In this lesson, students are given excerpts from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats and categorize the excerpts according to economic problems. After identifying economic problems and FDR's comments on the problems, students simulate a fireside chat by writing their own fireside chat. After reading the fireside chats of their classmates, students complete a consumer confidence survey concerning their reactions to the recording. To conclude the lesson, students identify and evaluate a current economic problem and apply the strategy of FDR to promote and build confidence in a proposed solution.
View Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics
Content Standard 10: Institutions
Grade 8 Benchmark
2. Banks and other financial institutions channel funds from savers to borrowers and investors.
Content Standard 11: Money and Inflation
Grade 12 Benchmark
1. The basic money supply in the United States consists of currency, coins, and checking account deposits.
Content Standard 19: Unemployment and Inflation
Grade 8 Benchmark
1. To be counted as unemployed, a person must be in the labor force. The labor force consists of people age 16 and over who are employed or actively seeking work. Thus the labor force is the sum of total employment and total unemployment.
Grade 12 Benchmark
1. The unemployment rate is an imperfect measure of unemployment because, among other reasons, it does not: (1) include workers whose job prospects are so poor that they become discouraged from seeking jobs and leave the labor force, and (2) reflect part-time workers who are looking for full-time work.
Standard 20: Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Grade 12 Benchmarks
1. Fiscal policies are decisions by the federal government to change spending and tax levels. These decisions are adopted to influence national levels of output, employment and prices.
2. In the short run, increasing federal spending and/or reducing taxes can promote more employment and output, but these policies also put upward pressure on the price level and interest rates. Decreased federal spending and/or increased taxes tend to lower price levels and interest rates over the long term, but they reduce employment and output levels in the short run.
View UCLA U.S. History Content Standards
Content Standard: Era 8
2. How the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state.
View National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies
Content Standard 2: Time, Continuity and Change
Human beings seek to understand their historical roots and to locate themselves in time. Knowing how to read and reconstruct the past allows one to develop a historical perspective and to answer questions such as:Who am I? What happened in the past? How am I connected to those in the past? How has the world changed and how might it change in the future? Why does our personal sense of relatedness to the past change?
Content Standard 6: Power, Authority, and Governance
Understanding the historical development of structures of power, authority, and governance and their evolving functions in contemporary U.S. society and other parts of the world is essential for developing civic competence. In exploring this theme, students confront questions such as: What is power? What forms does it take? Who holds it? How is it gained, used, and justified? What is legitimate authority? How are governments created, structured, maintained, and changed? How can individual rights be protected within the context of majority rule?
Content Standard 7: Production, Distribution and Consumption
Because people have wants that often exceed the resources available to them, a variety of ways have evolved to answer such questions as: What is to be produced? How is production to be organized? How are goods and services to be distributed? What is the most effective allocation of the factors of production (land, labor, capital, and management)?
Content Standard 8: Science, Technology and Society
Modern life as we know it would be impossible without technology and the science that supports it. But technology brings with it many questions: Is new technology always better than old? What can we learn from the past about how new technologies result in broader social change, some of which is unanticipated? How can we cope with the ever-increasing pace of change? How can we manage technology so that the greatest number of people benefit from it? How can we preserve our fundamental values and beliefs in the midst of technological change?
Content Standard 10: Civic Ideals and Practices
An understanding of civic ideals and practices of citizenship is critical to full participation in society and is a central purpose of the social studies. Students confront such questions as: What is civic participation and how can I be involved? How has the meaning of citizenship evolved? What is the balance between rights and responsibilities? What is the role of the citizen in the community and the nation, and as a member of the world community? How can I make a positive difference?
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