Many years ago, in the ‘70s when I was in my early twenty’s, I remember seeing a photo from the ‘50’s of a literal lynching party, with middle-class white young people and adults laughing beside a Black man hanging from a tree. This occurrence was during my lifetime. I was naturally quite shocked and horrified, but equally upset that information about the status of racism in our country had not been taught in my high school. I remember thinking, “I thought Jim Crow racism was a thing belonging to the turn of the century, not still going on during my life time!” The scene certainly upset me, but did not lesson my patriotism and did not bring me personal shame. It only made me think that we should and could be doing better. I realize I was a little older than young people in high school, but I imagine most teens today have seen more gruesome stuff in movies than I had as a young adult.
Today, sixteen state legislatures, Tennessee included, have passed laws greatly restricting any teaching about racism or about people in America being oppressed. These laws are very vague. Many of these laws state that a teacher cannot teach Critical Race Theory. Exactly what does it mean to not teach about CRT? That is a broad group of writings from many years ago, written by many authors about Black oppression and about expressions about liberty. Tennessee does not ban Critical Race Theory by name, but bans teaching about racism that might cause shame in any way. It’s a very vague statement, which could quite likely cause public school history teachers to feel extremely uncertain as to what can be said about a number of things such as the civil war, Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the freedom marches in the south, and current occurrences of police mistreatment of Black people. I heard in a discussion on a radio program recently, how some teachers were wondering if they will be allowed to say slavery is wrong, and their superintendent was not willing or able to give an answer. What?! That is outrageous! I know many schools in our area try to teach character. That is teaching right and wrong. If we cannot say that slavery is wrong, we are headed toward worse problems that we have now!
In my opinion, to forbid teaching the truth of history is extremely undemocratic and repressive. Do we want to be like Russia where only good things about the country are taught? These laws do not belong in a country whose constitution declares that we must allow freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. As a country that stands for freedom, we should never sugar coat the truth or leave out the ugly things that have happened in the past. To leave out anything significant in a high school American history course would be imitating authoritarian regimes which want to admit only to occurrences that reflect positively on their past history.
Furthermore, for many teens, this is the only time they will learn history by competent, educated adults. Most young people do not go to college. Even many who do go will not be taking American history again. We need to teach our young people the truth about history, when we have the opportunity, so they will be less vulnerable to misinformation from television and social media.
My profession for the last 20 years has been mental health counseling, but my master’s degree is in educational psychology. I have a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. I know something about education and a lot more about shame. Shame is not taught by straight forward teaching of a subject. Shame is taught and caught when someone tries to make another person feel ashamed by scoffing or belittling that person or by treating them in a humiliating manner, which most teachers know not to do. Teaching facts along with a strong dose of positive patriotism will not produce personal shame, even from the most horrible facts about our past history of slavery. However, in my opinion, many things in our history ought to shock and be upsetting. Feeling horror over an occurrence can be good and with good teaching it can produce resolve to never allow those occurrences to happen again. So how do we do this?
First, we need to do an overhaul of how we teach history. Children for generations have grown up not understanding why we need to study history. I have heard too many children and adults say that they never liked history. If you make history read like a story and if you stress the importance of history to maintain our democracy, children will learn to appreciate it and even love it. History should never be taught as a dry set of facts. Yes, facts do need to be taught, but make the learning fun and incorporate the story as part of the facts being presented. Introduce good history books written for children. All along the way, teachers need to state the truth that absolutely none of our ancestors were perfect. People in the past made mistakes just like we do, but hopefully we can learn from those mistakes. This should be the line of thinking from the beginning, such as what kind of mistakes did the early explorers make in their expectations and in how they treated the native peoples here? Why did early colonists bring Black people over from Africa? How was that not a good thing? These questions will not be bad if we incorporate patriotism into our lessons.
So how do we do this, incorporate patriotism into the honest teaching of history? I believe we do it by showing what our country has learned. What did we learn from the way Native Americans were treated? What did we learn from the internment of Japanese American citizens who were treated like traitors, with no evidence, during World War 2? These are things our young people need to be thinking about before graduation, so they can recognize mistreatment in the future.
On an even more positive side, we should emphasize that our country is and has been in the process of learning and making many improvements. Point out the progress in different areas such as improved treatment of minorities, such as African Americans, Native Americans and others. Everything is not perfect now, of course (and that should be readily admitted), but our country is constantly striving to make democracy work. We admit past mistakes and work toward correcting those mistakes or failures. When students see that there has been progress and realize that teachers are not trying to falsely pretend our country has always been perfect, or is perfect now, they will trust what they learn more. They will be encouraged over the progress and feel pride for having a country that recognizes past mistakes and does something about those mistakes. Teaching the truth does not automatically mean blaming or shaming our country, but can lead to pride in one's country.
Of course, the worst of the facts should be saved for high school age kids, who are not too young for the truth. Most of them have seen more horrific stuff in movies than will be taught in history. I believe we should present the truth, even the difficult parts. I hope it will be shocking to realize it was only a couple of centuries ago that many in our country condoned the selling of children out from under the parents’ care. They should be shocked that not only were slaves living in squalor, but they were abused physically, raped repeatedly and were emotionally scarred by separation of families. High school seniors should know about these things because many of them will never go to college. All American adults should know the horror of slavery as well as the dangers of authoritarian leaders, such as leaders we have seen in Germany and in Russia. They should learn how populist leaders, like Hitler, knew how to manipulate and fool the public, and they need to recognize characteristics of populist leaders. The dangers of authoritarianism need to be well taught or our public will not know how to recognize authoritarian leadership in our country when they see it.
Besides accurate teaching about our history, including the good, the bad and the ugly, we should spend a lot more time teaching civics. Americans do not seem to understand the basics of democracy and are much too easily fooled by charlatans, who would take away their freedom if allowed to. They need to learn about local, state and national government and the power of the media. How does misinformation get spread in a democracy? We have too many adults who do not understand how government works at all and they have no interest. Part of good teaching is getting across how important it is to our future as a society for them to know these things. However, if teachers are afraid of speaking the truth about the past, they might be afraid to talk about how our government operates now and how leaders are properly chosen.
On a positive note, civics and history can be combined in a fun way. Divide the class up into political parties, hold mock elections and make mock laws. Teach state civics and state history more thoroughly. Compare state governments. Encourage civil debate. State government is where most laws affecting their personal lives are made. Some of my own children got to experience mock government in their nineth grade civics class. It made learning civics much more interesting.
Summarizing the issue of shame, yes, students might experience shock or horror over past events of how our country or how one’s state acted in the past, but that is not the same as personal shame. Kids are not likely to identify themselves with bad history. Horror over the past is not necessarily a bad thing. That is what motivates people to be determined not to repast mistakes. Being upset over how one’s ancestors acted, if they acted badly, is part of learning good morals. We recognize the wrong and students learn that the reason we examine these “shameful” things is so we can learn to do better, definitely not to feel personal shame. Children know honesty and sincerity when they see it. Honesty about one’s country, that also expresses hope and patriotism, can lead to a positive resolve to never make the same mistakes again.
Young people who currently see discrimination in their communities might also be encouraged that our country is learning and trying to change, possibly giving them personal hope. The failure to admit to past or current discrimination could cause some childrrn snd youth who are now living with discrimination to experience hopelessness and anger. Instead, they need evidence that improvement is possible and does occur. Truth can produce hope. Hope can produce patriotism. Thus, truth can produce patriotism!