On Education, Curriculum, and a Terrible Week: Thoughts re American History, and of "Not Cooling It"

Surely this was one of the worst weeks in America in my lifetime:

• a pandemic death count hit 100k and the elected leader of the country chose not to speak to memorialize those deaths (he did go golfing though, so there's that);
• record-breaking weekly unemployment announced again, and the economy in free fall, but Congress has still not passed further relief for workers, and the Fed instead began buying corporate junk debt ("bail out") with our tax money;
• the nation's leader promoted conspiracy theories of murder against a former congressman;
• there was a noteworthy racist incident in Central Park, NY widely share on video;
• news of continuing injustice in the murders of a woman of color in Kentucky and a man of color in Georgia;
• murder by four white police officers of an already-subdued African-American man;
• rioting across the nation over three nights;
• a robber-baron POTUS decried “thugs,” and threatened to use the military against the American people.

I so wish this week that I were in a class room, with engaged, inquisitive, and earnest young people, who have questions about the world and a desire to make it better. We need such kids, and we need such teachers.

It is hard to be home alone during this pandemic and not teaching, and to feel powerless to impact on young citizens when it seems so desperately necessary (it has always been). That hope that we might foster informed and engaged citizens is the reason I have stayed working in schools.

I know many educators care deeply about these issues. I care deeply about these issues. I'm not writing to lecture, but maybe to implore.

Regarding this week's news items related to police brutality and racism, I think it is very possible that the only thing different about this week from others, is that incidents were caught on video. The shocking statistics of institutionally-sanctioned police brutality against people of color in this country should be a daily news item about which our nation feels collective shame. Sadly, such matters are not as click-worthy [profitable] for news outlets as are more trivial topics.

I imagine most young people in America are hearing in their friend groups and in their homes -- as most of our media will report -- that rioting is unjustified and "works against the cause" of people of color (I'm sure the word thug will be repeated). This is a popular attitude among "respectable" Americans. Ironically, our American mythology eulogizes and celebrates riots by white (specifically Anglo) capitalists, ex: dragging British tax collectors behind horses through city streets, and murdering them with tar. Such acts are considered the work of "true American patriots," such as when millions in private property (tea) were destroyed in Boston in 1773. This "party" is considered justifiable, and laudatory. History books teach students the laissez-faire, Anglo capitalist position that the power to tax is the power to destroy! and should justifiably be met with violent rebellion. Thomas Jefferson himself claimed that the tree of liberty should be watered with the blood of tyrants, and that to do so is an act of patriotism. 

But when people of color pursue the blood of American tyrants, it is never called patriotic, it's called a "riot.”

Dr. King had this to say about riots, in a series of speeches in 1967 and 1968:

It is as necessary to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.

 

In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. What is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. In a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay...

 

As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption. The question now, is whether America is prepared to do something massively, affirmatively and forthrightly about the great problem we face in the area of race and the problem which can bring the curtain of doom down on American civilization if it is not solved.

Less well known is the poet and novelist James Baldwin's constant, consistent beseechment of white America to pay attention to the way people of color are treated in this country. His words are particularly poignant in the time of Covid-19. In 1968 he said:

It is not for [black people] to cool it. We are the ones who are dying fastest. White racism is at the bottom of the civil disorders.

 

I have no quarrel with the police officers, they are hopelessly ignorant and terribly frightened. If a policeman sees a black [man] in what he considers a strange place he's going to stop him—and you know of course the black [man] is going to get angry. And then somebody may die. But it's one of the results of the cultivation in this country of ignorance. Those white cops in the Harlem street, they are scared to death and they should be scared to death. But that's how black boys die, because the police are scared...

 

I object to the term "looters" because I wonder who is looting whom. How would you define somebody who puts a [man] where he is and takes all the money out of the ghetto where he makes it? Who is looting whom? Grabbing of the TV set? He doesn't really want the TV set. He's saying screw you. It's just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn't want it. He wants to let you know he's there.

 

The question I'm trying to raise is a very serious question. The mass media and all the major news agencies endlessly use that word "looter." On television you always see black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us, And no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you're accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it's obscene...  

 

I don't envy any white man, because I would not like to have to face what you have to face. If you don't face it, though it's a matter of your life or death. All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history.

I do not seek to justify, or advocate for the riots in our cities. What I do want is an admission by the educator class in America that we Americans are rarely transparent about how white supremacy is embedded in the national mythology we teach young people. That mythology is at the heart of the center-right narratives pushed in state curriculum guides, College Board syllabi, and history textbooks. 

We teachers and school leaders need to be bolder in interrogating the narratives about America, bolder in questioning authority figures, and bolder in developing better curricula. Do we really need the "fossilized five” disciplines, in which so much time is wasted on irrelevant content while questions that are relevant and important to real citizenship in the twenty-first century are never addressed?

There's so much being written right now about how Covid-19 is changing everything. I don't think it will change every thing. In fact, there's a risk it won't change the very things that should most be changed, if all of us just want to go back to the way things were.

It will be a shame if we go back to how we've always done school. I think there is a willingness for people to talk about the inequity of health care and public policy, as a result of Covid-19, and that should be part of curriculum. The killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbury, and George Floyd have provided another teachable moment for our nation about race and power, and that should be part of curriculum. People of conscience need to be brave enough to stand up and say the inequalities of our society must lead to real, meaningful change in society more broadly, and in our schools. We must fight against mythologizing our past, and against our collective ignorance of the present.

If you were starting a school right now, what curriculum would you develop if you were focused on preparing young people to use their power for good in the world of today? Let that inquiry guide your path to reopening school.

Please feel emboldened to push harder in the weeks and years to come. If our schools are to be meaningful, we have to push them to be more than simple instruments for maintaining the status quo, for maintaining the white capitalist power structure.