Nervous. Involved. Nervous. Cautious. Unprepared.
That is how center and highschool academics have advised me they’ve felt over the previous few years in relation to instructing the troublesome subject of slavery.
Though I work with academics in Massachusetts, their response to instructing about slavery is frequent amongst academics all through the U.S.
Thankfully, lately there have been a rising variety of people who’ve weighed in with helpful recommendation.
Some, akin to historical past professors Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Kenneth Greenberg, have advocated for serving to college students see the methods through which enslaved individuals fought again in opposition to the brutality of slavery.
Whether or not via a concentrate on the battle to keep up household and tradition, resistance at work, working away, bodily confrontation or revolt, college students get a deeper understanding of slavery when the teachings embrace the assorted ways in which enslaved individuals courageously fought in opposition to their bondage.
Others, like James W. Loewen, the writer of the favored ebook “Lies My Trainer Instructed Me,” have argued for a concentrate on how slavery has deeply influenced our standard tradition via motion pictures, tv collection, historic fiction and music.
There are additionally those that advocate using particular assets and curriculum supplies, like the Harriet Jacobs Papers Venture, the four-part documentary collection “Africans in America” and the Freedom on the Transfer database, which options hundreds of runaway slave commercials.
Heeding a few of these suggestions, in my work with academics now we have sought to provide you with classes that college students like Ailany Rivas, a junior at Claremont Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, say have helped them to change into “extra knowledgeable and educated in regards to the brutal historical past of slavery and its legacy.”
These classes that I’ve developed take a wide range of approaches however are all rooted in having a look on the realities of slavery utilizing historic proof.
Many college students have echoed Ailany in suggestions that I’ve collected from 9 completely different courses the place I’ve helped design classes about slavery.
And the academics whom I’ve labored with have all shared informally that they’re now assured in taking over the problem of instructing the complicated historical past of slavery.
A lot of this confidence, for my part, is because of 4 issues that I imagine are obligatory for any trainer who plans to cope with slavery.
Right here’s what I inform academics about how you can educate younger college students about slavery:
1. Discover precise data
Few issues shine the sunshine on the cruel realities of slavery like historic paperwork. I’m speaking about issues akin to plantation data, slave diaries and letters penned by plantation house owners and their mistresses.
It additionally pays to look at wished commercials for runaway slaves. These adverts supplied particulars about those that managed to flee slavery. In some instances, the adverts include drawings of slaves.
These supplies can assist academics information college students to raised perceive the historic context through which slavery existed. Educators may want to have a look at how individuals akin to historian Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, who wrote a chapter in “Understanding and Instructing American Slavery,” have used historic paperwork to show about slavery.
2. Study historic arguments
With the intention to higher perceive completely different views on slavery, it pays to look at historic arguments about how slavery developed, expanded and ended.
College students can learn texts that have been written by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and pro-slavery advocates like George Fitzhugh.
They need to wade via the newspaper commercials that supplied particulars about those that managed to flee slavery.
these completely different arguments will present college students that historical past is stuffed with disagreement, debate and interpretations based mostly on completely different targets.
As an example, in analyzing arguments about slavery, academics can present college students how early Twentieth-century historians like Ulrich Bonnell Phillips sought to place forth concepts about sort masters and contented slaves, whereas others from the Nineties, akin to John Hope Franklin, co-author of “Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation,” centered on how Black individuals resisted slavery.
Seeing these starkly completely different portrayals of slavery offers college students an opportunity to look at how issues akin to selection, context, racism and bias would possibly have an effect on the way in which slavery is seen or seen.
3. Spotlight lived experiences
In my 11 years of instructing historical past, many college students entered my courses with an excessive amount of misinformation about what life was like for many who lived underneath slavery. In pre-unit surveys, some acknowledged that the enslaved labored solely within the cotton fields and weren’t handled that badly. We all know the historic data inform a special story. Whereas many labored as discipline fingers, there have been others who have been put into service as blacksmiths, carpenters, gunsmiths, maids and tailors.
To fight misconceptions like this, I counsel academics to make use of historic sources that characteristic particulars in regards to the lived experiences of enslaved individuals.
As an example, academics ought to have college students learn Harriet Jacobs’ memoir – “Incidents within the Lifetime of a Slave Woman” — alongside diaries written by white plantation house owners.
Scrutinize pictures of slave quarters and excerpts from the Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Venture, which accommodates greater than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery.
Ask college students to look at numerous historic sources to realize a greater understanding of how individuals lived via their bondage over time.
4. Think about the relevance
Additionally it is essential for academics to think about the assorted methods through which slavery is related to the current with their college students. I counsel them to ask questions like: How has the historical past of slavery influenced the standing of Black individuals in the US at present? Why are there so many motion pictures about slavery?
In Ailany’s class, we ended our unit by offering college students with an opportunity to learn and take into consideration the relevance of latest image books about slavery like Patricia Polacco’s “January’s Sparrow,” Ann Turner and James Ransome’s “My Identify Is Reality: The Lifetime of Sojourner Reality” and Frye Gallard, Marti Rosner and Jordana Haggard’s “The Slave Who Went to Congress.”
We requested college students to attract on what that they had realized about slavery to think about after which share their views in regards to the historic accuracy, classroom appropriateness and relevance of a specific image ebook. College students at all times have a lot to say about all three.
Instructing slavery has been and can proceed to be difficult. To academics who’re requested or required to tackle this problem, the 4 issues mentioned above can function sturdy guideposts for creating classes that ought to make the problem simpler to navigate.
This text by Raphael E. Rogers, from Clark College, was initially printed by The Dialog.
