How Should We Remember Toussaint Louverture?

How often is it that here of stories in history where a slave becomes a ruler? It's extremely rare, but Toussaint Louverture proves that it is possible. Toussaint Louverture was just your average slave on the island of Saint Domingue(Haiti). It became an extremely rich colony and produced 40% of the world's sugar and more than 50% of the world's coffee. This work was being done by the 500,000 slaves on the island. ( Background Essay )Toussaint was one of the slaves helping to make Saint Domingue an even more rich colony until he gained his freedom. Now Toussaint was a free men of color and he is known today for his role in leading the slaves in revolt and abolishing slavery in Saint Domingue. He was able to come from being an enslaved man, to being a doctor to troops and commanding a small group of slave soldiers in a slave revolt in the north. (Doc A) Then from there,  France abolishes slavery and he supports France.  Toussaint Louverture should be remembered for many reasons including his role as military commander, liberator of slaves, and ruler of Saint Domingue. However, I think it is most important that he should be remembered by his role as military commander because without his military skills, he wouldn't have been able to be the ruler of Saint Domingue or liberator of slaves.

Slave turned military commander of slave soldiers. When thinking of Louverture's legacy, it’s extremely important to remember that he was a good military commander and leader because without his military skills, he would have never have been recognized as a leader of the slaves or be seen as fit and receive his position of ruler of Saint Domingue. His great military skills can be seen when revolt breaks out on the night of October 29 in 1801. The revolt is against his now unpopular laborious requirements because they were much like the work that was being done by slavery before. Toussaint needed to get the situation under control as fast as he could and when passing through the rebel zone, he ordered rebels to commit suicide on the spot. Then, he ordered Moyse’s arrest who was supposed to be commander of all the Northern Department, but turned out to go against Toussaint. Moyse was then executed by firing squad.(Doc E) Louverture was able to get the whole thing under control and back to normal as fast as he could to keep the peace on his island.Also while being a military commander, Toussaint was able to drive out the English and the Spanish from the Island while raising the army’s reputation. When the French landed on the island trying to reinstate slavery under Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint makes the clever decisions to burn down their city as to not provide infrastructure to their army and to flee to the mountains because the people of Saint Domingue know the mountains better than anyone else. The French would be unfamiliar in the area. (Doc F) These were key events that lead to his success and contributed to his status of military commander which should be thought of when remembering Toussaint Louverture.

Aside from his role as military commander, Louverture should be remembered for being the liberator of the slaves. One thing that makes him a great leader for the saves is how he is consistantly fighting against slavery and for the slaves. Whether he is fighting with the French when they abolish slavery, or against the French trying to abolish slavery, he is always trying to stand up and fight for the slaves. (Doc A) Also, when it is feared that the French will try and reinstate slavery on the island, Toussaint send a letter to the French Directory letting them know that it will be impossible to reinstate slavery because they all know how bad slavery is and will refuse to be put back into their torturous positions as slaves. He sends this as a threat to basically say that they are ready to fight to the death for their freedom. (Doc B) He isn't getting scared and causing Saint Domingue to panic, but rather keeping them under control and motivating them to fight if need be.  To add, when helping organize the constitution for Saint Domingue, Toussaint makes it clear in  Article 3 that slavery cannot exist and is forever abolished, but they all live and die French. (Doc C)He was able to rise as a leader and knowing how awful it is to be a slave made him even more powerful. He should be remembered as a liberator of slaves because he lead an extremely important revolution that would inspire not just Saint Domingue, but other countries around the world.

