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Tag Archives: American History

Black History = American History, But For American Stupidity

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

African American History, American History, Black History, Black History Month, Prejudice, Racism, Self-Discovery, Teaching, Teaching and Learning, US History, Willful Ignorance


Pythagorean Theorem (except when it comes to Black history and race), February 4, 2014. (http://ncalculators.com/)

Pythagorean Theorem (except when it comes to Black history and race), February 4, 2014. (http://ncalculators.com/)

It’s Black History Month. It’s a month that often feels more like an obligation to honor the Civil Rights Movement than it does a full month to celebrate and appreciate all African American contributions to the development and success of the United States over the previous four centuries. Yet there are many Whites, Blacks and other people of color who refuse to see this at all. Some argue for a White History Month, some argue that Blacks don’t have a culture or history at all — or at least, one worth celebrating. And some argue that the time and need for a Black History Month has passed.

Some of this ridiculousness I parody here:

No argument is more central to the reason why Black History Month needs to continue than the one I’ve heard from conservatives and former students over the years. That because Black history shines a light on America’s racist, economic loading of the dice in favor of White elites and business interests, I’m being “anti-patriotic” when I talk about or teach on this. Then, of course, I get the “love-America-or-leave-it” response.

People who respond this way are such assholes. Some of your ancestors brought my ancestors here in chains, well before most of these alleged patriots’ ancestors even thought about coming here. My ancestors built plantations, chopped down forests, grew the cash crops that made White men rich and provided the money necessary to make America an industrial capitalistic powerhouse, built the White House and the Capitol, and have fought in every war this country’s been a part of. But I’m unpatriotic when through Black history I can point out America’s flaws and great failings?

The less evolved part of me would say, at least in a street argument, “Kiss my Black ass!” But to be honest, I don’t want these folks to touch me, much less kiss my butt. What I want them to do is read, listen, watch and learn, and not just assume everything they’ve heard from FOX News, their parents and in elementary school social studies is the gospel truth. That way, they would then have the choice between understanding that US history and Black history are one and the same and wallowing in their willful stupidity.

Immigration Assignment & Montgomery County Public Schools

29 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Pop Culture, race, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Administrators, American History, Fiction, History, Immigration, MCPS, Migration, Montgomery County Public Schools, Parenting, Pedagogy, Personal Stories, Teachers, US History, Woodlin Elementary School, Woodlin ES


Immigrants In Own Words, Woodlin ES, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Immigrants In Own Words, Woodlin ES, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Well, the two-month long ordeal that was my son’s fourth grade immigration/migration segment and assignments concluded at the end of last week. While my son’s teachers at Woodlin ES and administrators at MCPS were well-meaning, this was probably the single worst assignment I’ve seen given by them to my son and his classmates. As I said in my post on this project from earlier this month, teaching undergraduates and graduate students the big and nuanced differences between two enormously important trends in American history is difficult. Teachers with an average understanding (at best) of historical trends and patterns like immigration and migration teaching nine and ten-year olds? That’s an almost impossible task.

It was a thoroughly frustrating assignment to watch my son go through and for me as his helper. It was a terrible set of tasks pedagogically, and just plain bad history, even for elementary school. Their so-called Wax Museum immigration project (they also titled it the 4th grade Legacy Project) called for each student to interview a relative that immigrated to the US. After our complaints, the school modified the assignment to include “a composite of several of your family members, with a mix of fact and fiction to tell the story” (emphasis added). Sorry, but encouraging “realistic” fiction for a big social studies assignment is beyond unacceptable. It shows a complete misunderstanding of US history and proper teaching methods for this subject.

In getting ready for my version of summer academic enrichment for my son (where he can build on his reading, writing and math skills while also doing fun summer camps), I ordered textbooks and other grade-appropriate materials. One of these was the activity workbook for The American Journey textbook, typically US history taught between sixth and eighth grade. I have tons of US history textbooks — I wanted the activities workbook to help guide and calibrate what my son should read and learn without going into every college-level historical nuance.

"An Immigrant's Experience" worksheet from The American Journey activity workbook, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

“An Immigrant’s Experience” worksheet from The American Journey activity workbook, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

When I leafed through the workbook last week, I found a worksheet activity titled “An Immigrant’s Experience.” The worksheet directions asked for students to “[i]nterview someone in your community who immigrated to the United States from another country or research the life of an immigrant to your state.” I realized that the questions from my son’s “Immigrants in Their Own Words” assignment were similar to the ones from this worksheet meant for kids at least two grade levels above his.

That sounds great in some respects, but it’s not. Not really. Not when I considered the fact that this was my son’s (and his classmates’) first real foray into US history at his school. Not when I figured that even this material from Glencoe McGraw-Hill mixed up immigration and migration, and yet the questions were specifically about immigration. These questions were obviously meant to cover either the 1870-1920 period or (in some cases) the period since 1965.

