Warning: Part 1 of this post is a political statement. But... Part 2 will have some lesson plan ideas. Civic ImaginationWe live in a time (as was the same with our predecessors) where we are inundated with tragic events that seem to highlight the angry, competitive, frustrated, and hateful aspects of human interaction. News media frames the human experience by focusing on sensational events. And by no means am I devaluing horrific situations that occur across the world in Syria or France, or even here in the United States. What I want to highlight is the need for a shift in our thinking about history and history education. While I watch the education pendulum swing towards STEM, no doubt because of the high demand for job applicants in related fields, what most ignore is how the pendulum swings away from humanities courses like history, political science, sociology, and literature. I struggle to support an increased emphasis on STEM based on an economic argument. The increasing wage gap and opportunity gap between economic classes, people of color, and genders continue to widen despite the push for STEM in schools. We need a more radical approach in dealing with constant conflict and debate regarding income disparity, race wars, police brutality, gender discrimination, and religious fundamentalism. I truly believe that we are at another crossroads for history education. Because of heightened awareness regarding political, social, and economic conflict, NOW is the time we must engage in a new kind of historical thinking. I remember studying history (sometime guilty because I teach history) as an object of the past. People before us made decisions that caused our current situation. Some historians might think that I am erroneously encouraging presentism; however, I believe that we need a way to talk about history as if we are creators and dreamers. We need to think about history, not just in the past, but as an analysis of the present and most importantly the chance to imagine possibility. What is the point in studying the past if there are no effects on our present lives and the world we have the power to create? My first goal in exploring this topic is to talk about, what Henry Giroux calls, "civic imagination." Many teachers feel that their classrooms have been drained of creativity, imagination, and free thinking. Increased "accountability" measures have tremendously affected what we value as knowledge and what is taught. As history teachers, we have focused on memorization and recall that our students do not even practice the act of engaging as historians. This idea is shifting as more research is being done with respect to thinking, reading, and writing like historians. However, I believe these skills still limit our understanding of history as the stuff of the past. We need a language that engages our ability to think and create. We need a driving force that encourages hope through the language of possibility. We need to practice building our civic imagination where our students are building relationships based on respect, equity, and justice. Civic imagination is connected to civic engagement, whereby our students see action as a necessary step is studying history. We can't just think, read, and write. We must also do. Giroux says we need a "radical imagination" that encourages civil literacy and provides opportunities for personal and social transformation. Here is an excellent passage that summarizes Giroux's point: "The importance of civic education in the shaping of democratic values and critical agents cannot be underestimated and functions as the basis for developing specific modes of resistance and larger social movements. Cultivating the radical imagination, civic education and engaged and critical modes of literacy and agency are central to producing an informed citizenry, but even more so to constituting any viable notion of politics. Education must be considered central to any viable notion of politics. This suggests that progressives make clear how cultural apparatuses and media sources work pedagogically to produce market-driven subjects who are summoned to inhabit the values, dreams and social relations of an already established repressive social order [....] The time has come to develop a political language in which civic values, the radical imagination, social responsibility and the institutions that support them become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic courage, a renewed sense of social agency and an impassioned political will." Framing Our LessonsFrame #1 - So What? One challenge I am beginning this year is to add a "so what?" question at the end of each class. My hope is that my students and I can make direct connections between the content we cover in class with current events. So many of my students say they do not see the point in studying history. Adding the "so what?" will hopefully ground the content in contemporary contexts. So when we are studying federalism, the first Two Party system, and the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton, all I have to do is turn show a clip from the current GOP and Democratic presidential debates and highlight the arguments about the power of federal and state governments. We can talk about the legalization of same-sex marriage and marijuana as conflicts regarding governmental powers. This first frame indicates the importance of using current events in our history classes. Frame #2 - What if? An additional question we might ask of our content is "what if?" an event in history or a person's decision had a different outcome. This line of questioning directly infuses civic imagination whereby students are imagining new and possible worlds that are dependent on significant political, social, and economic choices. This question blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Some history teachers might fear when students reach into the future to imagine what would happen if Hitler had won World War II. The purpose of this question is not to re-write the past. It is instead of find what I call "points of divergence" so that we can write the future. We are the lives of history. Our choices have a profound impact on what the world will look like tomorrow, next year, and in 100 years. The people we study in history had this same idea. FDR imagined a different United States than the one that existed after the stock market crash in 1929. It took the imagination of numerous people to foresee the effects of the New Deal. Frame #3 - Now what? The last question I want to ask in my planning is "now what?" How can we make history a subject that encourages participation? In the last couple years, there has been a push for civic engagement (C3 Framework) and defining what it means to be an engaged citizen. I am wary of the use of the word "citizen" in this framework, but I also have this same fear with the term "digital citizenship." This is due to my experience teaching in a community where many of my students are undocumented and will never have the chance at becoming "citizens" based on the current political climate. It makes me uncomfortable to teach the concept of "citizenry" when the idea remains an illusion or an unreachable goal for many students. However, I do believe that the qualities outlined in the framework are valuable - my objection is purely based on language and the effects word choice have on people's inclusion or exclusion from identity membership. Asking "now what" allows me to encourage students to see history as action. We need to think about action steps that can accompany our study of historical events. We constantly talk about people who did something in history, but often fail to encourage action as a responsibility. One organization that has helped me think about the value of student voice and student perspectives is SoundOut. Our schools and communities would benefit from responsibly and ethically implemented student-led research about our local communities and what can be done to change the world,one choice at a time. Next StepsI am working on some concept maps that can be used to help frame history lesson plans using these three questions. I am also working on some graphic organizers and instructional tools that will engage students in the kind of thinking and doing proposed.
But the most important work that I am completing right now is my doctoral dissertation. I worked with a group of eleven high school students to examine the significance of dystopian fiction and how fictional narratives influence our thinking about issues related to identity formation, power struggles, and resistance movements. There were some great findings associated with the use of dystopian fiction in history/social science classes that engage in the three questions I highlighted. More on this to come.
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