Toussaint probably never imagined himself becoming a liberator of the slaves never mind the ruler of the new Saint Domingue once slavery has ended. Toussaint became the leader of Saint Domingue and should be remembered for what he did as a ruler. Though slaves don’t want to go back to working the way they used to, Toussaint is smart and makes the decision that they have to continue the work because agriculture is the only way the economy can thrive. However, now everyone gets to be rewarded for their work. He decides to have smaller plantations hoping the conditions will improve. (Doc C) However, his plan doesn't really go over too well because like I mentioned earlier, the slaves don’t want to go back to the same work they were doing before and now that they know they don’t have, they avoid it. In 1801 he makes a proclamation to enforce the provisions of the constitution where he states that everyone needs to work and be employed on a plantation. He also mentions that any individual takes action against the military, that they should be seen before a court martial and punished with the law. Another rule he enforces is that people cannot leave their plantation and take refuge in another or they will be denounced by the captain and spend one week in prison. Lastly, he says that vagabond cultivators, wanderers who refuse to work, will be arrested. (Doc D) When things get out of hand, Toussaint does just what he needs to do and enforces the law to keep the island running. It’s important to recognize him as having control of the island and in the end, wanting the best for his island which is why he keeps plantations. Louverture may not have been the most popular ruler at the time, but he was definitely doing is best and making smart decisions.

The Haitian Revolution would have been extremely different and may not have even happened or been successful without Toussaint Louverture. He took on three very important roles as military leader, liberator of slaves, and ruler of Saint Domingue. His successes are obvious. If anything, his legacy should be his great military skills and leadership. A man of so many accomplishments should not be forgotten. It’s people who step up like Toussaint Louverture whose legacy will live on years after their deaths.

Sources:
Background essay- from Toussaint Louverture Mini Q (2012 The DBQ Project)
Doc A- created from various sources
Doc B- Toussaint Louverture, "Letter to the French Directory, November 1797."
Doc C-The Saint Domingue Constitution of 1801.
Doc D- Toussaint Louverture, "Proclamation, 25 November 1801."
Doc E- Madison Smartt Bell, "Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, 2007.Doc F- William Wells Brown, " A Description of Toussaint Louverture," from The Black Men, his Antecendents, his Genius, and his Achievements , 2nd Additon 1864. Engraving of Toussaint Louverture, 1802.

We are all Humans

The essential question for our unit on the Latin American Revolutions is as follows, "Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative?". 

We went about starting this lesson by viewing a map of South American Countries that had the year of their independence included. We previously learned about the Haitian Revolution in 1804 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Knowing this information, we realized that most of the countries had gained their independence after both of those events. This may be because they were angry with the results of the Congress of Vienna that cracked down on social structure and political policies, and they were inspired by the Haitian Revolution to create their own revolts for independence like the Haitians. 
Next, we made a pie chart showing the percentages of different races in Latin America. Mine is on the above.  What's funny about the percentages though, is that if you look at the social structure pyramid to the left, the Peninsulares have the most power, and they are the least present in the population. It sounds a lot like how Haiti was. We also discussed how your rank in social class depended on how white you were and there were many terms made up to describe how white a person was.  


The class then broke into three groups. Each group was assigned one of the following counties: Brazil, Mexico, and Gran Columbia. I was in the group that was assigned Mexico. We read about our country and made a timeline of important events that took place in the country. My timeline for Mexico can be seen to the below.

 After everyone in the class had completed their own timeline of their Latin American Country, we formed new groups where there were at least two people who had studied the other two countries that the others didn't. We shared our timelines and overall summary of our countries revolution and tried to come up with commonalities and differences between the three. 

Our commonalities and differences that we found are as follows: Commonalities

• First rulers of power after Independence only remained in power for a short amount of time.
• All three revolutions were successful and split ties from European powers. 
• Each three revolutions had a primary goal 
• All early 1800s 

Differences

• Brazilian revolution wasn't violent 
• Gran Colombia resulted in several independent countries 

We took a closer look at how race was involved in each of these revolutions. We noticed that in Mexico, the revolution was started by a priest and one of the three key reasons hes mentions for starting the revolt, is racial equality. Also, Pedro becomes the new King of Brazil and only allows white Europeans (Peninsulares) in his cabinet (high government positions). This of course upsets the people in Brazil who just fought to get away from European rule. In Gran Colombia, Simon Bolivard, a creole, was able to unite people despite their race in one army to fight the Spanish and Peninsulares. In this situation, you see many races being banded together because they all feel mistreated. These revolutions show that racial equality is important because it could break out into violence and revolts. Also, in the end, we are all humans and are not superior to one another because of where we come from. 

