Education Week - December 14, 2022 - 8

Is a Comprehensive U.S. History Course
Still Possible? Scholars Weigh In
By Ileana Najarro
How do you teach an inclusive U.S. history
course? What does such a course look like? And
how do teachers put one together when facing
legal restrictions on how they can discuss race
and gender in class?
These were some of the key questions addressed
by a panel of researchers and historians
in November. They are also some of
the most pressing ones for K-12 social studies
teachers, as a growing number of state leaders
work to limit or ban classroom instruction
and school library books that provide context
for discussing the various perspectives at play
in history.
The panel, which was livestreamed, was held
as part of a conference hosted by the Gilder Lehrman
Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance,
and Abolition's conference at Yale University.
While panelists cited these legal barriers and
other challenges when trying to teach U.S. history
from a pluralistic point of view, they, like
other historians, have hope that such an instructional
approach will take hold in more classrooms.
That's especially needed, they argue,
because of the importance of teaching historical
thinking skills, which hinge on understanding
historical context.
" The crucial thing about a history class is
that the emphasis is on context, " said Jim
Grossman, the executive director of the
American Historical Association in a separate
interview with Education Week. " And so
what you're helping students to do is to understand
that every concept, every event, or
every process, cannot be understood outside
of a context. "
What does it mean to have a pluralistic U.S.
history course?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars
debated whether historians were losing
a cohesive narrative of American history as
they began diving into the history of social
groups, said Eric Foner, a professor emeritus
of history at Columbia University at the panel
discussion. But practitioners of social history
argued that the big textbook narratives
were inherently limited, one-dimensional,
and couldn't incorporate the real diversity of
American society.
In one of his own books, Foner found a way to
balance the need for a cohesive narrative with
the need for more inclusiveness: He focused
on the theme of freedom and the nation's contested
narratives about freedom. He delved
into questions such as who is entitled to freedom
and what kind of social arrangements are
necessary to enable people to enjoy it, among
other things.
" These ideas are inherently contested, "
Foner said.
That emphasis on the tensions is crucial, fellow
panelists argued. It can raise some real questions
for students about what it means to be in a
society that values freedom when the freedoms
of some people are in conflict with the freedoms
of others, said Mia Bay, a professor of American
history at the University of Pennsylvania.
A pluralistic history course is " not just the kind
of standard vanilla multiculturalism, which talks
about one group after another, " said Grossman.
There needs to also be an exploration of power,
conflict, and division.
History teachers from across the country
discuss innovative ways to teach racial
history at a conference hosted in November
by the Gilder Lehrman Center for
the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and
Abolition at Yale University.
"
Researchers have found
that when Asian
Americans were included
in the textbooks, they
were either primarily
depicted as victims with
little to no agency or as
new immigrants who
have made no
contribution to the
country. The
consequences of this
invisibility, this erasure,
[have] laid the
foundations for ignorance,
for hate, and for violence.
ERIKA LEE
PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Pluralism may be a good ideal to strive for, but
some scholars insist there needs to first be a fundamental
rethinking of how the field still centers
some groups versus others.
Ned Blackhawk, a professor of history and
American studies at Yale University, called for a
recentering of American history through the lens
of Native Americans-essentially the inverse of
what's more common today: incremental inclusions
of Native American and other perspectives
in broader American history courses.
Bay in Pennsylvania, who teaches both American
history and African American history, said
she's seen a stark difference in the narratives
each course covers with respect to Black history.
" I always find teaching African American history
so much more depressing than teaching
American history, which is strange because it's
all coming at the same time, " she said.
In African American history, students assess the
fight for social and political progress as well as the
attempts to reverse that trajectory. But American
history textbooks tend to emphasize the American
promise of e pluribus unum, " out of many, one. "
New laws threaten educators' ability to make
history courses inclusive
K-12 educators in particular now face the
added challenge of laws and other efforts to limit
instruction that digs deep into contested narratives
and historical tensions.
Paul Ortiz works as a professor of history at the
University of Florida. He hears students demanding
that their families' full histories be taught in
school. Yet the state has a law in effect limiting certain
discussions of race and gender in K-12 schools.
" The reality is I have many former students
who are teachers in Florida who tell me we
can't say a word about Black history that's really
meaningful, beyond just kind of a glossy
kind of thing, " Ortiz said.
8 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 14, 2022 | www.edweek.org
Florida's law in particular prohibits instruction
that students must feel bad about something
their ancestors did.
To that, Grossman said: " What you tell the
students is you are not responsible for what your
ancestors did. You are not responsible for what is
going on now. You are responsible for what will
happen tomorrow. And you have to learn history
in order to be a responsible citizen who has an
impact on what happens tomorrow. "
Why it matters to push for inclusive history
courses
Some historians stressed that there's also a
safety imperative to ensure inclusive courses
are taught.
Erika Lee, a professor of history and Asian American
studies at the University of Minnesota, said
there is an almost complete lack of Asian American
history in K-12 education and textbooks.
" Researchers have found that when Asian
Americans were included in the textbooks, they
were either primarily depicted as victims with
little to no agency or as new immigrants who
have made no contribution to the country, " Lee
said. " The consequences of this invisibility, this
erasure, [have] laid the foundations for ignorance,
for hate, and for violence. "
A growing number of states are now looking
at requiring Asian American studies in K-12
schools, but there is a long road ahead to make
such courses the norm nationwide.
Ensuring that students walk away with the
ability to understand the past from the perspective
of people who lived it and how human
agency effects change, is a necessity not just for
the sake of a good history class, Grossman said.
" You're not going to heal any sickness you
have, unless you understand its existence and
its history. And that includes the disease of racism
and power relations in the United States, "
he said.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Vieira
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - December 14, 2022

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