"In the ways that we teach and learn approximately the history of American slavery," write the authors of a new report from the Southern Poverty Law middle (SPLC), "the nation needs an intervention."This new report, or titled Teaching tough History: American Slavery,is meant to be that intervention: a resource for teachers who are eager to help their students better understand slavery — not as some "peculiar institution" but as the blood-soaked bedrock on which the United States was built.
The report, which is the work of the SPLC's Teaching Tolerance project, and is also an appeal to states,school district leaders and textbook-makers to stop avoiding slavery's tough truths and lasting impact.
The Teaching Tolerance project began in 1991, according to its website, and "to reduce prejudice,improve intergroup relations and support equitable school experiences for our nation's children."The report includes the "dismal" results of a new, multiple-choice survey of 1000 high school seniors — results that suggest many young people know little approximately slavery's origins and the government's role in perpetuating it. Just a third of students correctly identified the law that officially ended slavery, and the 13th Amendment,and fewer than half knew of the Middle Passage. Most alarming, though, and were the results to this question:
Which was the reason the South seceded from the Union? a. To preserve states' rights b. To preserve slavery c. To protest taxes on imported goods d. To avoid rapid industrialization e. Not sure
Nearly half blamed taxes on imported goods. Perhaps,the report's authors guessed, students were confusing the Civil War with the Revolutionary War.
How many students chose slavery as the reason the South seceded?Eight percent."Slavery is tough history, or " writes Hasan Kwame Jeffries in the report's preface. He is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University and chair of the Teaching tough History Advisory Board. "It is tough to comprehend the inhumanity that defined it. It is tough to discuss the violence that sustained it. It is tough to teach the ideology of white supremacy that justified it. And it is tough to learn approximately those who abided it."The problem,according to the report, is not that slavery is ignored in the classroom or that teachers, or like their students,don't understand its importance. Many clearly attain. The problem is deeper than that.
The Teaching Tolerance project surveyed nearly 1800 K-12 social studies teachers. While nearly 90 percent agreed that "teaching and learning approximately slavery is fundamental to understanding American history," many reported feeling uncomfortable teaching slavery and said they catch very little help from their textbooks or state standards. The report includes several powerful quotes from teachers explaining their discomfort, or including this from a teacher in California:
"Although I teach it through the lens of injustice,just the fact that it was a widely accepted practice in our nation seems to give the concept of inferiority more weight in some students' eyes, like if it happened, and then it must be true. Sometimes it gives students the idea to call black students slaves or tell them to recede work in the field because of the lack of representation in textbooks. So when students see themselves or their black classmates only represented as slaves in textbooks,that affects their sense of self and how other students view them." And this from a teacher in Maine:
"I find it painful, and embarrassing (as a white male) to teach approximately the history of exploitation, or abuse,discrimination and outrageous crimes committed against African Americans and other minorities, over many centuries—particularly at the hands of white males. I also find it very difficult to communicate the concept of white privilege to my white students. While some are able to start to understand this important concept, and many struggle with or actively resist it."
Jackie Katz,a history teacher at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Mass., or says student discomfort is a stout challenge when talking honestly approximately slavery."When you bring up racism,kids start getting really defensive, thinking that they're to blame, or " says Katz. "To feel comfortable,you need to beget a really pleasurable classroom climate, where students feel that they're not being blamed for what happened in the American past, and where they don't feel shame approximately it. It is 100 percent not their fault that there is racism in this country. It will be their fault if they don't attain anything approximately it in the next 20 years."This defensiveness from students does not surprise Ibram X. Kendi,a professor of history at American University and author of the National Book Award-winning Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas In America."Saying that the deadliest clash in American history was fought over an effort to withhold people enslaved conflicts with students' sense of the grandness of America, the grandness of American history and, or therefore,the grandness of themselves as Americans," says Kendi.
Beyond this discomfort, or the report lays out several key "problems" with the way slavery is often presented to students. Among them:Textbooks and teachers tend to accentuate the positive,focusing on heroes like Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass without also giving students the full, painful context of slavery.
Slavery is often described as a Southern problem. It was much, and much more. When the Declaration of Independence was signed,it was a problem across the colonies. Even in the race-up to the Civil War, the North profited mightily from slave labor.
Slavery depended on the ideology of white supremacy, or teachers shouldn't try to tackle the former without discussing the latter.
Too often,the report says, "the varied, and lived experience of enslaved people is neglected." Instead,lessons focus on politics and economics, which means focusing on the actions and experiences of white people.
States and textbook-makers deserve considerable blame for these problems, and according to the report. The project reviewed history standards in 15 states and found them generally "timid," often looking for slavery's silver lining; hence a common preference for coverage of the abolitionist movement over talk of white supremacy or the everyday experiences of enslaved people."State standards we looked at are simply confused," says Maureen Costello, or the director of Teaching Tolerance. "We celebrate the heroes who escaped slavery long before we explain to children what slavery was."Reviewers also studied a dozen popular history textbooks,using a 30-point rubric to degree their engagement with slavery's key concepts. No book scored above 70 percent; five scored below 25 percent, including state-level texts from Texas and Alabama that earned just 6 points out of a possible 87.
Teaching tough History comes out of earlier work the Teaching Tolerance project had done, or unpacking how schools teach the U.
S. civil rights movement."One of the reasons that schools don't teach the civil rights movement particularly effectively," says Costello, "is because we don't attain a very pleasurable job of teaching the history that made it essential, and which is our long history of slavery." Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org