Teaching English and Civic Learning

A Unit on the African-American Experience
Six Writers (1860’s-1960’s)

by Peter Huidekoper

The following article was prepared for the newsletter Another View. The article was prepared with Colorado teachers in mind, but it is relevant to all Core Knowledge teachers. In it, the author argues for the need to integrate civics into the curriculum, dispels myths about Core Knowledge, and recommends resources for those teaching about black history and African-American literature. (Grace Abounding: The Core Knowledge Anthology of African-American Literature, Art, and Music would make an excellent companion to Mr. Huidekoper’s materials.)

Another View is a newsletter by Peter Huidekoper, a teacher, writer, and consultant. Another View represents his own opinion and is not intended to represent the view of any organization he is or has been associated with. Comments are welcome. This article is reprinted with his permission.

This newsletter is written for four reasons:

1. to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday.
2. to continue the conversation initiated by last week’s Agenda 2010 Summit: Educating for 21st Century Democracy, where Gov. Bill Ritter, Roy Romer, Hank Brown, David Skaggs, and many other leaders articulated their belief in “the civic mission of schools.” I want to show one way English teachers can serve that civic mission — by asking students to take a close look at important speeches and essays from American history.
3. to give a second newsletter pointing out the strengths of the Core Knowledge curriculum (my first one, Another View #40, described in more general terms what I taught in English class in our Core Knowledge school in grades 7 and 8). This issue focuses on a unit I developed around the works of six African-American writers whose speeches, essays, and autobiographies are recommended by Core for middle school students.
4. to encourage the nearly eighty Colorado schools using the Core Knowledge curriculum — to whom I will send this newsletter — to make the most of these important texts; and to share with other schools (perhaps some planning for Black History Month in February) material that could help in teaching King, Du Bois, and others.

I am proud of the curriculum unit on these six African-American writers that I developed and used at the Parker Core Knowledge Charter School. This unit is on the state Core Knowledge website (see below). I invite readers — especially teachers — to take a look at it. I hope it gives folks excited by the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools another example — an academically rigorous way — of how we can engage students to think, discuss, and write about one of the most fundamental “civic lessons” in American history: the struggle for equality and justice. I see no rigor in simply saying we should “ensure that students discuss and debate current events.” That often entails little more than opinion, or a regurgitation of what students hear from parents or on TV. Instead, this approach requires a careful reading of good literature and significant speeches.

The old prejudice against Core Knowledge – please, take another look

 A false perception exists about Core Knowledge. Some still view it as an “off-the-shelf” conservative curriculum that emphasizes drill and kill instruction and the teaching of “mere facts.” I hope, for the second time, to challenge that misunderstanding by describing what the Core material asked of me and of my eighth graders the past few years as we read and discussed these works.

Core Knowledge has created three anthologies, Realms of Gold, Volumes 1–3, which contain the shorter works for the curriculum in grades 6–8. Some of the essays, speeches, and documents can be taught in English class, some in History; they are seen as among the essential works teachers should choose from when creating their reading lists for the year. Volume 1 includes the readings by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. When I realized they were not being taught in the sixth grade, I developed a unit that begins with these men and leads into four other key writers whose works are in Volume 3 (the anthology created for eighth grade).

My unit, The African-American Experience, covers the time period from the early 1860s (Washington describes his childhood memories as a slave), up to February 1965 and the speech given by Malcolm X one week before he was assassinated. Here are the readings my eighth graders did the past four years:

From Realms of Gold, volume 1

• The first three chapters of Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, pp. 253-271
• Washington’s speech: “Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895), pp. 189-194, from Realms of Gold, Volume 3
• Speech by W.E.B. Du Bois: “Address at the Founding of the Niagara Movement” (1906), pp. 175-179
• Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 4 from her autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road, pp. 379-400
• Maya Angelou, Chapters 15-17 from her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, pp. 354-378
• Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” (1963), pp. 232-255
• Speech by MLK Jr., “I Have a Dream” (1963), pp. 297-302
• Speech by Malcolm X, “On African Self-Hatred” (1965), pp. 342-352

In addition, for three classes we read and discussed ten poems by Langston Hughes, Paul Dunbar, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Angelou. Most of these works are also found in our Realms of Gold texts.

“Liberty and Justice for all”

I begin the unit by giving out 3x5 cards and asking students to explain what they believe is meant by these last five words in our Pledge of Allegiance, and to state if they feel “liberty and justice for all” exists in America today. Four weeks later, as we end the unit, I return these cards and ask students if their perspective has changed at all, and if so, in what way. Some of their responses are read aloud.

