It was so perfect, I didn't get it at first. Much of this blog, and my work around Social Justice and Social Studies in our schools, deals with the fact of cultural domination - in our textbooks, in our mass media, in our conversation, the very language we use when we converse and write. We tend to focus on big, very obvious examples - the burning of the Aztec histories and commentaries by the Spanish in Mexico; the destruction, by Christian zealots of the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans; digging up burial mounds to make parking lots, etc.
But I was so fixated on the big and the obvious that I forgot that cultural domination is always happening in thousands of little actions everyday. The insistence on English dominant instruction (an attitude which often views a student's home language as a problem and a drawback) for example, continues the subjugation of Spanish to the dominant culture's English. The thing to recall is that these culture wars are not finished. In order to substantiate itself, the ruling group must continue to subjugate the "other" culture, even long after shooting wars and invasions are over.
Several years ago, a renowned mural artist was hired by my principal to create a mural on the back wall of our cafeteria - auditorium stage. My school is 50% Latino, and about 30% Asian/Pacifca. He involved kids in his work and the result was a park scene with airplanes, smiling kids, swimming kids, balloons, etc. He did very little of the work himself, but let the kids plan and paint it. By adult standards, it wasn't great. It was too sloppy, too...child-like. some people liked it and some didn't, but most of the kids did.
One day, teachers planned a school-wide talent show at the school. A young white woman supervised the preparations, and decided that the mural should be painted over. So, without asking anyone, she had it done. This was not only thoughtless on her part - the destruction of a piece of community art for momentary convenience - but also an act of cultural domination. We might compare it to the wholesale incineration of Aztec literature by the Spaniards; the destruction of classical art by early Christian zealots; Taliban warriors recently wrecking several giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan; US troops standing by while museums in Iraq were looted
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Social Justice Classroom
Timeline. Maps. When you have a picture of Malcolm X up in your room (for Example), you show your solidarity with the kids and their community. If you have a picture of George Washington, for example, you are siding with the tradition that has dominated and exploited their communities. When you teach traditonal history, you teach about the heroes power and authority. Whole history works from the point of view of those who challenged power and authority.
"Yummy Srawberry" is the direct descendant of
The Clothes on Their Backs
This lesson is about the distribution (!) by continent of the world's wealth.
They will think about where their clothes are made, or where their shoes are made, and by whom.
They will realize that there is peoples' work in all manufactured goods.
They will figure out why all the work is being done elsewhere, and all the money ends up in White America and Europe.
In order to demonstrate the process that Columbus began, divide up 20 of your students to roughly represent the population distribution of the world's people. Then, pass out 20 apples to the 20 students, but in the following way:
12 people stand on the map of Asia. they receive 5 apples.
3 people stand on Africa. They get one apple.
2 people stand in South America. They get one apple.
2 People stand in Europe. They get 7 apples.
1 Person stands in North America. that person gets six apples.
The point here, which the students should understand, is that most of the people, 17 out of the 20, or 85%, live in Asia, South America, and Africa, but 65% of the wealth is owned by the three who live in North America and Europe.
Next, we will find out who is doing the work of making our clothes. It always surprises kids and holds their attention to find out where their clothes were made. So, have them look at the labels on their shirts, sweaters, and keep a tally of the various countries. You will find of course, that most (if not all) of their clothes are made in Asia, Central America, or the Pacific Islands. Now we come to the big point: most of the work to make our clothes is done in Asia, Africa, and South America. How can this be? Why is most of the work done by Africans, South Americans, and Asians, but all the money is in the hands of North American and European companies and rich people.
(The US statistics are even more suggestive.We'll deal with those on another blog.)
Is this fair? you ask the kids. Of course not! If your class is like mine, they will all want to move to North America,where the riches are! Why are things like this? How did they get to be this way? This is the logic of capitalism and its big brother, Globalization. There are a few simple rules in this "upside down world":
1. The things that people make do not belong to them. Neither does the money made by selling the things.
2. The person who "owns" the things gets to make money from them. Consider a Peyton Manning jersey that sells for $80 was made by someone who got 10 cents to make it.
