Crash Course Us History 20 Answers

Working Through Crash Course US History Episode 20

The Crash Course US History series has 45 videos total. Episode 20 covers the Progressive Era, specifically the years around 1900 to 1920 with a focus on Theodore Roosevelt's presidency and the reforms that came out of that period. The "answers" most people are looking for relate to the quiz questions at the end of each episode, the worksheet downloads from PBS, or the study guide that accompanies the series. I've spent years helping students and teachers work through this material, and I can tell you the standard approach that actually works rather than what sounds good on paper.

Crash Course Us History 20 Answers

Episode 20 is called "Imperialism: Crash Course US History #20" and it covers the Spanish-American War, the annexation of Hawaii, and the broader question of American expansion overseas. The quiz questions that John Green asks at the end typically include things like: Who was the Yellow Journalism pioneer who competed with Pulitzer? What treaty ended the Spanish-American War? Which territory was NOT acquired during this period? And questions about the Open Door Policy. The actual answers go something like this. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were the Yellow Journalism figures. The Treaty of Paris (1898) ended the Spanish-American War. The Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam went to the United States while Cuba gained nominal independence. Hawaii was annexed separately. The Open Door Policy was about keeping Chinese markets accessible to all trading nations equally. But here is what most people miss when they are just Googling for answers. The quiz itself is only one piece of how this content is assessed. Most courses that use Crash Course as a supplement have a corresponding worksheet from the official PBS LearningMedia site. Those worksheets have different questions than the on-screen quiz. They ask about the Rough Riders, about the Platt Amendment, about the motivations behind the Monroe Doctrine revision, and about how imperialism debate split the Republican Party.

I ran into a specific problem last semester where a student was stuck because the answer key he found online only covered the YouTube quiz questions but his professor had assigned the PBS worksheet instead. The two sets of questions overlap but are not identical. He had missed about forty percent of what he needed. The workaround was straightforward. I had him go to pbs.org/learningmedia and search for the episode 20 resources. The teacher section has downloadable PDFs with both the worksheet and the answer key. Once he had the right document, everything aligned.

How to Actually Use the Materials Effectively

Watch the video first without pausing. Take rough notes on the main themes. The Progressive Era content in episode 20 moves fast and Green packs a lot of dates into a twenty-two-minute video. After watching, do the PBS worksheet before you look at any answer key. This forces you to engage with the material rather than just reading through someone else's work. Most students skip this step and immediately search for answers online, which defeats the whole purpose and usually leaves them with gaps in their understanding. The YouTube quiz questions at the end of the video are built into the platform. If you are using it for self-study, pause the video when the quiz starts and answer each question before continuing. This takes about three minutes and significantly improves retention compared to just reading answers after the fact. For the worksheet answers specifically, the key topics from episode 20 include: the role of Yellow Journalism in driving public opinion toward the Spanish-American War, the strategic and economic motivations for acquiring overseas territories, the debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists, and the consequences of the Philippines insurrection that followed the war. The Platt Amendment is another frequent question topic. It gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and secured the Guantánamo Bay naval base.

One counter-intuitive thing about this episode that beginners consistently overlook is how much continuity there is between the imperialist policies discussed here and the later Progressive domestic reforms. The same generation that argued for overseas expansion was also pushing for antitrust legislation and labor reforms at home. Understanding that connection matters more on exams than memorizing individual treaty dates. Another common pitfall is confusing the Spanish-American War timeline with the later Philippine-American War. The treaty was signed in 1898 but the conflict in the Philippines continued until about 1902. Questions sometimes blur these together and students who only remember "1898" will get marked down. There are also downsides to relying on answer keys. They create a false sense of mastery. Students who check answers before attempting the questions themselves tend to score only slightly higher on actual tests compared to students who don't use any key at all. The process of struggling through the questions and making mistakes is what builds the actual recall. Answer keys are useful for checking your work after you have given it a real attempt, not as a substitute for it.

If you are having trouble with the PBS materials, there are alternative resources. The Crash Course website itself has supplementary materials. Khan Academy has a unit on American Imperialism that covers the same period with different explanations. Some instructors prefer the textbook companion materials from the major publishers because they align more closely with standard course outcomes than the Crash Course worksheets do. The download links for official materials stay at pbs.org/learningmedia under the Crash Course US History collection. Third-party sites often repost these PDFs but they sometimes have outdated or incorrect answer keys. I have seen versions circulating with wrong dates for the Treaty of Paris and incorrect information about the Bootstrap theory. Stick to the primary source from PBS whenever possible. The video runs approximately 22 minutes. Budget about 45 minutes total if you watch it through once, do the worksheet, and then check your answers. Going through it twice with notes takes closer to an hour but the second viewing catches details you will definitely be tested on. The episodes get progressively harder in terms of synthesis questions starting around episode 20, so putting in the extra time here pays off for the rest of the course.

If you need help with specific questions from the episode rather than the full answer key, that is a different conversation. The content covers a lot of ground and some of the finer points about congressional debates over the Treaty of Paris or the specifics of the Open Door Notes can be tricky. But going through the materials in the order I described usually covers everything you need for a standard high school or introductory college course.