Fandom High School

"Hey," Tyler greeted from atop his desk once most of the students seemed to be there. "Wipe last week from your memories. If you ask us about it, congratulations, that's a detention. This is a research week for your final project. We have to cover from 1975 to the present day. I was going to talk about President Obama, but that means skipping over a couple of decades and we've already skipped a lot. So we decided to be kind and let you guys teach the last 35 years."

Generous, wasn't it?

He hopped off his desk and started roaming the classroom, handing out slips of paper listing assignments. "Most of you are paired up, but there's one group of three, and you've all been assigned five-year time periods from 1975 to now. Each team gets to research their assigned era and selecting a major historic event or trend from that time to discuss. The rest of this class period is yours to prepare. I warned Miss Kishi in the library that we might be coming, if you want to head down there and start on your research, or you could go to the computer lab. If you do that, remember, I know how to use Wikipedia too. Be prepared to give an original five-minute presentation next week."

A beat. "This is all pretty recent, so don't decide to focus on anything where huge numbers of innocent people died. It doesn't tend to go over very well. Questions?"

"Here's a hint," Algren tossed in, for good measure, "if you think somebody from the Civil War era who has been horribly misplaced might want to learn it in order to catch up with the times, do, please, tell him. But be sure to break it to the poor man gently. He's old and possibly senile, after all."

Algren was allowed to poke a little fun at himself, dammit. He'd spent far too much time in the past two weeks wearing women's clothing.

[OOC: Preplayed with shinoi_tiger.]

Tyler was feeling lazy this week. Lazy, lazy, lazy. "The Great Depression," he began, without preamble. "A lot like what we have now, except people couldn't write blogs about how much being laid off sucked and there were more soup lines. Lasted from the stock market crash of 1929 until World War II. Here's a handout about the whole thing, and we're going to watch a movie. It's set in Mississippi during the Great Depression."

This totally made it educational. He poked at the DVD player, cuing up "My Friend, Whither Dost Thou Go?"

When the movie ended, Algren stood, nodding to the class. If he seemed somewhat skeptical about the educational content in the movie, he kept that mostly to himself.

"Your homework this week," he intoned, "is to economize in some way and tell us what you did next week. Did you switch to the cheaper store-brand food? Did you skip out on seeing a movie you wanted to see on opening night in favor of the matinee? It doesn't have to be much, but it does have to be something."

The teachers were back from their vacation, and, if they looked slightly less well-rested than the students, that was to be expected.

The students, after all, had not spent any part of the cruise being attacked by Nazi bees.

"Labor unions," Tyler said briskly, once everyone who was coming seemed to be in a seat and relatively quiet, "are our subject of the day as we get to the turn of the 20th century. This is the time when unions arguably had their greatest influence over American life. We have a handout for you because it is a lot to go through in an hour, but we'll try to talk through some of the high points."

( Labor unions are MADE OF BEES. )

( The activity? Also FULL OF BEEEEEEEES. )

"Manifest Destiny," Algren said, launching into the lecture the moment the last student's butt hit their seat. Tyler stood back and observed this week; it was clear to him that Algren had the subject well in hand.

"The American ideology that saw us believing that not only was our nation destined to expand clear across the continent, but it was also ordained by God Himself." He clasped his hands behind his back, a gesture that was probably growing familiar by now, and paced in front of the class as he spoke. "Some people took it farther, believing that it meant more than simply expanding from sea to shining sea. The term was also used from time to time to refer to the eventual conquest of the continent as a whole. Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. Clearly, we Americans have simple desires. We only want everything, after all."

"While the notion of Manifest Destiny was popularized in the 1840s, it wasn't where America's major expansion really began. Roughly a quarter of our nation was actually attained in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase, when Thomas Jefferson, the American President at the time, struck up a deal with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ruler of France. The deal consisted of portions of fifteen current states and two Canadian provinces, and cost us, between money paid and French debts forgiven, $15,000,000." Algren quirked an eyebrow upward slightly and smirked. "Lunch money, considering it worked out to less than three cents per acre of land in the currency of the day."

He frowned thoughtfully, and then leaned backward against the desk.

"Of course, for all that the land was now legally the property of America, all that was really purchased was the right to take the land away from someone else. After all, there were people in America long before anyone thought to call it 'America,' and the American Indians weren't so much as informed that the sale had taken place. It would be, essentially, as though some man who lives somewhere down the street just up and selling your house to your annoying new next door neighbor. And now they would like you to leave. It's their house now, after all."

"Which brings us to our assignment for today. At the back of the room, you will find a couch. There's only enough room on that couch for so many of you. Half of the class will fit, and I want that half to all get up onto it right now. Stand on it. Shoulder-to-shoulder, make it work. The rest of you? That's your couch that they're standing on. Really. Pair off with someone that's up there and try to convince them to leave. You'll be armed with these Nerf guns, here. That ought to make your conquest nice and simple, right?"

"Don't put anybody's eye out," Tyler chimed in for the first time as he went to hand the Nerf guns to the students who were getting them. "Other than that, this is a free-for-all."