Age of Global War: Social, Cultural, and Economic Life — Skinny¶

Standard: WH.6_12.4 — Analyze the influence of social, cultural, and economic development on individuals Era/Unit (if SS): Era 4 — Age of Global War and Globalization (~1900–present) ELA Crosswalk: 9-10.R.9 — Analyze informational texts; 9-10.W.3 — Explanatory/narrative writing NDSBL Target: 3.0 score Estimated Time: 60–90 minutes Subject: World History + ELA crosswalk

Official proficiency scale — the source of truth for scoring

Scoring follows the official NDSBL World History Proficiency Scales — not the examples on this page. Proficient (3.0) for Era 4: Age of Global War and Globalization means:

Analyze the causes and global effects of the world wars.
Explain how political or social ideologies shaped the 20th century.
Explain the social, cultural, or economic changes influenced by globalization.

What You Need to Know (Score 2.0)¶

Era 4 produced the modern world's social and economic structures — global capitalism, the welfare state, mass media, and globalization. Understanding how these systems shaped individual lives means understanding the specific mechanisms: how did the Great Depression change daily life? How did WWII change women's roles? How has globalization changed what ordinary workers can earn?

Great Depression (1929–1939): A global economic collapse triggered by the 1929 U.S. stock market crash. At its peak, ~25% of Americans were unemployed; similar rates in Germany, France, and the UK. The Depression transformed the social contract: it demonstrated that unregulated capitalism could destroy ordinary people's lives, leading to government intervention (New Deal, welfare states).
Welfare State: A political system in which the government provides basic economic protections for citizens: unemployment insurance, social security, public healthcare, public education. Developed in Western Europe and the U.S. in response to the Depression and WWII's social disruptions.
Women and WWII: WWII dramatically changed women's economic role. With men at war, women in Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union entered the industrial workforce in unprecedented numbers — "Rosie the Riveter" symbolized this shift. After the war, pressure to return to domestic roles created the post-war "feminine mystique" tension.
Decolonization and Economic Development: When colonies gained independence, they inherited economic structures designed to extract resources for colonial powers, not develop local economies. This "colonial legacy" — debt, single-commodity dependence, lack of industrial infrastructure — shaped the economic options available to individuals in post-colonial nations.
Globalization: The increasing integration of the world's economies, cultures, and populations through trade, communication, and migration. Globalization has created wealth globally but distributed it unequally: manufacturing jobs moved from wealthy to poor countries; workers in both benefited from cheap goods but many in wealthy countries lost manufacturing employment.
Mass Media and Consumer Culture: Radio, film, television, and the internet transformed how culture spread. Consumer culture — the social norm of defining identity and status through purchased goods — became the dominant cultural framework of the late 20th century in wealthy nations.
Migration and Diaspora: Wars, decolonization, economic inequality, and climate disruption have driven massive migration in Era 4. Today there are ~100 million displaced people globally (refugees + internally displaced). Migration creates diasporic communities that transform the cultures of both sending and receiving nations.

Basic Processes: - [ ] Explain how the Great Depression changed the relationship between individuals and the government. - [ ] Identify how WWII changed women's economic roles — and what happened after the war. - [ ] Explain what "globalization" means and how it affects wages in different countries. - [ ] Distinguish between the economic legacy of colonialism and formal political independence. - [ ] Identify at least one way mass media shaped social or cultural development in Era 4.

A student who can score a 2.0: A student who can state that the Great Depression caused high unemployment and that WWII changed women's roles — without yet analyzing the specific social mechanisms (how unemployment relief programs changed the social contract, or how the post-war pressure for women to return home created the conditions for the 1960s feminist movement).

The Standard (Score 3.0)¶

WH.6_12.4 — Analyze the influence of social, cultural, and economic development on individuals (Era 4)

To meet this standard, you must connect large-scale economic and social developments to how they shaped individual lives. In Era 4, the key theme is the gap between the wealth produced by industrial capitalism and globalization and how that wealth was distributed — and who was left out.

3.0 Example: A student achieves a 3.0 by analyzing how globalization in the 1990s–2000s affected manufacturing workers in both the United States and China. In the U.S.: manufacturing jobs moved to countries with cheaper labor; American factory workers in the Midwest saw wages decline, job security disappear, and communities devastated as factories closed. In China: manufacturing employment grew rapidly; hundreds of millions of rural Chinese workers moved to cities and entered the cash economy; wages were low but higher than rural poverty. The student analyzes how the same economic development (globalization) had different effects on individuals depending on where they lived in the global economy — devastation for some, economic emergence for others — and argues that understanding this asymmetry is essential for understanding contemporary political movements in both countries.

The Difference: A 2.0 student knows globalization involved moving jobs to cheaper labor markets. A 3.0 student analyzes what this meant for specific individuals in different positions in the global economy.

Going Further (Score 4.0)¶

To reach a 4.0, you must evaluate the systems that produced these social and economic outcomes — and assess competing explanations for why they happened and what should be done.

