Black Migration to the North: Teaching Suggestions & Resources

Sometimes it is important to address basic questions about our society today--things we tend to take for granted. Isn't that one of the points of studying history, after all? To illuminate how we got to be what we are?

Growing up in the Chicago area, I have always known that Chicago was racially divided and that blacks lived predominately on the west and south sides of the cities. The city has changed in dramatic ways since I was a child (most notably with the rise of a large Latino community throughout the greater Chicago area) but there are still sharp racial boundaries in Chicago. (Check out this AMAZING map --also below--for details. And see the list at the end of the post* for similar information for the rest of the country and other U.S. cities.) How did this happen? And why?

As I mentioned back in October in this post, students should know that slavery existed in the North as well as the South. So there have been African Americans in the North from the beginning. But the numbers grew dramatically beginning in the 1910s with what has become known as, "The Great Migration." The movement of black Americans between 1910 and 1930 from the rural South to Northern cities represented the largest movement of black people since the slave trade.  Approximately 1.5 million blacks made this move. And between 1940 and 1960, there were another 3 million who did so.  Just as slavery created a unique African American culture, the Great Migration created a new urban black culture.

The decision to leave the South was influenced--just like immigration--by what historians sometimes refer to as push and pull factors. Push factors were those that tended to support leaving the South; pull factors were those that attracted blacks to come to the North. The Chicago Defender, a newspaper for African Americans, highlighted stories of blacks who had "made it" in Chicago, inspiring greater numbers to leave the South. The Defender was founded in 1905 and is still published today. Lots of blacks wrote in to the Defender to get advice and assistance. You can use some of these letters with your students to illustrate the kinds of issues migrants faced. See Letters to the Chicago Defender - from History Matters. I have also a few on this handout, which I put together originally to go along with a lecture.  You can also use the sources on that handout as an in-class activity. For example, ask students to read them and consider questions such as the following:

• What does the writing tell you about the level of education of the writers? (interestingly, while there are clearly some grammatical and spelling errors, there is also a certain kind of eloquence that I don't always find in student papers!)
• What do the letters to the Defender suggest about work ethic? about Blacks willingness to work hard in a system in which the traditional paths to success had so often been denied?
• What do the quotations from Richard Wright and from Lucy Jefferson suggest about race relations in the North? And for Jefferson, what do they say about how those relations changed over time?

See also these sources:

• What life was like in the North sources - from History Matters
• Letters from resettled Southerners - from History Matters
• Resources on Chicago and the Great Migration from the Library of Congress

Once they arrived in the North, the experiences that greeted a rural southern people could be daunting. The noise, hustle and bustle, the smokestacks of the urban industries, the big buildings--and the weather! If you were lucky, you arrived in good weather. But even a late spring arrival (as those of us living in Northern cities know all too well) can mean winter jacket weather. Which of course, the migrants did not have.

I like to use the paintings by Jacob Lawrence as a way to "tell the story" of the Great Migration or--how it was sometimes referred to at the time: the 2nd Emancipation or the journey to the promised land.  Jacob Lawrence is an African American painter.  He was 23 years old when he painted the first panel of what became a series of 60 paintings, known as the "Migration Series." They are marvelous to see in person, (which I did when they were first shown together in 2008). Normally, half of them are at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the other half at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Currently, they are being shown all together in New York, so if you are anywhere near there check it out. Fortunately, you can see all of them online at the Phillips Collection website or the MOMA site wherever you might be. There is also a youtube video:

Alternatively--and this is what I like to do--is assign students to read the captions that Lawrence wrote for each panel. The captions and paintings are excellent tools to describe not just the who, what, when, where and why of the Migration, but the feelings and emotions as well.

For biographical information about Jacob Lawrence, see the Whitney Museum of American Art or the Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence virtual resource center. And see this story from NPR on the current exhibit on Lawrence's migration series in its historical context.

