Posted on 02/18/2007 7:39:16 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Joe Lawless is a white history teacher at George Washington High School in the city's Far Northeast, and this year the main course he teaches is African American history.
"I actually have learned more than I think I've taught," said Lawless, a 16-year teaching veteran, who grew up on an almost all-black block in North Philadelphia. "A lot of those questions I've had about African Americans and my relationship with African Americans have been answered. It's given me a lot of understanding."
Lawless embraces the Philadelphia School District's mandate - the first of its kind in the country - that high school students take an African American history course before graduating. Harry Knight, a black history teacher at the same school, which has a diverse student body, disagrees.
"It's a good idea to have it. Forcing it was a bad idea," Knight said, suggesting that it be an elective. "My first-period class, where they are predominantly Caucasian, they're like, 'Why isn't it multicultural?' I agree with them."
Such debates among teachers and students are quietly going on throughout the 173,000-student district, which experts say remains the only urban school system in the nation to require such a course for graduation.
But there have been no vocal protests similar to those when the district endorsed the mandate in June 2005. Even then-House Speaker John Perzel (R., Phila.) entered the fray, saying students first should master reading, writing and math.
The mandate's supporters argued that African American history had been neglected for so long in a district where nearly two-thirds of the students are black that a required course was the only way to ensure a proper education on the topic.
Opposition dissipated as the course was rolled out last year on a smaller scale. This year's 10th graders are the first to come under the mandate. About 11,000 students are enrolled, including 1,100 juniors and seniors taking it as an elective.
Some still quietly oppose it.
"It remains a sore issue with a lot of parents," said Miriam Foltz, a vocal critic two years ago whose son will take the course next year at Central High School.
Others who were concerned at first now like the course.
"It's going great," said Joe Putro, head of the social studies department at Central, an academic magnet. "Teachers are really getting into it. The kids are really getting into it."
Putro was worried that another mandated course would limit students' ability to fit in other courses. But, he said, Central now allows students to take a major course over lunch. It also permits them to split the course over two years.
Dana King, a lead academic coach in the district and coauthor of the curriculum, said complaints had largely dwindled because people had seen that the course was not being presented in a way that would cause division between the races.
"They looked and said, 'Well, wait. They're not even talking about race.' This is about culture... . It is about the human experience from the perspective of the Africans who came to the Western Hemisphere from the 15th through 21st centuries," she said.
The course uses the textbook African-American History by lead author Darlene Clark Hine, a professor at Northwestern University, but draws on lots of other material. It begins with a six-week segment on Africa, covering ancient Egypt, Ethiopia and other areas, and proceeds to the present day. It is delivered in six segments, each beginning with a prompt or question.
Next year, lessons on the Caribbean and Philadelphia black history will be added, King said.
At George Washington, most students in Barbara Fried's African American history class support the requirement. The class had about equal numbers of black and white students, and other races.
"It's good for all cultures to learn, just to see what we've been through, see how we rose in life, who helped us get out of this slavery," said Evan Gardner, 15, a black student.
But Eijaz Mulla, 15, who is part Indian, said he would prefer to double up on math courses. Diana Rodriguez, 15, a native of Spain, would opt for European history.
"I'm interested in the kings, the queens, Russian history. I like African American history, but I think it's a sad history, about being slaves," she said.
Other students said they, too, found some course matter upsetting, but thought it should be taught.
"You've got to understand that that's the past... . It's very different from how it is now," said Rakim Robinson, 16, who is black.
Officials from the district parents' group and teachers' union said they hadn't received complaints. Neither has the NAACP, said J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter.
"That's a good sign," he said.
The only blip he knew of occurred at Masterman, an academic magnet. Some parents and students, including his son, complained about a teacher who was unprepared. The school changed teachers, he said. Masterman's principal did not return a call for comment.
Some district leaders still wish it were an elective.
"I believe it's an important part of history, but I think that everybody should get a broader sense," said Greg Wade, president of the Home and School Council, the district parents' group.
About 80 high school teachers are giving the course. District officials said they did not have a racial breakdown. At George Washington, three are white and three black.
"The kids asked, 'Why is a white guy teaching this class?' " Lawless said. He answered: "It's not who you are but what you are and your motivation behind teaching it. I want to present history factually in a way that communicates an understanding of people."
Lawless, who volunteered to teach the class, has attended some of the district's summer and Saturday training for the course. The training is optional, and teachers are paid for it.
As he prepared, Lawless, who has a Temple University history degree, said he thought: "These are people I've never heard of before."
Experts were unsure why more districts haven't followed Philadelphia's lead. Some suggested that African American history had been infused into regular courses much better than it had been in the past and that many large, urban districts were preoccupied with raising standardized test scores.
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a lobbying group for big-city districts, said more should follow Philadelphia.
"Motivation is a big factor in educational success," he said, "and other districts might find that requirement could spur greater motivation."
But Samuel Wineburg, an adjunct history professor at Stanford University and an expert on the teaching and learning of history, doubted that assumption.
"A new curriculum label is a cul-de-sac," he said, "that can easily mislead us from focusing on the most pressing problems of our most impoverished schools."
The Course At a Glance
The course is divided
into six segments, each beginning with a prompt or question.
