A colleague recently dropped by my office to discuss a radio report she heard on her commute. The May 3, 2023 NPR report “History and Civics Scores Drop for U.S. Eighth Graders on National Test” had her wondering how the Freedom Center could support parents of middle and high schoolers who want to improve their students’ reading skills in history and civics.  My answer was – that’s a great idea! Here is information for parents who want to know more.

How do I know if my child is really “reading:”

To truly read a written text, you must be comprehending what is written. Pronouncing the words on the page doesn’t automatically equate to understanding the meaning conveyed by those words. You must discuss the text with your students to gauge if they are comprehending what they read.

Do you read all texts the same way?

No. You change how you read depending upon the text. You engage different reading skills and practices when reading a poem compared to reading a math story problem. You also employ different skills and practices when you read fiction versus non-fiction. Reading a novel and following character and plot development requires a different skillset compared to pulling important information from a newspaper article or chapter in a science textbook.

When students enter middle and high school, they have learned the basic skills and strategies for reading and comprehending texts across different genres. However, they do not yet have the reading skills they need to successfully understand the complex, discipline-specific texts required in middle and high school. Reading instruction cannot end in elementary school. Middle and high school teachers need the time and support to engage students with discipline-specific texts – and I’m not talking about textbooks. Students need to learn to read the type of texts they will encounter throughout their life.

What should students be reading to improve their history and civics literacy?

As the NPR articles states, “Teaching history is built on the foundation of reading comprehension.” We read to engage with the past. Of course, reading non-fiction texts is terrific. However, not everyone enjoys it. Non-fiction in smaller doses, such as content on websites, might have more appeal. Credible institutions, such as the Freedom Center, have texts about various historical events and people. Historical fiction is also a great way to learn about past societies.

Civics teaches us to be citizens in our participatory democracy. Therefore, we need to stay informed about the issues our country is facing. As the NPR report noted, “…we need to make sure our kids are engaged citizens, and that means they need to be informed with knowledge and the skills to do this work. And that takes every class.” Newspaper and magazine articles are essential reading. Books about civic engagement and social justice reveal how our system operates and how citizens make societal, political and economic changes.

Importantly, we need to teach students to identify credible sources. This is an essential civic reading skill. There is a lot of information out there, especially online, and not all of it is based upon facts and evidence.
Here is just one source that can help you judge the credibility of websites: https://thecollegepost.com/best-tips-check-website-credibility/.
Here is one about the credibility of sources in general: https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/credible-sources/.

December 10, 2021

As an African-American man in the United States, I have experienced discrimination and microaggressions in schools, both as a student and educator. I had the privilege of serving as a public school middle and high school Social Studies teacher for nearly a decade prior to enrolling at The Ohio State University to pursue a doctoral degree in Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education. One reason I care so much about equity in education is because I have never had an African-American male teacher or professor in my entire schooling experience (k-12, undergrad, and graduate school). Knowing that the education system is standards based, I have seen firsthand the harm that can occur to students of Color due to the fact that those standards are almost never developed, implemented or taught with their academic success and personal development in mind.

Teaching diverse, marginalized and historically resilient student populations has always been a desire and priority for me throughout my professional career. Currently I supervise and teacher preservice educators as they prepare to enter the classroom for the first time as a lead teacher. Aside from teacher education and preparation, my research passion, similarly to Dr. Love’s, centers the intersections of race, social justice and education.

The very fact of freedom’s incompleteness (no one is free so long as others remain unfree) necessitates action directed at changing society. Freedom, therefore, is ultimately a practice, rather than a possession or a state of being. – Michael Hames-Garcia

I find it fitting to lead with this quote, as a central theme in Dr. Love’s keynote address and abolitionist work is that freedom is NOT justice. A situation can be done justice, but freedom is an ongoing struggle. Love bluntly proclaims that to be Black in America means to be in a constant state of survival. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in America’s public school system.

During my teaching tenure I worked in schools that served predominantly Black and Brown students from middle to low-income communities. As an educator, I witnessed countless injustices; from over-disciplining of dark bodies, to deficit labeling of students of Color based on standards that center whiteness, to teachers negatively judging parents and entire communities of color, though having little to no knowledge of the cultural values and histories that make up that community. However, my time in the classroom was also, and more importantly, filled with joy as my students and I learned for each other by sharing stories and reflecting on our lived experiences. In so many ways this a microcosm of what dark people in this country must do each and every day; acknowledge and navigate marginalization and oppressive systems, while choosing to focus on our strength, resiliency and joy.

