History has always been the least favorite subject in American curricula which is not surprising considering the bland way that it has usually been taught. In fact, history is an endless stream of cause and effect, subtle nuances and complexities that are determined by human frailty, clashing personalities and the unexpected. Not surprisingly, while incidents in history might pass as objective, their interpretation is anything but.
Like everything involving race in America, the issue of teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) has created a national firestorm, one result of which is an ugly targeting of teachers. From the conservative Right, teachers have been threatened with heavy fines, dismissal and charges of promoting “Communism” if they teach anything about America’s racial past. From the activist Left, we’ve been denounced as racist if we don’t educate according to their brittle orthodox ideology.
I was lucky to teach before mandated curricula and as someone obsessed with history, created my own. This included separate units in 1995 on the Holocaust and African-American slavery. During my final year, I taught what I called “Three Families” that traced the flow of American history from English, African and Native perspectives (I had a small class; otherwise I would have added Hispanic, Irish and Jewish families.) All my units were conducted from a “You-Are-There” standpoint that put my fifth-graders in the center of the narrative through their diaries, role-playing, guided imagery and child-appropriate readings.
Despite the intensity of the subject matter, however, the issue of safety was paramount which is why I gave them a sense of ownership of the units. I don’t believe in bludgeoning children with every crime committed by humanity and when my kids told me that they had had enough of the Holocaust unit, I complied and we moved on to lighter topics.
As my class was exclusively white, during the unit on slavery I also emphasized that none of it was their fault, was not on them and there was no need to feel shame or guilt over the actions of others. I realize such an attitude flies in the face of some who think that instilling shame over race is a necessity to face the truth. I disagree and any teacher who shames a student for their identity — any identity — should find another profession. In my view, there is no such thing as collective guilt and we aren’t responsible for the sins of our ancestors or the crimes of others who look like us. That’s on them. And while systemic racism is an undeniable reality, dealing with it is the work of adults, not children who have enough to contend with navigating an increasingly stressful and confusing world.
But contrary to deceitful Republican hysteria, teaching about racism isn’t un-American. It’s part and parcel of who we are. It is not, however, the only part. History is a subjective exercise and in the course of my life, the teaching of it has swung from one extreme to the other. Maybe it’s now time to balance back to the center.
For us Baby-Boomers growing up in the 1950s, we received the sanitized version of that history which told us that the United States was the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, created by our Founding Fathers who were paragons of liberty and equality. Christopher Columbus was a brave, intrepid explorer who discovered the New World for the advancement of civilization. Slavery might have been briefly noted but that was in the past and Jackie Robinson was “A credit to his race.”
These accounts of our national saga were turned upside-down in the late 1960s and early ‘70s as the Civil Rights struggle, the Vietnam War and Watergate exposed the myth-making. Now the Founding Fathers are presented as a pack of white, slave-owning hypocrites and Columbus was the most genocidal killer in history. The United States is nothing but a tainted nation built by slaves on land stolen from Native Americans.
Both narratives combine truth and narrow-minded rhetoric but it’s the responsibility of an informed citizenry to discern the actual facts for themselves. We can (and do) love our country while acknowledging its history, however unsavory. Despite America’s shortcomings, millions of refugees and immigrants still come here. African-, Asian-, Muslim, gay, transgender and Native Americans serve proudly in our military defending our nation. Teaching about racism is coming to terms with inconvenient truths and instilling young people with the need to live up to the best of American ideals.
Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for forty-four years and is a frequent contributor to the Recorder. His article about teaching his fifth-graders about the Holocaust won an Educational Publishing Award in 1999. He invites constructive comments only at dbrown1793@gmail.com.