Biases in History and Marginalized Children in the Classroom

It is said that History is written by the winners, suggesting that History itself is highly subjective; what we choose to study and deem important enough to learn are the events and people which were able to take hold in the imagination of people who write history books. But facts are objective, and there are countless "small" events and people who have been forgotten--unstudied, undocumented, and unappreciated.

It seems logical to focus on history of "people like us," which is why for so long history has really meant the history of power--of the dominant culture at any given moment: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, then Europeans (and their empires) from the Renaissance until the present. But this "logical" view leaves out countless people, many of whom are a lot like us--if we consider them carefully. Maybe what's valuable isn't really who was powerful, but the common humanity of the disparate cultures of the world. What can we learn about ourselves from learning about others?

In the 20th Century historians seemed to begin to explore previously ignored aspects of history: folk art (and folklore) , subjected peoples, women, obscure cultures, and more. Indeed, I remember learning about the great trends in European history (which includes the mainstream European-influenced culture of the "New World" after European settlements took hold), but I was also exposed to indigenous cultures in school and took classes in junior high school that my parents did not: African history, Asian history, pre-Colombian American history. This trend of re-assessing history is still in progress, I suppose.

This is an admirable effort, I think, but can also make history seem vast, as it is vast. One challenge when teaching children is to present history as something that can be comprehended. That is, how deeply can a teacher cover the history of, say, China's centuries-long history in a way that is not overwhelming and dull? Maybe that's an unrealistic goal, but there are ways to introduce American students to the world and culture of China in ways that are not simply as a "cultural tourist." Maxim suggests integrating math literature, and social studies through a lesson about Chinese tangrams (p. 117). This kind of lesson does not attempt to give a complete view of China's complex culture or history, but presents a snapshot in an authentic, engaging way that is more sophisticated than the "we're going to eat fortune cookies today" kind of lesson that presents Chinese culture as an exotic and slight curiosity.

Exploring history with a wide net is intrinsically related to acceptance of all children in a classroom. And, more than "acceptance," it is the teacher's legal and ethical obligation to accommodate every child that he reasonably can. As we discussed in class, physical barriers must be removed for children who will be denied access. But there are other, less visible, accommodations that must be made as well. One year I worked in classroom with a child who was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, meaning that his understanding of social cues and norms was less developed than other children's. He was in fact very bright, but his disability meant that the lead teacher and I had to make certain accommodations for him to succeed: explicit, one-on-one directions, extra help organizing his work, and sometimes behaving in a way that might have looked--to an outsider--as though the child was getting "extra slack" regarding behavioral expectations. There was a lot of trial and error, and not everything we did worked great, but we knew our obligation to accommodate this child.

I've also worked with many English Language Learners, and they present some challenges to teachers as well. Children can fool teachers by seeming more fluent in English than they really are: kids can be quite adept at "playground English," but sometimes get lost in the world of academic English that we might assume they understand. And if kids do not understand, it's often not enough to just ask "Do you understand?" because many kids are anxious about appearing confused.

In my class, I would help these kids by modeling instructions. In my experience, that seems to help a lot because simply telling children how to do a task may not really explain it. (Actually, this is probably good for the native English speakers as well; most people benefit from a demonstration as well as mere explanation.)

Another thing to do is to have intensive word work and intentional vocabulary instruction for these kids. There are English words that kids who seem fluent do not know and cannot hear at home, so they must be taught these words in a way beyond simply hoping that they'll "get it" through osmosis. I hope I am cognizant enough to be able to serve the ELLs in my charge.