|
|
|
The Risks and Rewards of Teaching Race
Jonathan M. Chu
University of Massachusetts-Boston
| C.S. LEWIS, writing to his brother the historian W.H. Lewis, averred that "Whenever one turns from the historian to the writings of the people he deals with, there is always such a difference."1 Imagine what Lewis's reaction might be if he looked at the current state of history texts and state and national education frameworks in America today. The difficulties of reconciling the particular with the general, never simple or straightforward, have been accentuated by the not-so-recent new social history and the rise of micro-history, those intense narratives of small events. We have probed, prodded and discovered the exceptions that, piled one upon another, have brought into question many of our synthetic paradigms. Nowhere is the tension between scholarship and synthesis more evident than in the Advanced Placement United States history examination. Torn between its function as a national test and its desire to be the equivalent of the college survey, AP United States History has to reconcile the tyranny of generalization with the anarchy of the particular. Complicating its task is the need to establish a core of basic knowledge and fundamental analytical skills so that the many teachers of the course can prepare their nearly quarter of a million students for the standardized exam. Unlike the individual university course, AP cannot evade its responsibility to integrate new scholarship into a coherent and comprehensible synthesis because not to do so would imperil its objective and the process of assessment. |
1
|
Advanced Placement brings into sharp focus the dilemma faced by middle, secondary and university teachers of American history. The search for an introductory synthesis stumbles more frequently these days because texts and curriculum frameworks all too often depend upon what my colleague Mary Fredrickson refers to as the tyranny of chronology. With extremely rare exception, texts are shaped by a paradigm that has remained relatively constant over the last half century. A comparison of the table of contents of Morison and Commager's The Growth of the American Republic, 5th ed., published in 1961 with Faragher et al.'s Out of Many, 4th ed, 2003 and Jones et al., Created Equal, 2003 reveals some different periodization and topical treatment. Still, the texts remain locked in a familiar analytical structure. While Faragher's and Jones's treatment of late-nineteenth century America obviously reflects the considerable amount of research social history has generated since the 60's whereas Morison and Commager reflects the more political concerns of their generation, periodization and chapter headings have not significantly changed in the nearly half century that separates the former from the latter.
| Comparison of Chapter Topics |
| Growth of the American Republic, vol.2 5th ed. (1961) |
Out of Many, 4th ed. (2003) |
Created Equal (2003) |
| Chap. 8: The Economic Revolution, 1865–1914 |
Chap. 19: The Incorporation of America, 1865–1900 |
Chap. 16: Standardizing the Nation: Innovations in Technology, Business and Culture, 1877–1890 |
Chaps 9, Agriculture and the Farm Problem, 1860–1896
Chap. 11: Politics, 1877–1890
Chap. 13: The Battle of Standards, 1890–1897 |
Chap 20: Commonwealth and Empire, 1870–1900
1) Farmers and Workers organize their communities
2) The Crisis of the 1890's
3) Politics of Reform |
Chap. 17: Challenges to Government and Corporate Power: Resistance and Reform, 1877–1900
Chap. 18: Political and Cultural Conflictina Decade of Depression and War: the 1890's |
| Chap. 16: The Progressive Movement, 1890–1917 |
Chap 21: Urban America and the Progressive Era, 1900–1917 |
Chap. 19: The Promise and Perils of Progressive Reform, 1900–1912 |
|
2
|
|
To be fair to Out of Many and Created Equal, the authors have extended the treatment of social history far beyond Growth of the American Republic, but topics covered within the chapters remain all too familiar. In the section of chapter twenty devoted to domestic affairs, Out of Many covers the rise of machine politics and national government, agrarian protest, the economic crisis of the 90's, and the rise and fall of Populism. In comparable chapters, Growth covers the agricultural revolution and agrarian protest, machine politics, Populism and the Progressive movement. Even Created Equal, a text that makes an explicit connection to social history still remains within a chronological structure that is remarkably similar to Morison and Commager.2 |
3
|
|
Dealing with the new scholarship remains problematic. When it gets placed within the traditional chronology, it and curriculum standards seem only to add to the content practicing teachers need to know. In 2002, the College Board conducted a survey of over 32,000 Advanced Placement teachers to find out basic information about them, their training, experience and attitudes. In this survey, teachers from beginners through the most experienced expressed their concern about covering the course content in the time available and also making use of current materials in the field and good relevant supplementary texts.3 One proposed solution, however, "content-centered" professional development in history may exacerbate rather than solve the problem. Its very language emphasizes fact accumulation rather than treating history as a discipline that requires analytical reasoning or a critical understanding of the contingent nature of historical narratives. Paul Gagnon, author of a survey of forty-eight history social studies frameworks for the Albert Shanker Institute of the American Federation of Teachers and Senior Research Associate for Boston University's Center for School Improvement, notes that new history frameworks in Massachusetts simply overwhelm available teaching time. In United States History 1, Massachusetts students have to meet forty-four main standards covering 190 topics within a 180-day school year. Included in the standards are ten seminal documents including the Constitution, Federalist 1, 9, 10, 39, 51 and 78 and Tocqueville's Democracy in America—presumably in an abridged version when given to eighth graders. United States History 2, 1877–2001, has only thirty-three learning standards with 221 topics.4 |
