Language Police

Diane Ravitch’s book The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, follows the tragically humorous tale of textbook publishing, adoption, censorship, and testing in America and how what started as an honest effort to correct the wrongs of racial and gender bias has now ballooned into an idiotically impossible attempt to create school history texts that offend none and give all an equal voice. As I read this brilliantly obvious book I began to list in my head the very problems with school texts mentioned. One specific example comes up again and again in many, many school history texts. This problem is one of modernity. The problem of modernity seems to be a ditch that many textbook companies cannot seem to drag themselves out of. For example, the text that I am currently using in class makes reference to the rise of the two party system in American political history under the tutelage of Jefferson and Hamilton. I have no problem with this reference. These two men held great influence in this area of American political history. What I have a problem with and what is lost on the minds of the influentially naive minds of my middle school students is the comparison made by the text and the modern political parties, the Republicans and Democrats. The text draws a direct, unwavering, and absolute comparison with the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans of the 1790’s and the Republicans and Democrats respectively of the 21^st Century. There is no possible way to make the absolute statement that the Republicans of today are the same political party as the Federalists of the 1790’s, but that is precisely how it is delivered to the students who read this text and without proper historical guidance from a properly educated history teacher that is all they will know.

Chicago

Chicago, the “Windy City.” A city that has been glorified and vilified by historians and fictional writers alike is a city like all cities, with stories to tell. One such story from the period during and after WWII is the great cities housing battle between tenant and landlord. In the Journal of American History, Laura McEnaney chronicles the back and forth battle between tenants struggling to make rent payments and landlords and owners trying to make a profit on Chicago’s east-west running Elm Street. The stories she uncovered during her research are both fascinating and maddening. From the single young woman living in a make-shift room of a basement to the families living in an apartment who challenged the overcharging of their landlord each story throws off the myth that everyone in America was working hard toward the same goal, victory. When in reality people are people and some people will take advantage of a situation even if the situation is war. I would love to visit this area of Chicago walk the same streets and see the same buildings as the people who lived in them and made the cities history.

Kansas and the Great Depression

The above picture was taken by Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-, photographer for the Farm Security administration during the Dust Bowl/Great Depression. During this period the US government hired photographers to document American life during Great Depression. Many of these photographers captured everyday activities of average Americans. Many of these pictures chronicle everything from migrant workers in the fields of California to soup kitchen lines in New York. The picture above captures one such Great Depression activity. But what is actually going on? Please contemplate the questions below while you analyze the photo.

1. What possible activity is taking place in this photo? List a few possibilities.

2. Who is being helped and who is the one giving assistance?

3. What are they discussing? Develop a possible dialog for the two individuals using call outs.

Citation: Farmer signing a wind erosion agreement. He will receive twenty cents an acre for listing a certain percentage of his total acreage. Dodge City, Kansas.
Digital ID: fsa 8b27108 Source: intermediary roll film

To use this in class you the potential teacher will need to prepare the students with the necessary background knowledge of the Great Depression and conversely the Dust Bowl. Upon completion of this task you could bring in this picture and others taken from the Library of Congress covering the Great Depression/Dust Bowl website and have students critically analyze them for different information. Alternatively, you could use this picture to introduce a lesson or unit on the Great Depression or Dust Bowl.