When I was in elementary school, I had no idea what Columbus Day. This is because my school district (in Berkeley, CA) referred to it as “Indigenous Peoples” Day. Although I can appreciate the politically correct, anti-imperialist liberal sensitivities that inspired such a name change, it really didn’t help me understand why we had that day off. So I was curious about and pleased to observe how the fifth grade teachers at my site chose to address Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The classes watched a documentary (not historical fiction thank goodness) about Rosa Parks, which featured interviews with her family members, friends and others who had known her and could comment on her role in the civil rights movement. Then we had a class discussion about segregated schools. I was impressed by what the kids had to say and by how the discussion was structured. Instead of simply relaying historical information, the students were given the opportunity to say how they felt. And while the discussion was more about civil rights in general than about Dr. King’s role in it (we didn’t even listen to any of his speeches), I was happy with the way the discussion urged kids to really think about how much has changed over the last 50 years. One fifth-grade girl told me after class: “Ms. Jo, I’m glad white and black kids can go to school together now.” So cute.
I began to wonder how other schools in the district chose to deal with the holiday, so I asked around. It seems that although most schools made well-meaning efforts to address the foundations of the holiday, not all did so successfully.
On AmeriCorps member commented that, at his site, ensuing discussions were shallow, vague, and unoriginal. His response was so eloquent that I am going to quote him:
Unfortunately, the multi-age classroom addressed MLK Jr. Day in much the same way I remember it being taught to me. We memorialized the character traits we felt the students would most benefit from internalizing, and we also broadly situated MLK within the context of racial politics, which we only discussed in terms of a black-and-white binary. His historical connection to any social movement was signified once via reference to Rosa Parks, who apparently refused to give up her seat only because she was old and her feet were tired and not because she was a trained activist seeking to challenge segregation law in the courts. The other means of connecting MLK to a social movement was through pure inference; by watching his "I Have A Dream" speech, we expected the students to just figure out that the crowd had marched in protest to the Lincoln Memorial on the 100th anniversary of that very President's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and that this event was coordinated by many cooperating civil rights groups, not by MLK himself. In general, the approach reflected a failure to engage in any meaningful conversation about racial oppression, or the historicity of race and race relations, or even about the role of political participation in a democracy. I can't presume to know what occurred in other classrooms, but I'd guess that these failures are fairly typical, especially with regards to what we consider our students capable of talking about and learning from.
After reading this, I began to re-analyze my initial reactions to my fifth-graders’ class discussion at Berney. What are our students capable of understanding as far as the topics of segregation and racism are concerned? Should we discuss lynching and the KKK? (We did talk about these in my class, actually.) Or should we limit talk to triumphs and victories, to the Rosa Parks and the Dr. Kings of the civil rights movement? Why do we teach and re-teach Martin Luther King Jr. the same way, year after year, in our elementary schools, as JJ pointed out? While we’re at it, couldn’t MLK day represent a jumping-off point for significant discussions about other forms of civil rights, gay rights, for example? When will Harvey Milk get the same sort of recognition as Dr. King? Just some things to think about, if you happened to read this far.
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