In 1983 I was teaching at the Middle School.\u00a0\u00a0Mostly, it was eighth grade American History, but I also had two sections of sixth grade social studies.\u00a0\u00a0I was good with eighth graders, tons of energy and the \u201ctop of the school\u201d attitude to go with it.\u00a0\u00a0But sixth graders were different, especially in 1983.\u00a0\u00a0It was the era before the internet and social media (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born until 1984), and there was still a lot of naivete in twelve year old kids.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of years at Middle School changed that, and there was always a stark contrast between my classes. The eighth graders who thought they knew everything, and the sixth graders who knew they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My philosophy of education was that I would do my best to answer every question the kids had. Sometimes the answers had to be appropriate to their age and understanding, but I wanted my students to feel that we could talk about whatever was going on in the world and I would give them an honest answer. I wanted them to know about history and the world, the failures and the glories, and give them more than just \u201cdates and names\u201d. My goal was to help them become good \u201ccitizens\u201d, who could ask questions and reach logical conclusions about our world. Discussing, questioning, evaluating information: that\u2019s what good citizens do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was in a sixth grade class during a current events discussion that a boy brought up a \u201cgay murder\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0In 1983 \u201cgay\u201d wasn\u2019t much discussed in school, much less middle school.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, I was relatively sure that my sixth graders didn\u2019t even know what \u201cgay\u201d was.\u00a0\u00a0The AIDS crisis was just beginning, with the government still in denial about why it was centered in the gay population.\u00a0\u00a0A forty-three year old virologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was one of the leading researchers in the field.\u00a0\u00a0Ultimately 700,000 Americans would die from AIDS over twenty years, ironically near the same number that COVID has taken in the past year and three-fourths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a teacher I wanted to answer the student\u2019s question, without giving him and the rest of the class way more information than they were ready for. So I began asking him questions about what he knew about the murder. We were just getting into the issue, when the bell rung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That gave me some time to research it myself. In those days, that meant going to the school library and digging into the Columbus Dispatch <\/em>to see what happened. To my relief, the murder wasn\u2019t a \u201cgay murder\u201d. It was a murder ON Gay Street in downtown Columbus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I tried to let my students face controversies, especially the eighth graders.\u00a0\u00a0We confronted slavery and the Native American removal, bigotry and labor exploitation, the Holocaust and the Japanese-American Internment.\u00a0\u00a0They heard my story about meeting the hero Jesse Owens, and how he came home with four gold medals from the 1936 Olympics, but as a black man couldn\u2019t find work.\u00a0\u00a0We spoke to an internment camp survivor, a World War II spy, and a Vietnam veteran, the War of my students’ fathers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n My classes looked at the pictures of mountains of piled buffalo pelts, and discussed how it was a military strategy to starve the Native Americans on the plains and force them onto reservations.\u00a0\u00a0We learned the pathos of brother against brother in the Civil War, but also learned that one side was fighting for the right to enslave men.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted my students to see America as a nation of destiny, warts and all.\u00a0\u00a0Not everyone was bad, but they weren’t all \u201cangels\u201d either.\u00a0\u00a0 Our Nation started in contradiction: a man who enslaved others writing \u201c\u2026all men are created equal\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week in Texas, a school administrator told a teacher that she had to \u201cbalance\u201d the \u201ccontroversial\u201d literature in her classroom.\u00a0\u00a0Her books on the Holocaust had to be balanced with\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Books that deny the Holocaust occurred? Ones that tells the stories of the \u201cgood Nazis\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was attending Denison University, I took a comparative historic literature class. We read Harriet Beecher Stowe\u2019s Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin,<\/em> the novel about slavery that helped ignite the Civil War, and several of the \u201cAnti-Tom\u201d books written to defend the South\u2019s \u201cpeculiar institution\u201d. It was an exercise in understanding propaganda from both sides, as the nation approached the war. But we didn\u2019t \u201cbalance\u201d abolitionism with slavery \u2013 we acknowledged that there was an absolute evil in enslavement, period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This isn\u2019t about \u201cCritical Race Theory”, an idea intentionally misunderstood by some to mean diversity education.\u00a0\u00a0There can\u2019t be \u201cbalance\u201d, presenting \u201cboth sides\u201d of some issues.\u00a0\u00a0There is no \u201cpositive side\u201d of discrimination.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And just because you can \u201cfind\u201d Holocaust deniers, or modern segregationists, or any other number of extreme views \u2013 there still is right and wrong.\u00a0\u00a0Teachers\u2019 need to be more than \u201cneutral presenters\u201d, they need to explain the fundamental truth of all history:\u00a0\u00a0that it was made by humans, women and men:\u00a0\u00a0of all races, identities, and views.\u00a0\u00a0And that out of that mishmash of humanity mistakes were made \u2013 but a lot of progress was made too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are folks running for School Boards all across the nation, and right here in Pataskala, demanding that classroom teachers be muzzled, prevented from discussing any \u201ccontroversial\u201d issue.\u00a0\u00a0Even when they don\u2019t get on the Board, that message is getting through to those on frontline in the classroom:\u00a0\u00a0don\u2019t take the chance and \u201crock the boat\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Avoid all controversies \u2013 muzzle yourself, and even worse, muzzle your students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important that students learn mathematics.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s important that they can read and write, and understand science (now more than ever).\u00a0\u00a0But it\u2019s even more important, in an age when \u201call knowledge\u201d is at a student\u2019s fingertips, that students learn to evaluate information and reach reasonable decisions.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s called teaching citizenship. In our currently fragile Democracy, perhaps it is the most important goal a school should have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warts and All<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Faux Balance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Wrong Message Received<\/h3>\n\n\n\n