The other reason I like to use these paintings is because they create a perfect segue into a discussion of the creation of the urban African American culture I mentioned above. Though Lawrence painted his series in 1940-1941, he grew up in Harlem during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. (He was born in 1917, so he was a little young). His paintings were said to be inspired by the poem of Langston Hughes, "One-Way Ticket."(See here for the poem, and also a link to a larger collection from Chicago's Newberry Library about the Great Migration. You can also link here to download a recording of Hughes himself reading the poem.) Or I also like to use one of Hughes's other poems, "The South."

I probably don't say it often enough in this blog, so I'll say it now: history is one of the humanities. And the humanities include art, literature, and music. Teaching about the Harlem Renaissance is one of the great opportunities to connect with your Language Arts teachers down the hall. (It is also one of the topics that turned me from an English major in college to a focus on history, ultimately majoring in American Culture!)

One of my non-teaching passions is music, so I'm always looking for excuses to expose students to music they likely don't know and that has historical significance. One of my favorites for this topic, "Down in Mississippi." I post the lyrics up on the screen while playing it.

• Pop Staples, "Down in Mississippi" 
• or this more contemporary version from his daughter, Mavis Staples, "Down in Mississippi" (lyrics for Mavis's version here).
• Alternatively, check out "Times is Gettin' Harder"

Here are just a few more references for you to expand your lesson on the Great Migration to the Harlem Renaissance:

• excerpt from Langston Hughes's autobiograpy, The Big Sea (which is a great read, by the way...check out the whole book.)
• a link to links, and the lesson they came from on readwritethink.org
• Resources on the Harlem Renaissance from the Library of Congress
• Lesson from PBS: The South, The North and the Great Migration: Blues and Literature

With the events of Ferguson this year, and the Black Lives Matter movement (see yesterday's article from the Huffington Post) it is especially poignant to me that I feel the need to follow a lesson on the Great Migration with a lesson on race riots. The Chicago race riot of 1919, the East St. Louis riot of 1917, the Tulsa riot of 1921.... I used to conclude my lesson on migration with just a brief lecture about the Chicago riot of 1919, and conclude by suggesting that while such riots eroded the "myth of the Promised Land" by demonstrating that life did not become automatically better by moving to the North. And it is a critical point to come back to when you get to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, as race riots will once again rattle across Northern cities. Today, I'd be inclined to develop this into a lesson of its own. See here for a good starting place, from the SHEG (Stanford History Education Group).

In order that this blogpost doesn't go on too much longer (and because my kids will be wondering soon what is for dinner!) I will leave you with this parting question about the intersection of history and the present: recently, there has been a reverse migration of African Americans from Northern cities "back" to the South-- what does this tell us race and American today? Here are a few articles to give you the background on that trend (remember, whites are moving out of the cold, snowy North, too!):

• "Many U.S. Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend," March 2011 - from The New York Times
• "Why African-Americans are moving back to the South," March 2014 - from The Christian Science Monitor
• "Black Migration is Now from North to South," March 2014 - from Black Entertainment Television

* From the beginning of this post, here are the websites where you can find racial maps of other regions:

• for the whole United States
• for many other U.S. cities (I'm including the link that includes the link to maps about immigration, because they are really neat, too!)
• other interesting demographic maps
• Maps from University of Illinois at Chicago on Great Migration -  (Also check out their fully conceived unit on the topic here.)

The Roaring 20s and Its Dark Side

Students seem to love it when you get to the 1920s. It seems so glamorous to them.  But there is more doom and gloom, I think, in the twenties than they realize. I usually begin my unit on the twenties (which I combine with the Depression of the thirties) with the quotation below from Woodrow Wilson. It is eerily prophetic in light of the Red Scare and race riots of 1919:

Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of the ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. Conformity would be the only virtue, and every man who refused to conform would have to pay the penalty.

Mary Simkhovitch, the founder of the New York settlement house, Greenwich House, had a similar observation, but after the fact (the quotation is from her memoir published in 1938):

There were two great evils facing us in 1917. One was to go into war, and the other was to stay out. Whatever the outcome, war was bound to bring in its train not only loss of life and the destruction of property, but also new social alignments, a re-evaluating of customs, habits and outlooks, a redistributing of wealth and power.

