Social Studies Curriculum

United States History

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Post World War I (Roaring Twenties) (1919-1929)

Two weeks (through Week 17), followed by Final Exam and End of Semester One

Enduring Understandings

The students will understand:

1. Laissez faire capitalism flourished, providing wealth to some and poverty to others.
2. Women and other minorities got the right to vote at this time.
3. The 1920’s were a period of redefining social mores.

Essential Questions

1. How do social tensions and their outcomes affect society in the post war era?
2. How does a modern capitalist economy emerge in the 1920s?
3. What are the causes and effects of a changing society and its relationship to cultural movements? 

Objectives

• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the federal government’s policies and actions during the Roaring Twenties. 
• Examine reactions to radicals and immigrants. 
• Examine American foreign policy and its attempts to prevent future war.
• Examine how the neglect of the debt-ridden farmer helped perpetuate an agricultural depression.
• Examine changing societal roles and mores such as the evolving role of women. 
• Examine the role of technology (radio, film) in societal change. 
• Understand the impact of government policy on the economy.
• Analyze cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance as outcomes and catalysts of economic and political change.
• Survey significant cultural movements (literature, art, music, dance, theater, sports) and their superstars.
• Define essential terms including: anarchist, Palmer Raids, Great Migration, Flappers, Scopes Trial, Harlem Renaissance, Lost Generation, leisure time, quota system, Teapot Dome Scandal, Kellogg-Briand Pact, Universal Negro Improvement Association, speakeasy, fundamentalism, organized crime, mass media.
• Reflect on the contributions of the following:  A. Mitchell Palmer, Sacco and Vancetti, Jeanette Rankin, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Bessie Smith, Charles Lindberg, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandberg, George O’Keefe, George Gershwin. 

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