I teach 8th grade US history and we are getting ready to talk about the First National Bank and Alexander Hamilton. We have covered pretty much everything from the colonies to the establishment of the Constitution. We are discussing Washington, his term, and his precedents. You can assume the students know the important parts up to this.
I'm having an incredibly difficult time trying to figure out a way to explain the idea of a National Bank to the students on a level they would understand without getting too technical about the idea of having a national debt.
Anyone have a simple explanation I can steal for use in my classroom?
Basically, the idea was to solve the problems with the previous fiat currency, the Continental, which had been printed into oblivion, and also to solve the inconvertibility problems -- with so many state and private banks issuing paper, you couldn't necessarily use paper from one bank somewhere else. By having a unified currency, the paper would be convertible everywhere in the U.S. That's probably the easiest facet of it to explain to school-aged children.
The other goals were to establish credit and raise money for the United States as a whole and to pay off the war debts from 1776, since by that point probably no one was accepting Continentals. This is probably harder to explain to young scholars. Most of them have no concept of inflation, so it's nearly impossible to explain the fun government trick of inflating its way out of (part of) its debt.
One thing you can do in that class situation is to highlight to constitutional issues and the opposition from Jefferson and Madison. A debate assigning some of the class to Jefferson's school and some to Hamilton's school may lead the class to doing enough research and conversation to learn the subject thoroughly with little aid on your part.
Greetings! I teach eighth grade history as well and I have a few ideas. When I teach about it I usually pick a student and have them select a denomination of money. Generally they pick something like $100, making life easier on us all. With that, I explain that the United States places $100 in the bank and can only distribute that much for currency. The kids usually understand that simply making money and flooding the market leads to inflation, if for no other reason that people have the option of obtaining more money. Hope this helps!