4
|
|
The use of testing as a means of evaluating student learning and school performance encourages the impulse to use the retention of facts as a measure of excellence. Equating knowledge of facts with a mastery of history, of course, has its own background. Peter Novick points out how at its founding the American Historical Review intended to exclude from its pages "matters of opinion in favor of matters of fact capable of determination one way or another."5 Further, factual examinations more easily reduce performance measures to quantifiable, statistically verifiable and comparable indices. One important function of the multiple choice section of the AP United States history test is to provide a statistical check on the assessment of the essay sections—the sensible assumption being that essay performance more likely than not will correlate to knowledge of factual information.6 Another significant function of the multiple-choice section is to allow the equating of tests across time. Performance on key questions provides statistical links that verify the overall comparability of tests over the years. |
5
|
|
Were this not encouragement enough, there are the complaints of politicians and educational reformers that American students know too little of their nation's history and the explosion of new scholarship furthers the tendency to treat higher performance in history as knowing more information. The added value of education in history is defined as knowing a greater proportion of a list of significant information. Thus, the facts of social or African-American history become part of the canon of significance and worthy of knowing. Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" takes its place next to the Mayflower Compact in a list of essential documents young Americans must know. This process, however, is unlike that of science or budgeting; items of value do not replace those of lesser significance. In science Copernicus replaces Ptolemy; in history, the evolution of suburbs is added to the Federal Highway Act and the Cold War. The list of things to know simply gets longer. |
6
|
|
Such an approach to defining mastery in history places an emphasis upon factual recall. Teachers emphasize factual recall because to do otherwise would be risky in these days of teacher accountability, performance-based assessment, and high stakes testing, including the new scholarship in the middle and secondary school curriculum is a risky proposition. To do otherwise means using unfamiliar materials, having few resources and straying from standard frameworks upon which the high stakes tests are based. Massachusetts and California also divide the teaching of history not on the basis of the complexity of material but on chronology. Indeed, California has avowedly increased its focus upon chronological history. In California the middle school deals with the first half of the survey and high school essentially with the twentieth century. In Massachusetts, American history is divided into two courses at 1877, essentially replicating the split found at many universities. (United States History 1 covers 1763–1877, and is taken anytime between grades 8 through 10; United States History 2 covers 1877–2000, between grades 9 and 11).7 |
7
|
|
Not surprisingly when added to high-stakes testing like the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, AP history teaching finds itself torn between the emphasis upon instruction in fact-retention and the more analytical skills demanded in a university survey. An emphasis upon chronological coverage favors an approach that sees historical knowledge as an accumulation of facts. Despite disclaimers to the contrary, Massachusetts's standards demand a basic inventory of data: "the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution and America's growing role in international relations.... Important economic and political changes during the Cold War, such as the Civil Rights movement, and recent events and trends that have shaped modern-day America." California's lists are not much better.8 Race, gender and ethnicity merely add to the categories of things to be filed in the databank. Acquiring this databank, when grafted on to chronology and used largely within that basic paradigm, multiplies the problem of synthesis and obstructs the learning of analytical skills. |
8
|
|
To complicate matters further, American history in the schools operates within an essentially didactic structure, something university level teaching generally attempts to avoid. Massachusetts avers that the point of teaching history is "transmitting to each new generation the political vision of liberty and equality that unites us as Americans—and a deep loyalty to the political institutions our founders put together to fulfill that vision."9 Most illustrative of this is the treatment of the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention in curriculum frameworks. In Massachusetts the learning standards juxtapose two major topics: "The Political and Intellectual Origins of the American Nation" and "The Formation and Framework of American Democracy." Admittedly the placement of the latter is advisory; a footnote asserts that the unit "can be studied at any juncture during the course of this set of standards."10 California teaches the Constitutional period in two places. In the eighth grade curriculum, the two pertinent standards are "Students understand the major events preceding the founding of the nation and relate their significance to the development of American constitutional democracy" and "Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S. Constitution." Both standards require knowledge of the connections of the Revolution to the Great Awakening, Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights. When raised later in grade 10, the Constitution is taught in the context of the rise of democratic ideals and "assessed as a summation of this evolving tradition."11 |
