My favorite class

I developed a lecture last year for my survey history classes and it has proven to be effective every time so far. It consists of a lecture and discussion of Industrialization. This can be used in a class size ranging 4-50 students and takes about an hour to do. It can be used in either a world history, u.s. history, labor history, cultural history, or urban history class. The goal is to get the students to realize the abuses of industrialization in the free market/laissez-faire capitalist world system.

Task number one is a brief lecture on pre-industrialization society and a description of guilds and guild halls. We discuss the social and economic status of skilled journeymen and apprentices. Then I have the class simulate the guild hall experience. I ask for a volunteer (someone artistic) to draw a automobile on the board. The drawing must be detailed and of high quality. Then I ask the class to take out a piece of paper and duplicate the drawing. The volunteer artist acts as the master craftsman and goes around the class evaluating the work of the journeymen and apprentices. If the student does not duplicate perfectly the drawing of the car, the master craftsman crumples the paper and asks the student to start again. Once everyone completes the drawing, we count how many we made. Then we discuss the simulated experience. The class should articulate the social liberty of the guild hall, the eased pressure of performance, and the high quality/high cost of their products.

Then I lecture briefly about the factory system and the pre-Fordist assembley line. How this transformed the social dynamic of the workplace and how the factory system successfully de-skilled labor. Then I talk about Fordism and Taylorism and how this de-humanized labor. After this, we simulate the factory system under the guise of fordism and taylorism. I take rows of students and form them into assembly lines. I draw a crude car on the board and they set about producing drawn cars as fast as possible. I act as foreman and I try to keep everybody quiet and I try to speed the assembly line up as best I can. Then I take my digital camera and photograph each assembly line. Afterwards we count how many cars we produced. Of course the quantity has dramatically increased but the quality has signficantly decreased. I then project the photos onto the screen and we evaluate how, through taylorist ideas, each assembly line could improve their movements to maximise efficiency on the line. The class should articulate that social oppression, the intense pressure to perform, the low wages and low cost of mass production. I then lecture on the early abuses of the factory system.....child labor, union busting, low wages, etc. The whole purpose of this is to get the students to realize how much social chaos industrialization caused, particularly among the working classes. It is amazing how many students become supporters of unionization and liberal regulation of the economy after they experience this exercise. It seems to work very well so far.