APUSH and the Golden Age of American Circus
Open Letter to all APUSH Teachers
APUSH teachers everywhere, have you yet had a chance to teach the Golden Age of American Circus?
Most APUSH teachers typically introduce the topic when covering the period 1865–1898. They introduce it then for two reasons.
- APUSH Key Concept 6.1-III(E) states that “between 1865–1898, corporations’ need for managers and for male and female clerical workers as well as increased access to educational institutions, fostered the growth of a distinctive middle class (resulting in the middle class finding itself with) a growing amount of leisure time.”
- The Ringling Brothers World’s Greatest Show on Earth Circus was founded in 1884 in Barbaroo, Wisconsin.
If, for any reason, you haven’t yet managed to teach the topic, no worries. To get your students to know what they need to know, you need only put before them any one of the following:
- Golden Age of the Circus: The Era of Barnum & Bailey and the Ringling Brothers (website; John Schepler)
- The Barnum & Bailey Circus: The Greatest Show on Earth (4:48 video; SMHS Student-Produced)
- The American Circus in All Its Glory (website; National Endowment for the Humanities)
- The Circus (Part 1) (1:51:35 video; American Experience)
- The Circus (Part 2) (1:53:20 video; American Experience)
- The Ringling Brothers (1:14 video; American Experience)
- The Most Famous American of the 19th Century (1:25 video; American Experience)
- America’s Big Circus Spectacular Has a Long and Cherished History (website, Smithsonian Magazine)
- Never-Before-Seen Photos From the Golden Age of Circus, 1870–1950 (website, The Atlantic)
If you then want to have your students take it one step further, I suggest having them view a very good 5:32 KQED Above the Noise video entitled Should Zoos Exist?
As your students watch the video, have them also answer the question “should the circus still be permitted to exist?”
Then if your students want to share their answer to either of these two questions in a super safe place (other than your classroom), place this KQED Learn link before them https://learn.kqed.org.
Here they can share with peers not only in their own classroom but also with students across the country, for KQED Learn isn’t just a private message board for the individual classroom — it’s a platform for more extensive discussion with students nationwide.
Lastly, if you, as an APUSH teacher, know a middle school or high school US History teacher who might want to place the above-described learning experience before his/her students, feel free to share a link to this blog post with that teacher.
