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How Do You Teach the Warts of American History?
The United States has its fair share of skeletons in the closet. Racist, imperialist, sexist skeletons. While conservatives may be annoyed at how much liberals like to harp on (and occasionally exaggerate) those particular stories, they are still historical facts — and conservatives aren’t scared of facts.
Here’s my question: what is the right way to teach the “unsavory” parts of American history? There has to be a way to avoid the two extremes of stupidity: on one hand, the “God’s Chosen Nation” model, in which George Washington is practically canonized and no one who carries the stars and stripes can ever do wrong. And, on the other hand, the cesspool of self-loathing that liberals seem to prefer, in which we belabor every injustice ever perpetrated in this country and George Washington gets less coverage than Squanto.
How do you teach the whole picture and help students be proud of our country without closing their eyes to our warts?
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I don’t teach history, I teach American Government. I don’t have a perfect solution, but it always seems important to provide context. A historian friend of mine has the acronym CANSS -contextualize, analyze, never simply summarize -which I intend to steal in the future.
Understanding the Trail of Tears requires understanding the time period. In my case, I use it as an example of how public opinion can override the law, since the Supreme Court had sided against the government. And how even if Jackson opposed it (which he might well have, but the evidence is sketchy -the “let him enforce it” line is apocryphal), had he not done it he’d have been removed -as Davey Crockett was for voting against the IRA.
But the exact same power of public opinion also justified Lincoln during the Civil War, resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, and some questionable parts of Reconstruction.
The test question is then whether the power of public opinion is good or bad for American democracy, and I dock points if the answer hinges on the student agreeing with public opinion, rather than a balance of what it achieves (though “good and bad” is acceptable).
The whole sneeze while you mention we kept slaves routine isn’t working, huh …
An educator has to give the most amount of time and emphasis to what they think is most important. If you think it’s important to spend 30 minutes on Thomas Jefferson gettin jiggy wid his slave girl, fine; if you think that’s more of a couple of minutes item, and Jefferson’s ennobling thoughts and deeds deserve more time, then do that. Facts are facts, that’s certainly true, but what you want to teach is in your heart. You have to teach your highest understanding.
WHO are you teaching American History to? From your profile I”m reading home schooling, which makes me think you’re asking a much more specific question than most commenters are answering.
While recognizing that there’s a danger of going too far in praising American History, the vice of the age tends towards condemning our country. I’d be less worried about praising too much than too little, since the kids likely won’t get that perspective elsewhere.
Oh, and I think the general answer is to just keep teaching history; if you’re doing it honestly then you’ll get to the bad parts in their due sequence. The more history the kid has, the more perspective they’ll have. Naturally, this doesn’t work as well if you’re limited to a semester or two like Mr. The Poet.
One of the interesting things about the history of Native Americans is the way different factions have treated them as other than human. In out history, we have those who justified genocide by disregarding the humanity of the Native Americans (“the only good Indian is a dead Indian”) but today we have those who teach that Native Americans must have been something other than human (utterly nonviolent with a supernatural appreciation of nature.)
That actually goes all the way back to the early settlements: there were narratives that described the natives as almost pre-Fall innocents, and others that described them as sub-human brutes.
Rarely were they described as, you know, people.
Echoing others, I think it’s important to be very honest while also providing context, both about history and human nature. And the earlier you can dispel Rosseauian myths about Mankind’s natural innocence, the better.
This is inviting controversy: Gay marriage/polygamy, immigration restriction, drug war, and perhaps far, far in the future, the need for a coercive government in the first place.
One starts by pointing out that man is fallen and there is nothing perfect on earth. Then illustrate that these “skeletons” are not unique to the US. In fact they are common throughout the history of man.
The US was the first nation in history to see these “skeletons” as wrong and seek to do something about them. The reason why the US is a shining light on a hill (and Washington was a secular saint) is because we were established under a unifying set of ideals predicated on all being of equal value in the eyes of the Creator.
This widespread attitude was new in history. If the Founding Fathers had not started the process it would not otherwise exist. Instead we would still be in a “Game of Thrones” feudal world. If you don’t think Washington was saintly or a blessing, compare him to Maliki…
On slavery, I remind them that slavery is the 2nd oldest “profession”, after motherhood and before prostitution. Various forms of slavery have always been with mankind. Christ began the change, teaching that we are all God’s children, but the message took a long time to take hold, even with the Godly.