Currently, there has been recent protests and arguing about the event that took place in Ferguson, Missouri. Police shot unarmed, black teen Michael Brown. Many people think that if it was a white teen then it wouldn't have ended how it did. Protests have broken out all over the area and people are debating and arguing over whether this is a racial issue, or if it was the right thing to do. Difference in race still cause violence today. To learn more about the events in Ferguson, Missouri click here. 

Failure or Success?

 Many revolutions started taking place in the nineteenth century following the French Revolution. In school, my class took a look at this quote by Alexis de Tocqueville, "We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the Earth trembles anew. A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon. We took some time to look at this quote and figure out what it means. We said that liberals and nationalists are the sleeping volcano, the winds are the ideas of liberalism and nationalism that are spreading among the people in Europe who are unhappy, the storm on the horizon is the actual revolution that is about to come, and the Earth is trembling anew because the countries are unstable. Next, we were given our essential question for the lesson which is as follows, "Were  the  revolutions  of 1830 and 1848 really failures as historians have concluded?" A second quote we looked at to get started was one that said that if France sneezes, all of Europe catches a cold, and this could be true because we already saw that with Napoleon causing Europe. The class then divided into groups and we made timelines bout successes and failures. Mine is below.

  The timeline starts all the way at the left with complete failure and ends at the right with complete success. In the middle is not really a success or failure and the others are partial failure and partial success. 

Now to get started learning about the actual revolutions. we were again put into groups and each group was assigned a revolution. My group had the Decembrist Revolt. The Decembrist revolt took place in Russia in 1825. The Decembrists were liberals and the poor working class who were fighting to put someone like Constantine back in power to make constitutional reforms like they were promised but never given before. However, Constantine did not want to take the throne, so it was given to Tzar Nicholas I who was not prepared for the position. The Decembrist feared that he would be much like  Tzar Alexander who they did not like. They fought against his rule and for constitutional changes, but Nicholas would not give in to anything. He had people killed that fought against him to try and keep everything under control. The Decembrist Revolt was ultimately a lure because nothing changed as a result and many people were killed. 

After learning about our revolution, we made a survey monkey on it for the rest of the class to take. The results were great and we could tell that a lot of people were learning about our revolution. Most of the class got everything right! Below is a screenshot of part of our quiz. 

 

 The Frankfurt Assembly in 1848 wasn't a complete failure like the Decembrists Revolt, but it could still be considered a partial  failure because although they were able to organize and come up with ideas, they weren't able to put them into place. The German states wanted to create a constitutional monarchy and unify all of the states under it, but eventually the Parliament at Frankfurt was accused of treason and destroyed, and the revolt wasn't a successful. The French Revolution of 1830 is hard to call it either a success or failure. It was successful for the reasons of Charles X fleeing and Louis Philippe takes the throne and gives a constitutional monarchy and more voting rights to the wealthy. However, radical liberals were still upset because they wanted a republic. Another example that wasn't a failure or success would be like the events that took place in Hungary in 1848. A revolt breaks out and Metternich flees. Then, the nationalists in Budapest wanted an independent government, an end to serfdom, and a written constitution to protect their basic rights. The Austrian government was overwhelmed and agreed, but only temporarily. Once they gained control again with Russia's help, many were imprisoned, exiled, or executed.

I learned about the above revolts by taking my classmates quizzes on the revolutions that they made!

