Serving History to High Schoolers

On Monday my US History students will write their first Unit Test for the course. The title of this unit is, The Pre-Columbus Era and the unsettling settlers. Two quotes from two different and distinct professionals – one a historian and one a philosopher – but both prophetic professors – come to mind for me as a teacher of History:

“…the historian has been trained in a society which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.” – Howard Zinn

“…one has to separate the elitism from the honest acknowledgment that some people have more opportunities than others, some people have more privileges than others. And the question becomes how you use, deploy, those privileges, and how you use your privilege in such a way that it is in some way enhancing and empowering for those who are less privileged than you.” – Cornel West

In the later quote I think West not only refers to tangible and physical privileges and resources, such as money, houses, cars, but also education, rights, rights to education, so on and so forth.

So, the historian, then, and I think we are all historians in some shape or form, is not to look at history, or the past, as merely a time-line of events, but as a living document and a tool to assist in enforcing cultural and societal transformations and revolutions that reach across divides in race or economics. (insert protest sign: PASS THE HEALTH CARE BILL, DAMN IT!)

Here’s a bit I wrote and read to my class before their weekend of studying:

America
A word, a place, a name, an empire, a land
discovered
that’s what history tells us, but once
uncovered
we ask ourselves whose history is the history to
believe.
Some say our European ancestors were the ones to discover this
New world, this land of gold, but we can’t let the executioners
deceive.

America

MIGHT we take a closer look at the evidence of the land
itself
instead of them big ole books on the
shelf
we would find this land was once connected to our Asian
brethren
and through the Ice Age they moved with hopes of expansion and
settlin’
Check the DNA

America

ESKIMOS, Iroquois, Chactaws, and
Cherokees
Men, women, and children from these and other
societies
lived with the land. It was a brother, a sister, a tool, a
necessity,
without it, existence for them was nothing but a
catastrophe.
Never sell your land

America

RIPELY at the same time, the same era, another people began to
awaken,
from the age of the
forsaken.
Rebirthed in the spirit of the Ancient Greeks and
Romans,
a movement began sparking societal
explosions.
With confidence and optimism to better themselves, the people stood up
and stood out
and to the Popes and Bishops they would
shout;
a change in life was on the
horizon
and a new world they would soon be
devisin’
Santa Maria

America

INDEED, a change, a new world is what was
craved
but let’s not get
swept away,
was it religious freedom
or a King’s pleasin?
or a gold rush that compelled the Europeans to
push through
to this “new” world.
With open arms the Taino and Arawak
greeted
and like Gods Cortes and his men were
treated.
Like candy from a
baby
There were too many resources not to
stay, baby.
Dona Malinche

America

CULTURES collide and to the
victors
goes the
spoils.
Disaster in the new world went from simmer to
boil.
Hotter than
hot
what’s a truth, what’s
not
mass murders, forced labor, and chemical
warefares,
left millions dead that’s what the truth really
bears.
With a new Spanish name came a cross
That does not see the land where them Taino lived
Or those Aztec dwelled as a spiritual place, only
a place of
gold
and a tangible resource to
hold.
With a heart so
bold
to the Conquistadores their arms they were forced to
fold
but their courage will live forever, truth be
told.

America

AGAINST all odds of canonized thought here you are with a million and
one details to unravel
to un-earth,
to plant a seed
in your mind and your
heart
to better understand,
not the book,
but the look,
the look,
the look,
that look, that long-ago
look of Montezuma
as he saw his “god”
arrive
and later at his
demise
and that long-ago
look of
Isabel,
who sat there saying,
“oh hell”
not Columbus again, he’s a jerk,
that long-ago look
of the many sides of voices
and souls
of a past,
that may not be our own,
but that speaks to us
through this present day place we
all know
A-M-E-R-I-C-A

America

Happy studying knuckleheads…