And certainly not when I thought about what my son told me about his teacher’s negative response to changing his assignment questions to specifically reflect migration, in his case, Black migration. Really? I didn’t think that asking his grandmother about what her folks thought about the differences between the US and their home country was an appropriate question.

As part of this social studies segment, my son also had to complete an assignment on waves of immigration, one that listed immigration to the Western Hemisphere in four phases or waves. One being from 1492-1820, then 1820-1890, then 1890-1950, then 1950 to today. This just made me shake my head. The periodization — as we historians call it — was so far off that slaves and conquistadors could be considered immigrants in the same way as Scotch-Irish living in the hills of Kentucky! Apparently MCPS produced this handout in 2001 as part of their social studies focus.

Focus Questions For Waves of Immigration (2001), MCPS, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Focus Questions For Waves of Immigration (2001), MCPS, May 28, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Now I’ll have to do something I hoped I’d never have to do, at least prior to my son going to high school. I must now correct what my son has been taught in school for the past two months. Good thing, though, that most of what my son learned on this topic will be forgotten by July 4th. It’ll make it easier for me to correct the incorrect.

American Un-Exceptionalism

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

American Exceptionalism, American History, Capitalism, Chris Matthews, Democracy, Dorian Gray, Freedom, Imperialism, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Myths, Oppression, Patriotism, Representative Democracy, Superpower


Captain America and waving US flag, July 4, 2012. (http://http://www.vitaver.com).

One of the great myths of American history is that the US is an exceptional society with an exceptional history, earned as the shining light on the hill of democracy, the first modern republic in world history. Despite all the claims of such luminaries as Chris Matthews (of MSNBC lore) and presidential historian Doris Kerns Goodwin, America is hardly exceptional. What makes us exceptional is the frequency with which we claim to be so different and so unique from the rest of world. Beyond that, we’re about as exceptional as a C+ level college student.

Chris Matthews at 2011 Time 100 gala, April 27, 2011. (David Shankbone via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Speaking of students, my US history students have laid claim to American exceptionalism almost as often as Chris Matthews. If it’s US history prior to the Civil War, then the claim has been about breaking free from Great Britain’s empire, the Founding Fathers and the writing of the US Constitution, and building the first modern representative democracy. If it’s the twentieth century, then it’s about the good ol’ US saving the world from the tyranny of communism — or at least, anything that wasn’t supportive of US-style capitalism (which isn’t the same as democracy, by the way). Both are hogwash, as full of half-truths as George Washington’s honesty, Abraham Lincoln believing in Black equality and Henry Longfellow’s portrayal of Paul Revere’s ride.

I’m sorry, but I don’t find it exceptional that the US formed a representative democracy that represented the interests of rich, landowning White males, many of whom were plantation slave owners too chicken to deal with the issue in the summer of 1787. Even the comparison to ancient Greece and Rome is specious on a power-blue cloudless day in New York in September. Whether it was direct or representative democracy, both were limited democracies that relied heavily on slavery, warfare, and eventually became empires. America was born out of an empire, and to this day, has imperialist notions about itself and its relationship to the world.

As far as American the Superpower since 1945, I find it laughable that people see us as this shining beacon of truth, justice and the American democratic way on the world stage. There are folks who really think that we were too generous and altruistic in our Marshall Plan largesse, in our dealings with nations whom became aligned with us in the quarter-century after the end of World War II. Hogwash! With the US controlling fifty percent of economic production and activity in the world in 1945, it needed trading partners to ensure its future prosperity and dominance. The Marshall Plan was as much about the creation of stable trading partners and economies as was about checking Soviet influence in Central and Southeastern Europe.

Besides this, for every West Germany, South Korea and Japan, there were also our CIA-sponsored coups in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, military disruptions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and protections of American corporate interests throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South America and the Middle East. But I’m sure that this was only about spreading our exceptional democracy and economic prowess to the rest of the world. At least, that’s what American exceptionalists keep telling us.

“Dorian Gray” as played by Stuart Townshend, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), July 4, 2012. (http://empireonline.com).

There’s another perspective here, though. One that would describe America as an empire, or an empire in the making, at least. For American history is the stuff of imperialism, including the very justification we use for our actions on the world stage. Based on this point of view, America is unexceptional. As Dorian Gray of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) would say, “Empires rise and fall. There are no exceptions.” The choice we as Americans have is whether we prefer the soft landing that Great Britain recently experienced, or a crash-and-burn.

Doctoring History

25 Thursday Mar 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A.B. Davis Middle School, American History, Class of 1987, Demontravel, Humanities, Teachers, Teaching and Learning



One of the worst teachers I ever had was my eighth grade history teacher. There were a few others in my Mount Vernon K-12 days — and certainly in my times at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon — who were worse. But the absolute worst history teacher or professor I ever had between ’74 and ’96 was in a classroom in the corner of the new wing at A.B. Davis Middle School from September ’82 through June ’83.