The US is the only nation to have a civil war over slavery. The US was among the first in the history of the world to make slavery illegal. We were preceded only by Great Britain and (briefly) Post-Revolutionary France. In fact defacto slavery still exists in much of the world. If one totes up the plusses and minuses, the Anglosphere has been, on balance, a very good thing for its citizens and the world.
An aside in closing, Jefferson is often criticized for not freeing his slaves upon his death. People forget that he died heavily in debt. The slaves were assets against that debt. He did not have that option, because he had been a poor businessman.
I would add that the age of the child matters greatly. When children are young, they must be taught what is best and most idealistic about their nation. It is not appropriate to give them the warts until, at least, high school. And only then if they have a good grounding in all that is good and right about our history. With this they are better able to contexturalize and put a perspective on the total history.
Lastly, the amount of time you spend on a topic matters a lot. If you spend more time on the ideals and the proud moments, the student is also better able to grasp the entirety of history, putting an appropriate weight on the good and the bad.
Slavery was the norm for every culture. Only Christian nations turned against it.
Stronger cultures always overpower lesser ones.
Capitalism is the best way to reduce poverty world wide
No one yet. I teach English, not history. But I have two babies of my own and plan to homeschool them someday, with history being a pillar of their curriculum. Both my husband and I love the subject, so we won’t have a problem coming up with material . . . this is just something I have been thinking about (how to balance the many sides of history and give our children a realistic view, not a view tainted by ideology).
I agree, but when you first cover American history chronologically you have to take on slavery to some degree. It can’t wait any longer than that.
Also, it is critical to teach children to look at historical events from the eyes of then contemporaries. If you look at history with a 21st century perspective you are doing it wrong. For example, I suspect our present time will not be viewed favorably by those 100 years hence.
Hence my point on slavery in #38. I remember learning about slavery with the Civil War when I was very young, but at that early age the emphasis was on Britain’s Wilburforce and the Abolitionists, the battles of the war and the fact that our nation was the first to tear itself apart in war to abolish slavery.
The warts of America are the warts of all humanity, even liberals. Put it in context. And guess what, Washington was right. Teach his views with respect. Once kids understand both realities, they’re ready to hear that the spread of freedom had to start somewhere, and it started, naturally, with the folks who invented it, white Christian, mostly Protestant, Europeans immigrants.
Wow – lots of good serious commentary here. I was just going to be crass and say that it should be pointed out that Democrats gave us most of the bad stuff we lament: Indian removal, slavery, secession and the Confederacy leading to civil war, Jim Crow, the KKK, involvement in a world war bungled badly enough to lead to a second one, and now socialism with massive dependency and group victimology. I could throw in a few more, but there is a word limit.
I remember when studying in Germany being lectured by left-leaning Germans about all the bad things the US has done. I was often – but not always – able to restrain myself from pointing out the obvious – that German actions in the more recent past led directly to the deaths of tens of millions of people. Like Democrats, they want to project all that bad stuff onto someone else: “Well, it was those other Germans,” or “That’s back when Democrats were really Republicans.” Yeah, sure.
Without context, history is a subjective dalliance into personal narrative. Its like meeting a person once and telling their life story through a single encounter. Our lives are made through the years we lived them and the people with whom we lived and influenced us. None of us are all good nor all bad and history is made by people. As an artist knowing the history of art and its evolution is to understand how we got here, good and bad, heroic and pastiche.
The left wants criminals to be understood in the context that ‘made’ them but refuses the same context should be used to understood history, especially America’s history. The left loves to site the reasons for the communist uprising but denigrates the struggles that America has undertaken to create a free society. Every failure in America is a failure of perfection, the Communists obviously had their hearts in the right place, the Founding Fathers, not so much.
Would you like a list? I’ll give you a hint, it’s the SoCon laundry list.
I agree to a point, but also feel that conservatives sometimes go a too far with the “it was a different time” business.
When the US Constitution was written, the various colonies had pretty diverse opinions and policies about individual rights, as well as the rights of women and of non-caucasians. Some allowed them to vote and to own property, while others didn’t.
The Founders didn’t write the language they did into the Constitution with the intention of immediately violating that language as soon as they got into power themselves.
Instead, the Constitution was written through negotiation between parties with wildly divergent opinions on many issues.
When violations of the Constitution did happen, it wasn’t because “that’s just how things were back then”. It was the consequence of the ebb and flow of these different factions’ political power.
Just like today.
I find the Left treats the Founders as fundamentally “different” from us, and we shouldn’t fall for it.
See! That’s why I ask. In the case of young children I think reinforcing that America is the good guys and why that is is more important than careful equivocation about how nobody’s perfect. They’ll get the warts on full display from the rest of the culture; it would be good to give them a bedrock of patriotism to balance them by.