9
|
|
The consequences of attempting to integrate the last half century of research in some form can already be seen in the production of texts that attach rather than integrate issues of race, ethnicity and gender. Perhaps the most egregious example of this occurs in state frameworks where race and gender are grafted on and relegated to conceptual ghettos. The treatment of race in the post-Civil period appears in the California frameworks in isolation. The Harlem Renaissance has its special topic which, while part of "new trends in literature, music and art," is supposed to pay special attention to Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Developments in radio, movies and popular culture are another discrete topic. The next place race is treated is in the section on federal civil rights and voting rights. Missing in California's frameworks is any treatment of Asians; Hispanics appear in a unit on relations between the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth century. In Massachusetts, the post-civil war sections deal with race and gender issues slightly better; a section under the "Age of Reform: Progressivism and the New Deal, 1900–1940" is devoted to "post-Civil War struggles of African-Americans and women to gain basic civil rights." The other explicit treatment of race and gender occurs in the "Cold War at Home" unit. It is the most extended treatment of race and gender issues with three separate sections—two dealing with origins and goals of the civil rights movement and its accomplishments and one on the women's movement.12 |
10
|
|
Taught separately, these topics simply become another list and lose their capacity for being integrated into a synthesis—for being connected to the larger flow of the American experience. Suppose we rethought the structure of the survey, the assumptions that dictated its structure and the texts used to teach it, from the perspective of a new synthesis whose chronology was rooted within the analytical paradigms of race, gender and ethnicity. Might we not approach fewer topics but look towards the ways in which they connected to broader themes? Would this approach provide methods and intellectual bases for a more analytical approach to materials? Race, gender and ethnicity provide one opportunity to do this because they do not conform so strictly to the traditional chronology. Using topics in them as focal points for discussion and instruction suggests periodizing and organizing a course differently, but would it mean the rejection of the traditional core elements of what currently constitutes the university survey and by implication our core definition of the American experience? |
11
|
|
The expansion of the treatment of Chinese Exclusion in the textbooks demonstrates clearly the impact of the new scholarship on race and may suggest alternatives for teaching across the school and university survey that may both reinforce the retention of facts and promote instruction in analysis. For Morison and Commager, Chinese exclusion was an extension of the activities of the Knights of Labor. Faragher treats it as an example of discrimination in the workplace. Jacqueline Jones has a more detailed treatment of the Chinese, integrating their legal problems and Exclusion into the reactions against corporate and government power and into progressive reform. Interestingly, Jones raises the issue of the constructed nature of race with a box on John Svan, a Finnish immigrant who gained his citizenship by successfully petitioning to change his racial identity from Mongolian to white. While pointing out the case as an example of discrimination against Asians, the box does not really connect the case to Exclusion or the legal difficulties in which people like Yick Wo found themselves.13Created Equal's chronological structure serves to separate and divide the historical experiences of Chinese in America, leaving unexploited an opportunity to deepen and connect the story that might otherwise have addressed some of the other goals sought in various frameworks. |
12
|
|
Central to all these treatments, however, is the way in which an analysis of the facts of Exclusion—the content—leads to different historical narratives. Morison uses it to explain labor and the Knights' fear of the threat posed by immigration; Faragher, as an extension of late nineteenth century racism, and Jones, as a response to the disorders of the economy and society as well as racism. What is all too often missed is that in their essence, these texts were using facts as evidence in the construction of different stories. Herein lies an important lesson for the teaching of history—one recognized in the Massachusetts and California frameworks, but all too often forgotten in an institutional context that seems to equate mastery of history with the ability to recite a list of facts.14 |
13
|
|