Of course, both of these quotations address the year or so just after the war, which is technically before 1920. But the problems perceived continue into the twenties. So one way to begin is to set up this dichotomy of the 1920s:

Or this note I found in my files is also useful:

So then (after a day on the Red Scare) I spend a day or two on "Fords, Flappers & Fanatics."  And the fourth "F," films. This involves a collection of brief readings, a bit of lecture and some video clips (see below) about different aspects of the 1920s. See here for a worksheet you could use to do this. For the sources the students need, see below.

To find your own, check out the Digital History website has a good starting place for all kinds of resources about the 1920s (and every other topic in U.S. history, if you haven't seen this resource before). And another teacher, John D. Clare, maintains a website rich in overviews, including this one of the 1920s.

The sources I use:

• For the "Ford" box, I have usually given a brief lecture (5-10 min.) about Henry Ford and the Model T. I don't have it in a handy, shareable form, but it came from notes I took from an article by Roderick Nash, "Henry Ford: Symbol of an Age" which you can find here. The article points out the irony that a man who was as nostalgic and committed to "traditional American values" as Ford was also responsible for popularizing the automobile which so profoundly changed society. He was also profoundly antisemitic. He owned a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which published a series of
  
  articles called, "The International Jew," and later, the infamous (and fake) "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." (You can read more about this in the Jewish Virtual Library.) Both works blamed the world's problems on Jews, and echoed many of the ideas later espoused by Adolf Hitler. In fact, Ford received the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle from Hitler on the occasion of Ford's 75th birthday.  This was in 1938, when Hitler's views were widely known. Hitler greatly admired Ford. Check out this photo of Ford receiving the honor. Read the info there, too. I didn't realize this, but it mentions that Ford is mentioned in Hitler's, Mein Kampf, and a portrait of Ford hung in Hitler's office. 
• The political cartoon to the right comments on how the cheap price of the Model T and creating new models regularly led to Ford's success and the auto's proliferation.

For the "Flapper" box, check out these sources:

•  "Me and My Flapper Daughters" - wonderful reading about a man describing his daughter. Use your best judgement because the reading talks about smoking cigarettes and alludes to what goes on in cars when men and women date. It may or may not be appropriate for less mature students. But it can lead to some great discussions about life today. I can imagine a father writing a very similar thing today. I have included a few discussion questions at the end. This would work great as a read aloud, or for students to read on their own.
• Here is another reading on flappers I found you may prefer. It includes an excerpt from the above.
• And here is a really good powerpoint I found online comparing the "Gibson Girl" to the flapper. This could easily be its own lesson, along with this resource from Firstladies.org.

For the "film" box:

•  I use this speech from U.S. Senator about concerns about the movie industry - I have included 3 versions here: the first is probably longer than necessary, but at least you've got the whole thing. The second version (p. 3) is edited to be shorter. And p. 4 is even shorter. I cut parts and included some vocabulary, making it workable for middle schoolers and/or weaker readers. Or if you just want something shorter.

You might also want to actually show some 1920s film clips and incorporate some music. (How can we teach the Jazz Age without playing any jazz?!) The youtube videos below are somewhat repetitive of each other but do a good job of depicting the "roaring" part of the 20s.

• To Live in the 1920s - this one is a nice overview with music. (5:57 min.)  
• Flappers in the 20s - this one is good for giving students a sense of the style, music, fashion, dancing and the changing role of women. Keep in mind this is for the white and the wealthy. (6:24 min)
• 1920s Dancing (2:13 min)
• This one is kind of silly: lots of crazy 1920s inventions (4:43 min)

For "Fanatics," I focus on the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in new areas of the country.