Segment 1: How can we begin the study of the African-American (Africana) experience?
Segment 2: How did Africans preserve and affirm their way of life and use their identities as a means to resist enslavement (1420-1820)?
Segment 3: What were the similarities and differences in the practices of self-determination of Africans in the United States and their counterparts in the western hemisphere (1820-1865)?
Segment 4:How did Africans use their new geo-nationalist identities (African-Americans, Jamaicans, Haitians, Cubans, Ghanians, etc.) to resist racial segregation, colonization and imperialism (1865-1914)?
Segment 5: How did African-Americans make sense of and participate in international movements (1905-present)?
Segment 6: How does our study of the Africana (African-American) experience help us reexamine how we learn history and reshape our view of contemporary humanity?
To see the full course curriculum, go to http://go.philly.com/afamhistory
To see the curriculum for the district's African American history course, go to http://go.philly.com/afamhistory
Contact staff writer Susan Snyder at 215-854-4693 or ssnyder@phillynews.com
Wow. That's really racist. What about Chinese history? The Arab history? Mexican history? There's a lot of different races in this country.
Why don't they just demand AMERICAN history again? They've actually thrown that one out!
I think this should be an elective. Making it a required course for graduation is off-base.
Why just black history month? When are the PC nazis going to demand Muslim history month, or Gay history month? I do not understand how singling one ethnic group out for special recognition equals equality.
Why do they "quietly" oppose it? The first Amendment allows them to speak up loud and clear.
If the schools are singling out one race for elitist status, it's unconstitutional.
Egypt is part of the Mediteraannean culture, not African- Americans.
Because they'll be labeled racist if they vehemently oppose it.
Islam and homosexuality are a choice. Those should be left to the parents. Schools should teach only academics.
As an American institution paid for by all Americans, it should stick to American history. They should, at the very least, be teaching their students about the historical documents that influenced and direct our country.
Sounds good until the course itself is examined.
Judging by the segment titles it is pretty clearly a course in Marx's view of history as much as it is about Africans.
Will they speak at length at how Africans sold each other into slavery and how slavery and other barbaric customs are practiced on that savage continent to this day? Didn't think so...
their leaders knuckled under to the enemies
they were enslaved
they came to America
They were freed
their leaders knuckled under to the Democrats.
That's hardly shocking for public schools.
Citing the official US Census of 1830, there were 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners. -"Selling Poor Steven", American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90
Perhaps the group that had the strongest vested interest in seeing the South victorious were the black slaveowners. In 1830 approximately 1,556 black slaveowners in the deep South owned 7,188 slaves. About 25% of all free blacks owned slaves. A few of these were men who purchased their family members to protect or free them, but most were people who saw slavery as the best way to economic wealth and independence for themselves. The American dream in the antebellum South was just as powerful for free blacks as whites and it included the use of slaves for self-improvement. They bought and sold slaves for profit and exploited their labor just like their white counterparts.
Richard Rollins
BEGIN QUOTE: Abolitionist assertions that the bondsmen were frequently inadequately clothed, underfed, and driven to death are economically unreasonable. Masters wished to preserve the health and life of their slaves because a sick Negro was a liability and a dead Negro was worth nothing. A rough plenty prevailed on the average plantation. “The best preventive of theft is plenty of pork,” was the advice of a Virginian.
Slaves probably fared as well in the enjoyment of the necessities of life as did most of the free laborers of the country. One of the most respected of all Northern critics of slavery, Frederick Law Olmsted, wrote that the Southern bondsmen lived in quarters quite as adequate as those of most mill or mine workers elsewhere, and that the slaves were perhaps the best fed “proletarian class” in the world. He also testified that they worked less than did free laborers.
Incomplete statistics reveal that the slaves averaged somewhat higher sickness and death rates per thousand than did Southern whites as a whole. But the slaves were from all indications as healthy and long-lived as white common laborers in the United States before the Civil War. It was general knowledge at the time in Louisiana that the slaves were better off in these respects than were the thousands of Irish immigrant laborers engaged in clearing land and digging drainage canals on the sugar plantations.
The planters were reluctant to commit their expensive chattels to this dangerous work, but preferred to hire free laborers, whose loss by death, sickness, or injury cost nothing. A careful study of the figures on a group of 875 plantation slaves whose records are preserved indicates their average life expectancy at the time of birth to have been longer than that of the general population of such cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia during the same period. An authority on urban slavery concludes that the medical care, health, and welfare of slaves in Southern cities were superior to the care, health, and welfare of the free Negroes; and the outstanding work on the life of Negroes in the North at this time shows that they fared no better in such matters than did free blacks in the land of slavery. END QUOTE
Booker T. Washington.
BLACK SLAVEOWNERS
http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm
Child slavery today in West Africa?
http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/99ja/child.html
Slavery throughout history
http://www.freetheslaves.net/slavery_today/slavery.html
To support it is racist. "Blacks only."
Let's put it this way. I'm a pure blood Welsh that's an American citizen. Where's my Welsh history month? Without my ancestors working the coal mines, there wouldn't be a prosperous nation today. What about my heritage? If I'm cut, do I not also bleed?
I believe the argument goes, if you don't have economic power you can't be a racist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.