General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerican education fails to teach us anything about American history.
We are taught to read and write and it's up to us to learn the rest.
"The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson and published in 2010, is about the great migration of millions of African Americans from the South to the North.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/04/1353063/--The-Warmth-of-Other-Suns-a-review?showAll=yes
It is a huge story, taking place over great distances, large groups of people and decades of time. And that is perhaps why it is not usually told as a single narrative. Wilkerson uses the journeys of three individuals, from different decades, traveling from different origins to different destinations, to examine this largest of all internal migrations that the country had ever seen.
It was a leaderless movement of people who were tired of endless restrictions on their right to vote, to own and farm their own land; people who were tired of poor education and even poorer futures for their children. Surely, they must have been tired of their own vulnerability to Jim Crow laws that put the distance between the rest of their lives and the end of a rope in the hands of a white man who took offense at a few words spoken to a white woman.
Just as it was a war that ended the slave labor camps, it was another war that allowed so many to escape from what had become a virtual slavery in the South. World War I cut off the flow of immigrant labor from Europe upon which the industrial cities of the North relied. Word trickled down to the sharecroppers and the migrant agricultural workers and the domestics of the South and some of them left behind all they knew for a chance in the new world.
The fact that they would be facing much of the same racism and hate that they were leaving was probably unknown to many. They would at least be living in a place that did not require them to step off a sidewalk to let a white pass by, or to use a designated doorway, stairwell, or water fountain.
Isabel Wilkerson does not ignore the broader historic picture that she is painting:
The disparity in pay, reported without apology in the local papers for all to see, would have far-reaching effects. It would mean that even the most promising of colored people, having received next to nothing in material assets from their slave foreparents, had to labor with the knowledge that they were now being underpaid by more than half, that they were so behind it would be all but impossible to accumulate the assets their white counterparts could, and that they would, by definition, have less to leave succeeding generations than similar white families. Multiplied over the generations, it would mean a wealth deficit between the races that would require a miracle windfall or near asceticism on the part of colored families if they were to have any chance of catching up or amassing anything of value. Otherwise, the chasm would continue, as it did for blacks as a group even into the succeeding century. The layers of accumulated assets built up by the better-paid dominant caste, generation after generation, would factor into a wealth disparity of white Americans having an average net worth ten times that of black Americans by the turn of the twenty-first century, dampening the economic prospects of the children and grandchildren of both Jim Crow and the Great Migration before they were even born.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/04/1353063/--The-Warmth-of-Other-Suns-a-review?showAll=yes
We will never fix America until we recognize and acknowledge how we got here.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)of the educated African Americans from the South -- Wilkerson shows that the Migrators had higher average educational attainment than the whites in the northern and western cities they moved to. The South to this day economically suffers from that brain and skills drain.
JustAnotherGen
(31,780 posts)Even the very tail end migrators - the level of education leaving for the great lakes and north east was astounding.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The person-miles traveled in the Great Migration exceed the person-miles traveled by European immigrants to the US during that period. That's astounding.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)chervilant
(8,267 posts)the KKK has purchased another racist billboard... It's astonishing to me that so many people know so little and hate so much.
midnight
(26,624 posts)liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)detail or do critical thinking to analyze what they have learned. Just a quick side note and then on to the next bit of history.
LuvNewcastle
(16,834 posts)I think it would be ideal to spend an entire year on a certain section of American history, beginning with the Indians crossing the land bridge from Asia, and successively teaching other sections until you get to the present time in high school. That way, the students could learn detailed information and have discussions about one era to the next. It always seemed to me that there wasn't any organization to learning history in school.
We would rush through a book and facts would be thrown at us to be regurgitated on fill-in-the-blank tests or, even worse, multiple choice. There was a little discussion in class of opinions about different parts, but I never wrote essays about my opinions or impressions in history classes until I went to college. That's almost too late. The kids need to have a good command of the facts starting at an early age, and they should start organizing their thoughts into sentences, paragraphs, essays, and papers as soon as they learn to write.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)ErikJ
(6,335 posts)Is there any hope?
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)The history teachers I have worked with for the last several years have all taught that time in history and had students research various aspects of that and other diasporas within our borders.
