Idaho Social Studies 9-12.WC.45
The Standard
Analyze the extent to which the Enlightenment influenced the American and French Revolutions.
Idaho Content Standards: K-12 Social Studies · The Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution (c. 1600 AD – 1815 AD)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace Enlightenment ideas about rights and government into American and French revolutionary documents. They weigh those ideas against taxes, debt, and food shortages to judge how much they shaped each revolution.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can point to consent in the American Declaration and equal rights in the French rights declaration. They can use those examples to explain how ideas shaped both revolutions without treating ideas as the only cause.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may treat Enlightenment ideas as the only cause and overlook colonial taxes, French debt, and bread shortages. They may also assume that promises of equal rights immediately included women and enslaved people.
How to Assess It
- On an exit ticket, print the American Declaration's phrase “consent of the governed” and the French rights declaration's claim that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Ask students to name an Enlightenment idea in each and one other cause of each revolution.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Hand pairs excerpts from Locke, the American Declaration, and the French rights declaration; have them draw arrows between matching claims.
Ask: Could either revolution have begun without Enlightenment ideas? Students defend an answer with one document and one economic grievance.
Run a card sort with natural rights, colonial taxes, French debt, and bread prices; students place each under ideas or pressures and explain.
Have students draft a petition about a school rule, then compare its rights claim with a line from either revolutionary declaration.
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