All in all, I think that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were not failures like historians have said. I think that the only one I would call a failure is the Decembrists Revolt. The others were not successes, but definitely were not complete failures. The people were able to put up a fight against their government and see changes although the changes still didn't satisfy everyone. Even if the change didn't last long, the people were still able to get what they wanted across to the government in order for them to make a change. The people of this time were able to make their voices heard.

 

We Want Peace!

The Congress of Vienna was a peace conference in 1814 that was held in Austria. France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain gathered to come up with a peace treaty following Napoleon's defeat.

Our lesson on the Congress of Vienna started with an essential question that asked what people in power should do if their power is threatened. Our lesson continued when we read a background reading from Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna. I learned the information I wrote in the introduction form the reading as well as who attended the conference. Kings, queens, princes, and diplomats all made the journey to Vienna. The Congress of Vienna was a laid back conference and consisted of many balls and events. They realized toward the end that they needed to speed things up and did just that. The treaty was signed on the ninth of June in 1815. After reading the background essay, we watched a video that reenacted the meeting between prince Clemens von Metternich and Napoleon Bonaparte. Metternich seeks peace for France and requests Napoleon to stop his conquests and for the original boundaries to be restored. Napoleons response is that he will reduce Vienna to rubble and mentions how then multiple soldiers would have died for nothing if the boundaries were going to reset.

Metternich

Napoleon

Napoleon's power was diminishing. Now that Napoleon's threat no longer existed, what was to be done about the boundaries, France, and preventing future revolutions? The congress of Vienna met to plan for a future without Napoleon Bonaparte.

One thing that resulted form the Congress of Vienna was the Holy Alliance and Principle of Intervention, both of which were to prevent future revolutions. The Holy Alliance stated that monarchs had the divine right to rule and so if there were any revolution, it was reason and against God. This helped the powerful people attending the Congress of Vienna to make sure their power wasn't threatened because the people during this time were very religious and wouldn't want to ever be told they were going against God. The Principle of Intervention was an ideology that gave the great powers the right to send troops into a country to stop a revolution and restore monarchs. This also helped to prevent revolutions and power being threatened because there was always a chance that an army can send troops and make things even worse in order to stop the revolutions.

In my opinion, what the attendees of the Congress of Vienna did was effective and the right choice. I think they should have not completely just make decisions and take away land from other countries like Italy because it wasn't fair, but for the most part what they did prevented revolutions for the next 40+ years. I think that the people with the most power always should make sacrifices and give up some of their power to others in order to keep any issues from arising. Napoleon had gained so much power he just fell apart and people were upset everywhere with some of what he was doing. Life isn't fair, but sometimes you have to make it a little more fair than it is to keep yourself safe from conflict.

Napoleon Picture Site
Metternich Picture Site
 
For an interactive map showing the changes in Europe during the 19th century click here.

Taking a Closer Look at Napoleon Bonaparte

The essential question for our lesson on Napoleon is as  follows, "What was Napoleon's impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe?" The first thing we did on class to learn about Napoleon was watching the short five minute video below.





While watching this video, we were asked to write down the places that Napoleon conquered. We came up with a long list by the end that included places like Egypt, Austria, Prussia, Italy, etc. We soon realized that Napoleon was very successful in his conquests. Then we took a look at two different views on Napoleon.

From thew two views we learned that Napoleon was someone to be admired because he was able to keep thousands of people in his army over the years and was a brilliant military strategist, but that he should also be guarded against because he has so much greed that fuels his conquest. Marshal Michel Ney refers to Napoleon as "our august emperor". Madame de Stael believes that Napoleon is a cunning tyrant.

 Lastly, we took a look at this image above and highlighted what Napoleon did that made an impact on the whole world and on France. (pink= France) (orange= world)

From this, it was clear to see how Napoleon impacted the areas in the Essential Question.

