Indiana Social Studies IS.1.11
The Standard
Describe the growth of unions and the labor movement and evaluate various approaches and methods used by different labor leaders and organizations.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies · Industrialization and Immigration in Indiana: 1865 to 1900
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Explain why factory and railroad workers organized as Indiana industrialized. Compare whom the Knights of Labor, the AFL, and Eugene Debs's American Railway Union represented. Describe their tactics and judge how well those tactics worked.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can explain that the Knights sought broad membership, while the AFL focused on skilled workers. They can connect the American Railway Union's Pullman boycott to federal intervention and explain a strength and a limit of that tactic.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume every union used strikes as its main tactic. They may also assume all unions welcomed the same workers or that the Pullman boycott won because it stopped trains.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Compare the AFL's bargaining with the American Railway Union's Pullman boycott. Which better served workers in the 1890s? Give one historical outcome and one limit.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Tape cards for the Knights, AFL, American Railway Union, and Pullman boycott to a timeline; add labels for membership and tactics.
Ask: Who was left out when the AFL focused on skilled workers? Have students write two sentences about the tradeoff.
Give pairs tactic cards labeled bargaining, strike, and boycott; have them match each to a union scenario and defend their choices.
Read a current union contract announcement; have students list its demands and compare its tactics with the AFL's bargaining.
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Related Standards
- S.8.9
Discuss the impact of leaders of different social movements.
- GE.3.4
Explain the role and effect of labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and cooperatives in a given economy.
- USH.7.8
Evaluate and compare various social and political movements from 1980 to the present.
- IS.4.8
Describe the growth of unions and the labor movement and evaluate various approaches and methods used by different labor leaders and organizations in Indiana fr...
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