YO-YO History
An Introduction
Several years ago I overheard a conversation between two
teachers about how one of them decided to teach United States History
chronologically backwards. At first, I
did not grasp the significance so I did not bother to even explore the
possibilities of doing something that contradicted accepted instructional
methodology. However, in the intervening
years I read Paulo Freire, Howard Zinn, bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, James Loewen,
James Beane, William Ayers, and others who advocate for social justice. They did not address teaching backwards
(except for Loewen), but I realized even more than I previously had that
schools were not very democratic places and that the curriculum I taught catered
to the maintenance of national myths.
So, what does this have to do with teaching backwards? It has a lot to do with it. But, before I focus on the method that I feel
is a compelling approach to teaching history, I want to share with you how
YO-YO evolved.
I became committed to trying to create democratic classrooms
and began to read volumes. The more I
read, the more I convinced myself that we are in a profession that promotes the
ideals and the dreams of the privileged and is highly supported by a corporate
culture that wishes for us to produce compliant workers. Having students think critically is inviting
trouble. I began to speak up and the
more I did so, the more I realized the consequences. I will talk about this in a later blog post.
It is not so much that I intentionally began to do things
that would purposely go against the local status quo but my teaching was
augmented because I agreed with the people I was reading and I knew that there
had to be a consistency between my philosophical beliefs about education and my
pedagogical approach in the classroom.
Essentially the two ought to be one and the same.
One of the first steps was to remove the district text from
the hands of my students as their primary resource. Virtually all United States’ History
textbooks are the same. They start from
the same place and “cover” the same topics.
They weigh about the same and cost about the same. But perhaps most importantly, they tend to
perpetuate national myths that are so important for the maintenance and
hegemony of a national culture dominated by a very small percentage of
political and economic elites. The focus
is on the distant past while the recent events get little more than cursory
attention. Students who study United
States’ history in high school are not really all that interested in venerating
the heroic exploits and wars initiated by dead white men. Yet that is what they are forced to endure
because school districts are under pressure from states to have their students
perform well on standardized, and in some cases high stakes, testing that are
based on lofty and idealistic state standards.
One reason for the focus on the distant past may be that we have to wait
for the dust to settle on recent history so we can get an “official”
authoritative version of the facts that will be acceptable to book publishers
and local school boards. Unfortunately, it apparently takes years for the dust
to settle. In many cases the dust is still swirling around thus creating the
environment for students to put on blinders to prevent them from seeing the
whole truth.
For example, a well-respected colleague of mine introduced
me to a great video, “The Panama Deception,” that shed light on the growing
symbiotic relationship between mainstream media and the government and how the
American public was lied to about our involvement in that 1989 invasion. I began doing research and came across
articles that were critical of the official versions being spread by the Bush
administration to the media and ultimately to the textbook industry that obligingly
printed a false picture of that event. I
want to focus on the Panama Invasion of 1989 to illuminate a point.
An historian is responsible for doing an incredible amount
of research from multiple sources to arrive at a better understanding of any
historical incident. The teacher then
presents the information to students or gives them the tools and the direction
to be able to do the research themselves.
There needs to be an analysis of the information and in class, engage in
critical dialogue. Typically, this does
not happen in a history classroom because many social studies teachers subject
their students to droll lectures, worksheets, and endless videos. If all you do is have students read a
textbook for information, lecture from the text, and give them a multiple
choice scantron test, you are teaching them “twigs” “Twigs” is a term I learned from James
Loewen. He says that most teachers do
not teach the tree but rather the twigs.
I like the metaphor. Here is an
example of what one district is doing.
This district is in the process of purchasing new textbooks
for American History classes so I decided to see what the books had to say
about the Panama Invasion of 1989. American
History, A Survey, published by McGraw Hill gives us this:
“In 1989, that led the administration to
order an invasion of Panama, which overthrew the unpopular military leader
Manuel Noriega (under indictment in the United States for drug trafficking) and
replaced him with an elected, pro-American regime.”
That’s all. One
sentence. Does it matter that the regime
that replaced Noriega was not elected but rather appointed by our government
and that members of the new regime were also suspected drug traffickers and
money launderers? Apparently McGraw
Hill doesn’t. Do you think the publishing company’s relationship with the Bush
family has anything to do with it?
Perhaps, but I think the reasons are deeper than this.