• Here is a decent site to read more about that. 
• Check out this chart to see how the KKK grew dramatically in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois and declined in the South. If you use it in comparison it to the growing cities of that region, students will be able make the connection that to the KKK expanding from an anti-black organization to an anti-immigrant one (remind students that that many of the "new" immigrants of the 1880s-1920s were Catholic and Jewish). 
• More info on the Klan of the 1920s here and here and here.
• And check out this recent blogpost from Slate's history blog about the 1920s membership application. This would be a great primary source to examine with students.
• You can also use this quotation with students, from a speech attributed to Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans:

"Our unity is threatened by hordes of immigrants . . . who bring foreign ideas and ideals into our land. Two things must be done: first, we must stop influx of foreigners; second, we must through education, bring all people to common program of acting and thinking."

I also usually like to spend part of a period discussing what I suspect is not as widely taught as it should be: the 1924 Immigration Act, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act. Check out the chart here that depicts the quotas. And read here for more background. I often teach this as a conclusion to my late 19th century/early 20th lesson on immigration and nativism. But even when I do, I bring it back up in the 1920s. It's also useful as a reminder when you get to the Holocaust and need to explain why the U.S. didn't do more to help the Jews of Europe.

To conclude this lesson, help students connect the dots between the items below:

• rising urban population
• increase of automobile, movie industry
• increased immigrant population
• prohibition (I bet there's a good clip in Ken Burn's series on Prohibition)
• increase of crime
• revival of KKK, esp. in North/Central U.S. where the immigrant population is
• changing fashion, music, styles, social mores
• changing role of women

World War I: Teaching Suggestions & Resources

Full disclosure: I am WAY behind where I intended to be by now. If I were teaching a full year U.S. history course, I'd be at the Cold War by now. But I am not, and I really hate to skip things. So I am going to continue marching forward, with the hopes of picking up the pace enough to still make it through the Gulf Wars by June.

The U.S. officially entered World War I ninety-eight years ago today. So this is a good day, I think, to do my one and only post on World War I.

Another disclosure: I have never particularly liked teaching World War I. Most topics that I don't like to teach are topics that I don't know as much about. I have always found World War I rather complicated because--duh--it is a WORLD War and involves the history of so many other nations and empires. Oddly, I don't have this problem with World War II, which I love to teach about. And I love to teach it because I find it so interesting. Because I find it interesting, I have read a lot about it. And as a result, I know more about it and my teaching of it is better as a result.

So you'd think, with the 100 anniversary of World War I, and all the great books and articles that have come out recently about it, I'd be reading more about World War I. But no, I have always had a fascination with World War II, so recently I went out and bought David M. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

And guess how the book starts? With a prologue titled, "November 11, 1918." It's really fascinating: it describes where Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were at the end of World War I and what were doing and thinking. (With a bit of editing, this would make a potentially awesome read aloud to conclude your unit on World War I.) And then the prologue concludes with the first sentence from Herbert Hoover's memoir: "The primary cause of the Great Depression was the war of 1914-1918."

So clearly World War I is important to U.S. and to World history for a number of things, but I'd argue that in a U.S. history class one should limit the teaching of World War I to its effects on U.S. history. That means there is a lot to leave out. I have always felt okay about that because students usually study the larger context of World War I--its causes & effects, etc.--in a world history class. So why repeat that?

I don't even do a separate unit on World War I; I just include it as part of my foreign policy, 1890-1920 unit (see the previous few posts). What I focus on is continuing the discussion we began when discussing the Philippines. But now the issue is not whether we should annex or not, but whether isolationism or intervention should prevail in the trouble brewing in Europe. And how is this influenced by idealism and realism?

To discuss these issues, I would focus on the decisions Wilson makes after World War I has begun in Europe and leading up to his decision to ask Congress for a declaration of war. And then we would look at the issues surrounding the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, particularly over the League of Nations. Alas, with my goal of Get to the Gulf War by June, I will save ideas on this for another time.