3. Things are made in other countries (even though the unemployment rate among certain US socioeconomic groups is close to 30%) because workers in these countries get paid so very little. This is called "cheap labor." Often, the companies don't have to pay taxes - or pay very low taxes in these countries.
4. In these countries, environmental regulations are nonexistent or ignored by corrupt local authorities. this means that the companies can pollute the earth, dump poison waste into rivers, and destroy the natural world around their factories without having to pay any penalties or being told to stop.
5. Most of the workers in these factories are young women and children, because the bosses can bully and threaten them and force them to work long hours for very little money. These people often don't make enough to live on.
6. One quarter of a billion (250,000,000) children go to work each day instead of going to school. Of these, a large percentage (about 75%) are treated like slaves.
So,Review Questions
Where are our clothes made?
Why are so many things made in Asia, Africa, and Latin America??
There are lots of people in our city who don't have jobs, so why don't the companies give jobs to them?
"Why don't the people who do the work get the money?"
And the best question of all: What are we going to do about it?
As a matter of fact, one of my writing classes really did something about it.My students went around the school and read out facts about Nike and its abuse of workers around the world. We put up signs around the school and organized a "No Nike" day. Success was mixed. Several students told us that Nike shoes and "gear" were the only clothes they had. Now look at this short video which indicts another world-class and worldwide exploiter of labor - the Disney Corporation.
They will think about where their clothes are made, or where their shoes are made, and by whom.
They will realize that there is peoples' work in all manufactured goods.
They will figure out why all the work is being done elsewhere, and all the money ends up in White America and Europe.
In order to demonstrate the process that Columbus began, divide up 20 of your students to roughly represent the population distribution of the world's people. Then, pass out 20 apples to the 20 students, but in the following way:
12 people stand on the map of Asia. they receive 5 apples.
3 people stand on Africa. They get one apple.
2 people stand in South America. They get one apple.
2 People stand in Europe. They get 7 apples.
1 Person stands in North America. that person gets six apples.
The point here, which the students should understand, is that most of the people, 17 out of the 20, or 85%, live in Asia, South America, and Africa, but 65% of the wealth is owned by the three who live in North America and Europe.
Next, we will find out who is doing the work of making our clothes. It always surprises kids and holds their attention to find out where their clothes were made. So, have them look at the labels on their shirts, sweaters, and keep a tally of the various countries. You will find of course, that most (if not all) of their clothes are made in Asia, Central America, or the Pacific Islands. Now we come to the big point: most of the work to make our clothes is done in Asia, Africa, and South America. How can this be? Why is most of the work done by Africans, South Americans, and Asians, but all the money is in the hands of North American and European companies and rich people.
(The US statistics are even more suggestive.We'll deal with those on another blog.)
Is this fair? you ask the kids. Of course not! If your class is like mine, they will all want to move to North America,where the riches are! Why are things like this? How did they get to be this way? This is the logic of capitalism and its big brother, Globalization. There are a few simple rules in this "upside down world":
1. The things that people make do not belong to them. Neither does the money made by selling the things.
2. The person who "owns" the things gets to make money from them. Consider a Peyton Manning jersey that sells for $80 was made by someone who got 10 cents to make it.
3. Things are made in other countries (even though the unemployment rate among certain US socioeconomic groups is close to 30%) because workers in these countries get paid so very little. This is called "cheap labor." Often, the companies don't have to pay taxes - or pay very low taxes in these countries.
4. In these countries, environmental regulations are nonexistent or ignored by corrupt local authorities. this means that the companies can pollute the earth, dump poison waste into rivers, and destroy the natural world around their factories without having to pay any penalties or being told to stop.
5. Most of the workers in these factories are young women and children, because the bosses can bully and threaten them and force them to work long hours for very little money. These people often don't make enough to live on.
6. One quarter of a billion (250,000,000) children go to work each day instead of going to school. Of these, a large percentage (about 75%) are treated like slaves.
So,Review Questions
Where are our clothes made?
