Teaching Civil War History

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Building off what Richard Rothstein was just saying there about the desire to know in this country, we're going to take advantage of the fact that this is a holiday and teachers are off from work by having a call-in to end this Martin Luther King Day show for a group of people who usually can't participate, and those of you are teachers. Obviously, you usually can't call in at this time of day. Here's the question. Teachers listening right now, how do you teach the cause of the Civil War?

You know, I am asking that question to your students of any age, and if you've been teaching for a long time, or maybe even if you're recently retired, how has the teaching of enslavement, of Jim Crow, of discrimination in our area, even here in the New York area in the North, and racial inequality generally changed over the course of your career? Has it become more sophisticated? Has it become deeper? Has it become emotionally with a different tone than it had at the beginning of your career?

Teachers, the phones are yours for the last 15 minutes today. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Teachers or recently retired teachers, how do you teach the cause or causes of the Civil War to your students of any age? How do you teach racial inequality in any era in US history, including today, to your students of any age? Has that changed for you as a teacher? Has the curriculum changed? Has your relationship with it changed? Has the way you communicate it changed over time during your career? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Teachers, history teachers, current affairs teachers, whoever's relevant to this, call in. Why do we frame it this way? Well, I'm sure you've heard Nikki Haley's widely criticized explanation of the causes of the Civil War. If not, here is her original 40-second answer.

Nikki Haley: I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn't need to tell you how to live your life. They don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.

We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.

Brian Lehrer: Without government getting in the way. We've talked about that on the show before that even when she amended the answer to say, of course, I should have included and said that the cause of the Civil War was slavery, she still came back to the bottom-line message of the era being that government shouldn't get in the way. Never mind that that's often used as an excuse for perpetuating racial inequality today.

Teachers, how do you teach the cause of the Civil War? Do you say slavery, and it's one word and let's move on? Or is it slavery and states' rights, as some people would say? Do you ever put it the way Nikki Haley put it there? Because the rest of the answer that we heard persisted in her revised answers. It was slavery plus all that stuff. We need to have economic freedom. We have to make sure individuals have freedom to be anything they want without government getting in the way.

Does government getting in the way come into play in your teaching of the Civil War or anything else about how your teaching has evolved over time, how the curriculum in your school district has evolved over time on Martin Luther King? How do you teach Martin Luther King? How much time do you spend on Martin Luther King before Martin Luther King Day? Do you say, content of our character, and you move on? Did you maybe do that 20 years ago, but now it's more complicated than that?

Teachers, tell us about how you teach the cause or causes of slavery, how you teach the causes of Martin Luther King, what causes he stood for, and anything else about racial inequality. How do you teach school Nikki Haley, even though she's not listening right now, she's campaigning in Iowa, 212-433-WNYC, and school everybody else on how you teach the cause or causes of the Civil War, how you teach the cause or causes of current racial inequality in our country today, how you teach Martin Luther King?

Let everybody know how this has developed over time in your own head as a teacher or in your classroom or in your district's curriculum. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Okay, teachers, you're up on how you teach what caused the Civil War, how you teach MLK, and how much any of that has changed over time in your head or your district curriculum. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. You can also text. Patrick in Long Island City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Patrick.

Patrick: Hey, Brian. How are you today?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Patrick: The only point I would make is I think-- I've been teaching for about 24 years. I haven't been in the classroom for about 10 of those 24 years, and I was a history teacher. I think that in the city, the city does a good job of providing the space for us to have racial conversations, social justice conversations, but I also live in Long Island and I find that the audience there is much less receptive to it.

I think that in the city we do a good job at addressing these issues, and there is a certain level of comfort in having those conversations and teaching about King and his legacy, teaching about racial justice. The challenge, I think is, you were talking earlier about the Black Lives Matter movement, when I would go to my kid's school out East, what I would find is there would be Blue Lives Matter flags, which not only just isn't appropriate in the school, but you would have that very visibly in the schools out East.

My question for you would be, how are the teachers out in the suburbs who face much harder pressures to not engage in these conversations, how are they doing it? Because I think in the city, by and large, we do a pretty good job at delivering those messages.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me ask you one follow-up question, Patrick. When you do teach out East, how do you navigate it? Black Lives Matter, that's a very current events issue, and Blue Lives Matter in response, whatever, but what about teaching King or teaching the Civil War if you did?

