Challenging How We Remember the Past

I thought today's discussion about Hamilton was rich--though I wished a few more people felt comfortable jumping in. Thanks to everyone who spoke! (And sorry if any of you felt lost through parts of it! I'll do better on that in the future.)

What today's discussion boiled down to for me was that the musical Hamilton challenges how our society popularly remembers Hamilton--as an old, white-haired, "Founding Father"--who must therefore be dignified, stoic, selfless, and the like.

Instead, the musical portrays a "bastard, orphan, son of whore," an immigrant who, "just like [his] country," is "young, scrappy, and hungry." He drinks with his bros, he shoots off his mouth, he gets into duels, and he womanizes.

Is this what you thought of when you saw a ten-dollar bill?

Showing you the Tony performance of Battle of Yorktown was meant to complicate things further. You don't just hear the music and lyrics, but you see Black actors inhabiting white, slave-owner roles. Truly, the "world turned upside down!"

My question was whether we should embrace this or be careful with it? Is this redefining the traditional American narrative or confirming it? Are we led to think differently about women's and African Americans' roles in the Revolutionary period?

I don't think there is a clear answer to that question.

This leads me to your popular memory lesson plan assignment. As you think about your popular memory lesson, here are a few things to consider:

1) What form should your lesson plan take? Does it need to be elaborate?

My answer: It's up to you, but I think a formal lesson plan is best. If your school has a way to do official lesson plans, use that. If not, use the format we used last year. Create a "show-stopper" lesson plan, with all the bells and whistles, that you can use for the job search.

2) Should I critique how an event is normally remembered by Americans?

Yes, I think so. A really easy way to plan interesting history lessons is to take the "popular" or "Hollywood" version of a historical event and see what is changed, what is emphasized, and what is downplayed. Downright inaccuracies are interesting too!

If popular memory of the Holocaust is Germans = aggressor, Jews = victims, then a movie like Defiance, which shows the Jews actively resisting Germans, challenges us. If popular memory of the Holocaust is Germans = bad, Jews = good, movie like Schindler's List, which shows a German war profiteer coming to care about Jewish victims and working to save them, challenges us.

3) Can I use a non-written text?

Yes! Movie or movie clips are probably the best for this. But so are photos, or museum exhibits, or memorial plaques. Remember the past is all around us. So take a place where the past is commemorated or explained for the public and start to think about it with your students!

4) Anything else?

Yes. As I was thinking about it, you probably want to get student input as you start the lesson. Ask them to create a timeline, narrative or story about what happened and who was involved. It can be short and quick. That raw input lets you see how students remember the past and what differences exist in the class.

The point of this assignment is to help students challenge how we (however "we" is defined) remember the past and to ask how particular versions of the past reinforce stereotypes or benefit certain groups at the expense of others.

I think this is something that interests most people, so I'm hoping your students will find it interesting and you will have a successful lesson.

I really look forward to continuing this topic through viewing the film, Detroit, and discussing the complications involved in understanding the 1967 Detroit riots (disturbances? uprising? freedom fight?) and what it means for us today.

Curiousity and Teaching!

One of my all-time favorite commercials reminds us to, "stay curious, my friends!" Especially good advice for teachers.

This week, I asked you to figure out how your school community voted in the last presidential election and how that might impact your teaching. I thought it was a wonderful conversation. One thing that surprised me, though, was how hard this task was going to be for some of you.

For East Lansing, it was somewhat easy. The boundaries for the East Lansing School District overlap nicely with the city borders. This is not the case for many of you, that have school districts that draw from diverse townships and counties! Of course, even in East Lansing, with schools of choice, there are many students attending from outside the city borders. So defining who is in the East Lansing School District community is not so easy after all!

While information on Ingham County is easy to find, the city of East Lansing was a bit harder. Nonetheless, I could pretty easily find a chart of precinct reporting and do some easy math!

But some of you were going to have a harder time, with precincts spread across diverse political boundaries. It took some searching, but finding this map with the national precinct results--put together by a graduate student at Washington State University--was well worth my time spent looking around. What a great resource to use with our students!

There is a lesson here. As teachers, our own questions can drive our search for resources, which we can then share with our students! We never stop learning!

I look forward to talking about Hamilton and the power of collective memory over the coming weeks!