As the unit opens I also put the following “guiding questions” in front of the class. During the weeks that follow I try to return to a number of these questions to provide a framework for the readings:

• What are equality and justice, and how are they achieved?
• What have African-Americans experienced in the struggle for equality and justice?
• What was it like to grow up African American in the 19th or 20th century in America?
• How has society changed over the past 100 years to bring us closer to the goal of “liberty and justice for all”?
• What caused those changes? How does society change? What is needed for a society to change its values and behavior so that it becomes more just?
• What forms of protest have brought about positive change? (Core’s recommended reading for grade 8 also includes Gandhi’s speech, “Non-cooperation.” Students read this prior to reading King.)  
• What is the role of leaders, and what is the role of average citizens, in bringing about a more just society?
• When is it right to challenge or disobey the law? Why? (Make connections to Animal Farm — read earlier in 8th grade — and the role of dissent in challenging those who are in power.) 
• Is it “American” to dissent?
• In bringing about change — in order to create a more just society—do the ends justify the means?
• What role does courage play in bringing about change?
• Can one person make a difference in society? (Du Bois, Gandhi, King, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson)

History and Literature — Two disciplines, one story

The Core Knowledge history curriculum on the Civil Rights Movement includes many topics we return to in this unit: Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow laws, Harlem Renaissance, and Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It is one of several areas where Core literature and history overlap nicely — where we reinforce what is being learned in the other discipline. English teachers can present these hundred years as a narrative, a story with a central conflict—blacks seeking equality and justice, America struggling to fulfill its promise. In presenting this “story” through the words of six important men and women covering one hundred years, I try to make connections — Washington and the Court’s “separate but equal” doctrine, how King builds on the foundation provided by Du Bois, how Malcolm X challenged King much as Du Bois took on Washington. And the Hurston and Angelou childhood memories—as well as the poetry—bring to life some of the terrible trials blacks endured.

Perhaps it is an example of what Jared Polis, former Chairman of the State Board of Education, was suggesting at the Agenda 2010 Summit when he answered his own question: “Where does civics fit?” He did not believe the answer would be to put in a civics course, so you could then check it off—we’ve done that! Instead, he proposed that “it needs to be included in a multidisciplinary way.”

Curriculum Matters

In support of, and a question for, the Colorado Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools

I am excited about the effort to advance the Civic Mission of Schools, but as an English teacher, I hope we continue to ask: What do we want students to read? What is in the curriculum — in English, History, Science, and other disciplines? I hope we choose wisely. I fear too many schools might fall back on that all-too-familiar means of “fostering dialogue about current events”: handing out cover stories from Time or Newsweek as a prelude to a class discussion. Hardly a way to meet higher expectations.

Colorado Standard #6 in Reading and Writing states: “Students read literature that reflects the uniqueness and integrity of the American experience.” High school students are expected to “identify recurrent themes in United States literature.” Based on that, a whole range of literature might qualify.  

Please understand that I do not mean to suggest here that Core Knowledge material is the only way to enable students to address “civic learning,” or to know America’s journey from slavery to Jim Crow to Dr. King’s “Dream.” But I hope you agree that it matters which texts we choose.

I admit that I have not thought long and hard about the “civic mission” of our schools. But the last few years I have thought a lot about the potential of Core material — like The Diary of Anne Frank, Animal Farm, and WWII speeches by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Einstein—to engage students in thinking about Big Issues that one could classify (if forced to) as “civic lessons.” Such texts asked the boys and girls I taught to wrestle with questions about war and peace, genocide, security, self-defense, tyranny, power, totalitarianism, and dissent.

Similarly, the Core texts in this African-American unit—perhaps especially the works by Du Bois, King, and Malcolm X—call on students to think about citizenship and rights, anger and protest, and the use of language— and action—to further justice.  If we give them works of exceptional significance to read, students in our English classes can begin to explore issues critical to our country: race and prejudice, liberty and equality. All fundamental, are they not, to a strong “civic education”?

Thumbs Up for Freedom Writers — and a belief in possibilities

I was moved by Freedom Writers, the movie about the Los Angeles English teacher, Erin Gruwell, and her class. If you see it, you, too, will probably find connections to the strong in-depth series on dropouts in The Denver Post recently; or to the world the Broncos’ Darrent Williams may have known as a teenager in Fort Worth, Texas. And you will no doubt be horrified by how a white teacher describes “black literature” to an honors student. But the film is also inspiring, especially to all of us who believe that what we ask students to read — in this case, The Diary of Anne Frank—can make a difference.

A major theme of the film is hope and belief in the potential of young people. Sadly, condescending, racist teachers stand in the way. It echoes another reading we do from Angelou. At the end of eighth grade, my students read several first-person essays or memoirs prior to their writing an autobiographical essay of their own. I assign Chapter 23 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, on Maya’s graduation from eighth grade. I give students six options for a paragraph response, including these two:

• At Angelou’s graduation ceremony the guest speaker, Mr. Donleavy, sent a cruel message to her and her classmates; the message was NOT to hope, NOT to believe in themselves or in their dreams. She wrote: “It was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life.” Do you believe your race, religion, sex, or your coming from Colorado, could play a role in limiting your options, in reducing your possible choices, in your future? Or do you think there are other factors not listed above that could become obstacles standing in the way of your ability to fulfill your potential?
• Being black and being a girl, Maya Angelou graduated from eighth grade over 60 years ago into a society that too often would not recognize her full potential, a society that would treat her as a second-class citizen. In spite of this, she managed to go on to accomplish a great deal, and her achievements have brought her much acclaim. As you read her em­otions on her graduation day, can you find some indications that she would not settle for being “second class,” inferior, a girl with limited options and possibilities? Explain.

We thank you, and honor you, Dr. King, for reminding us of our possibilities.

Peter Huidekoper
8802 N. Piney Creek Rd.
Parker, CO 80138

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