Week 10: Curriculum Design, Equity, and Social Justice
This week’s reading is pulling my mind in a lot of different directions, in an effort for something focused for you all to react to I will try to segment my thinking.
The oft quoted saying “history is told from the perspective of the victor.” Pinar pulls out many instances where the dominant class (right wing white segregationists), tried to impact curriculum by controlling what history was published in textbooks. This sentiment was best summarized by a Californian who said, “we do have much for we are not proud, but why play up our mistakes, downgrade our heros, and please our enemies?” Also what propolled the argument to limit textbook and curriculum references to public housing and other left wing ideas was a strong anti-communist sentiment in America. They feared that teaching about racial violence and Black poverty would be somewhat of a communist dog-whistle.
Another thing I thought about is decrying poverty, and advocating for better housing and jobs, and other “leftist” ideas is what made many discredit and blackball Paul Robeson and ultimately the assassination of Martin Luther King. Especially for King, who was falling from public grace close to his assassination in 1964. The anti-communist sentiment helped the “right” wing segregationists when it came to essentially, censorship in American textbooks. This is connected to the the other strong appeal to misrepresent African American experiences and histories as well as strike distinguish Black people from textbooks. I think this impact can still be felt today, and is why many students (Black and other races/ethnicities) do not see them or their experiences and histories reflected in textbooks. This deeply impacts not only how they engage with the material, but their self worth. As long as the curriculum remains this way, it’s important that educators continue to get creative when affirming their students. This can be in classroom/school decor, field trips, or guests (e.g. we had steel drummers and african dancers often in my elementary school, which had a large but not exclusively Black demographic), or in the curriculum when they have flexibility.
Magruder wrote in his book that teaching this history in New York City is okay, but not in Georgia. I would like to push back on that, I think there would have still been backlash. It would have manifested differently, but it would have and it did. Racism in the American South was brutal and worth noting, but this article failed to get in the nuances of northern American racism and how it manifested in education at large and in curriculum.
The funny thing about curriculum design is that it has an angle because it is designed to fulfill a purpose. It does not have a duty to be “balanced’ or “objective”. If American education is designed to encourage democratic participation in the bare minimum fashion and prepare the next workforce, then it is succeeding. But if the American education system desires to create critical thinkers and change agents who not only are prepared to enter to workforce, but to continue to innovate, then it is failing miserably. And only succeeding with Generation Now, by some sort of happy accident -- they are frustrated by the world that products of previous education goals have created.
Questions to consider:
- I believe schools leave it to individual educators on how they integrate diversity in their curriculum (whether that diversity is reflected in race/ethnicity, ability, or religion). Only a policy level how can schools better reflect the diversity of society in the curriculum in any subject matter?
- I learned about Japanese internment camps in ELA and history in middle/high school, did you? Why do you believe this is still left out of the curriculum in many schools? What other American history (MLK in Chicago speaking out against poverty and getting brutally attacked for it) moments are strategically left out?
- Is it a “not enough time” to cover this or “lack of desire” on the part or curriculum designers?
Thanks for writing this post. This idea of White people decrying history because it paints them in a negative light is, of course, absurd, but it also hits at what critical race theory suggests: that the majority will not take action unless they see something in it for them. How will Whites benefit from a curriculum and texts that tell the whole American history? How can they be persuaded? Unfortunately, I don't believe that it will be by explaining that young Black children will continue to feel inferior. That's emotionally appealing, sure, but people in power want things beyond emotion--they want money and they want power and they want to be seen as good. This might be me being super cynical this afternoon, but I think that until we can reframe the inclusion of all peoples in school curriculum as a way to empower those already empowered, we may not be successful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for engaging with my post! I tried very hard to not be cynical when writing this, so we’re in the same boat. I think in addition to the inclusion of all people into American history, but recognizing that their stories is American History. We can’t be a melting pot only when it sounds good.