But the other key issue to examine during a study of World War I in a U.S. history class is how a large, industrial and democratic nation goes to war. In other words, how does such a nation mobilize for war? What is involved? And what effect does that have on American civil liberties? So the two lessons I use to develop those themes are one on war propaganda and posters, and the other on the case Schenk v. United States. (Check out Stanford History Education Group's Reading Like a Historian lesson on that here.) I find these particularly interesting topics to discuss in order to set up the 1920s unit. (Next post).

I am hardly the first teacher to use World War I posters, but they are a great way to teach about the homefront and how the U.S. mobilized for war. And they introduce themes and concepts that will come again in--you guessed it--World War II. For an excellent collection, see the Library of Congress collection. I have used this worksheet to go along with it. It is a good example of a Common Core/C3 framework type lesson.

2/25/17 Update: I was just looking through some old papers and came across a handout I picked up at a teacher conference about WWI posters. And I realized that the above reference worksheet I adapted from a session by teachers James W. Coutts and Richard J. Hryniewicki, two teachers in Wisconsin. So a belated thank you and credit to them for the inspiration.

They are also great to use for talking about images of women, as in one of my favorite examples at right:

A few interesting facts you or your students might like to know about World War I posters:

• always useful to remind students that World War I predates television and--of course--the internet, so posters are the way to communicate.
• the U.S. printed more than 20 million copies of perhaps 2500 different posters. This is more than all the other belligerents combined!
• the Advertising Division of the Committee on Public Information oversaw the production of posters. Many were done by famous illustrators, who were commissioned to produce work for free for the government. Some of these illustrators normally commanded fees of anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 so the government saved a lot of money.
• the iconic, "I want YOU for the U.S. Army" poster was originally created for WWI. There were at least 4 million copies printed. Read more here.
• Did the posters work? Consider the fact that approximately $21 billion dollars was raised from the public. Compare that to Britain and France; neither could raise more than $20 billion each during the full four years of the war. Estimates are that approximately 1/3 of the U.S. population bought bonds. Hoover's Food Administration had approximately 8000 full-time employees and 750,000 volunteers. (Not a bad idea to talk about the incredible feats of Herbert Hoover for a bit...will help make students appreciate him later when you get to the Depression.) 

Questions you can ask students about various posters:

• what is the message of the poster?
• what emotions do they appeal to?
• what is the role of American workers? women? children?
• how is the enemy portrayed?
• what symbolism is used?
• what were Americans being asked to do?
• how effective do you think these posters were? would they work today? why or why not?
• what groups of people are the posters directed toward?
• how might these posters be different from European posters?

And to throw out another non-visual source, have students listen to the famous song, "Over There" by George M. Cohan. Read about it here and here.

The Library of Congress has a lesson on it, but I can't get the link to work for me. Maybe it will work for you:  http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/activities/songs/song2.php

Another fun source--less relevant, but fun! maybe for a brief intro?-- are the Charles Schulz Snoopy cartoons where Snoopy plays the World War I Flying Ace. Check out this exhibit. You can also find live action on youtube.

Next post: stay tuned for Wilson's prophetic quotation about the effect of war on tolerance. . . .

The Annexation of the Philippines: An Aberration in US History? Thoughts for teachers

Few stories in U.S. history amaze me more than the war in the Philippines.

That a nation whose founding document is the Declaration of Independence could go to war to free Cuba from Spain and end up with...the Philippines?

I sense that if you told this to the average 7th grader--or even high schooler--they'd look at you like you were crazy.

And if we can believe the results of surveys which ask Americans who is the current Vice-President or in which half of the 19th century does the Civil War occur, then I suspect few adult Americans have a clue that once the Philippines was a colony of the United States. Nor do they likely know how the U.S. came to acquire Puerto Rico and Guam. Or what that has to do with the Philippines.

This episode in American history is one that--I have NO research on this, mind you--I suspect gets far less attention than it deserves. It's in the textbooks, of course, but it seems that much more attention is given to World War I. In seven years of observing student teachers, I have seen only one lesson on the topic.

