History, Emotional Objectivity, and “A Class Divided”: An Election Day Classroom Fantasy
Tuesday, 4 November 2008 Clay Burell 
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Body Language: Blue-Eyes in Front, Brown-Eyes in Back
Preface: What I Learned from the Comments on My “Portrait of the Teacher as a Young Racist” Post
I was surprised that my story of anti-black racism in the American South drew strong reactions in the comment thread from readers in New Zealand, Australia, England, and regions of the American Mid-west (where there were no African-Americans, but there were Native Americans).
I start with this point to urge Americans and non-Americans to at the very least watch the film linked below. It’s one of the most remarkable moments in education I’ve ever seen. And it should resonate on a global, and not merely American, scale.
A Day for History
It’s November 4, 2008, an Election Day in the US that, barring a miracle or a crime, will live as long as human history does.
It makes me regret that I’m not teaching US History this year, and able to share this hopeful teachable moment the way I shared the hopeless US invasion of Iraq when teaching World History in 2003.1 So consider this little post a fantasy of what I would somehow squeeze into my syllabus this week – which I also fantasize someone reading this post might do in the real world.
It has to do with an online documentary goodie that I’ll deliver at the end of this post, but first, a little background from a great book:
“Emotional Objectivity”: A Paradox
Toward the end of his must-read Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen writes:
When two-thirds of American seventeen-year-olds cannot place the Civil War in the right half-century, or 22 percent of my students reply that the Vietnam War was fought between North and South Korea, we must salute young people for more than mere ignorance. This is resistance [to " 'learning' isolated, incoherent, and meaningless data"] raised to a high level. Students are simply not learning even those details of American history that educated citizens should know. Still less do they learn what caused the major develpments in our past. Therefore, they cannot apply lessons from the past to current issues.
Unfortunately, students are left with no resources to understand, accept, or rebut historical referents used in arguments by candidates for office,2 sociology professors, or newspaper journalists. If knowedge is power, ignorance cannot be bliss.
Emotion is the glue that causes history to stick. We remember where we were when we heard of the attack on the World Trade Center because it affected us emotionally. . . . As textbook critic Mrs. W. K. Haralson writes, “There is no way the glowing, throbbing events of history can be presented fairly, accurately, and factually without involving emotion” (Loewen, 342-3). [Emphases added.]
Linger on the paradox in that last line. In essence, it argues that without emotion, historical objectivity is a fallacy, and this goes against the popular conception of objectivity as a dispassionate stance – “Present all sides and let students come to their own conclusions.” While some history teachers I have known and worked with understood that “all sides” (yes, a problematic concept) can be presented with the emotions attaching to those respective sides, but without crossing the line into indoctrination, more have mistaken this tightrope-walk for a breach of the objective ideal of the profession.
Loewen and Haralson, though, claim that without experiencing the emotions of history, students find it irrelevant and boring, and really don’t learn it more deeply than is necessary to pass the class. Garbage in and out.
The Connotative Maelstrom of a “President Barack Hussein Obama”
Without getting too deep about all of this – I swore I’d keep this post short – just look at all of the strands of major themes in U.S. history woven into that title: President Barack Hussein Obama. Race and racism. The legacy of slavery. The challenge of Islam and post-9/11 terrorist fears. Intermarriage and single parenting. Black liberation theology. FDR and the Great Depression. JFK in an African-American Camelot. Bobby Kennedy. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jim Crow. Now factor in the race against McCain, a Vietnam Cold Warrior. On and on go the tropes attached to this man, and back and back into US history go all the attendant hopes and fears. It reminds me of a long-ago post in which David Warlick plays with the idea of teaching history backwards, from the present to the past. All of these issues could begin with explorations of the Obama presidency, and trace the causes of its controversy that make it so historical.
This is more than a “teachable moment;” it’s a full-blown teachable year.
But I’ll stop there, confess again my envy of all US history teachers worldwide, and move on to deliver a plug to a documentary that PBS Frontline makes available to us all, online, for free. It’s called:
A Class Divided
If you take no other recommendation from me ever in your life, take this one. I had read about this famous lesson before, and about the documentary film, but had never watched it myself. So I just took a break during this post to watch it with my wife, and it jolted me in ways text couldn’t.
This third-grade teacher put the emotion in history, and judging by the film, taught her third-graders a lesson that changed them not “until garbage out,” but for life.
From the PBS FRONTLINE site:
This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE’s history. It is about [Jane Elliott,] an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives. . . .
