Fandom High School

"While we've concentrated mostly on national parks and monuments this class," Steve began, standing in front of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, "they are not the only organization charged with the protection of our nation's history. Many of you have already visited the National Archives downtown in Washington, DC, to see the founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But the Archives is also charged with keeping track of all the other historical documents as they come into existence. Since Herbert Hoover, presidents have established presidential libraries in their home states to display all of the, well, stuff, they accumulate as president."

"We picked Reagan because, well, he's a huge influence on everything as it stands today," Tony added. "Not really for the better, but it is important to know."

"We're in California in December, too," Steve said with a little smile. "That was a factor as well. Ronald Reagan was president for eight years in the 1980s and oversaw the end of the Cold War. He also drastically cut many of the government-funded social safety nets that had been in place since the 1940s." He gestured around. "This is considered the most extensive of the presidential libraries, so there's a lot to learn and discover. You can even go sit in a replica of the Oval Office. Maybe you'd make better decisions!"

Steven.

"And we'll be buying In-N-Out for the class." As a bribe, Tony?

It was certainly working for Steve. "Oooh!"

Class today featured one of the teachers on their phones with Portalocity as they'd been dumped in the middle of nowhere Kansas. Was Tony getting anywhere with customer service? No. No, he wasn't.

"No, don't put me on hold again!" Aaaand he was on hold again. "Sorry, guys. Just a little snafu."

That left the naturally more upbeat teacher to smooth this over. "So...welcome to this really big ball of twine!" Steve said enthusiastically. "And not, um, the Grand Canyon."

All while Tony paced behind him and kept on trying. "Hello? Hi, I just need--no, no, no! Why do they keep picking up just to put me back on hold!?"

"Entirely to annoy you," Steve said. "Sorry. So we're in--" he craned his neck to read the helpful sign near the giant string ball, "Cawker City."

He had no idea what state that was in. "In the Midwest," he added, making a guess based on how flat it was around them. "And sometimes people in the United States have very odd ways of passing the time. Like this, the biggest ball of twine, which is an excellent example of a community working together and probably being very bored and cold in the winter."

"Yes, I want to escalate this to a manager!" Tony said, leaning against said ball of twine to dull horror of the employees of the site. "No, not claims, a manager. A manager, yes."

"Do not buy Portalocity," Steve hissed as he walked past his husband. "So explore this piece of Americana and maybe we can come up with something like this we could implement back in Fandom. And then we'll find something to eat."

Your teachers were moderately bundled up for a nice, cool fall day with extra jackets at the ready for the class should they need them for this trip since it was a little more north than Fandom.

"Welcome to Yellowstone National Park," Tony said. "The first national park in the country and some think in the world, being founded in 1872, with over two million acres of land under its purview."

"We're not going to see all of it," Steve assured them. Even if he kind of wanted to. "We're near Tower Roosevelt, the northeast corner of the park and one of the best sections to spot wildlife. It's also near the Roosevelt Lodge in case you get snacky."

"Please do not get close to the wildlife," Tony emphasized. "The elk are... a bit jumpy. And can cause some serious damage."

"And don't pet the fluffy cows," Steve added.

Your teachers were born in a city, students. Don't expect a ton of information about wildlife that wasn't also found in Central Park.

"I know that Washington, DC, might not be particularly exotic for you," Steve began with a smile, "because it's so close to the island, but it is the nation's capital and is therefore filled with historical monuments."

"We'll be taking a break from the Revolutionary War and going with World War I," Tony added. "A brand new sculpture that someone wanted to see."

"I'm excited about all new sculptures that don't feature me," Steve said with a tiny little smile, "but yes, my father died in World War I, so I have a personal interest in seeing that conflict memorialized properly."

"So, let's get there and we'll turn you all loose," Tony replied. "And maybe there will be time for a half-smoke too."

"Just please don't get them from the stands by the Washington Monument," Steve said, sounding disapproving. "They mark the prices up to prey on tourists."

"Welcome back!" Tony said. "Hopefully everyone had a nice break from classes this past week. And we have another holiday fast approaching, but before that... let's move onto another inventor who changed the world... Jack Parsons. Who was a pioneer in rocket technology."

Steve gave Tony a fond little grin. "Tony loves rocket science. But he's smart enough not to die by blowing himself up with an experiment, right, Tony?"

Right, Tony?

"It certainly helps to have work to piggy-back off of for safety measures," Tony added. "Jack Parsons was mostly self-taught scientist who pushed rockets--which were considered mostly science fiction at the time--into reality. He developed a much safer fuel source for the propulsion that would later be adapted for space flight rather than simply rockets for wartime."

"He worked with scientists whose names are on buildings now," Steve said, "like Goddard and Werner von Braun. His genius was, frankly, as volatile as the compounds he was working with."