By the way, my partisan rant earlier wasn’t just to bash a political party. Democrats have long been associated with a form of populist activism that runs counter to constitutional principles and toward doing things that sound good at the time. Removing natives from desirable land and using the forced labor of other human beings were both expedient and popular for long periods of time. That should be at least a part of the lesson we draw from history. I’m sure we could all think of things happening right this minute that would fit the same pattern.
Pretty sure Wilberforce doesn’t make it into most public school discussions of slavery, sad to say. (Actually much British history that ought to provide good background for our own gets overlooked.)
I’m going to take a practical approach to answer your question: When homeschooling middle school, I use The History of US. Full of maps, primary source material, illustrations, and great story-telling, it takes a non-apologetic and factual approach to American exceptionalism, warts and all. The study guides are helpful when leading discussions with more than one student. The discussion of the Indian question, for example, or child labor in industrialization, or slavery, are all handled quite well, with the arguments presented as honestly as possible.
In high school, I combined history with literature. My son this year studied from the text Christ and the Americas, which is written from a Catholic perspective, but he also read things like Mourt’s Relations, the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Ben Franklin, O Pioneers, The Deerslayer, Miracle at Philadelphia, Witness, and many speeches, such as Lincoln’s second inaugural, which he outlined.
We discuss America’s problems forthrightly in our classes, geared toward the age of the students, but our goal is to understand her better and love her more, not to learn disdain and scorn for the past.
I think that the older students are, the more balanced the teaching can be.
I don’t see any reason to teach the warts to young students; I think it’s much more important to teach them a simple, coherent picture of the (good) basics about America. If one of them happens to ask a question about some American shortcoming, the teacher should answer honestly, but that’s about it.
I like most of these ideas. I have taught nine year old students in public schools for eighteen years. I’m a huge America booster. I want them to know why people can be proud to be American.
The “that was then, and this is now” perspective is useful. I also point out that people lived in a very small “space” for centuries. No internet, no television, no movies to know about anyone else but their own culture or family.
Columbus, for example, should be noted because he did something that no one else in his time had dared to do. He was wrong about where he landed (he never knew he didn’t make it to India) but he was quite a daring person to pursue his goal tirelessly. We do mention the conquest of the western hemisphere, but the gruesome details are for high school.
Same with our state history in regard to the native people: we learn about how they lived for centuries, and we learn about how their lives were affected by the settlers. It’s more of a time-line thing because most 4th grade students are only just learning about anything outside of their own family. I don’t shy away from it when someone brings up an uncomfortable topic. We try to look at how we act differently today, and what our country learned from the bad events.
I find it encouraging and refreshing that they are astounded to learn about the Jim Crow era. They can’t understand how anyone could act like that, or want to live that way. I just agree with them. Too–it often comes up that slavery still exists in today’s world, and they are surprised to find that it wasn’t just in America. And, I love explaining that we Americans fought through the law, and with guns, to get rid of it here. Kids this age soak up the good things about our country. I love my job!
I think that only works for students who’ve already been taught how properly to make up their minds.
I agree that critical thinking skills are essential for a free people. My students learn to diagram and outline so they can express thoughts more easily. The learn rhetoric and logic; and how to marshall arguments, ask questions about assumptions, and attempt to understand differing perspectives without falling into the trap of relativism.
I realize I’m crossing the streams here. But it is this kind of post and discussion that will keep me on Ricochet. Frustratingly I cannot find the post from Jerry Carroll from a few days ago that talked about his frustation with Rico 2.0. A frustration I share. I’m not a teacher and I don’t home school. But I enjoy these types of posts immensely. And this kind of post is why I’ll renew despite my frustrations.
Being honest is the best policy. America is a great, but imperfect, country. Context, of course, is important.
We often treated American Indians brutally, slavery is blot on our history, Jim Crow laws were despicable. Heck, some of my Mormon ancestors were treated pretty badly in Missouri and Illinois.
But, bad as these things were, America at least has the capacity and inclination to reform itself. Not all countries can make that claim.
Part of the solution is, at some point, to quit harping on past inequities and try to build a better future.
The fact that America is still the place millions want to go is pretty good evidence this country is far more good than bad.
Be honest about whatever topic you are covering. Inform your students that there is a historical context to every episode throughout history, that the people involved with making the policy should not be confused with those who carry it out, and always strive for the objective truth. As a teacher, you are not there to persuade them about this or that historical event. You are there to inform them with all the information available to those of us in the present.