Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: How many learned about this in school?

[Brigid]

I know I didn't. I learned about it later. :grr:

[Critters2]

1. I did. High school and a women's history course in college.

And was proud to later join UNITE, the successor org to the ILGWU.

[Dappleganger]

2. Our teens did...

but that's because their teacher used Howard Zinn's history book in class.

[drmeow]

3. I seem to recall

learning about this in HS.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Technically I was in school but learned about it in an ABC Movie of the Week

The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080048/

It really was good.

[femmocrat]

19. That movie is where I learned about it too.

I don't remember ever getting past the Civil War in school history classes.

[Hissyspit]

21. That's where I learned about it, too.

MAYBE a high school teacher mentioned it.

[Raine]

27. Same here, the movie. nt

[Gemini Cat]

5. I learned about it via my Grandmother.

She was 26 when it happend. School did not touch upon the subject.

[northoftheborder]

6. I learned about it from a book (not at school) but later at....

......architecture school, it was taught.

[LWolf]

7. I didn't.

Why would that piss me off? I can't possibly learn all the significant history of the world or the nation by high school.

I'm grateful that my history teachers taught me to love history, and to explore it whenever I got the chance. I learned about the Shirtwaist Factory Fire when independently exploring 20th century labor issues.

I DO wish that the 20th century got more attention in high school.

[Rabblevox]

8. Well, I was a schoolchild when I learned, but it was my Grandfather...

who taught me. He also taught me about Joe Hill and Emma Goldman and took me to my first picket line. Grampa was an old-school, fiesty union organizer, who never in his life used the word republican without inserting curse-words before and after.

Damn, I miss him!

[malaise]

9. Watch HBO tonight at 9.00pm ET

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x709445

[AngryOldDem]

14. PBS's American Experience had an excellent documentary on this about two weeks ago.

It had me almost in tears at the end; not only because of the loss, but at the thought that what these girls died for is very much under attack in these supposedly more modern and enlightened times.

While I did not learn about this in school, I used to read a lot of American history as a kid, so I knew of the fire.

ON EDIT: CBS Sunday Morning had a feature on this yesterday, too, and interviewed the granddaughter of one of the company owners. She has put together a memorial where she has sewn the names of all the victims on to handerkchiefs.

[malaise]

18. I did cry

Ratigan had the director on - this one looks good.

[Dappleganger]

34. This is available on Netflix streaming

American Experience: Triangle Fire is on streaming. Think I'll watch it this week.

[Shallah Kali]

37. & On PBS website - link to the documentary here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/player/

[Brigid]

20. I would love to see this.

But I don't have HBO. And what do we have on the History Channel tonight? Pawn shops an two guys picking through junk piles. I need to figure out how to contact their program director. :grr:

Do you think this incident will make "The Ed Show" tonight?

[malaise]

23. It will be covered all week - the 100th anniversary is Friday

Hope you get lucky

[demodonkey]

10. When I lived in Greenwich Village in NYC I used to walk over that way...

...thought about it many times.

[mopinko]

11. learned about it from my mom. also learned about

the our lady of angels fire which was near her house. she also taught me to be a dem.

[TygrBright]

12. I did. It was covered twice, once in History and once in Sociology.

History covered it as part of the emerging 20th century and the rise of the labor movement.

Sociology covered it as part of the early-20th Century shift toward worker-based social expectations.

Of course, this was in the 60's and early 70's, back when they taught Civics in public schools, too.

nostalgically,
Bright

[blondeatlast]

13. Not me, I learned about it from a TV dramatization. nt

[Warpy]

15. Are you kidding? High school history only teaches about wars and heroes

and Bowdlerizes everything else in order to produce happy, obedient worker bees.

I learned about Triangle only with passing remarks in books until PBS did a special on it, one of the best things they've ever done, on "The American Experience."

The owners kept all the exits but one blocked out of fear that employees would steal, something that would have cost them pennies.

In a just society, those owners would have spent the rest of their lives in prison for mass murder.

[Coyote_Bandit]

16. I did

I also remember being required to read about the early history of organized labor.

But, hey, I went to a small rural school in a poor Southern state at a time when students werte prohibited from using calulators. Maybe my education wasn't substandard after all.

[Maru Kitteh]

17. I did, but that was a couple of decades ago. n/t

[starroute]

22. Learned about it from my mother and grandmother

My grandmother was working as a milliner on the Lower East Side when it happened -- she got married just a few weeks later -- so it hit pretty close to home.

My mother told me my grandmother had dreamed about it beforehand -- the women screaming and jumping out of windows -- but when I asked my grandmother she said no, it wasn't that fire, it was another one like it. Only I've never seen mention of any similar incident, so I still don't know the truth of the matter.

Either way, those places were deathtraps, and everybody was aware of it.

[Jersey Devil]

24. I wrote a paper on it in college

The more I researched it the more I was horrified at the working conditions there, which were quite common at the time.

[Raine]

25. I didn't. I learned about it from a made for TV movie

and was horrified.

[lunatica]

26. I learned about it in Women's History in College

[vim876]

28. Yeah...

I learned about it from the "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" TV Show.

[Old Troop]

29. I learned about it in high school during the 60s

[Codeine]

30. Yeah, high school history class in 1986, Bloomington California.

I don't think we spent as much time on the labor movement as we should have, but there was coverage and we had decent discussion. Same year we read The Jungle in Honors English.

[Spider Jerusalem]

31. Learnt about it before I would have in school

when I was...6 or 7? I had a set of US history cards my mother got for me. There was quite a lot related to the history of the labour movement in the US; the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the "Battle of the Overpass" at the Ford River Rouge plant in Detroit in 1937, the Haymarket Square riot, etc.

[AmandaMae]

32. I did, 4 years ago in 10th grade

[Ilsa]

33. I Believe I learned about it in high school, but it may have been college. nt

[demtenjeep]

35. I teach it

as part of my industrial revolution unit


also talk about how they had a wooden ladder on the fire truck

[Puregonzo1188]

36. Oddly enough I think I did. And I had one teacher who outright excluded labor history (and said so),

but I think it came up briefly.

[upi402]

38. Unionism was a dirty secret

God help us if 'muhricuns knew they could link arms and stand together against oppressors. How revolutionary!

[eppur_se_muova]

39. Learned about it through PBS. nt

[Quantess]

40. I learned about it in High School.

My Social Studies teacher was pretty cool. He seemed pretty solidly liberal.

I remember more than one mention, in my High School and college education.

[quiller4]

41. We did. We spent quite a bit of time on it in elementary school

and when I was in high school we had a segment on US Labor History and Washington State Labor History. I have to thank the Tacoma Dominican Sisters for my social justice education.

[Maat]

42. Beloved Daughter homeschools.

Thanks - I just put it on the list of topics to cover. Thanks again.

[LooseWilly]

43. I learned about it some 2 weeks ago... just started a book about it.

Needless to say... I've long since finished high school. :+