Yes, there are history teachers who focus on what is on the tests and nothing else, but most these days have the students research what it was like for the average person in each time period, try to present everything as fairly as they can with their biased textbooks (that they are required to use, by the way), and cover history in as engaging a manner as they can.
I teach Spanish, so I cover the parts of Latin American history most history teachers don't have time for, and at least half the time, my students tell me that they knew that already, that they'd learned it in their history classes. If you have a problem with the required curricula, please complain to your state ed dept. If you have a problem with textbooks, please go when your school board approves the next set.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)Public school teachers do what they can and most are far better than we even deserve. I have attended school board meetings over the years regarding curriculum and have advocated for more civics, current events and history courses. Civics is unheard of these days, but budget and time constraints are the usual response. I even ran for a school board seat once, but lost.
My daughter's school history education was nearly non existent. We live in a small, rural area and American history has been hijacked by our right wing board of ed. She learned "patriotic American history" in school and real history at home.
I have a picture of Karl Marx in my den. One of my daughter's friends looked at the picture and asked who's that? Karl Marx, I replied, totally unprepared for the next who's that? 6 high school grads, from the same school, 3 in college, and the only one who knew about Karl Marx was my daughter, and she didn't learn it in school. I realize Marx wasn't an American, but his name sure comes up a lot with American politicians.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)You clearly blame the teachers and make several sweeping generalizations about how American history teachers throughout the US supposedly aren't teaching real US history. You continue to do so after saying that you don't in this most recent post. Taking your experience and applying it to the entire US is a bit much.
I'm sorry if I am coming across too strongly, but all of us teachers are getting tired of this meme, that we're inept, that we don't rise above bad standards and teach it the way it "should" be taught when, in reality, test scores are the highest in American history as are graduation rates, and especially in this area, American history teachers are doing a better job than ever when they have a harder time than ever.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)I think education is severely lacking. Test scores? Really? What's on the test?
Big controversy in Colorado last year when a conservative school district wanted to change the American history curriculum. To their credit, students and teachers walked out in protest, but the school board was doing what they were elected to do.
I never said teachers were inept, those are your words.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)You're parroting the right-wing, profiteering agenda rather well. Start with Madfloridian's posts here--very informative. The Education group is helpful, too.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)aren't getting a real education. I think you're reading me wrong. but I really don't care.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Please consider going to school board meetings, though, and speaking up for the teachers doing their best to do the right thing.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)much say in that matter.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)If you have tenure, you can ignore it and do what you know you need to do, but if you don't, you don't have a choice.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)tenure is disappearing.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)We're losing so many hard-won rights. It's disgusting.
marmar
(77,052 posts)Virtuous European settlers overcame those savage Indians
Founding fathers were wonderful men
Better dead than Red
Women and People of Color had a few moments, but really aren't that important
.......... I knew it was all bullshit even then, in the late 1980s, but once I got to college, started doing my own research and learned actual American history, I just got mad about it all.
We need more Howard Zinn, and less Prentice Hall.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Problematic Europeans come over in waves, kill off millions through disease and ethnic cleansing. The Founding Fathers were not perfect, but they were a product of the Enlightenment. Women and People of Color were the backbone of our economy through Wall Street starting as a slave market and women's unpaid labor as well.
We had a "normal" textbook, but my teacher went above and beyond. I have worked with history teacher colleagues who have gone above and beyond, ignored textbook guidelines when needed, and have had students really get into history in innovative ways.
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)We read about it in American History class, and we also discussed it in English class (when reading parts of Ellison, Baldwin, and Morrison). This was in NYC in the late 1980's/early 1990's.
I'm convinced that a lot of people just don't pay much attention in school, but that's not really a problem of curriculum.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Per the CCSS, you need to have facts to back up that kind of opinion (9-10.W.1B, 9-10.W.2B, 9-10.W.9).