[O]n the night of the day that Martin Luther King was murdered, [Jane's] memories and experiences had coalesced into an idea of how she might give her third-graders a sense of what prejudice and discrimination really meant.
Jane took a deep breath and plunged in. “I don’t think we really know what it would be like to be a black child, do you?” she asked her class. “I mean it would be hard to know, really, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves, wouldn’t it?” Without real interest, the class agreed. “Well, would you like to find out?”
The children’s puzzlement was plain on their faces until she spelled out what she meant. “Suppose we divided the class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed people,” she said. “Suppose that for the rest of today the blue-eyed people became the inferior group. Then, on Monday, we could reverse it so that the brown-eyed children were inferior. Wouldn’t that give us a better understanding of what discrimination means?”
So I’ve said enough. If you do watch it, I’d love to read any thoughts in comments. The social engineering aspect of the lesson is particularly gnarly. After seeing its results, though, and hearing the views of the townspeople about it, is this something you think should be used in classrooms around the world? Have you any stories of such a thing, or lessons similar to it?
Whatever the case, here’s to Jane Elliott, a new hero in my teaching pantheon.
- And any Surge Enthusiasts out there, please note Petraeus and other generals are far from sharing the blithe forecasts of Bush, McCain, and others in Washington. Several bombings this week in Iraq show how fragile that peace is. [↩]
- For more on this angle, see yesterday’s post on the correlation of successful fear-mongering campaigns to voters’ educational levels [↩]
- On Carrotmobs and Election-Stealing: An Edu-Activism Fantasy
- Another Free US History Resource to Put Textbooks to Shame: PBS’ “The Presidents”
- Three Uses of Diigo in the History and Language Arts Classroom
- I Can’t Make Educational History – But We Can: “Networked Learning” Class Update
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Tags: elections08, obama, psychology, racism Print This Post
No. 1 — November 5th, 2008 at 5:03 am
A Class Divided is an epic. Imagine as an educator making as much of a splash with not just your own students, but thousands of others.
There are several amazing aspects to it…one is that the “definition” of “race” used in the class is about as scientifically accurate as any. In other words, it is not scientific at all, merely an arbitrary division based on an observed and fairly imprecise characteristic.
I have used it in college classes and in freestanding anti-racism workshops. I think it benefits most by a fairly detailed watching. Stop and start. Catch the phrases “It made me feel like a king, like I was the King.” Wow. There’s nothing that conveys the sense of privilege even the lowest-class white could feel in a racialized society. When you feel like crap cuz you’re poor or female, you still have race. And then it goes the other way. i used the video once to explore gender categories, privilege, oppression with an all-girls high school soccer team…and all-white, by the way. One of the team members had uttered a racial slur against a member of another team, in an emotional moment. Emotional? That’s where this stuff lives. The consequence of the slur was the team spent a few hours with me on the subject of race. Anyway, we worked on the video from a gender point of view first, then got to the racism. Really landed with the young women. There are few richer, deeper resources out there.
Run it with kids in classrooms? It’s been done a fair amount, but these days I’m not sure it would get past the ethics issue.
I could write pages on this stuff.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Jeffrey,
Interesting. I read somewhere recently about a teacher who drove the arbitrariness of racial categories home by having students go to a census-type website in India, which classified social divisions so markedly differently from what Westerners are used to.
I agree with you about the “stop and start” approach, and think it holds true with most video in the classroom. I’ve driven many a student crazy with the pause button, but the conversations, as you say, focus on details in ways a straight run-through can’t match.
There’s a lot more to say, but I’ll stop by saying I’d love to see your workshops. They sound intensely good.
Thanks for stopping in.
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No. 2 — November 6th, 2008 at 8:09 am
A quote from Elliot near the very end really struck me, in her hope that one day this exercise would not be necessary.
Last night, I think we finally saw that dream become a reality – or at least become much closer to one.
For the first time in my life, I am genuinely proud to be an American.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Morgante, you’ve probably seen the news about the KKK woman, recruited online from Oklahoma to join a Louisiana chapter, being murdered today for trying to back out of her initiation. And the other news about the New York high school students who, out for some fun “beaner-bashing,” killed an Ecuadorian immigrant today.
Still some rivers to cross, it seems.
