Lesson Plans

The Western Heritage ©2000

by Kagan, Ozment, and Turner

Focus Lesson 22

Chapter 30: "Faces of the Twentieth Century: European Social Experiences"

AP* Course Description

1. Intellectual and Cultural History
   • Changes in religious thought and institutions
   • Secularization of learning and culture
   • Scientific and technological developments and their consequences
   • Major trends in literature and the arts
   • Intellectual and cultural developments and their relationship to social values and political events
   • Developments in social, economic, and political thought
   • Developments in literacy, education, and communication
   • The diffusion of new intellectual concepts among different social groups
   • Changes in elite and popular culture, such as the development of new attitudes toward religion, the family, work, and ritual
   • Impact of global expansion on European culture
2. Political and Diplomatic History
   • The rise and functioning of the modern state in its various forms
   • Relations between Europe and other parts of the world: colonialism, imperialism, decolonization, and global interdependence
   • The evolution of political elites and the development of political parties and ideologies
   • The extension and limitation of rights and liberties (personal, civic, economic, and political); majority and minority; political persecutions
   • The growth and changing forms of nationalism
   • Forms of political protest, reform, and revolution
   • Relationship between domestic and foreign policies
   • Efforts to restrain conflict: treaties, balance of power diplomacy, and international organizations
   • War and civil conflict: origins, developments, technology, and their consequences
3. Social and Economic History
   • The role of urbanization in transforming cultural values and social relationships
   • The shift in social structures from hierarchical orders to modern social classes: the changing distribution of wealth and poverty
   • The influence of sanitation and health care practices on society; food supply, diet, famine, disease, and their impact
   • The development of commercial practices and their economic and social impact
   • The origins, development, and consequences of industrialization
   • Changes in the demographic structure of Europe, their causes and consequences
   • Gender roles and their influence on work, social structure, family structure, and interest group formation
   • The growth of competition and interdependence in national and world markets
   • Private and state roles in economic activity
   • Development of racial and ethnic group identities

Key Components

• Instructor's Manual: pp. 55–57
• Study Guide and Workbook, Vol. II: pp. 176–184
• Test Item File: pp. 163–169

Key Web Sites

• A New Urban Society?
• The Meaning of the Maastricht Treaty
• Writing the Social History of Eastern Europe after the Fall of Communism
• Children of the Holocaust
• Children and the Holocaust
• Hitler Youth
• Safety Instruction Campaigns for Danish Children, 1920–1950
• The Witnesses

Key Words and Terms

Suggested Pacing

Test Strategy

Key Concepts

• Changing roles of women
  Women during the early twentieth century generally had more opportunities than their mothers and grandmothers. In many countries, they could attend universities and work in previously male-only professions such as medicine and law. Eventually, because of their work during World War I, women began to expect rights in social and political arenas. Yet, in the totalitarian states of the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy, the post-World War I world brought a more restrictive role for women. They were expected to be the perfect women, wives, and mothers that these societies needed to produce their perfect worlds, fascist or communist.
  
  
• Changing secular and religious thought
  As a result of the turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century with its two world wars and major economic depression, thinkers rejected traditional ways of reasoning as they attempted to analyze their world. The irreconcilability of Soviet communism and Marxism led to alternative communist governments and to a redefinition of Marxism itself. Post-World War II existentialism, with its criticism of reason and human's rational achievements, illustrated an intellectual and ethical crisis that equaled the social, political, and economic crises of the times.
  
  The end of the war also spurred a renewal in Christian churches, whose answer to the turmoil was faith in God and His ability to redeem humans from their sins. While much of this interest was in a conservative Christianity, some theologians preached that humans should look for God in themselves rather than in heaven. In the post-World War II period, the Roman Catholic Church liberalized some of its practices, such as saying mass in the vernacular rather than in Latin; however the Church stayed true to its foundational doctrines, such as clerical celibacy.

Summing Up Student Understanding

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Aspects of Western Civilization, Vol. II, edited by Rogers—Chapter 11
• Sources of the West, Vol. II, edited by Kishlausky—Part V, "Thoughts on Empire" and Part VI, "War and Revolution"
• The Global Experience, Vol. II, edited by Schwartz, Wimmer, and Wolfe—Chapter 28, Reading 190