He impacted the social system in a positive way by giving more people access to education and the rights to property. He also impacted the political system in a positive way by his ideas of meritocracy which rewarded people based on their talents and not because of their social rank. Lastly, he impacted the economic system in a positive way by stimulating industry and removing trade barriers. He also was able to steal money from Italy, and created the Bank of France which involved having a budget system and massive public work systems. Upon first glance, Napoleon may seam like a greedy man who just wants all of the power in the world, which is true to an extent,but taking a closer look shows how Napoleon was able to impact France in positive ways.

Many People, Three Ideologies

To begin our lesson on the ideologies of the 19th century, we were given an essential question. The essential question is as follows, "What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action?". After we were given the question, we took some time to look at the words conservative, liberal, and nationalism. We defined them ourselves and used them in a sentence. Then, we discussed what exactly an ideology is and learned that ideologies are ideas that are formed by someone or a group of people, that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. Now we had an idea on what the ideologies that we were going to look at were going to be by defining the words in the beginning and broke off into groups.


The class was divided into six groups; two groups per ideology. In the groups, we were asked to make a sixty second presentation on our assigned ideology. My group got conservatism and decided to do a common craft video. You can view it below.

Our presentation gives a definition and overview of the beliefs of conservatism with the audio and images. Conservatives believe that the traditional political and economic ways should be kept in use. They do not believe in reform and do not want a revolution. They wanted to preserve the system of aristocracy and set social structures. They liked traditional monarchies. This influenced social and political action because it was giving power to specific people like the monarch.



Another ideology is liberalism. Liberalism is the idea that the middle class has a say in government and that everyone has god given natural rights that need to be protected. Liberalism prevented tyrannic rule and promoted freedom of though and natural rights. However, liberals did not want a democracy, instead they left out the women and poor but gave the middle class a say. It influenced the social and political action because the liberals had opposite ideas from the conservatives and made the middle class happy, but not the poor. The last ideology is nationalism. Nationalism is when a nation wants to be united and the best and strongest nation it can be. They wanted to be strong and able to conquer others and drive out foreign rulers. Nationalists believed that people were bound together by sharing the same culture, language, and history. The nationalists would not focus on social classes and power as much as how they should all be united as one strong nation.

Help the Poor!

     In order to tech the class the ideas of Karl Marx and Adam Smith about the economy, our teacher set up a fun activity to help us better understand what exactly Karl Marx was trying to accomplish. In this activity, each student was given Hershey kisses. Most of the students in the class including myself! were given two Hershey kisses. Two kids however, were given 8. The Hershey kisses were a representation of money and the people who had more were wealthy and the rest of us, which was over 90%, were poor. Then, we were given instructions that we could get up around the class and play Rock Paper Scissors shoot with others. If you lost, you would give the winner a Hershey kiss and vice versa. Our freedom of competition and trade of Hershey kisses represents Capitalism which we would later find out to be Adam Smith's idea of the invisible hand. Pretty soon a lot of students including myself, were sitting down because we ran out of Hershey kisses and had nothing to trade. Next, we ended the game and everyone sat down with their Hershey kisses if they had any. Our teacher then took back all of the Hershey kisses and redistributed them so every student had the same amount of Hershey kisses. This was representing Karl Marx's idea of socialism and how the government would take all materials and redistribute them equally among the traders. Finally, we were shown how communism worked when we all agreed on having equal Hershey kisses and not trying to play the game again. After that, we were free to do as we wanted with our two Hershey kisses. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and that was eat them! When we were free to do as we wanted, it was representing his with communism the government is no longer needed because everyone agreed to having equal amounts of materials.

Now we know what Karl Marx thought was a well developed system, and it was time to learn more about Adam Smith and his theories on economics. To do this, we watched this short video below that gave us an overall main idea of this system that was easy to understand.

