Justin M. Boucher
Objective 1:
The first objective of the unit will be met by an inquiry into American life before the 1950s. Students will review, research, and synthesize information from historical sources to help them understand the social and political factors that led to the creation of the suburbs after World War II. Students will complete three basic writing exercises in which they seek to describe urban life in America in the 1920s, the 1930s and the 1940s. For each writing exercise, the students will have the opportunity to discuss their findings with the class.
Prior to the class, students will be assigned a reading from Alan Brinkley's American History: A Survey, as well as their first writing assignment. Students will have chapter 24, the 1920s to use as a resource when answering the prompt "Describe urban life in America during the 1920s". This will allow students to review their understanding of the 1920's, and it will prepare them for class, which will begin with a whole class discussion of their writing.
This discussion will set the stage for their writing on the 1930s and the 1940s. The teacher will guide students through explaining their writing by asking them to explain what their lives might have been like as city dwellers in the 1920s. Ideally, students will describe living in apartments, working in factories, using public transportation, and exploring new means of recreation. This should give students the context to understand the relevant information about the 1920s while giving them a basic guide for what will be expected of them in their next two assignments.
Students will then be broken into two groups. One group will use the materials in the class (history books, internet resources, maps, etc.) to describe urban life in the 1930s, while the other will describe urban life in the 1940s. Students will have about half of the class to complete their descriptions, before the class reconvenes. The teacher will spend this time circulating from student to student, helping to ensure that they each understands what is being requested.
When the students have completed their descriptions, they will break into groups of four, with each group containing two students who wrote about the 1930s and two who wrote about the 1940s. The groups will discuss their writing assignments with one another. Each student will be responsible for ensuring that they understand the decade their group members wrote about.
When the groups have completed their discussions, the class will reconvene to review their findings. It will be necessary at this point for the teacher to fill in some of the gaps produced by this kind of independent inquiry. Some students will not find all the information they need, and others will find a great deal of information that is irrelevant. It is most important that the students understand the 1920s as a period of growth, the 1930s as a period of finding work and making do, and the 1940s as both a period of pent-up desire during the war and a watershed where the desire for prosperity came roaring back.
Objective 2:
The next step in the unit is to break down the steps in the policy-making process. In order for students to critically analyze the history and the acts involved in the creation of the suburbs, it will be necessary for them to understand these steps well enough to apply them to the laws in question. Moreover, given that policy is usually the result of a number of separate acts of Congress, students will ultimately need to understand that policy rarely results from a single law. This will set the stage for understanding that while no single law led to the modern suburb, many different laws passed over many different years amounted to a policy of suburban creation and urban renewal.
In order to accomplish this objective, students will list, explain and cite examples of each step in the policy-making process. Prior to class the students will read chapter 15 of American Government and Politics Today, which outlines the process by which policy is created. Class will begin with the students listing those steps, and explaining each from memory in their notebook.
The teacher will then lead the students in a discussion of those steps, and of the Federal Government's tools to influence the economy. As my classroom includes computers for every student, the students will then find recent examples of economic policy, and explain the steps in the policy process as they pertain to the policy they found. In order to ensure that students are fluent in the parts of the process and that they can explain those steps. Students will then present their policy and their findings to the class. While there is a potential for overlapping policies, the sheer number of economic policies available to the students should limit the chances that two students will choose to present on the same policy.
Objective 3:
Having become fluent in the process by which policy is made, the students will move on to discussion and evaluation of a specific act in long list of acts leading to the policy of suburban development. Prior to class the students will read chapter 5 of Tom Lewis' Divided Highways, which explains the political wrangling necessary to pass the Federal-Aid to Highways Act of 1956. This history clearly outlines the political history of the act, and therefore serves as a useful step between policy as a result of a single act, and policy as a result of many.
When the students arrive in class, they will sit with partners and outline the steps and stakeholders involved in the passing of the Federal-Aid to Highways Act of 1956. This will allow them to synthesize their understanding of the steps in the policy process, as well as allowing them to break the chapter into its most relevant parts.
When this is complete the teacher will lead the students in a discussion of their findings, and the class will outline the obstacles that existed in 1955 to the passage of the bill, and the changes that led to its passage in 1956. This discussion will lay the groundwork for a political understanding of the policy as well as giving the students the chance to finalize their understanding of the events. The students will then individually break down the pros and cons of the 1956 act. Each student will be assessed based on a writing assignment at the end of the class in which they explain whether or not they would have voted for the 1956 act.
Objective 4:
Once the students are grounded in the steps of policy-making, the history of the suburbs, and the Federal-Aid to Highways Act of 1956, the unit progresses to a broader discussion of the economic policies that led to the suburbs. Prior to class students will read Thomas W. Hanchett's article on federal aid to suburbanization (see resources section). This article outlines in clear and specific terms the economic aid involved in the rise of suburbia. Furthermore, reading this article at this time allows students to synthesize their understanding of the history of suburbia, with their understanding of economic policy in a coherent way.
