Guest Contribution: The First Measured Century

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Note

Note: I’m delighted to be sharing the Underground Classroom’s very first Guest Contribution. This lesson focuses on the history of polling and public opinion and the impacts of “being measured” on society. The teacher who shared this requested to remain anonymous. It is my hope to post more Guest Contributions. If you are a teacher, especially a teacher in one of those states where academic freedom is constrained and under attack, and there is a lesson you feel your students should know, but you do not safe or comfortable teaching, scroll down to send them to the Underground Classroom. I will be happy to post them for you.

It looks like much of this curriculum is pulled from the far-left radical PBS. That in and of itself can get a teacher investigated in some states.

Sociology: Sociology of Knowledge

The First Measured Century

Grade Level: Advanced High School – College Undergrad

The First Measured Century

This video was created in 2000. Although it is twenty+ years old, the information is historical and not surprisingly, relates to today. Especially in the recent 2020 census and election year(s)!

Please watch this video in segments. Spread it out over a few weeks. Watching it all at once is a bit overwhelming. I don’t want you falling to sleep!

And… I want to read some in-depth observations comparing and contrasting the video and what’s happening today! How have things changed… or not changed?

__________

poll /pลl/ โ€“ noun

noun: poll; plural noun: polls; plural noun: the polls

1. the process of voting in an election: “the country went to the polls on March 10”

Similar: vote, ballot, show of hands, straw vote/poll, referendum, election, voting figures, returns, count, tally poll /pลl/ โ€“ verb

poll /pลl/ โ€“ verb

gerund or present participle: polling

1. record the opinion or vote of: “focus groups in which customers are polled about merchandise preferences”

Similar: canvass, survey, ask, question, interview, ballot

__________

FROM PBS TOPIC SEGMENTS

The three-hour PBS program “The First Measured Century,” tells the story of America by the numbers through the eyes of those who did the measuring and the interpreting, often in highly controversial and unusual circumstances.

These include George Gallup, Alfred Kinsey, Robert and Helen Lynd (authors of “Middletown,”) Daniel P. Moynihan, W.E.B. Dubois, Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop, Frederick Jackson Turner, Franz Boas (who turned back the tide of “scientific racism,”) James Q. Wilson (co-author of the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention), Frank Fukuyama, William Julius Wilson, and many others who, for the most part, are unheralded.

We begin our look at social indicators before the time of Gross National Product, public opinion polls, rates of unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, infant deaths and maternal mortality (which was the second leading cause of death among women, beaten out only by tuberculosis.)

We see the United States going from half the size of the four biggest European nations to twice the size of all of them combined. We see a nation of 50 million, taking in 25 million immigrants.

READ these abbreviated segments first.

PART 1: 1900-1930 (You will choose 2 from this group.)

PART 2: 1930-1960 (You will choose 2 from this group.)

PART 3: 1960-2000 (You will choose 2 from this group.)

Watch these two videos:

Video 1: PBS The First Measured Century Part 1
Video 2: PBS The First Measured Century Part 2

Practice and Assessment Ideas

WRITE a List discussing six (6) different things you learned or found interesting AND how these compare to today. Be specific!

Choose to write about two from each of the three groups above.

Use one paragraph each (250 words minimum โ€“ use Word Count!) for each of the six items.

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