Social Studies Teachers: You are Democracy’s Soldiers
Media, Myths, and Multiculturalism.
For the past twenty-two school years I have had the pleasure of being a “student for a day” through my attendance at the Central New York Council For The Social Studies’ Annual Conference. This year’s well-planned conference was entitled: Teaching About The Past, Preparing For The Future, Nurturing Students in The Here and Now. Although I always take something away from this wonderful day, the lessons from October 24, 2017, were especially timely and important.
I am also a participant in my school’s book club this school year, where we are tasked with reading two books, one of which is Results Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning by Mike Schmoker. The author contends that teachers need to have students read, write, and talk in order to truly learn the content. I hope to amend this concept by including listening and watching to the first step. At the conference, I listened to many professionals and this post is an attempt to model listening and writing. Hopefully, my dear readers you will engage with me in a discussion of this piece.
The biggest takeaway from my day of learning is that social studies teachers are democracy’s soldiers, for the following reasons:
- Americans lack a consensus of media, which has led to mistrust of the media due to inaccuracies and sensationalism.
- Historical myths persist in the teaching of the social studies and lead to very poor arguments when debating current issues facing Americans today.
- The student body has changed, diversity will increase, and therefore the demographics of public education enrollment is the canary in the coal mine. America is changing and social studies education will need to assist students (and their families) in navigating the implications of those changes.
Consensus of Media
Dr. Rob Thompson of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communication has been dubbed the “ambassador of pop culture.” He gave an informative and humorous lecture entitled: “Television News and the Crisis of Civic Information.”
Dr. Thompson explained that the days of consensus media (that is the former reality of everyone getting their news from three networks, and the state of the union address being on every network, so that poor Johnny cannot escape watching the president speak) are very much over. He outlined the historical timeline of modern media from radio and television dominating after world war one to the invention of the 24-hour news cycle in the eighties and the internet immediacy beginning in the late nineties.
Dr. Thompson reminded his audience, of social studies teachers from across the region, that consensus news was like a national power-point presentation where all Americans heard and viewed the same information. During the halcyon days between roughly 1919–1996, the news was the authority and the journalism had rules of objectivity. Dr. Thompson also pointed out that objectivity allowed for many diverse companies to pay for advertisements during network news time. Sanitized-appropriate- for-network t.v.-appealing to-white-America programming enabled corporations to sell without a great deal of controversy over their sponsorship.
Dr. Thompson informed the teachers in attendance that before the 20th Century, media was consumed through subscriptions based on political affiliations. Today’s consumption of media is more akin to the 19th century because since the proliferation of social media many people live in their intellectual “bubbles,” surrounded by media outlets that confirm their beliefs and include discussions with like-minded “friends” online.
Education “pops” those bubbles. Education challenges long-held beliefs. Public schools often merge disparate experiences and introduce children to many perspectives, force critical analysis, and include “foreign” concepts.
In today’s political climate, Americans (both adults and children alike) are bombarded with rival perspectives: north vs. south, urban vs. rural, coastal states vs. fly-over, liberal vs. conservative, Trump vs. Bernie, etc. Social studies teachers are often the referees of these competing ideas. They need to define, explain, and carefully tread that line between their own analysis and what might be inaccurately construed as indoctrination. Dr. Thompson stated that soldiers are often thanked for their service and he believes journalists and social studies teachers should be too. Unfortunately, social studies teachers are often attacked for their teaching of mandated content, accused of having a biased, liberal agenda of promoting the coverage of minorities over the “consensus” of dead white men. Because, yes, that consensus media of that long-ago era was a consensus of privilege. It was a led and dictated by white patriarchy — sanitized and limited. Although Dr. Thompson optimistically thinks that consensus led to progress in civil rights, that consensus kept more issues hidden, especially the ugly truths of racism and sexism.
Social studies instruction is crucial to the survival of the American system. It is difficult, at times, but more necessary today because students need so much assistance. Public school teachers (especially in the humanities) must help students navigate the enormous amounts of information; they must assist students in the analysis of the validity of those sources; they must allow adolescent students time to communicate (both orally and in written form) their own conclusions. This is the true task of education: to create a vibrant, well-read populace.
Historical Myths
Dr. Egerton, professor of History at LeMoyne college, stated that:
“The past is a series of roads that lead us to today.”
Poetic and true.
Dr. Egerton’s lecture on “The Southern War on States’ Rights, 1848–1865,” debunked a road taught by myself and my colleagues. Regularly when teaching about the causes of the American Civil War, social studies teachers describe states’ rights as more of a cause for the fighting than slavery, and yet as Dr. Egerton pointed out, slaveholders were a minority of a minority in the United States. Unfortunately, they were a powerful, wealthy minority.
Dr. Egerton’s myth-busting claim was that the southern slaveowners were actually against states’ rights, especially when northern states passed laws abolishing slavery, when new territories were admitted to the union as free or under the decision of popular sovereignty, and when northern states did not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. So, yes, the south was concerned about states’ rights, but was more interested in how northern states’ rights were different from their version of what they wanted for the United States as a whole.
If teachers have been teaching about the south’s desire for their own state’s rights over their desire to own other human beings, it changes the analysis of a historical period and it also squashes critical discussion of the legacy of slavery when discussing current events topics like Colin Kaepernick’s taking of a knee during the national anthem.
The myth of states’ rights also informs the debate concerning the removing of Confederate monuments. It also promotes a different dialogue concerning southern culture.
History matters. Analysis of past flaws is significant. We are not a post-racial society and we must face the implications of how and why we fought so that we can heal.
Student Demographics
I learned that over 400 students at a neighboring urban high school are ELLs (English Language Learners). 400!
Students are coming to Syracuse from countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The same teachers who instruct about old and new immigrants, push and pull factors, are seeing an influx of students who speak Arabic, Swahili, and Spanish.
How will public schools support the newest residents of our communities?
A colleague informed us about ELL’s needs and gave us some strategies like visual cues, wait time, and a new term for most: translanguaging. Translanguaging is allowing students to use their entire language repertoire in class because, unlike most students in the U.S., many of these “new” students are multilingual.
The biggest impression from the presentation was the enormous anxiety that my ELL students must face. I could not even imagine navigating high school while being an emergent English language speaker.
These immigrant students further threaten the old “consensus” thinking of what defines America. Many of these students are not Christian, are not white, and may be struggling with post-traumatic stress.
Our urban schools are doing an amazing job of supporting ELL students. Today, I learned that a neighboring urban school offers a newcomer program, an ELL leadership club, sheltered classes, and hires nationality workers to help these students. Incredible!
I have two ELL in my suburban high school class this year. I now have a few strategies, but I still feel inadequate. Again, I am on the front lines of helping new residents pursue the American dream and navigate the American system.
I left the CNYCSS’s conference invigorated and buoyed. It felt like a soldier’s pep talk, part strategy, and part skills training. Social studies teachers (and all teachers) are the gatekeepers of what we value as Americans. Teachers protect, serve, feed, nurture and most importantly inform students. We have a great responsibility and we should be afforded the respect that we earn.
