“ Picturing American History” Child Labor

1. “Picturing American History”Child Labor The American History ROCKS! Liberty Fellowship November 16, 2010 Fran Macko, Ph.D. fmacko@aihe.info

2. The OklahomaState History Standards US History High School Content Standard 2: The student will analyze the impact of immigration, the settlement of the American West, and industrialization on American society. Analyze the impact of immigration, migration and settlement patterns. A. Analyze immigration, including the reasons for immigration, employment, settlement patterns, and contributions of various immigrant, cultural, and ethnic groups (e.g., Irish, Chinese, Italians, Germans, Japanese, and Southeast/Central Europeans) from 1850-1930.

3. The “traditional” definition includes: The process of recognizing vocabulary and decoding printed text. The process of making meaning from text with an emphasis on vocabulary, phonics, fluency and comprehension. More recently, reading is defined in a broader sense to include visual elements. How do we define reading?

4. What is visual literacy? Visual literacy is the ability to interpret information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read”. Students view an image and construct an interpretation. What is visual literacy?

5. Level 1 is basic identification of the subject or elements in a graphic, photograph, or work of art. Level 2 is understanding what we see and comprehending visual relationships. Level 3 is placing the image in the broader context of the historical period. What are the levels of visual literacy?

6. Visual literacy activities provide access to content for students who have difficulty reading text. Primary source documents in history are often visual; paintings, photographs, cartoons and other images figure prominently in the resources that are available for students. State and local assessments frequently ask students to interpret images. Why is visual literacy an important skill for understanding history?

7. Our Focus: Industrialization and Child Labor • During the Industrial Revolution, many children in the United States were forced to go to work to help support their families. • Instead of going to school, these children worked long hours in coal mines or factories for low wages. • Children who worked in these jobs were often treated cruelly, such as not being provided enough food or beaten for minor infractions of workplace rules. Their work was dangerous and accidents were commonplace.

8. Guiding Questions • What were the images of child labor at the beginning of the 20th century? • What was the reaction to these images of child labor in America? • How was this reaction captured by photojournalists? • What was the role of the media in the propaganda of the era?

9. A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of people, places and things. A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available - frozen images. What is photojournalism?

11. Taking a Closer Look • Using the Image Analysis Worksheet, complete questions 1 – 3. • Observation. What do you see in this photograph? • Inference. Make some reasonable guesses about this photograph. • When, would you guess, was the photograph taken? • Where was the photograph taken? • Why are the people here, doing what they are doing? • Why was this photograph taken, would you guess? • Inquiry. Write a question that is left unanswered by this photograph.

12. Read excerpt from "The Story of Child Labor in the Cotton Mills." Review your responses to questions 1 – 3.

13. A bobbin boy was a boy who worked in a textile mill in the 19th and early 20th century. He would bring bobbins to the girls at the looms when they called for them, and collected the full bobbins of spun cotton or wool thread. They also would be expected to fix minor problems with the machines. Average pay was about $1.00 a week, with days often beginning at 5:30 am and ending around 7:30 pm six days a week. The most common example of this job was a young Andrew Carnegie, who worked as a bobbin boy in the late 1800s.

14. Then, complete questions 4 – 9. • Do you think that the photographer has a message beyond simply documenting the moment? If so, what might the message have been? • Write a question that is still left unanswered about the photograph. • What would be a good title for the photograph? • Write a question that you would like to ask the people in the photograph. • Write a question that you would like to ask the photographer.

16. Taking a Closer Look • Using the Image Analysis Worksheet, complete questions 1 – 3. • Observation. What do you see in this photograph? • Inference. Make some reasonable guesses about this photograph. • When, would you guess, was the photograph taken? • Where was the photograph taken? • Why are the people here, doing what they are doing? • Why was this photograph taken, would you guess? • Inquiry. Write a question that is left unanswered by this photograph.

17. Read “The Lowell Mill Girls”. Review your responses to questions 1 – 3.

18. Conditions in the Lowell mills were severe by modern American standards. Employees worked from five am until seven pm, for an average 73 hours per week. Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two male overseers managing the operation. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as "something frightful and infernal", and although the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed during the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth.

19. Then, complete questions 4 – 9. • Do you think that the photographer has a message beyond simply documenting the moment? If so, what might the message have been? • Write a question that is still left unanswered about the photograph. • What would be a good title for the photograph? • Write a question that you would like to ask the people in the photograph. • Write a question that you would like to ask the photographer.

20. Once the historic context for an image has been set and students analyze each of the images, they can compare the images. Discussion or accountable talk can be structured around a series of guided questions. Visual Literacy and Accountable Talk

21. Digging Deeper: Comparing Two Images

22. Describe the scene and the figures in each image. • What are the similarities and differences? • Compare the setting of each image. • How does the setting contribute to the meaning of the image?

23. Describe the mood of each work. • How did the photographer achieve that mood? • Each photograph is about Child Labor. • How does the photographer want the viewer to feel about the main subject? • Find something in the photograph that supports your opinion.

24. Photographers plan their work and give careful thought to the arrangement of people and objects. • How has each photographer placed his figures to enhance the “story” of the photograph? • What is similar and different about each composition? • How does each image add to your understanding of the impact of industrialization on children at the turn of the 20th century?

25. Pairing Images with Resources from CICERO Video Resources: • “Immigration” by Dr. Vincent Cannato • http://www2.cicerohistory.com/Cicero/navigate/CiceroMoviePlayer.do?filename=/Cicero/subscriber/content/Books/Book-9/L09-Videos/Industrialization_DrVincentCannato/playlist.flv.xml • “Lackawanna Coal Mines” • http://www2.cicerohistory.com/Cicero/navigate/CiceroMoviePlayer.do?filename=/Cicero/subscriber/content/Books/Book-11/L09-Videos/Lackawanna_Coal_Mines/playlist.flv.xml

26. Using Images to Analyze Point of View and Present Multiple Perspectives

30. Adapting Image Analysis to Your Classroom • How might you use image analysis in your social studies classroom? • What adaptations would you make? • What might be some contemporary connections?

31. An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labor - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere toiling as domestic servants in homes, laboring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. Connections to Today

32. Extension Activities • Analysis of images can be springboards for other content area literacy activities. • Elementary and Middle/ Making Images Come Alive • Provide the historical context of the image. • Project the image and have students discuss the photographer’s message and how the image represents this message. • Reproduce the image with dialogue boxes. • Choose one character and model an historically accurate voice. • Have students work in groups to create dialogue for the remaining characters in the image.

33. All Levels/ Giving the Image a Voice • Have students choose one character and write a speech, poem or journal entry in that person’s voice. • Have students choose one character and interview him or her. • Have students build on the dialogue boxes and create an historically accurate conversation between or among the characters. • Have a group of students create a tableaux where they recreate the image and step into the shoes of the characters.

34. Middle and High/ Creating a New Perspective • Project several images of an historical person from the time period. • Have students work in groups to generate a list of characteristics of that person based on the images. • Read and analyze a famous speech by the person. • Have students compare their thoughts on the individual as portrayed in the image and his or her words in the document. • Evaluate whether or not the person’s words coincided with the artist’s portrayal.

35. Compare the 1943 images of Stalin to his reply to Churchill,1946 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1946stalin.html

36. Final Thoughts • Visual literacy supports students in making meaning of historical events and people. • It supports students who struggle to read and understand text. • It engages students in the study of history as students are increasingly familiar with visual images. • It supports critical thinking skills. • It provides an entry point into the study of history.