fandomhigh | 20th Century American History, Friday, January 15, 2016

"Today we're going to start in the 20th Century, and we're going to start in the 1900s," Steve said. "I wasn't alive for those--I'm not that old--but I knew people who were. And since it's been over a hundred years, it's pretty easy to figure out the important events from the day to day stuff." He smiled. "It's a lot harder to tell what's going to be remembered when you're living through it."

He handed out a small stack of papers. "I picked three events from 1900 to 1910 that still reverberate today: the first World Series baseball game, the Wright brothers' first flight in North Carolina, and Teddy Roosevelt's new foreign policy doctrines: Big Stick Diplomacy and the Roosevelt Corolllary to the Monroe Doctrine."

Steve then spent half of the class talking about the airplane's link to technology and warfare, how the Roosevelt foreign policies started manuevering the United States as a global power and began interfering in Central and South America, and how baseball was really swell.

And yes, he actually used the word "swell." Repeatedly. Sorry.

He brought a computer screen to life, linked to Wikipedia's summary of history from 1900 until 1929 and projected it onto the wall. "But I'm still pretty new to this time, and while I did a lot of reading this week, there might be an event mentioned in the first ten years of the century that you think we should talk about instead. Anything catch your eye? What event from 1900 to 1910 do you think has had the longest lasting impact?"

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Bored already.

Foreign policy, shiny technology and baseball!

Which American historical event from 1900 to 1910 had the longest impact on the country? The airplane? Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy? The World Series?

Or maybe something else on the list?

Don't tell him about the Dodgers.

Raven Darkholme

"I'd probably go with the Ford Motor Company or the Model T," Raven said. "The car completely changed the way people live and work. And it had a giant impact on the environment that we're probably never going to be able to reverse. Oh! And because we need gas to power them, we keep getting into wars with the big producers of oil. And it totally changed how people eat, too, with the start of the trucking industry. And! And it even changed the drinking age, because young people were getting into too many car accidents."

Okay, some of those weren't great examples. But Raven was coming up with them on the fly here, and she just kept thinking up more. Kathy had clearly had a terrible influence on her.

"Those are all excellent points," Steve said, nodding and smiling along. "The assembly line that Ford pioneered would have a huge influence on the world wars to follow, too."

Got to be able to put a lot of equally shaped bullets in your best guy's gun, after all.

Kira Yukimura

Ada Miller

Mabel Pines

Alex Mack

Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren

"How?" Jalian asked. "What is an assembly line?"

There were still some gaps in her twentieth century; sorry, Steve.

Eric Bittle

Xanthippe Voorhees

Steve had met more than a few men in the war who'd been working on an assembly line, so he was on solid ground to explain. "Take something like a car," he said. "Lots of parts to it, some of 'em pretty sophisticated. What Ford did was make it so that they men working were experts in just their part of the car. They didn't need to make the whole thing, but they would just make, say, the battery. Over and over again. It's a lot faster--he took a car assembly time from 12 hours down to 2 and a half. In a war, well, you can see how making things faster than the other guy is going to be essential."

Jalian nodded, but frowned. "Because you have so many people, you can specialize," she guessed. "Who combines the parts? They have to know all of them, don't they?"

"Well, final inspectors would have to know how it's all supposed to look," he said, "but I'm not sure if they always know how to fix it to make it better. They could just take it back to the section that did it wrong and tell 'em to fix it." He brightened up. "We could do a field trip or something to a factory."

Cosima Niehaus

"That would be good," Jalian agreed. There was still so much she didn't know about this time. And it was good to know that the teacher valued practical experience; maybe he could be sensible, even if he was a male.

20th Century American History, Friday, January 15, 2016

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