Just The Average 19th Century Lifesytle

        Have you ever wondered how countries were ruled in the 19th century?  To begin our lesson on ideologies, we worked in groups to determine the definitions of the words Liberal, Conservative, and Nationalism.  However, we were not able to use the internet for assistance upon figuring out what these words meant.  We also had to create sentences that included each of the terms in them.  Next, our activator was to get the accurate definitions for the words Liberalism, Conservatism, and Nationalism in order to answer the essential question.  All of these terms are the ideologies.  The Essential question was: What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action?  This activity really helped us get a good understanding of the terms so that we would be able to answer the essential question.    

       The next step in our activity was to create a presentation with our group on the ideology that we were assigned.  My group had to create a presentation that displayed Nationalism.  Nationalism today is very different than it was in the 19th century.  We were told to focus on the meaning of Nationalism as if we were in the 19th century.  In the 19th century, Nationalism was defined as the people being united by customs, and languages and who share cultures and trade; not just by countries.  This influenced social and political action in the 19th century by causing nationalists to believe they need to come together and unify the country.  Also, Nationalism caused social and political action because the people wanted to get rid of foreign rulers that controlled their freedom.   We displayed the ideology in our presentation by having Mike play the nationalist who is defending his country from a Foreign ruler played by Anna who is trying to convince him to be a liberal.

Here is our video presentation!:

        The other two ideologies, Liberalism, and Conservatism, were assigned to the other groups.  Liberalism in the 19th century meant that the governments job was to preserve the rights of its people.  Everyone is born with natural rights and the government had to acknowledge this.  It is not fair if the government gives some people more rights than others.  The groups who had Liberalism for their ideology showed it in their presentations by talking about liberalism and what it meant.  Also, both groups included the topic of the Invisible Hand since it was a good example of Liberalism.  Liberalism influenced social and political action because the people all had the same rights and no one was treated unfairly.  Next, Conservatism in the 19th century was against new ideas and innovations.  The aristocracy wanted to stay in power because they feared that there would be bloodshed.  They influenced others to believe in an aristocracy not a meritocracy.  They showed conservatism in their presentations by creating videos with characters talking about how they shouldn't change things.  The French Revolution was used as an example of what bad things would happen if the people tried to change the original tradition of things.  Conservatism influenced political and social actions in the 19th century since the monarchy and old classes were kept the same and the people all believed in an aristocracy.

          Learning about these 3 ideologies and what they meant in the 19th century compared to what they mean today was very interesting.  In the 19th century, the ideologies definitely seem a bit too extreme!  Overall, it was a great lesson and I enjoyed making a presentation with my group to show what Nationalism meant.