Engage the Maze....
A Teaching American History Newsletter from Dr. Christine Johnson
Hello fellow teachers! Welcome to a new installment of Engage the Maze. Christine Johnson, Editor
January, 2008
Welcome to a new year!
In a recent newsletter, I urged readers to consider that we as educators might be relying too heavily on war and other (potentially scintillating) instances of global conflict to punctuate our historical instruction.
Ken Burns’ recent depiction of WWII on PBS reminded me that it is possible to teach about a time period characterized by warfare by focusing on people and the stories of their lives throughout the conflicts. In conveying these types of personal stories to a classroom, many of us find ourselves concentrating on
positive elements and avoiding the difficult. One of those difficult elements of human interaction, and of our collective history, is prejudice.It is tempting, perhaps, to avoid a topic so fraught and complex, but avoiding classroom discussion of prejudice can have disastrous effects. For me, broaching the subject is not an easy process as prejudice/bias is deeply rooted, and since it can be polarizing to discuss it in a group. But then I remembered Teaching Tolerance magazine referencing how we adults tend to have the biggest problems discussing our experiences with prejudice, as we are more guarded in general.
Prejudice is not a subject that makes for easy class discussion, but it is all too real and present in our lives and the lives of our students, and it is irresponsible to ignore it. Its appearance throughout history has instigated catastrophic events of major proportions.
Prejudices/biases have been based on different factors—sometimes on racial difference, sometimes on economic/class difference, sometimes on cultural or religious difference. To map the history of prejudice in human interaction is to draw a complicated maze of events, a tangled knot of action and reaction; in order to effectively teach prejudice’s past, we as educators must, with the help of our students, carefully untangle this knot.
This means addressing how, in some cases, bias/prejudice effected population shifts. It also means looking at how governments or government agencies behaved, in certain ways, out of fear of the unknown and new. To teach history holistically, we educators must begin to view bias/prejudice as a subject that demands addressing; it is vital that we consider it in historical curriculum choices.
While working with students in special session, discussing the day-to-day bias/prejudice they encounter or observe, they reported that fellow students’ words or fists never hurt as much as do the actions (or inactions) of teachers, youth leaders and other adults. Here are some examples of what I heard:
• A 4th grade African-American student was asked, in classroom performance of a fiction piece, to read the part of an 1840’s slave (with dialect) because he would, according to the teacher, “have better knowledge of how to do it.”
• A biology teacher illustrated “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” by
citing how weak slaves died on the slave ships, hypothesizing further that this is why Blacks in contemporary times are such good athletes.• Students reported that they had no awareness of American-Japanese internments.
• Students reported that a Native-American student questioned a teacher, when a “reservations program” was being completed, as to why “reservation schools” were not discussed. The student apparently felt that ignoring this topic was unjust given the ramifications, for Native-American communities, of separation of Native-American youth from their families, wherein that youth population was placed in schools that did not permit teaching of their cultures/languages.
It often falls to teachers to choose tough subjects for discussion, and to direct that discussion so that it remains productive. We often have to select items, time permitting, to include or leave out. I see it as a challenge for myself to portray historical life as honestly as I can. As my mother, a 3rd grade teacher, reminded me many times, “Teaching is an art of the heart.” Prejudice/bias can damage the strongest heart. Tread carefully, my friends.
Very Sincerely,
Christy
cj@alivelearn.comPrevious newsletters
Early Spring 06
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Winter 06-07
Spring 07
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