Suppose we organized a curriculum unit on the Chinese in America that emphasized the criteria of race rather than time? Could we then treat what is a relatively small story in the survey, the Chinese Exclusion Act, in a way that illustrated its capacity to touch upon multiple topics? One danger lies in the presumption of political correctness. Discussions and analyses could fall back on the simple platitudes that discrimination and segregation were wrong, that people who advocated them were ignorant or foolish. If, however, we attempted to integrate the story of the Exclusion Act, one that included Wong Kim Ark, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the various immigrant restriction acts, we could still reinforce material by pointing to connections, some made, some not made in texts. First, doing this would make clear that the traditional chronology has the capacity to explain some patterns of historical causation better than others. Second, by so doing it would provide the possibility of a deeper learning experience—of seeing, for example, how facts used differently produce different stories. |
14
|
|
Although obscure, Wong's attempt to enter the United States in 1895 provides an illustration of the many ramifications of the Exclusion Act. Born in 1873 of Chinese parents in San Francisco, Wong returned to China with them in 1890. He returned to the United States in July and departed again in 1894. When he returned to California in August of 1895, however, he was denied admission into the United States on the grounds that he was Chinese and barred under the Exclusion Act. Argued before the Supreme Court in 1897, the fact of Wong's citizenship hinged upon whether his birth in the United States made him a citizen and whether the Fourteenth Amendment applied to him. Was the fact of his birth in San Francisco sufficient to grant him natural-born citizenship? Alternatively, did the fact that his parents were not citizens or his voyage to China either when a minor or as an adult invalidate his status? How could Justices Fuller and Harlan looking at the same set of facts arrive at diametrically opposing conclusions?15 |
15
|
|
Exclusion raised another problem beyond Wong. By specifically barring Chinese from immigrating, Exclusion also raised a number of issues occasionally seen in, but frequently omitted from texts. It shifted responsibility for regulating immigration from the states to the national government and justified it on the basis of a constructed science or upon reasons of political economy. Two themes emerge out of this development, both consistent with themes reminiscent of the progressive era: the creation of a national bureaucracy to regulate labor, a different kind of commerce16 and national race- or ethnic-based justifications for limiting immigration. From Wong we get the impact of reform, but in a poignant, ironic story that complements the prevailing wisdom. First, the very structure of the Immigration and Naturalization Service reflects a microcosm of the forces that affected Wong and other nineteenth century immigrants, when part of the Commerce Department, the Immigration Service, was mainly concerned with finding workers for nineteenth century factories and railroad construction. Merging Immigration with the Naturalization Service and placing the new agency in the Justice Department speaks eloquently to the different understanding of American concerns. Second, Wong and the National Origins Acts supply an example of the problem of racial constructions in the United States. Wong ran into difficulty because even as an American, he was burdened by different assumptions about his race and citizenship. What are the case's connections to Plessey, to immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe and Japanese internment—all examples that illustrate the reach which assumptions about race have across time in America? |
16
|
|
Therein lies another significant contribution a reorganized, reintegrated synthesis might offer—the recognition that whites, blacks and Asians in America are all shaped by unexamined assumptions about racial categories that are themselves definitions rooted not in genes and DNA but historical circumstances. Teaching the story of Wong Kim Ark and Chinese Exclusion as an exercise in the arbitrariness of racial and historical construction would open students to the possibility of a deeper understanding of the complexities that shape historical outcomes and interpretations. Learning that our very notion of race—of supposedly physically immutable categories—is, in fact a historical construction ought to trigger caution whenever we raise issues of race, gender and ethnicity in public discourse.17 |
17
|
|
The very obscurity of Wong Kim Ark argues, not for adding more material to overburdened frameworks and textbooks, but rather for making facts and primary documents do more work—of using an inquiry-based analysis of materials in a more intensive and thoughtful fashion—as suggested by looking at them through the prism of race, gender or ethnicity. Teaching stories that have the power to explain many themes in different contexts will compel students to connect them to other stories thereby reinforcing what they know or perhaps making them want to know even more. Race, gender and ethnicity have that power because they take familiar assumptions about our physical nature and show just how historically determinative these categories are. They make especially powerful stories that will, I submit, develop among students habits of inquiry and explanation and give them the tools of skepticism and evaluation, including the ability to see the contingent nature of historical events, find subtlety and complexity in the American experience, search more carefully and critically for truth and, ultimately, I hope, better discern wisdom from folly. |
18
|
|
Notes
1.Ê W.H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C.S. Lewis: Edited and with a Memoir (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966, 123.
