Is There A Usable Past for History Teachers?
Thanks to David Blight and the entire staff at Yale’s Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition for hosting such a thought-provoking and timely conference on the challenges of teaching race and slavery. It was encouraging to see so many secondary school educators in attendance as well as their inclusion on the panels. Thanks as well to the GLC for livestreaming the sessions. I wish I could have been there in person.
I learned a great deal and was inspired by many of the presentations and discussions. The panel featuring history educators and how they are teaching their subject was the highlight of the entire conference for me.
At the same time, I was also left with questions and even a certain feeling of uneasiness with some of the discussions and panels. Let me explain.
The conference was clearly inspired by recent efforts across the country to limit the teaching of race and slavery as well as the vilification of teachers themselves. I really appreciated the table cloth that included the words “Trust Our Teachers” on the side facing the audience. Nice touch.
Many of the panels focused on the long history of censorship and attempts to control and shape the curriculum. Scholars like Nancy MacLean focused in on the big money of powerful conservatives who are committed to bringing an end to the public school system. There is no question that what we’ve seen play out over the past few years is connected to this long history and we need to understand it.
My concern is that teachers will leave this conference feeling as if they are engaged in a political and cultural war with Republicans and the Conservative Movement. Educators have to teach students that may self-identify as conservative and/or Republican and there are tens of thousands of teachers across the country who identify as such.
I didn’t hear their voices at all this past weekend. [As I mentioned above, I was not in attendance so perhaps those conversations did take place off camera.]
There was a missed opportunity over the course of the conference to follow up on an important point that was made a number of times and one that I have experienced time and time again in my own work with history educators. Most educators—regardless of political affiliatation—agree that we need to teach the hard topics of slavery and white supremacy, where it is appropriate to do so at the k-12 level. There really is no debate about this. In fact, poll after poll suggests that Americans generally agree that these subjects need to be taught.
I honestly can’t tell much of a difference between the conservative and liberal teachers that I come in contact with throughout the year, while leading history tours or in a workshop setting. The questions they pose are the same and they are just as committed to trying to understand this history.
In other words, while the broader history of the Far Right is relevant to understanding where we are in our current political environment, on the ground things look very different. There is room at the grassroots level to work to find common ground between teachers who identify as Republican or Democrat and perhaps between those who have divergent views about the importance of American history and why it needs to be taught.
I wish the panels had included more conservative voices that can help us move in this direction. Ultimately, we all have to co-exist. The political and ideological tug-of-war surrounding how American history is taught will always be present, but perhaps we can exercise some control over it by finding and nurturing a middle ground.
The one panel that left me feeling utterly frustrated was titled, “Writing Textbooks: Is a Unified Narrative of Pluralistic America Possible,” which featured Eric Foner, Mia Bay, Erika Lee, Ned Blackhawk, and Paul Ortiz. Overall, it was another insightful panel. All of the historians are at the forefront of their respective fields and doing incredible work, but there was a noticeable disconnect between the work that scholars do and the needs of history educators and their students.
Only Foner offered a positive assessment in response to the question posed by the panel title, in large part because he has managed to write a textbook that is widely used and offers something close to a unified narrative of American history. I’ve used Give Me Liberty!: An American History over the years, mainly in my Advanced Placement courses.
The other historians were much more skeptical, owing to the failure of textbooks to include the history of Asian Americans and Native Americans, among others. They also expressed concerns about the interpretive categories or concepts that currently structure most history textbooks.
These are all good points. Our textbooks need to be inclusive. Students need to be able to find their own stories in the American past, but we also need to keep in mind that textbooks are not works of scholarship. Textbooks have always lagged behind the latest interpretive trends. Only in the past few decades have textbooks begun to offer a more nuanced narrative of slavery and the history of race.
This is not a reason to give up on this particular project. I actually think that Foner’s textbook is an example of what a unified narrative can look like, even though he admits that updates are always necessary.
Call me old-fashioned, but regardless of whether you use a traditional textbook or cobble together online sources, etc., high school students need something akin to a unified narrative in order to make sense both of the richness of American history and change over time. One of the many reasons I like Foner’s book is that it can be read as an interpretive piece of history and supplemented with primary and secondary sources.
Thanks again to the GLC for highlighting the amazing work that our history teachers are engaged in as well as the challenges they face. I encourage you to watch the sessions, which you can find at the GLC’s YouTube page.
I’m a middle school teacher who attended the conference in person. While the topics were concerning, little of it was entirely surprising to me. This isn’t to say I didn’t learn a whole heck of a lot (I most definitely did!), but following these issues fairly closely for some time, I am all too aware of the political context in which many of us teach.
As an attendee, I left feeling much more inspired, far more knowledgeable, and considerably less alone in navigating these culturally fraught times. While I understand some of the frustration you mention, I think this made me appreciate the multiplicity of factors that complicate the question of “usable past” and even more aware of the challenge to try to craft one.
As you note, K-12 teachers and higher ed face different issues, as do elementary, middle, and high school teachers. It can be far too easy for us all to silo ourselves, to talk past each other. But we were talking and listening to each other this weekend—and that in itself was very empowering.
I am consensus builder, so don’t relish or tout being in a culture war—and I did hear mentioned the stat about broad bipartisan support for hard history. Still, I think it’s safe to say this: History educators who support a more nuanced history indeed are up against broader cultural forces that want to weaponize complexity, and topics that provoke unease. (That teachers on both sides of the aisle who attend voluntary professional development support complexity is not surprising; it is not those on different ends of the journey that decry us, but those who decry the journey itself as a sign of weakness.)
For me, the question I was left at the end of the conference was not if and where there was a usable past. Rather, it was this: How can a broad range of history educators who look at our past in emotionally/intellectually complicated ways convince a largely otherwise preoccupied public that our pursuit of a usable pluralistic past is a worth pursuing? That complexity is common sense? That hard history is actually a hallmark of a healthy democracy and, in fact, is worth defending?
One conference cannot be expected to answer everything, but trusting the teachers who care enough to investigate these questions is an important first step. Now, we must keep walking in unison.
That is the conundrum when teaching high school or an undergrad survey-what do you include. As a military historian Ithought it important for my students to understand the impact of the Spanish-American War on American's perceptions of there place in the world, but taking time to do that meant I took time away from domestic issues like Jim Crow, and industrialization, and the expansion of the white middle class and immigration. I also thought it important for my students to understand how important US involvement in WWI was but did not always have time to talk about the African-American role, or war dissent at home to depth I thought i warranted. And many colleagues would have agreed and disagreed with my decisions about what to cover and what not to cover.
I think there is usable past and I really think it reflects a national movement in a reasonably positive direction, although not always as fast as we would have liked and not with out taking some wrong turns and occasionally backing up. But conveying this to students who are not always that interested in the subject so that they see the negative and positive nuisances and subtleties and obvious contradictions and aspirational goals that jumble together to make up American history is exhausting. And, I don't think we do a very good job preparing history teachers anymore (especially for high school). We train generalists in our state regional comprehensive universities, not teachers of American history.
I like your postings. Since retirement I have been doing research on the Civil War along the Red River Trails network from St. Paul/St. Cloud to Ft Gerry, Canada. Your comments and scholarship often give me insight into the contemporary social/political environment that the people I'm looking at lived