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 6, 2015, 11:09 AM - Edit history (2)
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Study-Americans-Dont-Know-About-Much-About-History.htmlhttp://thoughtcatalog.com/nico-lang/2013/10/14-surprising-things-americans-dont-know-according-to-poll-numbers/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43397386/ns/us_news-life/t/report-students-dont-know-much-about-us-history/#.VKtXtCvF82Y
https://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/histignr.html
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)You admit that you are using your own personal bias in this regard, and you are not a recent graduate. Keep in mind that, in education, a source five years old or older is often considered out-of-date because the standards have changed and much has happened in just the last couple of years.
Source #1 is from 2009. The study is from ISI, a well-known right-wing group trying to prove that colleges and universities are too liberal.
Source #2 is from 2013. That is better, but then there's the issue of the article being based entirely on polling. The very first poll the author cites is 2 years old and from a biased source. Polls are amazingly easy to swing one way or another.
Source #3 is from 2011 and clearly states that the test scores haven't varied widely for years despite different groups of students taking it. Given the serious rise in test scores in other areas, this makes me question the test. Remember, too, this source is basing the entire argument on the results of one test. Normally, educators aren't okay with that sort of thing, but it's common in the media since it makes for a good story.
Source #4 is from Trinity University, not exactly an unbiased source when it comes to "pure" American history, and it's undated. The first study cited and dealt with in the essay is from 1993. The second (after discussing C.S. Lewis and "The Screwtape Letters" is from 1988 and is based only on 200 questionaires done by college students at two universities in Texas. That's it. That's all the research cited.
So, two of the four citations are from right-wing groups with serious biases when it comes to history (in fact, in direct opposition to the history you advocate being taught), and the other two are based on flimsy evidence.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME, by James Loewen. Basically he says that events are described in the third person, as if the causes are not known, in order to not offend any particular group, as if uprisings come out of nowhere and have no causes.
He also wrote LIES ACROSS AMERICA about biased Civil War and other historical plaques. And a textbook about Mississippi history that was upheld as accurate by the Federal Court of the Northern District of Mississippi (Loewen v. Turnipseed). And a book called "Sundown Towns".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Loewen
And also read A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn and A DIFFERENT MIRROR by Ronald Takaki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Mirror
OVERVIEW from Wikipedia:
It deals with the subject of minority perspectives of multicultural America, incorporating quotes, folk songs, letters, telegrams, and photographs into the text. It deals with, in roughly sequential order, Native Americans, African-Americans pre- and post-slavery era, Irish, Mexicans, Chicanos, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and ties up the book with a current (for the time the book was written) summary of where minorities are now. Each chapter talks about the history of a different ethnic group, and covers over a period of time public attitudes towards the minority, public policy, laws for or against the minority, and attitude of the minority towards their situation. Several groups are revisited at multiple points through their history.
One theme going throughout the entire book is the 'us against them' attitude that the ruling structure has towards the minorities, from the fear of the "giddy multitude" in colonial times, to the Chinese Exclusion Act being created to 'protect' white labor, to the modern day accusations that "Hispanics [...] tak[e] jobs away from 'Americans'"[1]
A related theme of the book is the pattern of capitalist owners pitting different immigrant groups against one another, as a strike-breaking tactic. For example, the book relates that the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was unsuccessful in persuading Chinese workers to join the 1878 Chicago shoemakers' strike, when the latter were recruited as strikebreakers by shoe factory owners.
ENDQUOTE
The Warmth of Other Suns is also a good book.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)I've heard of James Loewen and both books. I read parts of "Sundown Towns" in a magazine article a while back. Thanks, i will read both these books.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Note that the article states clearly that many AP US History teachers use Zinn's book. I've never known an AP teacher not to use it, actually, as it is recommended by the College Board as best for preparing students for the AP test. Because of that, many schools have students read it in their first US History class so as to get them ready for AP, should they choose to take it.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)We had the standard boring drivel.
I graduated from high school over forty years ago.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)1963. He inspired me to explore American history. I read Zinn's book in the early 80's and my children have all read it. It was not taught in any school they attended.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)He explained the facts of life about why our town was totally white--what is now known as redlining. We had one black student out of 3,400 kids in 4 grades in a massive suburban high school. I don't think our school district was integrated until the late 70s.
