Teaching about Democratic Capitalism in Historical High Definition through Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
The Great Recession of 2008-2010 and its aftermath remind us that economic stability and economic prosperity cannot be taken for granted. This curriculum enables students to use the script of the film It’s a Wonderful Life to think about how the American economy works as a cultural fact of life, not as merely an economic one. In its ideal operation, the American economy is an example of “democratic capitalism”. You can access the script for It’s a Wonderful Life online for educational purposes.
In this curriculum, the film It’s a Wonderful Life provides a useful and compelling baseline narrative of how people make history, in times of ease, and it times of crisis. This curriculum asks students to compare what they know (or are learning about the past). The point of making this comparison is not to push any student toward a particular conclusion (such as, “Hollywood movies are an unreliable guide to “real life”), or toward a particular ideological conclusion (“free markets work best” or public ownership of major services and enterprises is essential to preserving the common good”) but to introduce them to the factors which complicate how the world actually works.
What’s So Special About It’s a Wonderful Life for Teaching US History?
This seemingly unremarkable film has shown remarkable endurance since the cable revolution took hold almost fifty years ago. What enabled this film to be rediscovered by the public? Because the film entered the public domain in 1974, it became an easy way for cable companies to fill holiday airtime. Since 1994, when NBC gained exclusive rights to its holiday broadcast, the film has won the crucial 18-49 viewer demographic every Christmas Eve (Welch: 2019). This curriculum enables our students and teachers to put the historical content of this film to work in order to see both the past and the present with greater clarity and complexity.
The Academic Content Standards for this Curriculum
The Oklahoma Standards for Social Studies: United States History
USH 4
The student will analyze the cycles of boom and bust of the 1920s and 1930s on the transformation of American government, the economy and society.
- B. Describe the rising racial tensions in American society including the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, increased lynchings, race massacres as typified by the Tulsa Race Massacre, the rise of Marcus Garvey and black nationalism, and the use of poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise blacks.
- E. Describe the booming economy based upon access to easy credit through installment buying of appliances and inventions of modern conveniences including the automobile.
USH 4.2
Analyze the effects of the destabilization of the American economy.
- A. Identify causes contributing to an unstable economy including the overproduction of agriculture products, greater speculation and buying on margin in the Stock Market, and the government’s pro-business and laissez-faire policies.
- B. Examine the role of the Stock Market Crash and bank failures in weakening both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors of the economy leading to the Great Depression.
- C. Analyze how President Herbert Hoover’s financial policies and massive unemployment as exemplified by the Bonus Army March and Hoovervilles impacted the presidential election of 1932.
- D. Compare points of view regarding the economic and social impact of the Great Depression on individuals, families, and the nation.
USH 4.3
Analyze the impact of the New Deal in transforming the federal government’s role in domestic economic policies.
- B. Examine how national policies addressed the economic crisis including John Maynard Keynes’ theory of deficit spending, Roosevelt’s court packing plan, and the new federal agencies of the Social Security Administration, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
USH 9
The student will examine contemporary challenges and successes in meeting the needs of the American citizen and society, 2002 to the present.
USH 9.2
Assess Barack Obama’s presidency, including the significance of his election, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, handling of economic conditions, establishment of DACA, and reforms to healthcare.
National Council for the Social Studies National Standards for the Preparation of Social Studies Teachers
Standard 4. Social Studies Learners and Learning
Candidates use knowledge of learners to plan and implement relevant and responsive pedagogy, create collaborative and interdisciplinary learning environments, and prepare learners to be informed advocates for an inclusive and equitable society.
Element 4c: Candidates engage learners in ethical reasoning to deliberate social, political, and economic issues, communicate conclusions, and take informed action toward achieving a more inclusive and equitable society.
Discussion
The Capra Bailey student site provides practical information about how home ownership was achieved in the society and time frame in which It’s a Wonderful Life is set and asks students to compare that data with what the screenplay tells them. The point here is not to prove the falsity of one source versus another, but to show how a factual narrative can nonetheless provide insight on the real world. From this student learn that complexity and contention are natural parts of life, and not necessarily signs of an existential crisis.
Standard 5. Professional Responsibility and Informed Action
Candidates reflect and expand upon their social studies knowledge, inquiry skills, and civic dispositions to advance social justice and promote human rights through informed action in schools and/or communities.
Element 5b: Candidates explore, interrogate, and reflect upon their own cultural frames to attend to issues of equity, diversity, access, power, human rights, and social justice within their schools and/or communities.
Discussion
The Capra Bailey student site makes a point of highlighting what is missing from this narrative of life. It is well established that home ownership in the United States has been powerfully influenced by racism. The Capra Bailey site empowers students to address how they would change the narrative by perhaps including a plotline about where the only African-American character (Annie, the Bailey family’s domestic worker) might reside and how her matriculation through life might differ from that of other residents of Bedford Falls.
The issue of how cultural assumptions structure how we see the world is key to the Capra Bailey student website. In It’s a Wonderful Life, the debate over what kind of capitalism is best is well represented. It is represented in the profound disagreement between the Bailey way of doing business and the Potter way. Embedded in the personal conflict between the Baileys and Mr. Potter is a very stark contrast between two kinds of self interest: that which is obsessively acquisitive and a more enlightened self interest which understands that the interests of one person are often connected to those others. The over-simplification of this reality is subtle but important and can make political decision-making very difficult: in the world of yesterday, and in the world of today, this also means that we can imagine and trust in the fact that our interests are tied together in ways such we may be connected to people who do not look like us, who we will never meet or know personally.
Compelling Questions of the Capra Bailey Project
This curriculum is organized into five chapters, each of which poses a Compelling Question:
- What is democratic capitalism?
- What did it take to own a home in George Bailey’s America (1907-1941)?
- How did these Americans respond to the Great Depression?
- Why not housing for all?
- What happens when hard times return?
At the bottom of each chapter, there are further questions and points for discussion.