This class will begin differently, drawing on their prior knowledge of suburban development to begin with a synthesized understanding of the material covered so far. Thus students will begin class by answering the following writing prompt. "How did the article you read last night alter your current understanding of suburban policy?" The class will discuss this question after the students have had the chance to answer it themselves.
The students will then use American Government and Politics Today chapter 16 to review the goals of American economic policy, and the distinctions between fiscal and monetary policy. This will allow the students to explore and review the tools the federal government has to influence the economy.
The students will then break into small groups and discuss the article with some specific tasks in mind. First the students must list and explain each of the laws that helped to create the Federal Government's policy on suburbanization in the 1950s. Second, the groups will need to explain how these acts combine to create a policy on suburban development. The goal of these conversations is to allow the students to analyze how individual laws that build roads, subsidize home construction and subsidize sewer construction can combine to advantage one kind of town, city or lifestyle over another.
Objective 5:
For the fifth objective, the students will need to step back from the history of suburbs and step into the present moment. Evaluating the policies that led to the modern suburb is a process that can only occur if the class takes time to study and analyze the modern suburb itself. This objective will be broken into two parts, and each treated as its own concept in class.
Prior to class the students will read chapter 8 of Tom Lewis' Divided Highways, which explains the fight over highway development along the riverfront in New Orleans. Thus students should arrive in class having considered the winners and the losers of highway development.
The first half of this objective, exploring the ramifications from the perspective of the Federal government, is a straightforward inquiry assignment. Students will begin by laying out the goals of suburban development policy. Some of these goals they will know from their reading, some they will have to find using classroom resources once they have the assignment. Furthermore, it will be necessary for the students to consider the cost to government of pursuing this policy.
The second half of this objective, exploring the ramifications from their own perspective, is a more complicated matter. We will begin by looking up the city of New Haven and their own homes in Google Maps. Once the students have taken a serious look at the maps, the students will have the chance to look over Dolores Hayden's Field Guide to Sprawl. Both of these resources offer an aerial view of the built environment, and serve as a valuable resource for pushing kids to think about where they live. At the bare minimum students should come away from these resources with a deeper understanding of their environment, though ideally they will be able to draw connections between the images they are reviewing and the policies they have recently studied.
Once both parts of the objective have been met, the students will convene in small groups and brainstorm the results of suburban development policies in their own lives. In this way class will conclude with a discussion of the personal impacts of suburbanization, the winners and the losers of suburbanization, and the pros and cons of suburbanization. The class will conclude with a brief writing prompt asking "Would you reconsider now whether or not you would have voted for the Federal Aid to Highways Act of 1956? Why or Why not?"
Objective 6
The unit will wrap up with an evaluation of both suburban development policy and policy development itself. Prior to class, the students will read chapter 6 of Lizabeth Cohen's Consumer's Republic. In this chapter Cohen explores the impact of the movement of marketplaces from cities to suburbs in the 1960s. Cohen describes the malls of Bergen County New Jersey, as well as exploring the meaning of citizenship in a more suburban nation. This reading will introduce the students Cohen's dual notions of citizen consumers and purchaser consumers. In this way students will become acquainted with the larger effects suburbanization and consumption on citizenship.
The class will begin with a brief discussion of the pros and cons of the suburban development policy we have explored throughout the unit. This discussion will rely heavily on the Cohen reading, in that it consolidates many of the forces that have been discussed in class up to this point. Students will describe the new landscape, synthesizing the reading and drawing conclusions about its implications. If they do not come to it on their own, the teacher should prod students toward the inclusion of consumption and consumerism in their discussions of the changed landscape of suburban communities.
When this is complete, students will break into small groups and answer the question, what are the consequences of suburban development policies. This will necessitate a final deconstruction of the pros and cons of suburban development, as well as a final assessment of its winners and losers. The Cohen reading will prove an asset to this discussion, in that many of the topics discussed in the previous class are laid out in the reading. Each student will be responsible for taking notes on this discussion, as the notes will be a pivotal part of the essay that will be written in the final class of the unit.
When the students have exhausted their discussions, the teacher will reconvene the class and lead them in tying the material together with a discussion of citizenship in this new suburban landscape. The class will conclude with this discussion of what it means to be a citizen/ exercise political rights in this new landscape.
Objective 7
On the final day of class students will evaluate the process of making policy in general, using suburban development policy as an example of both social and economic policy. The teacher will begin class with a review of social and economic policy. The teacher will put the terms on the board, and students will be asked to define each. When this is complete the students will brainstorm ways in which suburban development policies amount to social or economic policy.
When this is complete the students will review the policy-making process, and the policies involved in the growth of the American suburb. This will be a strictly question and answer review to ensure that students have ample time to write their essays.
Students will then write an essay answering the following prompt "Given what you know about the government policies that led to the modern American suburb, evaluate the process by which policy is created in the U.S." In order to write a complete and exemplary essay, students will need to assess the political factors involved in policy, the ramifications of this specific policy, and the steps in the process of creating policy. In this way students will be expected to put together all aspects of the unit into one coherent essay.
