Page 116 - 1619 Project Curriculum

‘We are The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American 3
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2019

history, making explicit how slavery is the foundation on

generations we have not
which this country is built. For

committing been adequately taught this history. Our hope is to paint a

fuller picture of the institution that shaped our nation.

educational Why Can’t We Teach T his?

By
N ikita Stewart

malpractice.’ Dixie Children,’’ Marinda Branson Moore, a teacher was published in 1863, the same year as the Emancipation Proclamation and
n the preface to ‘‘The Geographical Reader for the
who founded a girls’ school in North Carolina, noted that she wanted to teach
children about the world without it going over their heads. ‘‘The author of this little work, having found most of the juvenile books
too complex for
young minds, has for some time intended making an effort to simplify the science of Geography,’’ she wrote. ‘‘If she
within the grasp of little folks, and making it both interesting and pleasant,
shall succeed in bringing this beautiful and useful study
her purpose will be fully accomplished.’’ The book
in the midst of the Civil War. Teachers could review the lessons with suggested questions in the back of the book. Part of Lesson
IX’s suggestions read:
Q. Which race is the most civilized?
A. The Caucasian.
Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor of history at the Ohio State University and chair of the
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Hard History advisory board, which guided the 2017 survey. He is
Q. Is the African savage in this country? school students learn about our nation’s founders but do not learn that many of them owned slaves.
racist lies, but the United States still struggles to teach children about slavery. Jeffries said. ‘‘He owned people, too,’’ he told his daughter. The assignment said he lost his teeth and had to
an expert on how slavery is taught and has watched the dynamics play out in his own household. He recalled
A. No; they are docile and religious here.
how his 8-year-old daughter had a homework assignment that listed ‘‘fun facts’’ about George Washington,
and it noted his love of rabbits. Jeffries corrected the assignment. ‘‘He loved rabbits and owned rabbits,’’
Q. How are they in Africa where they first come from?
A. They are very ignorant, cruel and wretched.
have dentures. ‘‘Yes, he had teeth made from slaves.’’ Jeffries and teachers in upper grades I talked to around
spend the beginning of their presentations on slavery explaining to students that what
the country say they
More than a century
and a half later, textbooks no longer publish such overt

they learned in elementary school was not the full story and possibly not even true. ‘‘We are committing
Unlike math and reading, states are not required to meet academic content
educational malpractice,’’ Jeffries told me. A report published last year by the Brookings Institution’s Brown
Center on Eduction Policy, a research institute focused on K-12 issues in American public schools, examined
standards for teaching social studies and United States history. That means that there
is no consensus on the curriculum around slavery, no uniform recommendation to
from federal education law and policy,’’ the report found, which arguably makes it a ‘‘second-tier academic’’
explain an institution that was debated in the crafting of the Constitution and that
has influenced nearly every aspect of American society since.
subject. More than half the high-school seniors surveyed reported that debate in the classroom — a proven
Think about what it would mean for our education system to properly teach social-studies teachers and found that there is limited testing accountability. Social studies is ‘‘largely absent
practice of good teaching — was infrequent.

students — young children and teenagers — about enslavement, what they would I was lucky; my Advanced Placement United States history teacher regularly engaged my nearly all-white
have to learn about our country. It’s ugly. For generations, we’ve been unwilling class in debate, and there was a clear focus on learning about slavery beyond Tubman, Phillis Wheatley and

to do it. Elementary-school teachers, worried about disturbing children, tell Frederick Douglass, the people I saw hanging on the bulletin board during Black History Month. We used
students about the ‘‘good’’ people, like the abolitionists and the black people ‘‘The American Pageant,’’ a textbook first published in 1956 and now in its 17th edition. It’s a book that,
who escaped to freedom, but leave out the details of why they were protesting or although not failing, was still found to be lacking by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s survey. It graded
what they were fleeing. Middle-school and high-school teachers stick to lesson books based on how they treated 10 different key concepts, such as establishing that slavery was the central

plans from outdated textbooks that promote long-held, errant views. That means cause of the Civil War or explaining that the country’s founding documents are filled with protections for

students graduate with a poor understanding of how slavery shaped slavery. A modern edition of the book I used received a 60 percent mark,

our country, and they are unable to recognize the powerful and barely adequate.
lasting effects it has had. Thomas A. Bailey, a professor of history at Stanford University, was the
In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization textbook’s original author. Bailey was influenced by what is known as the

that researches and monitors hate groups, pored over 12 popular Dunning School, a school of thought arguing that the period of Reconstruction
U.S. history books and surveyed more than 1,700 social-studies was detrimental to white Southerners and that black people were incapable
teachers and 1,000 high-school seniors to understand how American of participating in democracy. This theory, along with the older ‘‘lost cause’’
slavery is taught and what is learned. The findings were disturbing: ideology, helped to reinforce Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, David M. Kennedy,
There was widespread slavery illiteracy among students. More than a colleague of Bailey’s at Stanford, was brought in to revise the book. ‘‘It

a third thought the Emancipation Proclamation formally ended was clear that the textbook needed to be updated in alignment with current
slavery. (It was actually the 13th Amendment.) Nearly 60 percent of scholarship,’’ Kennedy said. Now he and a third co-author, Lizabeth Cohen,
teachers did not believe their textbook’s coverage of slavery was revisit three or four topics whenever they work on a new edition. He pointed
adequate. A panel made up of the center’s staff, an independent to their efforts to show the impact of slavery on modern anti-black racism.
education researcher with a background in middle- and high-school And yet Costello points at troubling language that continues to appear
education and a history professor with expertise in the history of in the book. Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, who was