Transfer Tasks: 1. The social contract's limits: The welfare state was designed to protect individuals from economic catastrophe. Evaluate: has it succeeded? Use the 2008 financial crisis as a case study — what did the welfare state protect, what did it fail to protect, and who bore the costs of the bailouts? 2. Globalization and inequality: Globalization has reduced poverty globally (measured by absolute poverty rates) while increasing inequality within nations (the wealthy have gotten much richer; the middle class has stagnated). Evaluate: is globalization a net positive or net negative for human well-being? Does your answer change depending on whether you measure globally or within specific nations? 3. Migration and identity: Mass migration has transformed the cultural identities of receiving nations. Analyze: how does migration change culture — both the culture of migrants and the culture of receiving societies? Use at least one specific contemporary example.

4.0 Example: A student argues that the 2008 financial crisis revealed the limits of the 20th-century social contract: the welfare state protected individuals from unemployment and poverty but could not protect them from the systematic wealth extraction built into the financial system. The student analyzes how the bailouts (protecting banks while ordinary homeowners lost their homes) created the political conditions for both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street — populist movements of the right and left that both expressed the same underlying perception that the economic system was rigged. The student connects this to contemporary political polarization and argues that the 2008 crisis set the conditions for much of the political instability of the 2010s–2020s.

CrashCourse Connection¶

Video: World War I — CrashCourse WH #38 · Episode in reading library Also: WWII Part 1 — CrashCourse WH #40 · Episode in reading library Also: WWII Part 2 — CrashCourse WH #41 · Episode in reading library Also: China's Revolutions — CrashCourse WH #39 · Episode in reading library Also: The Cold War — CrashCourse WH #42 · Episode in reading library Watch Prompt (general): For each social or economic development mentioned, track: (1) What problem was this development responding to? (2) Who benefited from it? (3) Who was left out or harmed? (4) What individual lives does this development explain or transform?

Reading Library Connection¶

Night — Elie Wiesel — Read Night as a document of how social and economic conditions shaped Wiesel's family's choices before the Holocaust. Why did his family stay in Sighet when they might have fled? What social networks, economic ties, and cultural identity held them in place? How did the economic conditions of Jews in Hungary shape their vulnerability?
MLK — Letter from Birmingham Jail — Read as a document about how economic and social systems shaped Black Americans' lives. MLK explicitly connects racial injustice to economic exploitation. Identify the specific economic and social mechanisms he describes.

Demonstration of Learning — Choose One¶

How will you show you know this standard? Pick one mode.

#	Mode	What You Do for This Specific Standard
1	Written Assessment	Choose ONE Era 4 social or economic development (Great Depression, WWII women workers, globalization, or decolonization's economic legacy). Write a 3-paragraph analysis: (1) what the development was, (2) how it affected individuals differently based on their position, (3) what long-term social changes it produced.
2	Extended Writing	Write a 400–600 word essay: "Globalization: Who Won, Who Lost?" Analyze how economic globalization in the 1990s–2010s affected workers in at least two different countries. Argue: was globalization a net positive for the people most affected by it — or only for those who owned the capital?
3	Verbal Conversation	Record a 3-minute analysis: (1) How did the Great Depression change the relationship between individuals and the government? (2) How did WWII change women's social and economic roles — and what happened after the war? (3) How does globalization create both winners and losers, depending on where you sit in the global economy?
4	Visual/Creative	Create a "Social Change Timeline" for one Era 4 social group (women, manufacturing workers, colonized peoples, or refugees). Show how their social and economic position changed across Era 4 — and what caused each change. Annotate with specific evidence.
5	Multimedia/Performance	Create a 2–3 minute "Two Worlds" video. Profile two individuals whose lives were shaped by the same Era 4 economic development (one who benefited, one who was harmed). Show how the same system produced radically different outcomes.
6	Portfolio Annotation	Select a previous project about Era 4. Write a 200-word reflection: Whose social or economic experience was centered in your work? Whose was missing? How would including a different perspective change your analysis?

Deliverable Ideas (Your Studio Product)¶

These are NOT the demonstration of learning. These are PBL artifact ideas.

"Rosie After the War" — Research what happened to women who worked in U.S. factories during WWII after the war ended. Analyze: what were they told to do, what did many of them want, and how did this tension produce the conditions for the 1960s feminist movement? Write a 1-page brief with a specific argument.
Globalization: A Worker's Story from Two Continents — Research the specific wages, working conditions, and life changes for workers in one industry (e.g., textiles or electronics) in both a wealthy sending country (U.S. or UK) and a receiving country (Bangladesh or China) between 1990 and 2020. Write a 1-page comparative analysis.
The Colonial Legacy: Why Some Nations Stay Poor — Research the economic situation of one post-colonial nation (your choice). Analyze: what economic structures did colonialism leave behind? What has the country been able to change, and what has it not been able to change? Write a 1-page brief arguing whether contemporary poverty in former colonial nations is primarily a colonial legacy or primarily a result of post-independence choices.

Scale Tasks¶

[ ] 2.0 task: Describe three Era 4 social or economic developments. For each, identify: what changed, who was primarily affected, and whether the change was positive, negative, or mixed for most people.
[ ] 3.0 task: Write a paragraph analyzing how one Era 4 economic development affected people differently based on their position — at minimum, compare one group that benefited and one that bore the costs.
[ ] 4.0 task: Write a 200-word argument evaluating whether one Era 4 economic system (globalization, welfare state, or post-colonial economy) fulfilled its stated purpose for most people. Use specific evidence.