America: Arm Yourself With Real History

Health Editor’s Note: Sadly, Americans are not taught how our government, specifically our political world, is set up to work or not work as that is more often the case.   History books are written in such a way that no one will be offended. The concept that events happened and should be reported as they did happen, right or wrong, brilliant or stupid is lost in space. Can you change the fact that the sky is viewed as blue?  Probably not, so why change events that did happen?  The clear fact that America has always had the “missionary mentality” when forcing concepts, ideals upon other countries is sad and usually very counterproductive to the nation being “advised.”  We are groveling in this world as we experience Trump and his inane existence.  Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

The historian and political scientist, Charles Beard, interpreted how/why the U.S. Constitution was written in his book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.  His view was that those who wanted and penned the Constitution did so to protect their economic concerns and were motivated by social class. Members of Congress initially was not elected but was appointed by the wealthy. I bet you thought that the Constitution was written by the founding fathers, right?  

Since the interests were to create positive economic advantages for the rich, the Constitution best served the industrialists and investors for companies that would benefit from a strong national government and a political system that could be controlled. The Constitution was written as an economic document.  Do note that George Washington was the wealthiest land owner in the America at the writing of the Constitution. The penning of the Constitution was set up by those with personal property as opposed to the planters and farmers.   

Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980 is another of Zinn’s innovative works.  He offers a different side of history that was in opposition to the traditional fundamental nationalist praise and glorification of America.  Zinn’s history shows a side of American history more in line with actuality.  American history according to Zinn is the manipulation of the majority through those systems run by elitists.  I read and studied this book for a college course and highly recommend it for enlightenment purposes. Once your eyes are open you cannot go back….Carol      

Teaching More Civics Will Not Save Us From Trump

Let’s arm our students with an honest account of our nation’s political DNA, so they may have the wisdom to actively transform it into one worthy of our embrace

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca who has taught high school social studies since 2000. She is on the editorial board of Rethinking Schools and is the Zinn Education Project Organizer/Curriculum Writer for the 2018-2019 school year.  

Working as a social studies teacher for almost two decades, I have noticed a predictable and perennial pattern. A study is published showing some alarming deficit in the knowledge of people in the United States. Two-thirds of respondents cannot find Iraq on a map. One-third cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment. More people can accurately identify Michael Jackson as the artist behind “Billie Jean” than can identify the Bill of Rights as amendments to the Constitution. And each time one of these gobsmacking studies is published there is an equally predictable response: Why aren’t kids learning this stuff in school?

Cue the calls for reform: “a return to the basics,” stricter standards, high school exit exams, more civics education.

For example, last month Ipsos reported that 43 percent of self-identified Republicans say that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” Some analysts saw in this data evidence that President Trump’s “enemy of the people” refrain is working to erode public confidence in the news media. But others sounded a different and familiar alarm. Here is Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, on Twitter.

These poll numbers are terrible; and this political moment is unquestionably an emergency demanding resolute action in every corner of U.S. life, including schools and curriculum. So although I wholeheartedly support Haass’s suggestion that students need civics, I wonder what kind of civics?

Too often, our curriculum teaches the Constitution as if it is a holy text (with the framers its prophets), that asks students to memorize what is legal more often than it asks them to grapple with what is just, and which privileges the mechanics of political institutions over the social movements that can transform them.

Mr. Haass says children in the United States are not being taught civics. But what if he has it wrong? What if it is not the absence of civics that is the problem, but its standard, default iteration? Too often, our curriculum teaches the Constitution as if it is a holy text (with the framers its prophets), that asks students to memorize what is legal more often than it asks them to grapple with what is just, and which privileges the mechanics of political institutions over the social movements that can transform them. It is a curriculum that tells students the meaning of citizenship rather than inviting them to be authors of its ongoing definition and redefinition. Not surprisingly, this is a civics education that can be standardized and tested, adding yet more millions into the corporate textbook and testing industries. So I enthusiastically endorse more civics, but it cannot be more of the same.

And what of Haass’s suggestion that the goal of civics education is to “ensure America’s political DNA is embraced by this and future generations”? One hopes Haass is not beseeching children to “embrace” land theft, genocide, slavery, and the disenfranchisement of women and people of color. Yet, there can be no honest study of the U.S. political DNA absent those reprehensible strands in its helix. Haass’s use of the verb “embrace” romantically alludes to something pure and uncomplicatedly good in our collective past. But there is no pristine moment — no uncontaminated DNA — to which we can return to escape the evil of the present; indeed, the white supremacist, nativist, misogynist language we have heard spill from the lips of Donald Trump resonates with the 39 percent who steadfastly support him precisely because it has deep roots in U.S. history and politics.

The civics we need more of provides students a clear-eyed understanding of U.S. founders and foundations, free of mythology and hagiography. It surfaces the lives and experiences of groups historically denied voice and power in U.S. politics: women, the enslaved, Indigenous Peoples, immigrants. .

If not more of the same civics education we’ve seen recycled for decades, nor more of the sort suggested by Haass’s idealization of the nation’s “political DNA,” then what? The civics we need more of provides students a clear-eyed understanding of U.S. founders and foundations, free of mythology and hagiography. It surfaces the lives and experiences of groups historically denied voice and power in U.S. politics: women, the enslaved, Indigenous Peoples, immigrants. It highlights activism — not just institutions or heroic individuals. It acknowledges that although our “political DNA” has never been worthy of a full, unqualified embrace, abolitionists, feminists, and labor organizers established a tradition of activism that is. It enjoins young people — and all of us — to act against injustice, providing historical and current examples of what that looks like. This is the civics I want more of and which I hope shows up in the classrooms of teachers across the nation this fall.

In my social studies classroom over the years, civics has often meant incorporating lessons and resources from the Zinn Education Project, a nonprofit committed to helping teachers teach a more accurate, complex, and engaging history than what is found in most textbooks. For example, civics has meant investigating the United States’ “political DNA” in a role play that upends the traditional narrative of the Constitutional Convention by including the perspectives of workers, enslaved people, and poor farmers, alongside those of the real participants — the white wealthy elite.

Civics has meant teaching the role of tribal sovereignty in the “political DNA” of the United States in a lesson about the Cherokee and Seminole Nations confronting the 1830 removal acts, and in a role play I co-wrote about the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Civics has meant reminding students that for most of the history of this country, excluding marginalized groups from the franchise was part of its “political DNA” by investigating the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and the Black struggle for voting rights during Reconstruction, 100 years later, and today.

Finally, civics has meant challenging students’ blind faith in our “political DNA” by introducing them to times when, if not for whistleblowers and lawbreakers, the unconstitutional use of state power would have proceeded unchecked, like the FBI’s war on the Black Freedom Movement and “The most dangerous man in America,” Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

Yes, let’s teach civics. But let it be a civics that arms our students with an honest account of our nation’s political DNA, so they may have the wisdom to actively transform it into one worthy of our embrace.

Carol Duff, MSN, BA, RN

Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.

She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.

• Carol’s Archives 2009-2013