His name was Mr. Demontravel, our American history teacher. Or as he preferred in the last three months of eighth grade, Dr. Demontravel (he had finished his doctoral thesis on the Civil War, on what beyond that, I wasn’t sure, and, given the way he was to me and us, I didn’t care either). Or as I liked to call him throughout that year, “Demon Travel.” His was a class that sucked the life out of history for most of us. Like most teachers of K-12 social studies or history, it was a dates, names, and places class. Unlike most social studies teachers, his teaching methodology was the epitome of lazy. Every class, five days a week, Demontravel would put up five questions on the blackboard for us to copy down and answer using our textbook. At the end of every two-week period, we’d get a fifty-question multiple choice exam, helping Scan-Tron stay in business.

Demontravel rarely stood up to lecture or do anything else. Lectures for him might as well have been appearances by Halley’s Comet, only the lectures were far less memorable. This process went on unabated for forty-weeks, four marking periods, an entire school year. Calling this boring would only get you into the door of the intellectual famine Demontravel subjected us to in eighth grade.

He wasn’t particularly helpful on the rare occasions when someone did have a question. When a classmate did ask him something, the portly Demontravel would stand up from his desk, which was to our right as we faced the chalkboard, slowly walk toward it, point to a question on the board, tell us in his best Teddy Roosevelt voice what page to turn to in looking for the answer, and then, just as slowly, return to his seat at his desk. Of course, the page numbers he gave us were usually wrong. Demontravel was truly an unremarkable man, virtually bald in all of his pink salmon-headedness, skinny and potbellied beyond belief. His shiny bald head had a Gorbachev-like spot on it. In his early fifties, Demontravel was so boring that it was a wonder that I noticed him at all.

But there was the fact that there was a prize on the line for us nerdy middle-schoolers—the eighth-grade History Award. “Something I could actually win,” I thought. And Demontravel was the sole arbiter over the award. My favorite and easiest subject was in the hands of this hack of a teacher. That made me downright angry whenever I thought about it.

What made it worse was that I was in competition with a classmate who cared for history in the same way that a semi-suburban boy like me cared for milking cows. For most of the year, we were separated by less than a point in our overall grades as we fought for the award. I guess I should’ve known that I wasn’t going to get it, regardless of my grades in Demon Travel’s course. My competitor, female and White as she was, was doted on by Demontravel for most of the year. I guess my near-exact same grade just meant that I was slumming in the A+ zone.

Then there was Demontravel’s demand for a typewritten three- to five-page essay on a World War II topic of our choosing, at the beginning of April ’83. It wasn’t something I could just write at my leisure and in my own handwriting. My father Jimme had to go buy a typewriter for me, one of those where you have to punch the keys to leave lettered ink on a page. I didn’t know how to type, and I knew no one else at home did either. So I used the two-index finger method, gradually figuring out how to type in double-space, to add footnotes and references, to write without using a pen. I chose to look at the Battle of the Philippines and the almost comical errors of both the Japanese and the U.S. there in 1942 and again in 1944-45. Demontravel gave me a 95 or 96 on it, helping me pull away of my friendly competitor at the beginning of May.

This was when we had our little incident, me and “Demon Travel,” in which I showed up the newly-minted PhD in his classroom. Ours was a discussion of World War I, one of the few times he actually attempted to lecture. He somehow managed to get wrong a key treaty on the Eastern Front that declared Germany a victor, gave them parts of Belarus and the Ukraine, and took Russia out of the war. Demontravel managed to get the parties involved in the treaty incorrect as well. I raised my hand, and when called upon I politely pointed out his error. He immediately became angry and told me that he couldn’t be wrong. Since I also could never be wrong, especially about an historical fact, I quoted the book directly, pointed out the name and date of the treaty, the parties involved, and the significance of the treaty to boot.

At that point he told me that if I ever corrected him like that again I would go Assistant Principal Gentile’s office. Gentile, a hard ass, would’ve been better off as a correction’s officer in Shawshank Redemption or in the HBO series Oz than as an administrator at Davis. I still didn’t want to see him, so I got quiet, quiet but fuming. Demontravel looked like a redneck after a day of labor in the hot Mississippi sun. All he needed was a shotgun in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. My classmates were cracking up, excited even because they saw me as having put Demontravel in his place. I kind of knew then that it wouldn’t matter if I did finish ahead of my competitor. I wasn’t going to get my much-deserved award.

The lesson that it would take me until my thirties to learn was that life and learning isn’t just about how much you know and how well you exhibit such knowledge and wisdom. It’s much more about politics and being able to read people and situations before speaking and acting in such situations. I knew, but pretty much didn’t care, that Demontravel didn’t like me. He probably knew, but didn’t need to care, that I thought that his class was a joke, a cheap version of the short-lived contest show on NBC, Sale of the Century. Bottom line — especially in having gone through the experience of earning my own doctorate in history — you don’t mess with a boring yet overworked teacher who just finished earning a Ph.D. Even if his reach has exceeded his grasp of it.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

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