"And his personal life was--well, very interesting in conjunction with what he accomplished in his short life," Tony said slowly. "Because he did, indeed, die from one of his rocket experiments. But his impact is without question. So! Let us know if you think the burn bright and fast is better than a steady level of contributions to the world."

"Having done the other," Steve said a little cryptically, "I vote for the slow and steady option."

Well, no one was an animal today, or was talking to someone they thought was an animal. Steve was here for small, achievable victories this week.

"Hello, class," he said with a tiny smile.

"Hope you all had a fun Halloween with the candy falling from the sky," Tony said. "We'll be getting right back into it with an agricultural inventor and innovator, George Washington Carter."

"If the name sounds familiar, it's because he's one of our most famous 20th Century Black scientists," Steve added.

"He advocated for a rotation of crops for farmers in order to prevent the soil from being depleted. Like what happened during the Dust Bowl," Tony said. "Which, for those unaware, was one of the greatest ecological disasters in this country. Where a combination of over-farming and drought caused the soil to erode and created these huge, choking dust storms."

"It wasn't great," Steve said with the tone of someone who'd lived through it. Because he'd lived through it. "Cotton, in particular, is a crop that leaches nutrients from the soil and since Carter was located in Alabama, he could see the problems and then the results of his recommendations."

"His work brought sweet potatoes and peanuts to US farmers on a larger scale to replace those nutrients," Tony added. "Which doesn't seem like a lot, but it was a major boon to the farmers of the south."

Steve nodded. "Because part of the reason they wouldn't let fields recover between cotton harvests was the farmers needed the money. These were crops that helped the soil and could feed people. Carver found more than 300 different uses for peanuts--everything from food to shaving cream."

"So, today we'll be giving you all a challenge," Tony said. "Come up with something unique you can do with a sweet potato."

"Have you ever heard the saying 'the greatest thing since sliced bread?'" Steve asked, smiling softly at the class. "Turns out that sliced bread--a machine doing it--has only been around since 1927, which makes it younger than I am."

"It was invented by American inventor, Otto Rohwedder," Tony added. "It doesn't sound like a big deal, but pre-sliced bread was a novel thing for many people. They can't all be big ones, you know?"

"Well, if you have a dull knife and a need for a sandwich, two pieces of bread the same size can be a big deal," Steve countered, still smiling.

"So, in honor of the invention... we brought sandwiches for the class," Tony said brightly.

It was pretty much the limit of their cooking skills. "And when we go to France together next week, compare these to sandwiches on different types of bread, which are not on pre-sliced bread," Steve said. "And we can decide which way is better."

Guess what, History students? Three day weekend for you! They'd sent an email, but also put up the same note on the door:

We were not great with the ice to begin with, but sentient snow angels are really not our favorites. Stay home and do research on the truth of climate change and why your Members of Congress are using it as a political weapon. See you next week.

--Steve Rogers & Tony Stark

"American foreign policy is other countries domestic policy," Tony said. "And not willingly most of the time. There has been a very long history of American interference in the business of other nations. Native American nations, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Liberia... the list literally goes on for a very long time."

Steve nodded. "A very quick summary of the Monroe Doctrine would be: Europe cannot interfere in the Americas. But we can. So there. You can imagine how well the rest of the continent took that."

"Well, to be fair, at first some of the budding leaders in Central and South Americas took it to mean that America would prevent European powers from stopping their struggles toward independence. Same for Canada. But over time, the doctrine was reinterpreted to mean whatever the ruling party at the time wanted it to," Tony replied. "I do believe that the original intent had been to prevent colonialism in the Americas, but high ideals rarely survive the real world when power is at stake."

Steve nodded again. "Especially once we passed out of the 17th and 18th Centuries," he said. "And once the Cold War really heated up, I've read that a lot of elections became proxy battles between the United States and the Soviet Union."

"And it turns out, most of our current enemies are people we trained in those Cold War and on fights," Tony said with a sort of false cheer. "Because this country f--messed up real bad."

Wasn't that the story of the nation?

"But you won't read about any of that in a history book," Steve said. "We're always painted as trying to help, and we do try that too: aid programs, health outreach--it does some legitimate good which is undermined with the darker meddling."

"So, let's discuss," Tony said. "What gives us the right to interfere with other countries? Is it ever acceptable to do?"

"War is, generally speaking, full of scoundrels and other terrible people," Steve said, "and the Civil War was no exception."

"For some background on this, there wasn't a standing army for the US as there is today. Soldiers existed, yes. But they were stationed on the borders out west and there were not very many of them. Most military force, should there be need of it, came from militias drummed up by each state," Tony said. "So the officers were generally people who had connections or money to be able to afford to attend military schools. This will come into play here."