Another book, The Enduring Vision, published by
Houghton Mifflin puts it this way:
“In December 1989 concern over the drug
traffic led to a U.S. invasion of Panama to capture the nation’s strongman
ruler, General Manuel Noriega. Formerly
on the CIA payroll, Noriega had accepted bribes to permit drugs to pass through
Panama on their way north. Convicted of
drug trafficking, Noriega received a life prison term.”
Well, that is a little bit better, three sentences. Again, there is no reference to the fact that
while Bush was head of the CIA, he was protecting Noriega and paying him tens
of thousands of dollars.
The last book is, The American Pageant, also
published by Hougton Mifflin. Isn’t that
an impressive title? Sounds like a
rather elaborate Senior Prom. Let’s see
what they have to say about Panama:
“President Bush flexed the United States’
still-intimidating military muscle in tiny Panama in December 1989, when he
sent airborne troops to capture dictator and drug lord Manuel Noriega”
Hmmmm. What a
pageant!! One sentence and no explanation.
Nothing about how Reagan and Bush were funneling money to Noriega so the
Contra guerrillas next door in Nicaragua could use Panama as a staging area for
attacks on the Ortega administration.
This is unacceptable.
There is something fundamentally wrong with all of this
“twig” teaching. Here are three books
that are being peddled to school districts by these text mongers and yet all of
them provide our students with only a modicum of the truth regarding an event
that that Organization of American States condemned. On the other hand, A People’s History of
the United States, by Howard Zinn at least gives the invasion several
paragraphs and points out several critical issues that the other texts
conveniently forgot to inform students such as the thousands of Panamanian
civilians that were killed in the attack.
Maybe it is in our national interest not to tell students the truth so
they will continue to believe that America can do no wrong.
And, this is what happens.
Students read a textbook version of history that is filled with lies of
omission and if you, the teacher, do not take steps to fill in the holes, who
is going to suffer? Perhaps it makes no
difference to you. Apparently it may
make no difference with the students. In
an editorial for the New York Times (May
28, 2003) Maureen Dowd commented on the unsettling phenomenon that the many
of our youth are becoming reluctant to question decisions that are made by our
government.
“The
tactical efficacy and moral delicacy of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
solidified a trend: the children of Vietnam-scarred boomers trust the
government, and especially the military, far more than did their parents, whose
generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30."
… a Harvard poll found that 75 percent of college kids
trusted the military "to do the right thing" either "all of the
time" or "most of the time." Two-thirds of the students
supported the Iraqi war, with hawks beating doves 2 to 1.
Mr. Bush runs a
"trust us, we're 100 percent right" regime. So we've got a young
generation that wants to take it on faith. And an administration that wants to
be taken on faith.”
It seems apparent, then, that
textbook publishers can continue to leave out critical elements of historical
events in order to portray the government of this country in a favorable
light. There is nothing wrong with that
except the texts and/or the teachers also need to provide students with
alternative and, in some cases, disparate views. Of course, this is not going to be done
because textbook publishers realize that to print perspectives that challenge
official truth would mean less profit.
Essentially what they are doing is creating, what Walter Lippman calls,
‘the manufacture of consent.”
Lippman, referred to by many as
‘the dean of American journalism,” worked with George Creel during World War I
at the Committee on Public Information.
The main function of the Committee was to sell the war to the American
public. As a result of his experience,
Lippman realized how easy it was to “manufacture consent” of the public because,
in his view, the masses are victims of a system that expects and exhorts them
to attain an impossible ideal, participatory democracy.
“The individual man does not have opinions on all public
affairs. He does not know how to direct
public affairs. He does not know what is
happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen. I cannot imagine how he could know, and there
is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical democrats have thought, that
the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce a
continuous directing force in public affairs.” (“Making the Perfect Citizen” in The Phantom Public,
1925)
Students are not going to know any
better and the teacher whose only content knowledge comes from the text allows
for the myths to continue. John Dewey,
in his book, The Public and its Problems, contends that factual
information regarding events and governmental policy should remain as part of
the public trust and not be controlled or manipulated by private concerns. However, our textbooks are withholding
relevant facts and we are being intentionally manipulated by publishers who
choose to place their distorted agenda of perpetuating myth above that of
informing the citizenry.
I choose to have my students compare textbook versions of
events to the information we study.