slavery looked at how the books depicted enslavement, evaluating enslaved by him, is described as ‘‘intimacy’’ and an ‘‘affair.’’ Another passage,
them with a 30-point rubric. On average, the textbooks received a from the 15th edition, states: ‘‘White masters all too frequently would force
failing grade of 46 percent. their attentions on female slaves, fathering a sizable mulatto population, most
Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance, a program at of which remained enchained.’’ Costello noted that ‘‘it’s really a rather delicate

the Southern Poverty Law Center that promotes diversity education, way of describing rape.’’ This section has since been edited, but the 15th edition

said the rubric used to analyze the textbooks was about seeing how remains in print. It’s a reminder that although textbooks like ‘‘The American

the history of enslavement was integrated throughout a book and Pageant’’ are evolving, it’s a slow process, and in the interim, misinformation
exactly what those contents were. In most teachings, she said, about slavery persists.
slavery is treated like a dot on a timeline. ‘‘The best textbooks maybe Tiferet Ani, a social-studies specialist for the public-school system in
have 20 pages, and that’s in an 800-page textbook,’’ Costello told me. Montgomery County, Md., is in charge of shaping the curriculum for her
‘‘At its best, slavery is taught because we have to explain the Civil colleagues. She recommends using textbooks lightly and teaching students
War. We tend to teach it like a Southern problem and a backward Nap McQueen, the author’s great-grandfather, to challenge them. Ani, like so many teachers around the country, has been
economic institution. The North is industrialized; the South was locked photographed in Texas around 1936. influenced by the law center’s report. ‘‘The textbook is not an authoritative
in a backward agricultural system.’’ About 92 percent of students did document,’’ she told me. She and other teachers rely more on primary sources.
not know that slavery was the war’s central cause, according to the survey. Montgomery County is just outside Washington, so Ani can take her students to the National Museum of African
So how did we get here? How have we been able to fail students for so long? American History and Culture.
Almost immediately after the Civil War, white Southerners and their sympathizers Many black children learn the fuller history at home, listening to the stories passed down to us or reflecting
adopted an ideology called ‘‘the lost cause,’’ an outlook that softened the brutality on what was never shared. Earlier this year, while looking up some information about my grandmother, I
of enslavement and justified its immorality. One proponent of the ideology was stumbled upon her father, my great-grandfather Nap McQueen. There he was in a black-and-white photo,
Edward A. Pollard, whose book ‘‘The Lost Cause’’ transformed many Confederate looking straight into the camera, in a long-sleeve shirt, slacks and a hat. He was enslaved as a boy, and he
generals and soldiers into heroes and argued that slavery was proper, because was one of more than 2,300 formerly enslaved people interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project’s Slave

black people were inferior. The ‘‘lost cause’’ theory buried the truth that some Narratives. He was vivid in his recollection — how he was born in Tennessee and taken to Texas by wagon.
750,000 people died in a war because large numbers of white people wanted to His enslaver, he said, ‘‘was a good massa,’’ in part because he allowed McQueen to go fishing and hunting on
maintain slavery. Over time, the theory became so ingrained in our collective the weekends, and his enslaver wouldn’t draw blood during whippings. His enslaver treated his property so

thinking that even today people believe that the Civil War was about the South’s well, he said, that they were the envy of enslaved people on other plantations.
asserting its rights against the North, not about slavery. Nap McQueen’s words disappointed me. I was embarrassed. My great-grandfather had echoed the ‘‘lost
About 80 percent of this country’s 3.7 million teachers are white, and white cause’’ ideology.
educators, some of whom grew up learning that the Civil War was about states’ He talked about how his enslaver lined up all the enslaved people and announced that they were free.

rights, generally have a hand in the selection of textbooks, which can vary from They could leave, his enslaver said, or they could stay, and he would give them some land. My family stayed,
state to state and from school district to school district. ‘‘These decisions are making a life in Woodville, Tex.
being made by people who learned about slavery in a different way at a different But then my great-grandfather shifted his attention to telling a story about a monkey owned by an enslaver

time,’’ Costello told me. on another plantation. The monkey, which was allowed to roam freely throughout the plantation, imitated
The law center’s study focused on high-school students, but the miseducation everything humans did. It was annoying. Once, the monkey was used to play a prank on an enslaved man who
of children generally begins much earlier. Teachers bungle history as soon as thought the monkey, dressed in a white tablecloth, was a ghost. The man could not kill the monkey because
children are learning to read. Because teachers and parents are often so afraid it was ‘‘de massa’s pet,’’ but knowing that the monkey copied everything, the man shaved in front of it. The
to frighten children, they awkwardly spin the history of this country. They focus monkey picked up the razor ‘‘and cut he own throat and killed hisself,’’ McQueen said. That’s exactly what the
on a handful of heroes like Harriet Tubman, whose is picture is tacked to bulletin man wanted, my great-grandfather said. ‘‘He feel satisfy dat de monkey done dead and he have he revengence.’’
boards during Black History Month and Women’s History Month. Elementary- It’s a crazy story, seemingly so off the subject and so out of character for a man who obviously tried to
present himself as a good, law-abiding Negro, the kind of man who would not steal the cotton he picked
on your behalf. Why tell a story about the gratification of killing something the enslaver loved? My great-
grandfather’s words are my primary source. A whipping without blood is still a whipping. And I believe my
great-grandfather shared the story of the monkey because he admired the other man for finding a way to get
a little bit of justice. He wanted listeners to understand the horror of the institution, even if he was too afraid
to condemn it outright. For me, it’s a reminder of what our schools fail to do: bring this history alive, using
stories like these to help us understand the evil our nation was founded on./•/

Photograph from the Library of Congress. Cover: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.