Thinking About It

History is composed of stories, potentially fascinating ones of men and women placed in situations that bring out both the best and the worst in human nature. Properly addressed, these stories are not only instructional, but also vastly interesting. Yet most elementary and middle school students, if asked, will tell you that social studies is "boring" or "meaningless." The older they get, the more frequently they express the belief that the study of history lacks relevance. The core reason behind these sentiments lies with states' adoptions of textbooks that accept only the most sanitized and laudatory versions of our past. Therefore, teachers hoping to present American democracy in all its glorious contradictory messiness must generally incorporate trade books to present the conflicts that define our history, if they hope to counteract the message of steady, uninterrupted progress presented in most standard texts. If young people are to understand that the course of American democracy has been marked by trial and error—and that sometimes the errors are the experiences from which we learn the most—books that present a variety of viewpoints and employ a critical-thinking approach are essential.

Critical thinking requires consideration of all sides of an issue. A current example of a lack of critical thinking is the too-ready response to label "un-American" anything that does not directly support the agenda of the Bush Administration. In fact, questioning what any administration in power contends to be true, correct, or "in the national interest" is a hallmark of American democracy, protected by the First Amendment. Disagreement and debate are the tools that keep our system fine-tuned and allow for compromise and forward momentum. How, then, do we teach our children to take a 360-degree view of a problem before propounding a solution? How do we, for example, teach them to look at the women's movement not only from the viewpoint of those it helped to achieve employment and economic betterment, but also by examining changed family structure and what it means for those who subsequently chose to be "only housewives?" Our standard social studies texts will not help with these types of questions. However, there are trade books that will. Two recent publications provide support for sound upper elementary and middle school programs, producing the organic view of American history essential to becoming active U.S. and world citizens.

Steven Jaffe's Who Were the Founding Fathers: Two Hundred Years of Reinventing American History (Holt, 1996) looks at our 200-plus-year history, from the Ku Klux Klan to the yippies, through the lenses of revisionists. The author focuses on the words of the founding fathers (Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, among others), and his varying interpretations of their words are eye-opening. Jaffe traces the manner in which special-interest groups, the government, and historians have engaged in either hagiography or near slander when dealing with images of these men. While the text is complex and requires some prior knowledge of American history, knowledge that students often lack, this is an invaluable teaching resource. Used in excerpted form to focus on one issue (civil rights, for example, or the legacy of the American Revolution), this text shows quite graphically how words and actions can be twisted and interpreted to support varying agendas. The result is a picture of history as a constant process of revision and reinterpretation—not an entity set in concrete, but as a dynamic presence. The text raises as many questions as it answers, and students will come away with a clear understanding of the fluidity of the historical record.

If Jaffe's book provides a sound background, Robert D. Johnston's The Making of America (National Geographic, 2002) sets out a perfect step-by-step overview of American history aimed at fifth through eighth graders. Divided into eight, 20- to 25-page chapters, this well-written economical treatment encapsulates the seminal events in American history from the initiation of the Columbian exchange (1492) through the attack on the World Trade Center (2001). Johnston includes not only historical facts but also presents evenhanded debate on major issues. Each chapter begins with framing questions and contains two profiles, chosen to throw the defining issues of the time period into relief. For example, Pocahontas is paired with William Penn to represent the Colonial era, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Abraham Lincoln are the focal subjects for the Civil War, and Huey P. Long and Ida B. Wells-Barnett represent the era from 1900 to 1941. The evenhanded text shows that though the United States has been a locus of incredible discrimination and racial/gender tension, it continues to strive to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Especially notable is the presentation of the debate surrounding the last presidential election and the mixed response to the loss of civil liberties resulting from the War on Terror.

