Promoting Critical Thinking and Thoughtful Discussion

• Response Groups: Reaction to the New Deal

• Editorial Cartoons: The Immigrant Experience

Promoting Critical Thinking and Thoughtful Discussion

Persistent Issue: What should be done to help those who are poor and needy?

Central Question: Was the New Deal the appropriate response to the Great Depression?

Unit Placement: After examination of the various New Deal programs

Lesson Goals: Empathize with multiple views on ND policies Evaluate arguments and make own assessment

Response Group Strategy: Two-tiered discussion

Four-person heterogeneous groups

Provide with stimulus material and foundational knowledge

Series of critical thought questions

Small group discussions; appoint different presenter for each question

Presentation of small group conclusions; whole class discussion

Lesson Introduction

Was the New Deal the appropriate response to the Great Depression?

• Share the Wealth Plan• Re-distribute the wealth• Every family: House, car, ed. for children, pensions, $2,000-3,000 guaranteed income

• Other Critics• Father Charles E. Coughlin

• Take action against banking & money interests

• Dr. Francis E. Townsend• Pay everyone over 60 $200/month

Hewey Long: New Deal does not go far enough

• Why do you think FDR did not take the more radical course of action proposed by Long and others to combat the problems of the Depression?

• What do you think would have happened if he had?

• What is your interpretation of this cartoon?

• What is the cartoonists’ point of view?

• What sectors of American society do you think opposed the New Deal? For what reasons?

Conservatives/Republicans: New Deal is an excessive intervention in the free market

• Cripples business with heavy taxes and regulations

• American Liberty League: Combat radicalism; preserve poverty rights

• Alf Landon, Governor of Kansas: Republican opponent in 1936 election: FDR becoming a dictator like Adolf Hitler in Germany. He was over powering the legislative and judicial branches.

• Whom does the Forgotten Man represent?• In what ways has FDR remembered him?• What do you think is the cartoonist’s intended message?

• What do you think is the artist’s intended message?

FDR and Court Packing

• Supreme Court struck down NRA, AAA, and three other ND laws - fed going beyong Constitutional limits on regulating economy

• FDR threatened to increase from 9-15 justices if refused to retire at age 70

• Split Democratic Party, cost FDR support

• Plan rejected by Senate, SC did change mind

• Depression much worse for blacks• Last hired; first fired

• New Deal effects mixed• Thousands employed• Some discrimination allowed in programs

• FDR appointed some black advisors

• FDR denounced lynchings; refused to support federal anti-lynching law

• If you were a black citizen living during the Depression, would you have supported FDR?

Lesson Closure

• Summarize differing viewpoints and arguments

• Draw an editorial cartoon taking a position on the New Deal

Comparing Eras with Editorial Cartoons

ScaffoldingUnderstandingOf EditorialCartoons

• What is missing?

The power of the personal account- Zellner case

Two types of accounts Teacher-collected Student-produced

Using personal accounts in class

Using Personal Accounts: Oral History