives Remembers September 11

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Annotation

“Due to the Circumstances of Today”: The U.S. House of Representatives Remembers September 11, 2001 brings together a series of interviews conducted by the Office of the House Historian to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A project of the U.S. House of Representatives Oral History Program, it features the recollections of former Representatives, House officials and employees, and select eyewitnesses to the event.

The great strength of the website is its extensive collection of video and audio sources. Sources are divided into four sections that explore the events of September 11, American reaction and response, efforts to improve security and safety, and the lingering impact of the attacks. Such materials, extensive as they are, would make for an excellent set of sources for a research project.

The site also features a seven and a half minute long video narrative that draws on clips from oral history resources, as well as a dozen images and artifacts. Finally, the site offers a link to a series of historical highlights on the website of the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Each highlight is accompanied by a brief synopsis and a “teaching tip.”