Patrick: I don't teach out East, but I think that if I did, I would just have to teach what the content is. I guess it would be up to the individual to live with those consequences.

Brian Lehrer: Patrick, thank you very much. Let's hear from-- Anybody who teaches on Long Island and wants to take up Patrick's challenge, 212-433-WNYC. Marilyn in New Mexico, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York, Marilyn.

Marilyn: Good morning, Brian. A pleasure to speak with you.

Brian Lehrer: And with you. Are you a teacher?

Marilyn: I am. I teach high school, world history and US history.

Brian Lehrer: How do you teach what caused the Civil War?

Marilyn: Absolutely the answer is slavery. There's no question about it. We look at primary source documents from the time, and that's the answer.

Brian Lehrer: How much time do you spend on it? At what grade level?

Marilyn: Oh, my goodness. For world history, we start with slavery, back at the beginning of civilization with Mesopotamia. We talk about prisoners of war. I wait for my students to say, "Well, miss, when did it become racial?" Then that opens up that conversation about the triangle trade and the problems that we then have had from there.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. Marilyn, thank you so much for checking in with us. Here's Sue Ann in Goshen, New York. Sue Ann, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Sue Ann: Hi. Brian, I'm a longtime fan, and thank you for covering this subject today [unintelligible 00:09:57] most appropriate day. When I was a teacher, that was 11 years ago, I taught 3rd grade in Goshen, which is a rural area. I would do a whole month unit on Martin Luther King. How I taught it was through leveled reading so that the different readers in my class would be able to read about him, get his message at a very young age and in a way that they could understand it.

Their writing was about Martin Luther King's life. I would read to them a biography of Martin Luther King, and they would have a writing assignment about Dr. King, which I would model for them. They needed to put some of their own words in it, but the message was that Dr. King taught nonviolence. In 3rd grade, I covered Gandhi. We talked about the Civil Rights Movement and Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges. It was incorporated in their social studies lessons.

For the whole month of January, they were immersed in Martin Luther King, in slavery, in the message of Dr. King of love, and how diversity enriched their lives. As 3rd graders, they were appalled at the fact that Jim Crow laws existed. I explained it to them in terms of the schools that Black children went to as opposed to white children and the conditions in those schools. They were horrified.

Brian Lehrer: Sue Ann, I'm going to leave it there just for time so I can sneak one more caller in here before the end of the show. Thank you for telling us about how you taught Martin Luther King to 3rd graders for a month. [unintelligible 00:12:11] in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, [unintelligible 00:12:13].

Caller 4: Awesome. Happy Martin Luther King Day. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Same to you.

Caller 4: Thank you. I just wanted to share really quickly. I have an amazing story, and Gotham actually featured a podcast with me. [chuckles] Just because I'm so obsessed to learn about the history of race in America, I got three National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. My second one was the history of slavery in Brooklyn. There are over 82 different streets in Brooklyn named after slaveholding families. That includes the lots, the New Lots train station, that's the last stop, the Vanderbilt, Bergen, and Bed-Stuy.

When you think about Bed-Stuy and you think about Stuyvesant High School being the most prestigious high school, who was Stuyvesant? Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New York, was responsible for making New York City the second-largest slave port outside of Charleston, South Carolina. New York City was a huge hub for enslaved individuals. When I was in elementary school, we were taught [unintelligible 00:13:16] the thing, slavery was down South, South was bad, and they came up North for freedom, Harriet Tubman.

Then I remember being in the 4th grade and breaking news, breaking news, that there was this burial ground of enslaved people that was found while they were trying to just build an office sort of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the City Hall.

Caller 4: Yes. We were in the [crosstalk] I remember--

Brian Lehrer: That's going to have to be the last word. [unintelligible 00:13:38], thank you very much as we are out of time for The Brian Lehrer Show today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum, with Zach Gottehrer-Cohen on A Daily Politics Podcast and Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. Happy Martin Luther King Day to everybody. Stay tuned for Alison.