     Adam Smith's idea of "the invisible hand" sounds a lot like capitalism doesn't it? That's because they are the same thing. Karl Marx says that Capitalism isn't fair for the poor and it's not going to work out because the poor will revolt. Marx  idea of helping the poor is having them help themselves by creating a system where in the end, everyone was equal. It helped them by eliminating class division. However, Smith thinks that it would be better to help the poor when everyone is allowed free of trade and commerce because businesses will realize that people want good quality products that are at low price. This means competition between businesses will occur and some will fail, but it will provide the poor with the things they need because the prices will be better because businesses are competing with each other which in most cases, results in the drop of prices in order for companies to try and get business.

     I think that the ideas of Marx would be the best way to go. I think that if everyone had equal supplies and class divisions were eliminated, everyone would get along better and no one would try and revolt against the government. The government wouldn't even be needed! I think it would make most people feel better about their life knowing that everyone had gotten the same as them to begin with.

Why on Earth Would Anyone Want to Work at the Mills?

   

     Knowing what we know about the mills and factories during the industrial revolution, most people today would definatly not want to go work their. So what attracted all of these young girls during the time that they would leave their farm life and family behind them?

    The image to the left show an illustration of the Lowell Mills. Notice how pretty and peaceful the artist makes the scene look in order to draw people in. 

 These young girls were motivated to work in the factories because they could put money away for their dowry, and they could have money to spend on themselves. They also felt like by leaving their family and going to work by themselves showed how they were independent and mature. The idea of having the working and living experience in the city also drew some girls in because it was something they weren't used to and curious about. Another reason girls were attracted to the mills because it was thought as of a temporary job, so they could get married and have kids after.  Families were also having to make a big decision on allowing their daughters to work and I think that a lot of what made the decision easier is how they were going to send back money home to help with their families if they needed it and how factory owners told the families how beautiful the mills were. They also let the families know that they will be cared for and still have morals enforced. Painters used to paint the mills as this peaceful beautiful landscape surrounded by clean water, when in reality it was anything but peaceful. When everyone is telling you such great things about a place why not go? Well for mill girls here's why; girls suffered in the working conditions, their health declined, they weren't treated well by the overseers, they had to leave their life behind, they didn't get good meals, they were under strict rules, it could possibly prevent you from getting other jobs in the future, it was damaging to their reputation, and they were always at risk for injuries. I would not want anyone I know to have to experience what these girls experienced in the mills.

In class we learned most of this information watching "Daughters of Free Men". Click here
to visit a web page including a short clip from this documentary.

Google Chat = A Success

   My history class recently got to do a live google chat with an expert from the Museum of Science and Industry!

Picture I took in class during the chat. (Jamie)

   Before doing the chat, we had to prepare ourselves for the information that we were going to learn from him. First, we went to the museum webpage and took a lot at their articles on the topic. We went to this page here , and checked out the text on that page while also making sure to read the pages linked on the side titled "Richard Arkwright" and "Manchester Textile Designers". After getting a little background information about the information that the museum had to offer on their page, we watched a video of the expert, jamie, that we were going to chat with.

     From the video, we were able to take out words that he used while describing the cloth making process and make a vocab list. we had words like carding engine and slubbing. By the end of the video we had a list of vocab words, but no definitions. in groups, we broke up the list and had everyone look up one or two words using google. We had to think back to our first unit and remember how to search successfully. i had to look up other words before i could even define the term i was looking up.


  After getting to know a little more about the mills and machines, it was finally time for the chat. I learned a lot including just how bad the conditions in the mills were. Below is a picture of the flyers on a machine before the cotton was made into thread. The flyers would spin around extremely fast.

Small children used to have to clean between these flyers with little brushes. Children could easily get their hands could in the spinning flyers and their hands would get crushed. Jamie was also able to turn tis machine on and get it running. even through our google chat and with only this one machine running, we could tell the machine was extremely loud. Picturing people listening to that a hundred times worse with all of the machines and all day, just seems awful. People would frequently lose their hearing. Women with long hair could easily get their hair caught in many of the machines and it would either scalp them or take chinks from their hair. Since there was so much cotton fibers in the air, workers' lungs would get filled with fibers and make it hard to breathe as they got older. While using the flying shuttle, women would suck the thread through a whole and it spread disease ad got oil in their lungs. It also caused people to lose their front teeth because they were constantly sucking the thread through the wooden flying shuttle.  Overall, I learned that the factories were not fit for working.