He had a poster on his door of American Gothic with Shirley Chisholm (first black women congressperson--even before Barbara Jordan) and George Wallace! I guess it must have gone over the heads of the administrators!!
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)He taught several subjects depending on the grade level and year, with a mostly traditional narrative going by the curriculum, but made a point of putting a lot of pressure on the students to interpret and not just recite it.
So we'd be talking about one topic or another and he'd pose a question, usually a fairly straightforward fact-based one (think "when was the Battle of Austerlitz?" or the like - something with a specific answer).
A student would respond, and then he'd follow up just with the word "Why?" They'd give another answer - usually talking about what was going on before the event being asked about - and then he'd ask "Why?" again.
Wherever the starting point, he wasn't really satisfied with a student until they could look at the starting event, follow it back through three or four or five or six links in the causal chain, and start thinking about what other events were tied to a point, or connected through other chains in a consistent mesh over space and time. It wasn't about "this inevitably led to this" as much as "these things affected one another, even if a century separated them."
Three or so would usually do it - this was an eleventh grade public school class after all - but sometimes the student would be on the ball, or he'd be in a weird mood, and we'd get these Byzantine cause-and-effect road trips connecting the space race to the Thirty Years War or whatnot.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)always asking why? and what's the significance of that event? It was 1963 and everything was changing. I went to an inner city school and this teacher helped us understand the movement in the context of history. I loved that class.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)hunter
(38,302 posts)They are specifically designed to make it easy for teachers and school districts uncomfortable with the facts of racism in U.S. history, or evolution in biology, to dance very lightly over those "sections."
Nevertheless, evolution is the core principal of biology, and racism, frequently to genocidal extremes, is the central outstanding feature of U.S.A. history.
My kids' AP high school history teacher pushed the boundaries -- he had Zinn's People's History on his class reading list. If a kid couldn't afford a copy, he'd make sure they got one. (I was introduced in college to the 1980 edition.)
My own grade school, middle school, and high school history textbooks were crap. I was lucky to have two history teachers who were somewhat subversive and mildly mocking of the texts they were forced to teach from.
Later, as a teacher myself, in a school where budgets for the Xerox and ditto machine were absurdly tight, I was grateful for my teachers who had dedicated some of their income and a lot of their time to provide us with alternative readings, printed up at their own expense at the commercial copy shops. A few cents a page on a teacher's salary with 100-200 students is not a negligible expense. I always spent a lot of my own money on lab supplies and handouts when I was teaching.
My sister-in-law is still teaching high school science and her official budget is pathetic, less than three dollars a student each year. And yes, they still expect you to do labs... Just one of some of the labs in the textbooks could blow an entire year's budget.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)In our rural district, every teacher has second and third jobs. The starting pay is less than $2000/month and the cost of living here is high. Parents subsidize labs, the workshops and sports. Ours is a small community and for the 12 years my daughter attending public schools here. One thing we do have is a charter school which is under performing and sucks money from the school budget but has stayed afloat despite management problems and the teachers earning even less than the public schools.
The elementary school in our little town closed about 4 years ago. It was an important part of our community. The kids go the elementary school 15 miles away. State funding has been cut so much due to federal spending cuts, and so it goes. The military gets it all.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)I'd be happy for you to show up at a school board meeting to discuss the teaching of history with my school board.
I'll bet I'm not the only teacher out there that has been directly instructed, in an evaluation meeting, to "stop teaching so much history and focus on the reading test."
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)one comment was someone who's teacher taught the class about redlining. I can hardly imagine that being acceptable in any school district today.. no controversy. It stinks. I don't know how teachers manage to teach and inspire kids with the budget and academic restraints put on them, but most teachers I've known do it very well.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)because we love our students, and we love helping them learn, regardless of what tptb demand from us, so we do our best to comply with orders and continue to reach out to students IN SPITE of those orders.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)LWolf
(46,179 posts)And I still find ways to insert social studies, including history, into the day. I just call it a reading lesson, focusing on "informational text."
As long as the admin sees reading skills being taught when he walks through the door, I can defend it.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)When scores are low and money's on the line, administrators become awfully myopic.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)It doesn't help that our site admins are now evaluated based on the school's test scores.