Matthew P. Bachand
Washing machines, cell phones, air traffic control towers, and the Panama Canal all have one thing in common: they each require tremendous quantities of energy. In America’s free market system, many believe that the end-consumer is the one who absorbs all of the costs of the procurement of energy. In a sense, this may be true--each of us who purchases a commodity inherits a fraction of the costs incurred before reaching us. However, this does not tell the whole story of a commodity’s journey. In the case of electricity, entire (sub)cultures have developed out of the profits generated by--and the costs incurred in--the generation of energy for consumers. One important example of this truth is coal mining culture. e.
Coal mining has been practiced in the United States since 1000 A.D., when the Hopi Tribe (of what is now the northeastern corner of Arizona1) used coal to bake their pottery.2 However, modern commercial coal usage began in 1748, where Huguenot settlers at Manakin, Virginia, began forming mines.3 In 1901, General Electric built the first alternating current power plant; it ran on coal. From that time on, Americans have had an energy policy that has been inextricably linked to coal mining. Thus, coal miners are a linchpin in the American social machinery.
Coal-fired power plants supply roughly fifty percent of America’s electrical energy, and coal reserves range throughout Appalachia, across a five-state swath of the Midwest, and in the upper Midwest from the Dakotas through most of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps America’s most famous coal country is that of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but the largest reserves of coal can be found in Montana and the Dakotas. In fact, America has more coal than the rest of the world has oil--prompting the coal industry to refer to America as the “Saudi Arabia of Coal”"4: the “Energy Information Administration (1995) estimated that the United States has enough coal to last 250 years.”5
While the quality of coal varies from region to region, it is evident that coal will continue to be the preferred fuel for steam-turbine power plants well into our foreseeable energy future. Thus, coal miners will play a disproportionately important role in America’s economic well-being until well into that future.
This unit will introduce students to the lives of coal miners through scientific, historical, and literary texts in both print and electronic media. Sources will include missives from coal industry titans to regulators, as well as songs about children’s worries for their fathers in the mines. Students will take away an empathetic understanding of what it takes to make their lights come on in both technological and human terms. Moreover, they will be able to articulate the contribution that coal miners make to our society through multiple performances of understanding: written, pictorial, and dramatic.
We will study the coal mining region of Western Pennsylvania for several reasons. First, it is close in proximity to Connecticut, which makes it the largest coal-producing member of our regional economy. Second, the anthracite-rich region also has a central role in the development of coal-related economic engines, such as the Carnegie steel mills and regional power plants. Third, events ranging from the 1892 Homestead strike and Mary Harris “Mother” Jones’ children’s crusade was another cultural development that figures centrally in American mining labor history.
Objectives
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- Students will explain one of several scientific processes related to the production of electricity from a coal-fired power plant through a group presentation. (Performance Standard 2.2)
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Students will choose one of the scientific processes that: a) involves coal as a fuel, and b) results in usable ac current electricity, and describe it through a group presentation.
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- Students will synthesize information from multiple primary (sources created by a witness to an event; diaries, reports, etc.) and secondary sources (scholarly texts, analyses) to explore ideas and decisions, as well as political issues. (Performance standard 4.8)
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By analyzing primary and secondary sources about either the anthracite strike of 1902, The Centralia Mine Blast of 1947, the Centralia Coal Fire of 1961, or the 2002 Quecreek mining accident, students will be able to form opinions about the regional attitudes of coal miners towards themselves and the attitudes of other social groups and agencies that interact with them.
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- Students will write a persuasive letter using textual evidence to support a position. (Performance Standard 2.2)
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Presently, Coal Mining support groups (both labor and management) are lobbying the United States Postal Service for the creation of a coal mining stamp. Students will write a letter on the behalf of coal miners arguing for a stamp to be made in their name. Students will also have the option of creating a mock stamp to include in their letter.
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- Students will use critical thinking skills to respond to in-class discussion prompts about the life and work of American coal miners. (Performance Standards 1.11, 1.14)
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Students will be assessed on their in-class participation through the use of predetermined discussion prompts and a rubric for participation. Students will be given the prompts before the delivery of instruction, and a rubric will be used to assess their understanding. Those students who do not orally participate will be mandated to turn in written responses to the discussion prompts in order to receive credit.
About the Students
This unit has been prepared with the particular needs of students who have high skill functionality, but who suffer from a lack of critical thinking skills. By developing lessons with a constructivist, problem-posing framework, students will be encouraged to make connections between the different elements at play across all areas of the topic. Furthermore, the emphasis on cooperative learning and presentations is intended to encourage students who often prioritize individual achievement to strengthen real-world skills such as group-based inquiry, analytical discussions, and generalizing individual findings and conclusions into a group consensus.
Methodology
This unit has been developed for students in English II, world literature, or English III, American Literature. In English II, the focus would be on the challenges that cultures face to perform very difficult and important labor, and how this labor becomes mythologized in the culture as a whole. Because many countries use coal, and all cultures must rely on certain individuals to perform dangerous and necessary tasks, this interdependence is a widely experienced human condition. Other examples of such labor across time would include polar bear hunting Inuit, 19th century whalers, and firefighters.
In an American History course, students would be able to explore the relationships between technology and industry, social history and labor history, and the complicated nature of national economic and industrial “progress.” Depending on the interests of your class and your particular bent, this unit could be modified to fit individual science, history, or English classes. However, it would probably work best in an interdisciplinary team setting.
