Industrialization on Trial Lesson Plan
- Length
- One 60-minute class period
- Grade Level
- High School
Learning Objectives
- Students will identify and evaluate the benefits and harms of industrialization.
- Students will construct and defend an evidence-based historical argument, and assess competing perspectives on whether industrialization benefited societies more than it harmed them.
Instructional Plan
- Introduction (5 minutes)
Open the class session by asking students to look around the room and identify five objects that were manufactured in a factory.
Then ask students:
- Can you imagine a world without any of these things? What would daily life look like?
Take a few brief responses. Tell students that everything they named exists because of a single, world-altering historical transformation—and that today, they are going to put that transformation on trial.
2. Guided Reading and Discussion (25 minutes)
Next, have students read the CFR Education resource, What are the Causes and Consequences of Industrialization? independently or in pairs. Students should complete the Causes and Consequences of the Industrial Revolution worksheet as they read.
Follow up the reading session with a full-class discussion of the worksheet. Ensure students have a full grasp of both the benefits and challenges of industrialization. Draw out the tension at the heart of the reading: industrialization produced both progress and suffering, often simultaneously and often for different groups of people.
Close the discussion by introducing the prompt for the following activity (the next part of the session):
- Industrialization benefited societies more than it harmed them.
Ask students for an initial instinctive reaction:
- Do you lean toward agreement or disagreement?
Explain that they will now have to argue the case they are assigned, regardless of their personal view.
3. Activity: Industrialization on Trial (55 minutes)
Divide the class into two teams: the “Prosecution” (arguing that industrialization caused more harm than benefit) and the “Defense” (arguing that industrialization benefitted societies more than it harmed them). Each team should build arguments around the following domains:
- Prosecution: Working conditions; child labor and exploitation; urbanization, public health, & disease; environmental damage and climate trajectory.
- Defense: Economic growth and rising incomes; technological innovation and global trade; improved access to goods and long-term standards of living.
Give students 20 minutes to prepare their arguments. As the teams prepare, remind them that each of their arguments should be supported with specific evidence from the reading. Teams should anticipate the strongest counterarguments the other side will make and identify their most effective, factual responses. Likewise, teams should work to identify any weaknesses or limits in their own arguments.
Use the next 25 minutes for the “trial,” or debate. Run it in the following format:
- Opening statements (3 minutes per side, 6 minutes total): One spokesperson from each team presents their team’s core argument.
- Evidence rounds (3 minutes per side, two rounds, 12 minutes total): Each team presents its strongest supporting evidence. Teams alternate.
- Cross-examination (5 minutes): Each team poses one direct challenge to the other side’s argument. The opposing team has 90 seconds to respond.
- Closing statements (2 minutes per side, 4 minutes total): Each team summarizes their argument and addresses the most compelling point raised by the opposition.
Following closing statements, ask three to five students who were not designated spokespersons to serve as “jurors.” Give this group about 5 minutes to confer and deliver their verdict, explaining which side made the more persuasive case and why - not necessarily which side they personally agree with.
4. Closing Discussion (5 minutes)
Reconvene the class. Ask students:
- Did the debate change your thinking at all?
- Were there arguments you found compelling even if they were on the opposite side from your own?
- What does it tell us that reasonable people can look at the same historical event and reach such different conclusions from it?
Instructor Notes
Optional: Have students write a brief reflection or dive into a discussion comparing the Industrial Revolution to the emerging AI/digital revolution, paying particular attention to the similarities and differences between the two.