DeleteThanks for the blog. I especially appreciated the questions for consideration. I did learn about the Japanese internment camps from WWII when I was in eighth grade; I remember reading a first-hand account from someone who lived through the experience of being rounded up by the police and military and taken from their home to an internment camp. If our goal as educators is to create an informed populace aware of history and capable of learning from its mistakes, I think it's absolutely critical to include the horrible things that have been done to various groups of people in the name of the United States thoughout history. I hadn't heard of the various Latin American coups and dictatorships supported by the US until I studied abroad in Ecuador in college, and learned of what atrocities came about as a result of our support for Pinochet in Chile and the Contras in Nicaragua and the military governments in El Salvador and Argentina and Guatemala. While our textbooks at least cover slavery and often mention the poll taxes and segregation of the Jim Crow era and the courage of the activists in the 50s and 60s who brought about integration, the racial violence of lynching, mass-murder and later the KKK of the post-civil war era is often elided. Very little time is spent on how "westward expansion" meant "killing Native Americans," and the history of broken treaties between the US government and native peoples. We ignore history at our peril. Learning about what happened is essential to being able to avoid repeating it. Again, thank you for the very thoughtful post!
ReplyDeleteThanks for engaging with my post! Everything that you in regards to US involvement in Latin American coups would help the US citizens understand what’s happening in Venezuela and Haiti right now. And the fact that that knowledge is revealed in college and approximately 30 percent of the American population is college educated (and then thinking about how many students will never interact with those histories in college), American education’s true goal is to reproduce a caste system and sustain elitism by harboring that knowledge among the few.
DeleteHi April. Thanks for your careful analysis and discussion. From your blog, I learn more about American history. On a policy level, I think the school should first let students realize their important role in political events. And then teachers give them safe space to express their opinions towards political things. Besides, teachers from different disciplines could include current political things into the class discussion in order to create students an access to speaking out of their viewpoints. In classroom discussion, teachers could share their opinions first as a model but have to clarify these just personally opinions and students could have owns.
ReplyDeleteThanks for engaging with my post! I agree! I think there is a way to go about melding history and politics in all courses and we should be more diligent in doing so.
DeleteThank you for sharing! I am reading a book named "Ghosts in the schoolyard: Racism and school closing on Chicago's south side". Through this book, I came to understand the history of black Chicagoans, their increasing population in Chicago, they experienced segregation, racial violences, and discrimination, from 1910s to 1970s. It is heavy for me as a foreigner to know this history, let alone all the African Americans. I came to understand the significance of social justice in American society. I think everyone has rights to know the true history of their country. Curriculum design on such topic should care about this, and help all students to understand the whole experiences their ancestors have gone through, which encourages the society's progress and harmonious development in the long run.
ReplyDeleteThanks for engaging with my post! I agree whole-heartedly! Do you think China gets into the full history, the good and the bad? Also, I love Eve Ewing, that book is on my to read list. Once you finish you should check out UIC professor’s Pauline Lipman’s The New Political Economy of Urban Education, it covers the 50 school closings in Chicago back in 2012.
DeleteHi April. Thank you for your thoughtful post. To answer one of your questions: I personally did not know anything about the WWII Japanese internment camps until much later in my schooling. It was not taught at my middle school or high school. I only found out about it during my first year of undergrad when I was learning about political art and even then it was information I wasn’t really looking for, but stumbled across. It’s interesting because I was looking for information on the statues of peace that were installed in Japan to commemorate Korean women who were drafted for military sexual slavery by Japan during WWII. The questions you pose and this week’s reading are very interrelated to the Ted Talk we listened to about “The danger of the single story.” As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie implied, there are many stories we don’t get to hear and it dangerous to only hear one story and attach it to an entire group of people because it encourages stereotypes and misconceptions. Historically, we usually only hear (as you mentioned) the victor’s story. In the U.S.’ curriculum, the victor is usually eurocentric, but we know there are so many other vitcor’s that are underrepresented in curriculum and that students in diverse communities can probably find more relative. If information is relative then it is interesting, and if it is interesting, then the students are invested in their learning. I don’t know what the solution is and would hope that educators make thoughtful decisions to incorporate diversity in their lesson plans as often as possible. Depending on the school, or the teachers teaching diversity may not always be a priority, but I really think it should be.
ReplyDeleteThanks for engaging with my post! Not until college, wow, and you really dug deep. I think that it’s not only about diversity, but bringing in these histories as they relate to the US is American History. And a curriculum of world history not just taught from Eurocentric POV.
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