I'll grant you that World War I is a big deal. Okay, a really big deal. But in a way, I think the Philippines is even more important. If only because they'll learn about World War I somehow. But I fear that if I don't teach about the Philippines, they'll never learn about it. Anywhere.

So what to do about it?

First, it is a great opportunity to show idealism and realism (see my last post) at work. As I alluded to in that post, there are "idealistic" reasons for annexing the Philippines that we would understand as profoundly racist and paternalistic today. In fact, the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, "White Man's Burden" that many of us probably associate with the British in India is actually about the United States and the Philippines! The poem was first published with the subtitle, "The United States and The Philippine Islands." (Check it out here.)

I have always assigned students some kind of essay assignment in which they have to explain the imperialist and anti-imperialist arguments regarding annexation of the Philippines. I prep them for that with a discussion. The key problem to avoid is presentism: students have to understand the debate in the context of the 1890s. This means that, yes, there will be racism. Of course, there were some opposed to annexation of the Philippines on grounds that sit better with 21st century sensibilities. But it is important for students to understand that at least some folks were opposed to it precisely because they didn't want the possibility of Filipinos becoming Americans.

As always, I like to frame the lesson (usually 2-3 days) around some key questions, such as these:

1. Can a democracy rule another people?

2. Why doesn’t the U.S. Constitution deal with the rights of people in acquired territories?

3. In what ways did the problems in Cuba affect our national self-interest?

4. Which perspectives (realism or idealism) guided U.S. policy towards the war with Spain?

5. How did U.S. involvement in the Philippines compare to U.S. policy regarding Hawaii?

And a tangent….

6. What is the role of the press in a democracy?

This article from the February 1998 issue of Social Education is easily adaptable to middle or high school level students as a background reading for a lesson.

I begin my lesson by going through this handout this handout, which asks students to first consider the irony of a country based on consent of the governed having colonies. Then students consider pros and cons, by using documents. See the documents in some of the links below for that. For a "key" see here. 

One really interesting way to begin your lesson might be to pose this question:

If the U.S. granted independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1946, why did the Philippines decide later to move their independence day commemoration to June 12?

The answer -- June 12, 1898 -- is when the Philippine leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, declared independence from Spain, prior to becoming a U.S. colony. This seemingly small detail, it seems to me, speaks volumes about the difference in perspectives between the Americans and the Filippinos.

If you are looking for some documents and/or more specific lesson ideas to use with students, check out these:

• Lesson from the History Project at UC-Davis for HS students
• full lesson w/documents from History Matters
• blog about the US and Philippines - couldn't figure out who created this, but it has some good background info and interesting film clips
• historical background from U.S. Dept. of State
• full lesson plan from Edsitement - lesson in which students play roles of advisors to the President; includes documents
• Lessons from SHEG (Stanford History Education Group - I especially like these lessons. There are four lessons total: one on the explosion of the Maine, one on the Spanish-American War, a third on political cartoons from the Philippine-American War and a fourth on some of the atrocities which took place in the Philippines. The collection of political cartoons are fascinating. Check them out at the end of this post.
• Lesson from Zinn Education Project - I was excited to find this one, because it makes use of a reading from a book I found years ago, History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History (also check out the chapters on the Cold War and Vietnam!). Unfortunately, once you are registered for the Zinn Education Project and download this lesson, it doesn't provide the resources! But I have found this book at my local public library, so perhaps you can, too. It is definitely worth checking out. Also, the described lesson is really an adaptation of the lesson described in the next site, listed below.
• Lesson from the American Social History Project - part of this lesson relies on a 30 minute documentary called Savage Acts. You can see a clip of it here. Better for high school. But the lesson also has a nice collection of political cartoons and other primary resources. And the lesson reminded me that American world fairs had exhibits of "exotic peoples," including a Filipino village at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. This will surprise your students.
• This 5 minute youtube video does a nice job of explaining about the Philippine Village at the St. Louis Fair. (Be forewarned the words, "bare-breasted women" occurs, and there is a brief shot of an image depicting the same. Use your best judgement if showing to students. Even just the first 2 minutes would be good, and then you could avoid the bare-breasted woman that comes in at about the 2 min, 20 sec mark.)

