Skip to main content

No Text

Even though the President of the United States has declared the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement  "a symbol of hate" and a threat to the country, the nation nevertheless is having a racial reckoning.  Look at the composition of the demonstrations in most American cities and it's apparent that many white folks get it.  They need no explanation.  Yet this begs the question of why so many people in the US don't really know their own history.  I'm of the opinion that the answer is right in front of us.  Just look in our history books.

For years the conventional wisdom held that history was best taught from history books.  Those cumbersome texts we all carried around at some point were really worthless when it comes to accurate history.  I know I'm generalizing, but as one who taught the subject at one time collected and many texts as I could, the real history of this country was seldom found in those volumes.
From the time I first walked into a classroom until I locked my classroom door for the last time, I made my own curriculum and eschewed most textbooks.
So what's wrong with them? For starters, they ignore many of the significant events of America's struggle with race relations. And why?  Because the sad truth is that this had been a country founded on genocide, racism, slave labor, and the suppression of civil rights for all its citizens.  If you have to read this continually, from the age of colonization through the last few "endless wars," you might start to feel differently about all the star-spangled messages we constantly receive about "American Exceptionalism."
Our history lies in primary sources.  What if our students could read and discuss the documents that hold the honest truth.  Then they'd see the 3/5th clause in the Constitution.  They would read a real Green Book or the letters of a young soldier mired in the mud of Vietnam.  You get the picture.
Fortunately, today there are resources like the Zinn Education Project, the Choices Project, and The Jim Crow Museum that make teaching textless not only possible and preferable but much easier than the old days before we had the internet.  I vividly remember putting together handouts I typed while trying to hold open diaries, documents, and letters.  I made slides and tried to get photographs copied for years.  There is something particularly satisfying about letting students form their own opinions from reading and viewing primary sources.  This allows them to do the work of historians.  That, in turn, teaches how complex the work of history can be.
In the last few months, with the increased time spent at home due to the pandemic, I've been culling my collection of primary sources.  I plan on passing along many to other educators who get that the text is merely a point of departure.  A classroom, with ample displays of primary sources, along with student work) can go on teaching without the teacher.  I like that idea.

Comments

jennifer said…
I totally agree about primary sources. I remember as a kid asking why our textbooks never mentioned slavery. I was told that mentioning slavery would hurt the Black kids’ feelings. Hmm.

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Illusory

What does it take to enrage you?  That moment when your words fly on pure emotion because enough is enough.  Is it a driver that cuts you off at high speed?  What about being an eyewitness to blatant racism or on the receiving end of some obvious injustice? I know some people who never express rage.  I admire them but know full well I am not capable of such distance from that which would bring about such a strong response. Another senseless shooting and 7 people die at the hands of a mentally ill gun owner.  The father of the 20 year old college student lets it fly and somehow millions feel a new sense of relief.  He calls the politicians bastards who do nothing, he wears his pain in public.  The news media responds but we all know that nothing is going to change.  We are the gun country.  We are the place where anybody, anytime, can be cut down just for being there when somebody else snaps. Usually the perpetrators are delusional. ...

Mr. Greene v. Mr. Brown

I want to tell you about something. Something I've carried inside myself for a number of years now. Perhaps if I were a different kind of person I wouldn't need to talk about it. I'm not. My need to tell it is stronger than your need to hear it. Because, however, there are a number of teachers and former students of mine who may read these meanderings from time to time, I need to tell this story all the more. About 7 or 8 years ago I was asked if I would allow a university PhD. candidate to observe an English class. At first I decided against it because I was scheduled to have a student teacher placed with me the second half of the semester in question. After some urging, however, at the request of a respected colleague, I agreed. Soon I was committing to extra meetings, signing documents and explaining to the class in question who the young woman who thoughtfully pounded away on a laptop in the rear of the classroom three times a week was. I knew that the topic of ...