20th Century Interactive: To Boss or To Manage?

Overview

Getting Started

The Boss System

Progressive Government Reform

Applying and Reflecting

Resources

Links

Handouts

To Boss or To Manage?
Part III: Applying and Reflecting

Time needed: 1 hour for peer review; 3-4 hours for writing assignments
As a means of reviewing and assessing students' learning in this lesson, ask them to complete the chart on the traits and the pros and cons of the boss versus the city manager system (Handout 1e). Then, invite them to write a first draft of an opinion paper on this issue. Before drafting, review the handout on opinion writing (Handout 1f). Invite students to review one another's essays and then to revise their own. See Handout 1g for evaluating opinion papers and Handout 1h for a peer-review guide on opinion papers.

For additional enrichment, try one or more of the following:

1. Ask students to condense their opinion essay into a letter-to-the-editor, and mail to a local newspaper for possible publication. See Handout 1i for ideas of writing letters to the editor. Also, review sample letters to the editor on the CD-ROM. Which is written the most effectively? Why?

2. Divide the class in three groups. One team will be the Boss Political Party; the second team will be the Reform Party, and the third are the general citizens. Each of the two teams will put forward a candidate or candidates for class mayor (who will hold office for a week, month or the school year—whatever is your choice!). The third team will create a list of probing questions to ask the candidates. Hold a mock campaign and election in the classroom in which both parties put forward proposals, advertisements, speeches and opinion pieces that are true to the spirit of the boss or city manager political systems but are also suited for classroom politics.

Did You Know?

From 1880 to 1914, Dayton's city government showed a $60,000 deficit each year in operating expenses. Some historians have suggested that the city's financial problems led its citizens to agree to the reform in city government.
Dayton had an active Socialist party in the first two decades of the twentieth century that was strongly opposed to the new city manager municipal system.
There was a terrible flood on the Ohio River in 1913. Because it caused so much financial damage to Dayton, some historians claim that it ended up causing the reform of the Dayton city government.
George Barnsdale Cox, one of the most successful political bosses of the Progressive era, had once been a bootblack, butcherboy, bartender and tobacco salesman.