Teaching the Great Depression during the Great Recession

The timing could not have been better--or harder--to teach the Great Depression than this week. Better, because it was easy for my students to engage with the material and relate to the fear of economic downturn and the confusion of the how to fix it. Harder, because it's hard to talk about that crisis without talking about this one, and I am no expert on the economy. Better and harder still given that the stock market reached a 12 year low and unemployment numbers a 26-year high this week, and Obama delivered an address to Congress explaining how he planned to fix things. I spent a lot of time reading historians' perspectives and learning about the present problems to feel ready to take on this teaching challenge.

There's always disparaging talk among historians about presentism--looking at the past through the lens of today. To a certain extent, it's impossible to avoid: people are most interested in historical topics that strike a chord with events in their own lives. I've always thought historians were too quick to condemn comparisons between past and present; if we don't study history to better understand ourselves and our world, what are we doing?

I approached comparisons between the Great Depression and today's crisis delicately in my teaching. I created a table with stats and other economic factors comparing and contrasting the two crises, which I only shared after asking the students to first explain what caused the Great Depression and then what they understand about today's crisis. Finally we discussed whether it's a fair comparison to make and what's at stake.

The nuance of their answers really impressed me. As several pointed out, today's employment numbers are counted differently from the numbers in the 30s, so it's hard to know just how they compare. Another student asked how you can compare or quantify human suffering. Several worried that if we compared today's crisis with the Depression, people would be so afraid they'd stop spending and worsen things. Others wondered whether looking to the New Deal for solutions was a good idea or a bad one.

I think--or hope--that I got the point across that we can't make historical comparisons blithely and without consequences. I closed the class by reminding them of what they learned about people who were left out of the New Deal. Who might be left out in relief efforts today? They looked stunned when I told them feminists were worried that Obama's stimulus plans didn't help women. If learning history is opening their eyes about the present, I consider mine a job well done.

A Night at the Palestra

Ever since college, I've been obsessed with college basketball. I had been to a few college games at the University of MD before college and I'd even played on a team for two years when I was around 11 (and absolutely hated it). But when I started sitting--rather, standing--in the student section at my own school, watching our team rise from obscurity to a top 10 team, I got hooked. I loved the feel of the arena when it was full and you could feel the bleachers shake with energy.

When I went to a game at Penn's palestra with my parents recently, I gained a whole new appreciation for the kind of energy an arena can generate. The palestra, a graceful brick arena built in 1927, is the holy grail for college basketball fanatics. It's not just that this place has hosted more games than any other in the NCAA's, or that you can still see the original exposed brick with its hand-painted signs. The key to its popularity is that the palestra is a fantastic place to watch basketball.

Getty Images

I doubted this when we first arrived and hiked up the steep concrete stairs to our seats, near the top of the seats behind the hoop. I wasn't thrilled that I'd be sitting for two hours squeezed between people on a steel bench. But when I sat down, I was shocked to see how close I felt to the court. At almost double the size of my college's arena, the palestra nonetheless seems like an intimate space.

The sense of history at the palestra is palpable, particularly in my case since my grandparents watched games here. Banners from decades past hang from the arched ceiling. There is no jumbo tron, just a simple scoreboard behind each basket. The crowd noise reverberates and the sound of Penn's small pep band filled the arena; no need for music to be piped in through speakers to get the crowd excited. The opposing student sections--Penn was playing St. Joe's, which is using the palestra as its home arena this year--traded taunts via rolls of fabric with handwritten slogans passed over the students' heads like a wave.

Given the atmosphere of this place, it's no surprise that the palestra played a role in making basketball popular in America. The first ever NCAA tournament was held here and Philadelphia's famous Big 5 tournament was played here for decades. New arenas may have more comfortable seats, fancy boxes, and jumbo trons, but the historian in me can't help but feel at home in the palestra.