2.Ê John Mack Faragher et al.'s Out of Many, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), xxxi–xxii; Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager's The Growth of the American Republic, 5th ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), viii–ix. Jacqueline Jones, et al., Created Equal A Social and Political History of the United States (New York: Longman, 2003), xv.
3.Ê Glenn B. Milewski and Jacqueline M. Gillie "What are the Characteristics of AP Teachers? An Examination of Survey Research," College Board Research Report No. 2002–10 (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 2002), 15.
4.Ê Paul Gagnon, How Much Change Do We Need? (unpub. ms., 2003), 4.
5.Ê Q.v. in Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of the Teaching of the Past (Philadelphia, 2001), 36.
6.Ê Note, though, that statisticians would not want anything approaching 1 or a perfect correlation. To do so would indicate testing the same set of skills or abilities. Rather, correlations should range between .5 and .6—demonstrating sufficient but not perfect correlations—able students will both write strong essays and get most multiple choice answers.
7.Ê History Social
Science Framework Committee, California State Board of Education
History and Social Science Framework for California Public
Schools Kindergarten to Grade Twelve: 2001 Updated Edition
(Adopted October 11, 2000), <
http:// www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/hist-social-sci-frame.pdf
>, 4, 29. History and Social Science Framework, Draft for Board
Vote (Copy editing in progress), (October 22, 2002: Massachusetts
Department of Education), <
http//www.doe.mass.edu
>.
8.Ê Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework: Prepublication Edition, 8.
9.Ê Massachusetts State Department of Education, History and Social Science Framework: Prepublication Edition, 4, Boston Public Schools, History and Science High School Alignment Guide, September 2000, 29.
10.Ê Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework, 70.
11.Ê California
State Board of Education History and Social Science Framework
for California Public Schools Kindergarten to Grade Twelve: 2001
Updated Edition (Adopted October 11, 2000), <
http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/hist-social-sci-frame.pdf
>, 108, 126.
12.Ê Massachusetts, History and Social Science Framework: Prepublication Edition, 78–83, Boston Public Schools, History and Science High School Alignment Guide, September 2000, 29. California History Framework. stds. 11:5, 4, 5.; 11:9.10, 11:10, 153. 156–57.
13.Ê Morison, Growth of the American Republic, II: 235; Faragher, Out of Many, 573–574; Jones, Created Equal (New York: Longman, 2003), 575–578, 648–650, 654–655.
14.Ê "It is crucial, therefore, to avoid making the systematic study of history and social science 'just another, and perhaps longer, parade of fact.' History as nothing more than facts and dates is simply barren chronicle, devoid of its larger significance." See the section on historical and social sciences analysis skills in California Department of Education, The California Content Standards for Grade Eleven History-Social Science, (2001).
15.Ê One of the ironies of this case is that it ignores the clear intent of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Naturalization Act of 1870. United States v. Wong Kim Art, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). On the Fourteenth Amendment, see William Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). On the barring of Chinese from coverage under the Naturalization Act of 1870, see Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 51–52.
16.Ê See the examples of Chinese being naturalized on the day the Exclusion Act passed the Senate, New York Times June 27, 1882. For other examples of Chinese naturalization, see Zhang Qingson, Dragon in the Land of the Eagle: The Exclusion of Chinese from U.S. Citizenship, 1848–1943 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Virginia, 1994), 171–174
17.Ê See Sharon Lee's study of the mutability of racial categories in the U.S. census. "Racial Classifications in the US Census: 1890–1990," Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16 (1993): 75–94.
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|