Hey y'all, this is the World History Project.
I'm Wood Boyles, and today we're asking:
what has changed in the past century, and
has that change been a good thing?
We've made it to the 1900s, which was marked by some pretty significant events.
The outbreak of World War 1 in 1914
brought the Long Nineteenth Century to an end.
The end of World War 1 left a lot of
issues unresolved. Many of these problems
led to the Second World War, and then the
Cold War, and then, well, more war. Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s, globalization has been the
big story and has shaped our lives for
the better - and sometimes for the worse.
We'll be taking a look at these big events of the last century over the next
two weeks, but for today, let's think
about how different the world was back
in 1914. We would be missing our cell
phones, of course, and also maybe the
Internet. There wouldn't be any plastic -
at least nothing that you or I would
recognize as plastic - and you'd be more
likely to be riding a horse to work or
school. But the car had been invented, and so had trains. Some people had phones, but
you still wouldn't travel outside your
local town or community very often. There
were some countries that had democratic
forms of government, but most countries
were still ruled by kings or emperors - and a lot of people lived in colonies
with little or no rights. There were less
large stores. Most people either made
what they needed, or bought items from
specialty artisans, like blacksmiths or
leather workers. A lot of people were
also farmers - they grew their own food at
home. My great-grandmother's family were all
sharecroppers, and picked cotton on other people's farms. A lot of these jobs are
still around, and of course they had
lawyers, doctors, and bankers, like we do
today. They also had barbers, which
reminds me that I'm really missing mine right now.
You might be thinking that,
maybe life in 1914 wasn't that different
than now. But almost everyone has
experienced some degree of change over
the past hundred years - and that leads to our
word of the day: progress. Progress means moving forward towards a goal. In this
case, it means making life better in some
way or another. It might be a better
standard of living, or better working
conditions. In the past,
historians just assumed that things are
getting better,
for all of us. I mean, progress is being
made all the time, right? Well, people are
starting to question whether things are
actually getting better. As we progress
through Era 7, I'm going to challenge you
to decide for yourself on whether or not
you think we are making progress. Are our
lives getting better?
Today, I want you to watch the "Era 7 Overview" in lesson 7.0 on Khan Academy. As you watch, think
about whether or not we've made progress in the last hundred years, and if that
progress has been for the better, or the
worse. After you've watched this video,
write about this in your historian's journal:
how has the human experience been
different for people, globally, during
Covid-19? Our world is more
interconnected than ever. How has a
global pandemic, like Covid, revealed to us
how similar and how different our lives
are? I'm thinking about how we all access
resources differently. Does living in a
specific country, or even a specific
state, matter? Do people in large cities
have different experiences than people
living in small towns? Go find some
articles or blog posts that compare and
contrast people's experiences with Covid -
you might be surprised with what you find.
I'll see you next time.
