Download Barbarian Invasion lesson

Lesson 1:
Barbarian Invasion: What Did They Do?
Lesson Learning Standard: Power, Authority, Responsibility
Religion in History
Objectives:
Students Should:
A.
Begin to understand the difference between political, social and economic.
B.
Understand what happened when the barbarians invaded the Roman Empire.[
Student Notes:
What did the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire do?
(In other words, why do we study them in history? Most of them just disappeared. They
did not leave us anything.)
The barbarians that invaded the Roman Empire destroyed the social, political and
economic
organization of the Roman Empire.
Question:
What would this mean to you if you were a student in school in the Roman Empire after
the barbarian invasions?
(Probably be no school to go to. No jobs. No police or government.)
Which of these is political, social, economic?
(So we can see that the lives of everyone in the Roman Empire changed after the
barbarian invasions.)
Do you think they liked the change?
What was the social, political and economic organization of the Roman Empire?
The social organization organized people into two social classes.
The people in the upper class were the landowners.
They were called patricians.
You had to be born into this class
(They were descended from the first families that settled in Rome and owned all the land.
From the Greek and Latin words for father and country: patria. Like patriot etc.)
The second class was everyone else. Called plebeians.
The political organization was headed by an Emperor.
Below the emperor was a Senate.
The senators were patricians.
Only patricians had political power.
In other words, the upper class controlled the political organization.
The economic organization was based on trade and money.
This created many different jobs for people.
Barbarians, however, were uncivilized.
This means they did not have a political, social or economic organization.
(Let’s find out why not.)
Review what we know about organization.
Question:
Why do we organize things?
(to find them etc.)
When would organization be most necessary?
A. When we have a lot of things or only a few?
B. When we have many different things or all the same thing?
(It is the same for political, social, and economic organizations.
The bigger the group, the more different kinds of people and needs and jobs etc. the more
you need organization.)
So, why did the barbarians not have political, social or economic organization?
By destroying the political, social and economic organization of the Roman
Empire the barbarians destroyed the ability to run anything big.
(No big business or trade, no building roads etc.)
People broke down into small local groups.
People had to try and do everything for themselves.
There was no one to accept responsibility for the safety of the people.
There was no trade and so jobs disappeared.
There was confusion, fear and constant danger.
Questions for Understanding:
1. How did the lives of the people in the Roman Empire change after the barbarian
invasions?
2. Why did the Roman Empire have a political, social and economic organization?