Tag: history

To explain the tumultuous events of the past few days, Tracy Merlin used an analogy her sophomore class would understand: the eternal struggle between dogs and cats.

“Let’s say half the country thinks dogs are the best, and half the country thinks cats are the best,” said Merlin, who teaches in Broward County, Fla. “But it turns out the dogs won the election.”

“Do you think people can still love cats and there can be a conversation?” she asked. “They can still love cats,” dared 8-year-old Ander, his blue headphones tightened to his ears.

Mrs. Merlin scanned the sea of ​​tiny heads floating in their individual squares. “Do you think cats can break into any pet store when they are upset?” she asked.

“No,” Ander said. “Because it’s illegal.”

A riot at the United States Capitol. The second indictment of Donald J. Trump. And, despite everything, a transfer of power. The events of the past few weeks have been mind-boggling for many adults.

How, then, do they explain them to students, whether they are preschoolers meeting on socially distant circle mats or students anxiously scrutinizing seminar videochat?

Teachers across the United States have shifted their focus to current affairs. They turned to science fiction, Shakespearean tragedy and the fall of Rome in search of parallels to help their students deal with events that were often frightening and surely historical.

“When I was a kid, the Challenger exploded,” Ms. Merlin, 46, said the day before President Biden was inaugurated. She remembers exactly what she was doing when the space shuttle exploded after takeoff in 1986 – just as her parents remember exactly what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was murdered.

“I don’t know if this is the time of this generation,” she continued. “But I know there are things that have been with them from a young age. If I can let them know that it’s important to know what’s going on around you, to be informed and to have the facts, then I feel like I’ve done my job.

College students also needed help framing these hectic weeks.

On Wednesday, the morning of the opening, 180 students logged on to Steven G. Noll’s Introductory American History class at the University of Florida. The subject of the conference was reconstruction after the civil war.

Professor Noll, 68, easily found uncomfortable parallels to the present.

“Words matter,” he said. What were once called “riots” that resulted in the murder of newly freed and freed blacks are now called “massacres,” he said.

He showed an image of a stone monument in Louisiana, erected in memory of three “heroes” who in 1873, according to the monument, “fell in the Colfax riot fighting for white supremacy.” These rioters killed 150 blacks.

He said carrying the Confederate flag, as one of Trump’s supporters in the crowd that took over the Capitol on Jan.6, was pictured doing, tells us, “they are fighting for the white supremacy. ”

On the night of the Capitol riot this month, many students at Melissa Deokaran’s middle school in Washington woke up, some hearing Trump supporters yelling in their aisles. At least three have relatives in the DC National Guard who went to protect the Capitol after the riot.

So, the day after the riot, Ms. Deokaran used her Latin class to discuss the etymology of “invasion”, “insurrection” and “coup”. Then on Thursday, after Mr. Biden took office, Ms. Deokaran taught the root of “groundbreaking,” “resilient” and “union.”

“I think it’s important for us to understand what a union means and what it means to be unified,” Ms. Deokaran, 32, told her class. In Latin, she says, “it means ‘one’. In English, union means to be “joined as one”. “

Schools across the country occupy a busy political space. The ways children learn about history, civics, and literature can shape the votes they will one day cast. Teachers work hard to make sure their classrooms are safe so that everyone can express opinions and disagree.

But the pandemic has eroded that four-walled privacy. Teachers have had to navigate the political passions of their communities at a time of intense division. Parents with strong opinions may be nearby as students learn virtually – and object to characterizations of polarizing events.

“I’ve had constant meetings and emails and the like with a pretty aggressive contingent of parents who are very committed to the way I’m dealing with these issues in my classroom,” said James Mayne, who teaches at a Seventh Adventist school. day. in Clark County, Wash., which he said leans conservative.

On Thursday, Mr. Mayne asked his grade 11 American history students to compare Mr. Biden’s inaugural address with Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. Then he opened the debate, directing the students to the struggles the two presidents have faced to reunify the country.

“I would be hard pressed to find ground with the white supremacists,” said Jordan, 16.

“White supremacists are an extreme party,” retorted Talia, 16, who called herself a liberal. “I have a group of people on the other side of my life who are do not racist. They can sometimes have a bad way of explaining things, but in their hearts they are good people and they love everyone.

If you can’t look past the tongue, Talia says, you can’t find common ground.

In politically conservative or even politically mixed places, some schools have avoided political discussions. Some school districts, like Bangor, Maine, did not air Mr. Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday because they feared violence. And teachers who live in divided areas have to work hard to avoid appearing biased.

Alyssa Kelly teaches Grade 11 and 12 English in a conservative rural district about 35 miles southwest of Bangor.

The day after the riot, one of his students, a Trump supporter, arrived in class confused. He had spent the evening trying to analyze the memes, sound clips and his social media feeds. He just wanted a clear answer.

What had really happened, he asked. After speaking about it in class, Ms Kelly said he was frustrated with the way her fellow Trump supporters had acted.

“I’m not necessarily convinced that if he hadn’t had the space to fight his own ignorance for a minute – in a way that I didn’t judge him at all – he would have come to the same conclusion, ”Ms. Kelly told me. “I had nothing to say about politics, really. I just had to unpack it for him or help him unpack it.

Ms. Kelly, who teaches in a predominantly white district, hung a copy of “Golden Rule,” a play by Norman Rockwell depicting a racially and religiously diverse group of people under the American flag. When her students turn to take the pledge of allegiance, she hopes they will remember who else lives in the country.

“My students are going to graduate and, most likely, stay in their homogenous perspectives and in practical, familiar contexts,” Ms. Kelly said. “It’s a last chance to remind them that it’s actually possible to befriend someone who doesn’t agree with you.”

To avoid confusion, several teachers said they used a three-part query system: what do I know? What do I think I know? And what do I want to know? Where possible, they steered the discussions towards the program, using primary sources as a guide.

The day after the Capitol Rampage, Nicole Hix turned the class discussion in her Advanced Placement world history class to violence. Instead of having her students at a private Catholic school in Houston analyze documents from the reign of Louis XIV, Ms Hix asked them to discuss the pictures, headlines and tweets, as they would any other. main source.

“When it was awkward, I moved on,” Ms. Hix, 46, said. “It was a difficult day. It was hard to swallow. Many of them didn’t have any questions, so I made it an advanced training day.

A student, Sophia, said her classmates kept their heads down and their mouths shut. She answered direct questions, but mostly avoided sharing her opinion.

“It’s our age,” said Sophia, 15. “We don’t want to lose friends, but we also have beliefs. We can all say it’s very tense.

Back in Ms. Merlin’s second-grade class, she led the discussion on cats and dogs towards the riot on the U.S. Capitol. It had happened two weeks before – eons in second year.

“We have seen a lot of violence,” said Ms. Merlin, a local gun violence prevention activist. “Do you girls and boys remember the beating and pushing? What did you feel?

“It was a little sad to see that,” said Logan, 8. “They could probably talk to people and just understand that, instead of breaking into the Capitol.

“What have you got to do with your ears when the other person is talking?” Mrs. Merlin asked.

Sierra, who is 7, restored the sound. “You have to listen,” she said.

Hartocollis anemone contribution to reports.