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No. 3 — November 6th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Hi, I just had to respond to this one, telling a little story from my own school experience. I was a pupil in Norway in 8th or 9th grade, I guess I was about 13 or 14 years old, and we were learning about South Africa and apartheid. What the teachers did to us to make us feel apartheid was to divide us into a small group and a large group. The small group was representing the white people in South Africa, and was supposed to eat all good stuff while the large group, representing the black people of South Africa was watching.
What it did to us was giving us that feeling of unfairness, but it also left us puzzled. We found it worse to be white than black in this situation, because the left-out people were there and seeing us having what they had not. What we learned then was that we couldn’t understand how the white people of South Africa could stand having it all while the others had nothing.
What I understood when I grew up is that it is much more difficult to have it all and deny others the same right, if you are faced with “the others”. And in order to change some of the unfairness in the world it might be a good idea to force the upper classes to see the rest of the inhabitants of this world.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Inger, your last remark hits close to my take on why the have’s can live with themselves when so much is at the expense of the have-nots. They don’t “see” them closely enough at all.
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No. 4 — November 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Once again, you amaze me. I had heard about this experiment in one of my ed courses and in a sociology course. We actually did a modified version of it in the sociology class with similar results.
I think it should be incorporated in every classroom, ed program and faculty and staff program out there. Why it isn’t is the question. I do understand why it is not used in its original format in the classroom now, but there has to be a way to do a similar experiment to drum home the lesson of racism and discrimination.
Thank you so much for posting this. Your students are so fortunate to have you touch their lives.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
JBT, interesting input from others in this thread about how it can be done today. But it’s mind-boggling that this hasn’t become as routine in schools as, say, “Spirit Week” or other schooly traditions. It really does seem to be such a simple, cheap educational remedy for such a deep social ill. I guess we chalk it up to placing unruffled feathers among the reactionaries as a higher priority than social justice.
On the bright side, it’s good to see that the lesson seems to live on today, if only in pockets, puddles instead of seas.
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No. 5 — November 12th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Clay,
Another intriguing post. In the secondary setting the exercise works best with with a detailed watching of the film. Not to act with cowardice but reenacting it opens the school to a world of problems. It can be done. The junior high of one of our local feeder schools puts on this lesson every year. They hold a parent meeting, send home letters, and focus on pre and debriefing to minimize any potential damage. Within this context it can be done. I’ve watched these videos years ago and they still powerfully effect me. I watched them this time with my twins who are seven. There reaction was anger towards how can people be that stupid to treat one another that way. I hope they always feel that way.
Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Off-Campus Jurisdiction and Sanity
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Hi Charlie,
You make a good point about age-appropriate timing for this lesson. I read somewhere recently – in an article about sex education – that students tend to stop listening to all adult advice around the age of 11 or 12. Primary years seem best for reaching students with this lesson. The sense of fairness (child-speak for “justice”) is strongest then, if I recall my child development courses correctly.
Nice to hear from you, Charlie. I loved picturing you with twins (I didn’t know!), watching the video together.
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No. 6 — November 12th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I am an intern teacher in a high school in north Texas. Most of the students are African-American and Hispanic. Most of the students I saw were, literally, bouncing off the walls excited about the election. While I was sitting in the back of my classroom waiting for all the freshman students to quite down for class, my mentor teacher got up in front of the entire class and said, “Guys, please be quite! This is school and we do not talk about politics! Now open your notebooks and study for your test.” I was in total shock! What a wasted learning opportunity. As a future teacher, I couldn’t imagine going through the entire day and not talking about the election. The teachers said that classroom discussions would just lead to outbursts and confrontation. But isn’t it the teacher’s responsibility to control a discussion? It seemed so ridiculous. I truly felt for my students, minorities and whites, who just wanted to talk about one of the biggest days in history. Just thought I would share. I guess this is what I get for being a liberal, college female in a conservative, republican state.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Shannon,
Reading that teacher saying, “This is school and we do not talk about politics! Now open your notebooks and study for your test” just killed me.
Not talking about politics is itself political. Talk about irrelevance. Sheesh.
I follow the politics of the Texas Board of Education pretty closely, since their decisions affect textbook adoption in most other states. And they’re intensely political, as the stacking of creationists aligned with the Discovery Institute shows. The irony is galling.
Good luck down there.
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No. 7 — November 12th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
[...] said. I hope it puts the emotion in history for you as it did for me. It’s tragic how emotionless schools can make such an intense [...]
No. 8 — January 19th, 2009 at 7:50 am
[...] of this post is taken from a 2008 post on my older [...]