Part of the brilliance of this text is its use of seminal events and primary sources. It allows students to look in depth at several issues from an era, draw conclusions as to how the democratic experiment functioned in each case, and consider the implications for the future. One consistent critique of the American educational system is that it is a mile wide and an inch deep. Johnston's approach serves as a corrective, giving students exemplars and allowing them to generalize from specific illustrative incidents. Taken at a pace of a chapter per month over the course of the academic year, students can see how American democracy was conceived and how it developed. Understanding grows as students build on background given in earlier chapters.

As an example, understanding of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s is built around earlier considerations of the impact of both slavery and of losing the Civil War on the American South. It makes clear that the roots of Jim Crow grew out of bitterness over Reconstruction, a time during which the circumstances for many blacks improved dramatically, while many whites felt a loss of status and control. This critically oriented approach allows for discussion of the views of both white and black Southerners as well as that of the northern Radical Republican reformers. In doing so, it gives an in-depth picture of the roots of the racial discrimination we continue to deal with today.

A variety of materials, both text and visual and presenting differing viewpoints, can serve to complement The Making of America, further clarifying concepts like democracy, nationalism, and patriotism. If our American experiment has produced some resounding failures and inequities, it has also produced a staggeringly diverse, multicultural nation with a degree of drive and idealism unequaled in history. To bring clarity to this, Johnston's book is an excellent starting point—but extension is helpful. Focusing on the Civil War/Civil Rights issue, the titles below provide a brief compendium of short pictorial informational works that can be used as further fodder for discussion.

When we look at the American adherence to black enslavement, it is instructive to consider its European roots, from which we inherited our attitudes and traditions. An excellent starting point is A Long and Uncertain Journey: The 27,000 Mile Voyage of Vasco da Gama (Mikaya, 2001). Aside from a cogent discussion of navigation, Joan Elizabeth Goodman lays out the basis of the European trade in black slaves, which certainly continues to impact our attitudes today. Addressing the American slave trade directly, James Haskins and Kathleen Benson's Bound for America (Lothrop, 1999) provides a clear, sequential outline of the fate of those captured in Africa for sale in the Americas. An excellent source for oral reports, this is a lucid and shocking work, beautifully extended by Floyd Cooper's graphic and compassionate paintings. Nothing could make the case for abolitionism more clearly.

In moving to the Civil Rights era, it is surprising to note how unaware young people are of the depth of hatred and intolerance blacks have faced in the United States. Without doubt, A Time for Justice (Teaching Tolerance, 1992), a 38-minute video on the Civil Rights Movement between 1954 and 1965, is a powerful, if distressing, vehicle for presenting the enormity of the situation to fifth graders on up. Covering the time period between the Emmet Till murder and the signing of the Voting Rights Act, the video brings home to students the necessity of fighting prejudice. Certainly parallels can be drawn to the current civil rights violations experienced by Arab Americans in the wake of both the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Patriot Act. Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle (Greenwillow, 2002) makes the point that, despite the actions of an increasingly isolationist government, we are an integral part of the world community, with more similarities than differences no matter what our cultural or religious backgrounds.

In a recent column in the Seattle Times, David S. Broder* noted that voting rates among Americans between 18 and 30 are barely half those of their parents, and that the 1998 National Assessment of Education Progress found that almost one third of high school seniors lack a basic grasp of the structure and operations of American government. Broder's conclusion, along with that of NAEP is that, "…schools have several advantages as labs of active citizenship." Schools are "…communities in which young people learn to interact, argue, and work together with others." This will happen if, and only if, we give civics and history their due, providing teachers and students with sound, thought-provoking materials representing multiple viewpoints.

Our job is to build informed citizens by taking our cultural myths and subjecting them to scrutiny and questioning. When standard texts don't do that, or give alternative voices short shrift, we must look elsewhere. Fortunately, trade books give us ample sources for an accurate presentation of the American experiment—flawed, imperfect, but still the world's closest paradigm for achieving liberty and justice for all.

*Broder, David S. "Maybe Nation Building Should Begin at Home." Seattle, Washington: The Seattle Times, February 16, 2003. Courtesy of the Washington Post Writers Group.