    I really did enjoy doing this google chat. It was something that i had never done before in school and I really was able to gain a lot of information while I was also seeing what was being talked about at the same time. I also got to learn a lot of little fun facts that I wouldn't normally learn from an article or website. It was cool also knowing that we were talking to someone so far away and it watching what they were doing live. I would definatly do this again and recommend it to other teachers and students to do for their classes.

Exhibits, Exhibits, and some more Exhibits

To the left is an image of my group's museum exhibit that we made on the topic of child labor.
Close ups are provided at the  bottom of this post.


To continue our unit on the Industrial revolution, the people in our class were given artifacts that correspond with certain topics. Our artifacts were the pictures, writing pieces, and table. I was actually absent for the first day of this project and missed most of the analyzing the documents, but when I returned to school, my group really helped me understand how they did the analyzing and showed me how they related to the documents. They were really good at catching me up to speed. After checking over our notes, we began drafting the poster which was hard because everyone had different ideas on what they wanted the poster to look like. Eventually, we all decided that the background was going to be black and we were going to put brown boarders and chains on the poster to represent the dark emotions connected with this topic and the actual chains that children pulled things from in their labor. We just really wanted to show people how awful child labor was at the time of the industrial revolution. Kids were forced to pull such heavy things on their backs, crawl in tiny places, and work in dangerous mills. After our exhibit was all finished and put up, we checked out our classmates.


The group that had transportation as their topic did a nice job of using bright colors to show that there wasn't really that many negative things to say about it. Trains and boats were able to get people farther away faster, import and export goods, etc.


I also learned from the standard of living and economics exhibit that during the industrial revolution, pollution was more of a problem than it had ever been before in the past. Something else I learned was that from the 18th century and into the 19th century, the cost of living was getting higher and higher and the earnings of people were staying the same.


From another exhibit I found out that before the industrial revolution, families each had their own loom and it was very valuable to them. As factories and mills became more common, the valuable looms in each family just weren't cutting it out anymore, so the families would be forced to move into the city and work in a mill.


The last exhibit I visited was all about slavery. and the group set it up in a very creative way. They had a wagon wheel that you could actually spin in order to read what they had on their poster and I thought it was an interesting way to get the information across.


All in all this project allowed us to be creative and still learn a lot of important information. My close ups are below.

A Revolutionary Revolution

     To begin our unit on the industrial revolution, our class watched a brief video that gave us a lot of brief information about this revolution. Our main focus was to figure out what things were revolutionary about the revolution.  We then put these "things" in categories labeled people, technology, resources, and transportation. In my opinion, the two most important categories are people and technology.


     During the industrial revolution, people and the way they worked changed for the better. Before the industrial revolution, 80% of people were farmers trying to feed everyone. Today, only 1% of people claimed that farming was their occupation. This drastic change was due to new farming techniques. The fields were being made larger, fertilizer was being used, and much more crops were being harvested each year with less farmers. With the improved techniques and fertilizers, crops that were out of season could be grown and eaten during every season. The enclosure movement also helped the farming industry. Fields that were once occupied by peasant farmer, were fenced off by rich landowners and created more space to cultivate more crops. Also, this created more pastures for sheep which increases the wool that was being collected. With more wool there is a need for more workers and that was also now possible because not as many farmers were needed to grow crops so they could move into the cities and work the machines. With everything taken into account, the death rates were declining. Now there was not such a risk for famine. Also, women were healthier and having healthier babies. All in all, people's jobs during the industrial revolution changed and they were living longer.