This brief story from NPR discusses the 2004 commemoration of the St. Louis Fair, in which descendents of the Filipinos at the exhibit discuss the experience.

One intriguing way to conclude your lesson: consider the title of this post. Ask your students, should we the annexation of the Philippines an aberration? Or the beginning of U.S. imperialism? Or as a new manifestation of imperialist expansion, begun with the conquest of Native Americans? Is the U.S. still imperialistic?

I will conclude this post with the image on the right that's easily worth a 1000 words: I found this hard-to-believe-it's-not-being-facetious-advertisement while searching for the Kipling poem.

Also, check out the political cartoons below, and my earlier post about putting the Annexation of the Philippines into a larger context.

Realism & Idealism in U.S. Foreign Policy: Lessons & Resources for Teachers

In my last post, I discussed how to conceptualize U.S. foreign policy to help students understand U.S. thought on the subject up to about 1890. Beginning around 1890, U.S. foreign policy undergoes a shift that coincides with rapid industrialization and growth, imperialism in Europe, the closing of the frontier, the defeat of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, and a doubling of the population, due partly to an increase in immigration of peoples from non-Protestant, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.

As Henry Kissinger wrote, "once a country has reached the level of power of post-Civil War America, it will not forever resist the temptation of translating it into a position of importance in the international arena."

In 1890, Alfred T. Mahan published the most influential book on naval power, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1600-1783, which argued for an expansion of American trade, backed by protection from American naval bases established in the Atlantic and Pacific. The book struck a chord with many influential politicians, most notably, Theodore Roosevelt who would become the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, just before the Spanish American War.

So how to explain all this to students?

At this point in the school year, I like to introduce the concept of REALISM and IDEALISM to students as a way to think about the basis for intervention.

I have only done this with high school students, but my experience last spring teaching 8th grade U.S. history suggests to me that it is absolutely possible to do it with middle school students, too. I tried it out on my own 7th grade daughter and she seemed to get the main idea in the ten minutes she was patient enough to humor me. 

The way I did it with 11th graders was to go through the info on the chart below. (Click here if you'd like a copy you can print for yourself or students.) I would explain each in some detail, providing examples. I think for middle schoolers, I'd just do the first 3 rows. For more background on this concept, check out the websites listed at the end of the post.

Then I would go through some these quotations and ask them to apply what they learned about the two concepts by reading each quotation and deciding if it represented a more "realist" perspective or one of "idealism."

The quotations can be really HARD for some students. I like to go back and forth between idealist ones and realist ones and let students figure out for themselves which quotes are which. I remember many of my 11th graders struggling with them. I tried them on my 7th grader with some success, but I think for middle schoolers my new approach would be to use actual scenarios. This would probably make more sense than the quotations for high schoolers, too. Check them out here. And maybe you could use just a few of the quotes.

But the key thing that makes the quotations useful is to demonstrate some of the subtlety about the ideas. I think our more "idealistic" students are likely to jump to the conclusion that realism is "bad," and "idealism" is good. And the John F. Kennedy quotation--if you use it-- will confirm that for them. But then when they see the last two quotations representing idealism, you have the opportunity to explain that--at least in the past, but quite possibly very much in the present--there can be a racist, ethnocentric tinge to idealism. Assuming that America is the best--that the U.S. is always in the right, that all nations should have democracy-- these have beliefs have had a fundamental impact on our involvement in the Cold War and in non-Western countries. And they contribute to the concept of American exceptionalism. (For a very charged, but fascinating take on this, read this critique on U.S. foreign policy by William Blum. Or a less charged one, this article from The Atlantic.)

