Brainstorm up an easy peasy documentary based history "class"

[StephanieZ]

OK, so I am looking for an easy "year" of history to put on my ds16's high school transcript.

 

This kid is National Merit bound, high scorer, STEM-oriented, solid writer/reader, but really hates history. Same thing happened with dd19. I don't know what I do wrong, but after the fun of Story of the World and elementary SonLight years, my kids have uniformly hated high school and/or AP level history. 

 

After yet another "fail" this year with history, I really need to scrounge up some sort of abbreviated, low pain, history course for ds to crank through this summer so I can put it on his transcript without feeling like a total liar.

 

I'm thinking of US History via documentaries and movies. :) The kid already can write and read well enough to hit 99% on the SAT, etc, so I'm not sweating about having him write a lot, but I'm thinking of having him write me an essay every couple weeks, so maybe 4-5 all summer. That, and watch a bunch of documentaries and/or historical films and write me up a little "response" in a journal of sorts.

 

Yep, I am being THAT LAME. It's OK. He's taking AP Chem, AP Calc, and AP English this year, and he's really academically prepared for college already, so I'm just really looking to check a box PAINLESSLY so this angst-ridden 16 yo and I don't have to fight about school this summer.

 

So, help me brainstorm a list of great documentaries and/or historical films. 

 

I'm guessing that 50-70 hours of watching, plus maybe 5-8 hours of writing, is going to be plenty. 

 

I'm particularly interested in modern (1920-onwards) because I feel like the last century gets shorted in lots of the good quality stuff I did with the kids when they were little. And, besides, it's important. :) So, now that I've said that, how about we call it Modern US History. :)

 

If I aim for at least one film/documentary per decade ::

 

1900s

 

1910s

 

1920s

 

1930s

 

1940s

 

1950s

 

1960s

 

1970s

 

1980s

 

1990s

 

2000s

 

2010s

 

That gives me 11 decades, so about 4-6 hours of material (on average) per decade and we're good.

 

Please help me list important events/people for each decade and/or specific recommendations for documentaries (and sources if you know where they are streaming, please!)

 

ps. FWIW, our world view is liberal, peace-oriented. PBS stuff will likely appeal, and definitely not any right-wing Christian-world-view stuff. 

 

THANKS!

 

 

 

 

[Corraleno]

There's a series called The Century: America's Time that has 15 documentaries (45 mins each) on different periods of the 20th century.

 

There's a similar book series published by Time Life called Our American Century, with a separate volume for each decade of the 20th century, as well as a few others (most important events, most important people, background, overview).

 

There's also the PBS series American Experience.

 

Also, if you're interested in a short, heavily illustrated, and well-written overview of 20th Century world history, the 3rd volume of the Human Odyssey series is quite good. I read most of it in a weekend, and found it interesting and easy to read, not too "textbooky." K12 uses it in 9th grade.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Corraleno

[Emerald Stoker]

I don't think it's lame at all! Here's a very respectable scholar, several of whose books deal with history on film: http://www.rosenstone.com/ His books are very interesting and readable, and you could do worse than just watch the films he discusses. (He looks at dramas, not just documentaries.)

 

What about John Sayles's "Matewan"? And Barbara Kopple would be good, too. I will put my thinking toque on and see if anything else occurs to me when I am not so sleepy!

[TarynB]

How about mining the film/documentary list from FundaFunda's high school American History syllabus? Even if the Teaching Company video spine doesn't appeal, there's still lots of other video titles on the list to choose from.

 

http://fundafunda.com/blog/in-depth-us-history-course-for-high-schoolers.html

[TarynB]

Luckymama very generously shared the American history syllabus she created. She has lots of videos listed here to go along with her other resources.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/484179-us-history-using-the-american-odyssey-k12-and-primary-sources/

[Emerald Stoker]

Adding (for the '60s): DA Pennebaker's "Dont [sic] Look Back"; the Maysles Bros.' "Gimme Shelter".

[Emerald Stoker]

Oh, and films by Errol Morris, too.

[Cosmos]

We watched Ken Burns' Prohibition and Dust Bowl documentaries this year. They were both excellent. I'm not generally a Ken Burns fan because his things are just SO LONG and can be tedious, but these two were really compelling all the way through and on the shorter side. The Dust Bowl, in particular, tells a story that's not widely understood.

[Hilltopmom]

I recommend The Ken Burns documentaries, National Geographic's Lewis & Clark and their other historical ones, the ones listed at FundaFunda were all good too.

 

Others- films, not documentaries that we've enjoyed: Gettysburg, The Patriot, Gods and Generals, The History Channel the Story of US series (& other history channel documentaries)- that one is a documentary , Lincoln, Dances with Wolves (some of these are also on the FundaFunda list), 12 Years a Slave, Last of the Mohicans ( note- we are re enactors & some of these I like because they did a decent job with costuming).

I browse Netflix & amazon prime to find things for each time period. Amazon, in particular, has lots of short 20-30 documentaries series in US History topics.

 

Oh shoot, I just realized you wanted all modern ones, sorry about that.

 

If you want to look at Great Courses selections, you could just use the modern ones & skip the earlier stuff.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Hilltopmom

[Amy in KS]

I used The Century: America's Time when I taught in public school. All the kids loved it. You can find all the episodes on YouTube now (they were vhs tapes). A guide for the unit is here:

 

http://s3.amazonaws.com/scschoolfiles/237/the_century_video_questions_-_full_collection.pdf

 

I would probably have the student research social issues of each decade and look at other fun things such as music of the decades. Maybe have them make a paper or digital scrapbook?

[Hilltopmom]

Two modern era films , not documentaries we enjoyed while studying WWII were Code Talkers & The Tuskegee Airmen.

[Sandragood1]

I'm doing something similar for dd this summer to lighten her load for 11th next year. I'm planning to use Crash Course American History plus documentaries plus .... Still working on it.

 

I need to check my library's GC lectures.

[need2read]

Check out teachwithmovies.org. They have lists of movies organized by topic and time period and lesson plans to go with.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[goldberry]

For some modern history, we watched Columbine Killers and Battle of Chernobyl.  Also, some of the engineering programs about how things were built (like Brooklyn Bridge, etc) were more interesting to my science kid, who also hates history.  We also watched some docs about the space program and counted it for history.  

 

CNN has some shows about the 60s and 70s that are an hour long each, we recorded some of those.  They had a good one on Watergate.

 

Used mostly PBS American Experience for the rest.

 

ETA, there's some good documentaries out there about the Waco incident and Jim Jones Guyana.

Edited February 25, 2016 by goldberry

[Kareni]

Here are the movies and documentaries that we used when my daughter studied the 20th century back in 9th grade:

 

 

Battleship Potemkin (1904)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay)
Influenza 1918
The Best Arbuckle Keaton Collection
Inherit the Wind
All Quiet on the Western Front
Cabaret
Rabbit Proof Fence (1930s)
1940's house
Shane
Atomic Cafe
Ed Sullivan
Evita
All the President's Men
Forrest Gump
Hair
Good Morning, Vietnam
The Mouse that Roared
Wit

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Sebastian (a lady)]

CNN has a series titled The Cold War which was really good.

 

The Lost Battalion WWI

Band of Brothers WWII

The Great Gatsby with di Caprio

Flyboys. WWI

The Right Stuff. Space Race