Steve nodded. "Making the US military a large, professional career for millions didn't happen until after World War II. In the Civil War, militias were organized by town, sent into battle by states, and were generally led by the mayor's kid or the newspaper editor."

"Someone who had someone's ear who wanted to further their political career or gain glory in war," Tony said dryly. "Which I'm sure you can all guess how well this worked for both the Union and the Confederacy. Because trust us, it was on both sides. The Confederacy got lucky early on to have Lee in charge of their forces in Virginia. Lee had actual battle experience from his time in The Mexican-American War and was not entirely a political appointment."

"The Union side--the one fighting to keep the nation together--had bigger problems. Their initial head general was Winfield Scott, who at the time was slightly older than dirt. He'd also served in the Mexican-American War, but unlike Lee was not a young officer then. He was an old officer then. He was a young officer in the war of 1812, fifty years prior to the Civil War."

"Adding to all of this, West Point, where the majority of the actual officers received their training, was still teaching Napoleonic warfare. Where you marched your armies onto a field and duked it out. That... was not a smart idea as the technology of weapons were rapidly evolving," Trust Tony on that one, kids. "On top of that, the battlefields were in the forests and farmlands of the boarder states where an open field that could hold their forces simply did not exist."

"The death tolls were high and that was before you started adding in the terrible disease and horrifying health care that they had access to at the time," Steve said. "But it absolutely didn't help that the generals were equally concerned about their political standing and trying to win a battle. You can't serve both duty and ambition."

"Let's start with the gentleman who replaced Scott!" Tony said brightly. "George McClellan was the commander of the Army of the Potomac, the forces closest to the Union capitol. He was a rising star after he managed to organize his unruly band into something that made sense for classic military order. Once Scott was found to be too old and too cautious in his pursuit of rebel forces, the younger and much more popular McClellan was given his job as the General-in-Chief of all Union forces."

"Two problems with McClellan," Steve said a little dryly. "He vastly preferred training and supplying his troops to actually deploying them, and he thought he was much, much smarter than he actually was. He planned to run against Lincoln for President in the next election, so you can guess how taking orders would...chafe."

"Power corrupts they say," Tony added. "And popularity can go to a person's head. He even went so far as to consider taking the office of the presidency by force, using his popularity with his troops to do so. His tenure as General-in-Chief didn't even last a year before he was shuffled back to commanding the Army of the Potomac for a little while longer. His replacement was also no stranger to using politics to further his career, Henry Halleck--I'll forgive you for not knowing the name, he was barely of note in his leadership beyond perfecting supply lines to Union troops and his rivalry with his former subordinate and soon to be replacement, Ulysses S. Grant."

"We'll get more into General Grant in a different class," Steve said with a smile. "For now, imagine one side with generals fighting each other and the president while the other is united under a general who...isn't. The Union had vastly more people and munitions and still got its butt kicked all over Virginia for way longer than should've happened."

"How would you have handled the situation were you the president?" Tony asked. "Advisers telling you one thing and then another with no level on consensus as everyone jockies for position in the middle of a war."

"Well, today is the day taxes are filed in the United States, so it seems to be a good time to get into the 1970s and the disillusionment of an entire generation," Steve began.

Steve was so disappointed in you, 1970s, in ways that had nothing to do with disco.

Though disco didn't help.

He led the class through a discussion of the Vietnam War and an explanation of the Watergate scandal. "Richard Nixon is widely considered the worst president in American history. Do any of you have an argument for anyone else?"

"We got into this a little last week," Steve said with a small nod at Raven if she was there, "but this week we'll talk about the 1950s and the Cold War."

After going into some detail about how the Korean War began as a civil war and spun into a proxy war, Steve smiled a little wryly. "I really don't want this class to just be a rehashing of every war the United States has been involved in, so let's talk about other things that happened in the 1950s, too. The polio vaccine was introduced, which would have been huge: I knew people in my neighborhood with polio. The space race began with Sputnik in 1957--we'll get more into space next week. Comics were considered the gateway drug to juvenile delinquency, unions reached their peak in strength, millions of men and women returned from the front and set up households and had an absolute ton of children...what else am I missing?"

He turned to the class. "What do you think was a lasting legacy of the 1950s?"

Well, at least Steve had his clothes on today. Yesterday had been cold and he hadn't really appreciated the squirrels whistling after him. He smelled of very strong detergent, but so did everyone, right?

"Okay, today we'll get in the battles and strategies of my version of World War II," he said. "Apparently there are some realities that didn't have an evil scientist named Red Skull running a secret Nazi science division."

Lucky you, his tone said.

He then took the the students through D-Day, Bastogne and the battle of Stalingrad in the European theater and Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima in the Pacific.