It is extremely frustrating being committed to and engaged in abolitionist teaching, yet knowing the kind of radical change Love imagines must be taken-up by the vast majority of white teachers who are currently teaching in schools to have any chance of widespread success. As I continue to explore my roles and responsibilities within abolitionist education — as a Black man, an educator and a doctoral student — an issue I wrestle with is knowing and agreeing with Dr. Love that you don't have to be Black to do this work (speaking about abolitionist teaching). However, I also know from learned and experiential knowledge that teachers of color help students of the same race or ethnicity perform better academically (Goldenberg, 2014). Never experiencing the joy and affirmation that comes with being taught by someone who I see as having similar social identities as myself did have a negative impact on my k-12 schooling experience.

A 2021 Columbus Dispatch newspaper article highlighted that 94 percent of current Ohio educators are white. Furthermore, 86 percent of students in teacher training programs in the state of Ohio are white as well, these numbers are similar to national trends in teachers and teacher education. Educational inequity is not only related to curriculum, funding and discipline, but also connected to who we are encouraging to become educators. In her keynote Love made the point that often Blacks aren’t part of the curriculum, and efforts to introduce a more diverse and represented curriculum is often met with resistance, this all contributes to the educational survival complex that Dr. Love names, critiques, and resist through her abolitionist work.

Teacher Education Programs, Working for Change or Maintaining the Status Quo?

“Teacher education programs are typically designed to prepare middle-class, European American candidates to teach middle-class, European American students in mainstream schools. But these conceptions often do not fit the shifting student demographics in U.S. schools, particularly in urban communities. The dominant enrollments in many of these schools already are students of color and from poverty” (Gay, 2005, p. 222)

Even though the quote above is from a 2005 publication, I can tell you that nationally this is still very much the case in teacher education programs. In her book, We Want To Do More Than Survive, Love writes “My goal as an educator, teaching overwhelmingly White students, is to get white students to question how they are going to teach children of color with limited understanding of who these children are, where these children come from, their history, why and how they matter to the world, who loves them, why they should love Blackness, why they should want to see dark children win, how to support their quest to thrive, and how it is intentional that future teachers know so little about dark students” (pg. 126-127).

Teaching and learning with these goals in mind is not centered in the majority of our teacher education programs. Institutions of higher education, and teacher education programs specifically, are steeped in white normative thinking and ideals, Love refers to this as the teacher education gap.

Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash

As Dr. Love highlighted in her keynote, abolition is about eliminating not restructuring. The need to eliminate, not restructure extends to teacher education programs as well. Reimagining teacher education is a twofold endeavor: one, completely rethinking the required curriculum, practicum experience and colonial logics of learning, knowledge, research that typically shape teacher education programs. This would be vital in moving the white pre-service educators who are in the pipeline already closer to what Love calls being a co-conspirators rather than ally.

Secondly, given that in 2018 students of color represented 53% of the total student population, but teachers of Color only about 21% during the same time period (source: National Center for Education Statistics), teacher education programs must dedicate time, effort and resources to the recruitment and retention of preservice educator of Color. Love spoke of the coded language used in k-12 to alienate, oppress and push out dark folks based on their appearance, noting professional, inappropriate and distraction as examples of such language. Consider the message that sends to young Black children as they decide rather they should pursue teaching as a career path.

Abolitionist Educational Research

A significant idea presented in Love’s keynote and book is that of freedom dreaming. She describes freedom dreaming, simply as “dreams grounded in a critique of injustice” (Love, 2019, pg. 101). As I reflect on Love’s powerful ideas for reimagining what our k-12 schools could be for our students of Color if we adopted abolitionist teaching as the standard, I’m drawn to thinking about how educational research, especially that which aims to study marginalized communities, could be reimagined with abolitionist principles in mind.

Patel’s 2016 book Decolonizing Educational Research traces the genealogy of coloniality in knowledge production and education research, positing that “education research, though both meaning and matter, has played a deleterious role in perpetuating and refreshing colonial relationships among people, practices, and land” (Patel, 2016, pg. 12). There are similarities and overlaps in the works of Love and Patel, they both draw on the scholarship of great thinkers such as; Gloria Ladson-Billings, W.E.B. DuBois, and Kimberlé Crenshaw to inform their scholarship. Furthermore, both scholars acknowledge and push for the complete dismantling and radical rethinking of the systems they critique, k-12 education and education research respectively. Patel questions “whether educational research could, in fact, become something more than colonizing, whether an entity borne of and beholden to coloniality could somehow wrest itself free of this genealogy” (pg. 4). Patel calls for answerability, and Love for abolition, but they both interrogate the colonial logics of learning and knowledge.

In my freedom dreaming, I think about what abolitionist education research would look like. What would the implications be for all education scholars, practitioners, and researchers, regardless of race, if institutions prioritized educational research that critiques, rather than perpetuates, injustices in education. As an educator and emerging researcher, I must be cognizant of how my actions and research agenda can undo coloniality and create spaces for ways of knowing that honor the histories and experiences of people of Color, this can serve as a first step towards abolitionist education research.

