YOUTH INITIATIVE HIGH SCHOOL
Waldorf Initiative in Viroqua, Wisconsin, USA
COURSES AND CLASSES
20th Century American History (Grade 12)
Instructor: Matthew Voz
This course will take an unorthodox perspective on American history in the 20th century insofar as it touches only obliquely on the World Wars. Instead I have chosen to focus on three social crises; Industrialism, the Great Depression, and the turbulent 1960’s. The underlying theme of this Main Lesson will be how the relationship between the individual American citizen and American society and government evolved. The 20th century in America is nothing short of a crisis of the sacred notion of the individual and we will be coming back again and again to this concept.
Day 1: Labor Day
Day 2: Introduction to the class and its themes, review of Reconstruction, etc.
Day 3: Industrialization, market shifts, and the ascendancy of the corporation.
Day 4: The Growth of Labor Unions
Day 5: The reaction of the federal government, Progressivism
Day 6: The Versailles Treaty, the Stock Market Crash and other antecedents to the Great Depression.
Day 7: Keynes: His theory and its effect on government reaction to the Great Depression
Day 8: The Agricultural Adjustment Act and its repercussions.
Day 9: The National Recovery Act and its repercussions.
Day 10: The Human cost of the Great Depression
Day 11: The Civil Rights Movement
Day 12: Black Nationalism
Day 13: Vietnam, the first reality television
Day 14: Rock n’ Roll, Drugs, and the Youth Culture
Day 15: Feminism and the Sexual Revolution