As they drew to the end of their time, he leaned forward. "There are some even more unhappy portions of the war--the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the concentration camps across Eastern Europe, but I didn't want to spring those on you without making sure it was all right to talk about," he said. "If you want, we can do it next week. If not, we can move on to the 1950s as a group and you can research on your own and come to me with your conclusions. Talk to me after class with what you'd prefer, all right?"

"We've now hit World War II," Steve said, "and since this is kinda my area of expertise, we're going to devote a couple of classes to it. Today we're going to talk about propaganda and the rise of authoritarian regimes in Europe."

Guess who'd spent his insomniac nights reading about Super Tuesday election results, kids.

"Some of these images and ideas are pretty disturbing," Steve warned as he passed out various pieces of Nazi, American, British, and Japanese propaganda.

"My question to you is, why did this work? What does it tap into for people that makes images like this so effective? What can we learn about the different countries based on what their propaganda was aimed at stirring in their populations?"

After the discussion, he started up a DVD. "And for something a little lighter," he said, looking slightly rueful, "a selection of propaganda films I was in."

Enjoy your teacher in black and white and tights!

"Now, I know you guys are probably way more interested in what you're wearing to the dance than to learning about American history today, but that's too bad," Steve said with a small smile, "because I'm paid to talk about history and not about dances. I can't even dance. Today we're gonna talk about the Great Depression."

Yes, there had been a Valentine's-related thought process there, but not one Steve was going to share with the class. "The stock market crashed in October of 1929, and it was one of the definitives events in 20th Century American history," he began. "On October 24, the stock market bubble finally burst, and investors began dumping shares en masse. A record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as Black Thursday. Five days later, on Black Tuesday some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street. Millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks with borrowed money were wiped out completely. As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and construction and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and buying power decreased. Many Americans forced to buy on credit fell into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931. Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers, who had been struggling with their own economic depression for much of the 1920s due to drought and falling food prices couldn’t afford to harvest their crops, and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved."

Steve's smile was rueful. "I was 11 at the time. I remember the fallout in Brooklyn as people began moving in with family members who could still hold onto their apartments, and the Hoovertowns--named for the President and not in a flattering way--of shanties for people who'd been kicked out of their places."

He then went into depth about FDR and the New Deal, and how the fear in the country and around the world had led to extreme political movements, including the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. "That'll be important in a few weeks," he said. "But for today, let's talk more about the Depression and the New Deal. Oh, and I brought a snack for everyone. It's Lent, so meat's kind of out for me today but back during the '30s, we weren't eating a ton of meat anyway."

Unless Spam counted as meat? "My mom's secret vice were onion and Limburger cheese sandwiches, but out of respect for your noses and taste buds, I gave 'em a pass in favor of sugar sandwiches. It's butter, bread, and sugar, which was about a simple as it could get," he said. "I had 'em for lunch a lot. So did most of the kids I knew."

Now take your sandwiches and really let the Great Depression sink in, kids! Just in time for a holiday about love and indulgence!

Steve held up his Starkphone. "Of all the things currently used in this time period, the phone is particularly ubiquitous," he began. "Especially today, where it doesn't seem to want to shut up."

No one told Steve about Phone Day.

"Alexander Graham Bell patented the phone in 1876. The first telephone line was constructed a year later, and three years after that, almost 49,000 telephones were in use," Steve said. "Now I wouldn't be surprised if 49,000 devices were currently being used just on this island right this second."

Half of them Tony Stark's.

"There were 2.2 million phones in the U.S. by 1905, and 5.8 million by 1910. In 1915 the transcontinental telephone line began operating, which came in handy when we got involved in World War I and needed to make some calls. The phones were nationalized under the post office during the war, then turned back over to AT&T afterwards. But 1934, they were considered a 'regulated monopoly' and under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission. Public utility commissions in state and local jurisdictions were appointed regulators of AT&T and the nation's independent phone companies, while the FCC regulated long-distance services conducted across state lines. They set the rates the phone companies could charge and determined what services and equipment each could offer. This stayed in effect until AT&T's forced break-up in 1984. The all-powerful company had become popularly known and disparaged as 'Ma Bell.' AT&T's local operations were divided into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies, known as the 'Baby Bells.' AT&T became a long-distance-services company. And then everyone switched to cellular service plans, where you can carry around the entirety of human knowledge in your pocket and use it to find videos of cats playing the piano."

Steve put his phone down on the desk. "Now I didn't have a phone growing up. If you wanted to tell your neighbor something, you either hollered it out the window or sent your kid over to tell her. If you sent someone's else's kid over, it would cost a nickel. We still wrote letters if we had friends or relatives that were further away than the neighborhood, but that wasn't terribly common unless you were writing back to the Old Country or to friends or sweethearts in the war."

He pursed his lips a bit, lost in thought. "Anyway. Everyone here has a phone? Do you all know how to make the buzzing stop? Because I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been getting a lot of weird messages today..."

"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?"