From the beginning, the U.S. placed value on educating its citizens. As colonies became states, public school laws were passed. As the border pushed westward, public schools were erected in newly formed settlements. In fact, the one-room, frontier schoolhouse became an iconic symbol of America’s past.

In the mid-19^th century, Americans decided to fund public education for all, choosing to “establish and sustain the world’s most universal and popular system of education” (Mondale & Bernard, 2001). It was a grassroots movement that created a large-scale system of local public schools funded by local tax dollars. One might say, of the people, by the people, for the people. Today, all 50 states have compulsory education laws for children.

Hinkletown, Pennsylvania (vicinity). One-room eight grade schoolhouse. Source: Library of Congress

Teaching the American Identity

Americans did this because they understood that a democratic nation would only survive if its citizens were educated. As our new nation struggled to find its identity, “citizens came to believe that schooling was a public good essential to the health of the nation” (Mondale & Bernard, 2001). The problem was deciding what to teach. What would students learn from this education? What information, understandings, skills, and values did one need to become a productive member of civic society? These questions continue to be debated and shape public education into the 21^st century as the politics of education plays out in local school boards, state legislatures, and federal institutions. Currently, two Ohio House Bills targeting public education are in committee. Ohio H.B. Nos. 322 and 327 aim to prohibit what and how teachers teach in public schools and state agencies. The debate continues.

I argue that at the heart of this debate is our struggle to find an American identity. Who are we and what do we believe? The U.S. has been in constant evolution shaped by changing borders, immigration, industrialization, technology, and globalization. We’ve progressed in our understandings of science, math, literature, and the social studies. Education has evolved. Research has not only changed what we teach, but how we teach. With a better understanding of how humans learn, teachers are better equipped to maximize understanding and skill development. We’ve come a long way from the lessons taught in the one-room schoolhouse.

History for All of Us

The evolution of this country includes the diversification of its citizens. Remember when I said in the mid-19^th century, Americans decided to fund public education for all, and talked about publication education of the people, by the people, for the people? That isn’t entirely true.

In the mid-19^th century, there were approximately 3.5 million enslaved people of African heritage in the country and strict literacy laws prohibiting their education. Not to mention the free Black population in mostly northern states who faced discrimination in public education. And let’s not forget the approximately 300,000 American Indians who resided in U.S. states and territories. As native nations fought to maintain sovereignty, others were forced into citizenship. Many native children were required to attend boarding schools with the intent of “Americanizing” them.

Did you notice this mistake? Probably not because you were likely taught U.S. history from a white, male, European perspective. For years and years, this was the norm, but we are evolving. Educators now recognize the need to include multiple, diverse perspectives when analyzing the past. This has led to a broader understanding of our American heritage, and better represents the history of all citizens. History is a mixture of everyone’s experiences and perspectives. While there is factual evidence of people, places, and events; there often isn’t one correct way to interpret them. As James Baldwin said, “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” We are not a perfect nation with a perfect past. What matters now is that we learn from it and strive for a better tomorrow. This requires public education to teach history from multiple perspectives and include the beautiful and the terrible.

Ohio H.B. Nos. 322 and 327 do not support this evolution. When you read them (here and here), this becomes apparent. The bills prohibit certain concepts from being taught and aims to tell a version of America where sexism and racism did not impact our modern society. The bills also discourage educators from discussing these concepts in the classroom. The wording of the bills leaves much to interpretation and could dissuade teachers from including diverse perspectives when analyzing past and current events. They want us to focus on the beautiful but not the terrible.

Evolving for the Better

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what it never will be. - Thomas Jefferson

Acknowledging the words of Thomas Jefferson, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what it never will be,” I suggest that our American identity value an evolved, educated, participatory citizenry. Thus, public education should teach the information, understandings, and skills necessary to become a productive member of civic society. The U.S. is a representative democracy, so we need citizens who value inquiry and will question our leaders and the status quo. In the age of the internet and social media, we need citizens who value facts and evidence and can identify credible and non-credible information. Because we are a vast and diverse country, we need citizens who value diversity and seek out multiple perspectives. Since democracy is of the people, by the people, for the people, we need citizens who value communication and who discuss, debate, and deliberate with one another and then advocate for issues they believe in. Finally, because we are products of our history, we need citizens who value the lessons of the past and will apply them in creating a better tomorrow for all Americans.

Of course American is evolving. The world is evolving. The question is, will we evolve for the better? Will we learn from the past, assess our values, and move towards progress? Or will we ignore our mistakes and retreat into a past that was less accommodating to diversity and multiple perspectives?

Mondale, S. & Bernard, S. C. (Eds.). (2001). School: The story of American public education. Boston: Beacon Press.

Read Part 2: Why We Oppose OH H.B. No. 322 Pt. 2: Social Studies for the 21st Century→

Read Part 3: In Teachers We Trust: Why We Oppose OH H.B. Nos. 322 and 327→