Questions such as, “Why is the book not telling the whole truth?” are
commonplace. My response is, “Why do you
think the book is not telling you the whole truth?” This makes for some wonderful dialogue. The discourse that follows could possibly
label you though as some unpatriotic left-winger because you are asking
students to engage in critical thinking by challenging the official version of
history. For the school district it is
indeed “official” because they are the ones who purchase these books and then
force students to take a standardized test over the curriculum, which is based,
in some cases, entirely on a book. How
does this pressure to conform affect teachers who teach state standards and
district objectives by some alternative methodology? Can’t you still be in compliance without
having to rely on a book that perpetuates myths and is conspicuously filled
with lies of omission? An argument that many school districts will offer is
that they want all students to be reading the same text to even the playing
field. I guess the logic is that if
everyone reads the same book and the test questions come from that book, then
perhaps test scores will be acceptable and the school district can use these
scores to show the public that they are doing a good job. I am sure that I don’t want to play on this
game because the field is far from being even.
Instead, it is distorted, biased, and sometimes just wrong.
I do, however, keep copies of the district text in my room
for research purposes and for supplemental reading. They come in handy when I have students do
comparative studies. The comparisons of
textbook interpretations to alternative sources are intriguing. You can provide your students with myriad
resources that still comply with state standards and district objectives but
are much more stimulating and controversial than your textbook. I will get into these in later chapters
because now I want to relate all of this to teaching Yo-Yo history.
I did some research and did not find many references to
teaching backwards. One of the more
interesting ones is from a parent’s magazine in 1891/92:
“But, on the other hand, there is much to be said for the
view recently enunciated by the Emperor William, that children should begin
with their own times and read history backwards. We want to give reality to
history by showing that it is not something remote, to be found in books only;
we want to show that the life of each child forms part of history ; then we may
lead him on to see that the whole world is different for each man that has
lived… Not that I would put this into so many words, but endeavour, but
bringing the child's life into immediate relations with the history of his own
time, to help him to realise this as the reflective powers develop.” (Beale)
James Loewen, author of Lies My
Teacher Told Me, puts it this way:
"Teaching
history backwards from the present also grips students' attention. . . . Then
students are challenged to discuss events and processes in the past that cause
these differences." --pg. 310
Annette
Atkins, in an article from “Perspectives Online” suggests:
“I try to demonstrate
that knowing history helps us understand ourselves first, then to understand
our parents (and the generation relationship), then other ancestors, perhaps
our own, but more often our collective ancestors. The point isn’t to convince
the students that they stand at the bottom of a funnel, the inevitable result
of all that has gone before, but the reverse. We are who we are for complex
historical reasons. We make decisions in the present in particular ways and for
particular reasons. Both are true of people in the past, too. Knowing ourselves
helps us understand them and knowing them helps us understand ourselves—one way
or another.”
Finally, the Franklin Community School
Corporation in Indiana was the focus of a project entitled, “Backward
History: A New Application.” The author of the study was a teacher named
Michael Simpson. The article about their
project appeared in the Indiana Social Studies Quarterly in the autumn of 1983.
The methodology they practiced is essentially what I do. They started from the present, moved back to
a point in time, constantly making connections to the previous area of study. Part of their rationale was adopted from Jack
R. Frymiers’s 1955 article in The Social Studies, “A New Approach to Teaching History?” According to Simpson, “Frymier observed that
psychologists point out that learning is generally more effective when proceeding
from know to unknown, and what is more known, ‘knowable,’ and accessible than
the present and recent past? He asked,
‘Why not start with current, known events and proceed logically into
the unknown?”
The point in all of these examples
is that once students begin to see themselves as an observer and thinker about
what is going on around them, they may begin to understand themselves better
and, as a result, understand the past.
In an editorial by Andrew Schmookler (Baltimore Sun, June 1, 2003) we find
the following words, “What we learn about ourselves depends on the stories we
hold before our eyes.” What better place
to start than to read not just the “official” stories published by textbook
corporations about their interpretations of history but also alternative
stories that offer students additional insight about their reality. Simpson continues, “Therefore, students of
history will learn better if the history they are learning is related to the
newspapers they read, the documentaries and news they view on television, the
experiences of their family members or teachers, and to other similar aspects
of their lives.”
I believe a good part of my
presence in the classroom is to assist students to develop the necessary
critical thinking skills in order to bring their worldview, and ultimately my
own, into even greater focus. This
requires a commitment to critical pedagogy if a goal is to get students to
develop an ability to analyze recent historical events and then make the
political, social, and economic connections as you move backward and forward
through time. The world has undergone
some fundamental changes in the past thirty years, specifically the collapse of
the Soviet Union, and the United States is left as the lone superpower in a
uni-polar world. This makes teaching
Yo-Yo history all the more important.
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