     Another important aspect to the industrial revolution, is the technology that is being invented. There were many inventions that contributed to the clothing industry. The spinning jenny, flying shuttle, and water frame all increased the production in textile mills. These inventions were the cause for factories. More machines could be stored and operated all at once and more clothing could be made. Spinning was significantly faster which made clothing ore available to the people. With more factories, more electrical energy was needed. This problem was solved by the invention of the steam engine which produced electrical energy by burning coal to power trains, boats, and these new large factories. One last invention is the improved iron. The Darby family was able to find ways to make cheaper and stronger iron while also removing the impurities. Now iron was more reliable and more railroads could be made with it for more transportation.


Now these of course aren't the only good things from the industrial revolution. There are many more but this is just to give you an idea. To view the video my class watched click HERE.

Image from HERE . 

Exploring the Web

     This past week, my class has been getting used to using online search engines and really figuring out how to find the information we need and make sure we can trust and use it. We learned tips on how to search for information and tips for how to tell whether or not a source is real and trustworthy. 

     The fist activity my class did was a Google a Day. A Google a Day is an online activity and the goal of it is to find answers to the questions they give by searching on the website. By doing this activity, I learned more tricks on how to search things through google to get the results I want. For example, putting quotation marks around certain words will ensure that they will be in the results. I also learned that you may be given a question and have to search other topics before you can answer the question because you may need background information about things in the question. I found this activity to be fun because I liked being in a competition with my classmates. However, it did get frustrating at times when you felt like there was nothing left to look up and you didn't know how you were ever going to find the answer. I still do recommend this activity and if you would like to check it out, click HERE. 

     Accuracy, authenticity, and reliability are all important things a source should have to be trusted and used for gathering information. Accuracy has to do with the correctness of the information displayed. Authenticity is how true and genuine something is. Lastly, reliability is the ability to be depended on. To test our knowledge on these three key terms, we tested a website to see if it was accurate, authentic, and reliable. The website is titled "Help Save the Endangered Northwest Tree Octopus". We found this website to be authentic because it told us exactly what it was supposed to tell us about the tree octopuses, but it wasn't accurate because the information was false and there are no such things as northwest tree octopuses, and it is not reliable either because the author and organizations linked with this site aren't credible. All in all, the website should not be used for school work. To go to this site and check it out click HERE.

During this week, I learned how to be a more productive researcher. 

 
A picture of the so called "pacific northwestern tree octopus".
Link to picture is HERE. (also used as the link above) 

Teachers, John Green, and Me

 

    My name is Julia and I am currently a sophomore at Reading Memorial High School this year. I have created this blog to talk about what I am learning in my honors history 10 class. Our class has gone paperless and has turned to technology in order to help us learn everything this year for history class.
    What makes a teacher great? I believe that in order to be a great teacher, there must be freedom given to those who are being taught. I think giving kids freedom will allow them to become comfortable in the class and enjoy the class more. I also think getting to know all of the students in the class is extremely important so that you know where they are coming from when they speak in the class. One of my favorite teachers in the past was funny so she kept us all entertained, but was also strict when she needed to be. Once a week at the end of class we would all take 5 minutes and go around the room sharing things about us to get to know each other more. I also think that it was very important that she let us choose who we wanted to work with so we could work with people who we know and don't feel bad when you don't want to use their ideas. One last thing that made her a great teacher, was how she let everyone express their own opinions even when they weren't her own. I think this year having a fun engaging way to teach the lessons will benefit everyone.
     Recently my class watched a John Green video about how students should take advantage of their education and do great things with it. I agree with the points that John Green makes in his video. He mentions that we have this opportunity to learn so much for free. Also, he states that he is paying taxes so that we can go to school because when he is old, we will be the leaders of America. I never had thought about it like that. My goal for school this year is to do what John Green said and take advantage of being able to learn so much everyday. I will do this by making sure I stay focused.
To watch the John Green video, click the link below:

John Green Video
 Image from http://www.yvheadstart.com/yvhs/news/