Why are so many things made in Asia, Africa, and Latin America??
There are lots of people in our city who don't have jobs, so why don't the companies give jobs to them?
"Why don't the people who do the work get the money?"
And the best question of all: What are we going to do about it?
As a matter of fact, one of my writing classes really did something about it.My students went around the school and read out facts about Nike and its abuse of workers around the world. We put up signs around the school and organized a "No Nike" day. Success was mixed. Several students told us that Nike shoes and "gear" were the only clothes they had. Now look at this short video which indicts another world-class and worldwide exploiter of labor - the Disney Corporation.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Two White Guys
History- Whose Story?
"What, were the natives blind?" - Eduardo Galeano
Anyone who writes or teaches history has a point of view. No one can include everything that happens; sheer volume makes that impossible. So historians need to be selective, and in doing so, they write their version of the past. First, see if you can identify the two white guys; then use some of the suggestions for lessons with your class.
White Guy A was born to money.
When he was 21, his father, a renowned stock manipulator and bootlegger,
gave him one million dollars.
White guy B's family was often broke. He lost his father,
a coal miner, to lung cancer when he was 7.
White Guy A went to 10 different prep schools in 6 years.
He was accused of cheating on exams at least twice.
White Guy B left school when he was 13 to work and help support his mother.
He was involved in his first labor action as a warehouseman when he was 17.
A served as an attorney for the infamous McCarthy committee.
He gained national prominence because of family connections.
B worked his way up in local unions, eventually becoming
a powerful union leader, who negotiated sweeping raises and benefits
for his rank and file workers.
Person A supervised the wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phone.
Person B was an admirer of King, calling him a great organizer.
A did everything he could to have Cuban leader Fidel Castro murdered.
B sent money to support Castro during the Cuban revolution.
Mister A's ideas were the inspiration for the infamous School of the Americas.
Mister B became a strong and persistent voice for prison reform.
A is remembered as a hero and inspiring leader.
B is remembered as a liar and criminal.
Who are they? The answer may surprise you, and if it does, think about why it does.
White Guy A - Robert Kennedy
White Guy B - James Hoffa
Hoffa, of course, was no angel, and Kennedy evidently came to have real feeling and sympathy for the victims of the American economy. But traditional history makes Kennedy a "good guy" and Hoffa a "bad guy." Whose point of view is this? Is there an anti-labor bias involved? Why are Kennedy's shortcomings usually explained away, and Hoffa's emphasized? In short, who is Telling the Story, and Why?
This video introduces us to the Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano, whose classic trilogy, "Memory of Fire," chronicles the history of native and working people in the Americas, and their resistance to the takeover by European colonialism. Listen especially to his take on immigration, among other things.
Monday, January 26, 2009
History's Asylum
The past leads to us if we force it to. Otherwise it contains us in its asylum with no gates.
We make history or it makes us.
- Marge Piercy
A useful book for anyone teaching Social Studies or History is 1491, by Charles Mann, because it highlights a crucial part of our work as teachers. Mann's book looks at the Americas just before the arrival of great numbers of Europeans. He paraphrases the traditional European view of "PreColumbian," or "Prehistorical" Native Americans in this way:
They lived close to Nature in a kind of primeval Eden, migrating, hunting, farming in an endless unchanging cycle. Most of all, this view goes, they did not disturb the natural world around them. Generations followed upon generations in this way, until the white men came and broke it all apart, and history began, for good or evil, take your choice.
The trouble with this point of view, as Mann points out, is the unchangeable quality of it all. Since history, by definition, is change, the Native American people, in this traditional presentation, had no history. Once Columbus came, history began. Mann goes on to paint a very different picture, one of people who altered the natural landscape to suit their particular societies, who developed cultures and told their stories, as we do now, to explain the world around them, and who passed through social and political upheavals, conflicts, technological change, and migrations, all before Columbus.
Perhaps it is in the nature of all dominant, conquering societies to write and promulgate history in their own image, and to destroy and trivialize those which preceded and might oppose them . Eduardo Galeano, in his Memory of Fire writes eloquently about the destruction by fire of eight centuries of Aztec and Mayan texts - histories and literature - by priests and conquistadores in Mexico. Slave traders made it a practice to "break" Africans before they came to the slave markets, to isolate them from others of their tribe, to beat and torture out of them any memory of Africa, their native languages, or their African names.
In quite another, more subtle and gradual way, this is what traditional social studies teaching does to our children of color, our young women, and our working class children. Sure, we teach them history, but we leave them out of it. It's as if they and their people are mere spectators, silent and passive. Who are the actors? Sure. Great White Men - the generals and kings, the prime ministers, the Presidents, the business people who amassed great fortunes. "Progress" (of the European race) or, by its other names, conquest, colonialism, subjugation, exploitation, is the context in which everything happens.
"We're taught about the Carnegies and the Fords and all the other millionaires, but not what working people do," said Dolores Huerta. James Baldwin called this a "criminal conspiracy" against young black children. For many years, African-Americans were taught that their people were slaves, victims, defeated and silent. For those same years, Chicanos and other Latinos learned that they simply didn't exist in "our" history. Asians learned the same lesson, and women, and working people in general. School is the place where this conspiracy happens. Teachers taught (and teach- remember the teacher in Salinas?) this, textbook authors wrote (and write) this, and the world at large carries it out. Taking away the past means taking away the present. Such history lessons are at once both the chronicle and the continuing practice of conquest and exploitation.
This all begs the question - how do we escape History's Asylum, or better, how do we teach our students to escape it? First, throw away your history textbook. Sure, it might have nice graphics, pictures, photos and the like. But don't use it, for several reasons. First, it has been homogenized, passed through a long and deadening process to get adopted. Such books have to satisfy everyone, including the most conservative and anti-progressive state school boards in the country. They are major investments for publishing houses, so they can't be too controversial, anyway. They are filled with the dead and unburied Myths that have sustained and justified the darkest deeds of the American nation, often ignoring, or glibly passing on, major moral issues.
Worst of all, the texts are a package, a closed, rectangular prism named "History." If we leave it as it is, the textbook is History's asylum, as the poet mentioned. History, the text tells us, is in this book, not in the world; it is past and set in type, not happening all around. The people in the book make history, and the rest of us read about it. History, above all is something to be studied, not lived or made. So throw the book away. Our project is to wake our students up and make history.
Lesson - Autobiographies. When did your family come to California?
Everyone makes history, not just Great White Men. Everyone has a history. Our students can realize their own place in history by writing their own autobiographies.
I give my kids a long rectangle of paper, folded into seven segments. Rolls of paper are good, or the old tear-off computer paper. Each segment has a title:
My Family. When We Came To California
How My Parents Met
What Happened the Day I Was Born
What I Was Like When I Was Little. First Day In School
The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me
The Scariest Thing That Ever Happened to Me
What I Want to Do in the Future
On each segment, then, the kids write and draw about that part of their own lives. There are several good things about this lesson:
- First, children,in order to find out about their own lives, must use their memories. They must talk to their parents and other family members. They need to consult archives - family pictures and records. (These should be photocopied and returned.)
- They are able to see that they are not alone in the present, but part of a past that includes generations of relatives.
- They'll have to use research skills, learn to interview, to write down what they hear, and to edit and make it part of their own story.
- The "California" question can be used as part of a larger historical question: Why do people migrate? Most of the time, it is in search of a better life, whether that means a chance to work and otherwise prosper. And some people, we have to point out, did not come to the Americas by choice.
In writing about themselves and their people in this way, children can come to see the significance of their own their own histories. They can understand that they, too make history, and are actors in it, not merely consumers or spectators of it. A good next talk might be to identify prominent events in local, national and world history that happened during their lifetimes and correlate their own stories with the stories of society at large.
In this attached video, check out the vicious, racist images of African-Americans in white popular culture. Malcolm X makes the point about the teaching/learning of history: "As long as you can be convinced that you never did anything, then you can never do anything."
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