While I do think this is a challenge for middle schoolers, I think it is ESSENTIAL that they understand it. But I suspect they will understand it better by example. Case in point: when my daughter saw the second two idealist quotes, she said, "I don't like these. You shouldn't use those with students." So I think instead, I would wait and use those in the context in which they were delivered: in the late nineteenth century, just before and just after the Spanish American War and the Annexation of the Philippines. Waiting to allow students to understand it in the context of the times, will, I think, make better sense to them. And probably high schoolers, too.

Once students have a grasp of these competing viewpoints, you can now get them to consider the shift in foreign policy that begins around 1890.

One way to do that is by posing an overall question (compelling question, big question, essential question, inquiry--whatever you'd like to call it) about the factors I mentioned at the very beginning of this post. Here's one shot at it:

What factors led to an increased interest among Americans, and American policy makers in particular, to acquire colonies and spread American power overseas?

I am a big fan of getting information off of 81/2 by 11 sheets of paper--and also a break from computers--and putting information onto index-sized cards. You could, of course, do the same activity with online documents or on regular paper, but I have noticed that something about being able to manipulate cards makes the activity seem more "hands-on" to students. It's not that I think I'm fooling them. But it does seem to shake things up a bit. I have no idea why. The same thing can be said of using "stations." Putting different information at different tables forces students to get up out of their seats and move. It may be more time-saving to keep the student in their seats and move the paper instead of the kids, but this viral post from Grant Wiggins (co-author of Understanding by Design) has reminded me that kids need to move more often.

So you could take some of the factors mentioned above--the closing of the frontier, increased immigration, facts about industrial growth from last post's PowerPoint, etc.--and write a little blurb about them.  Put them either on a set of cards for each group of 3-4 students, or put one sheet at a "station" and create some supporting questions that will help students make connections. (E.g. "how might this lead Americans to become more interested in foreign involvement?") And wrap it up with a brief discussion that will lead you to the The Maine and the outbreak of the Spanish American War the next day.

I'd especially love to hear from middle school teachers-- give the idealism/realism dichotomy a try and let me know how it goes!

For background information for teachers about the concept of idealism vs. realism, check out these websites:

• Encyclopedia of American Foreign Relations has a brief definition of the two terms, with additional links.
• Political Realism versus Political Idealism - This one appears to come from a professor (not clear who, sorry) at Valencia College. Nice and brief.
• This page from SparkNotes is also pretty helpful.

Additionally, check out chapter 2, "The Hinge: Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson," in Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, which I mentioned in the last blog post. The second half of this chapter describes Roosevelt's realism against Woodrow Wilson's idealism.

The U.S. Enters the World Stage: Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1890-1920

In an earlier post, about how to start off second semester, I mentioned that there is a "story line" to looking at U.S. policy in the 20th century. Today I want to make good on that, starting with a look back at the nineteenth century.

If mentioning the phrase, "foreign policy in the nineteenth century" leaves you with a feeling of "huh?" you are not alone. I am NOT talking about the Barbary wars, or the War of 1812 or the South's efforts to court Britain and France during the Civil War. I am not even talking about the Spanish American War. Not yet.

But I am talking about Mexico. And I'm talking about American Expansionism.

And I think we need to review this with students as a way to set up the dramatic change that occurs in the late 19th century when the U.S. goes to war with Spain and ends up as a colonial power with control over the Philippines.

So I am including this link to a Google Presentation you can modify to use with your own students. I used it--unapologetically-- as a major lecture. I have only used this with high school students. But I have created an adaptation for use with middle school students. It is shorter, and the language is a little easier. I think a brief lecture is a useful way to introduce the major problems/questions surrounding foreign policy to this age group. Remember, I am using this to set up--not just a unit on the late 19th century/World War I, but also to set up our upcoming units on foreign policy:

• World War II
• The Cold War
• Vietnam
• The Middle East, September 11 and Current Problems in Foreign Policy

Most of the content for the lecture/presentation I linked to above is based on a chapter from Henry Kissinger's 1995 book, Diplomacy. It is a 900 plus page book that you will likely be able to find it on the shelf of your local public library. (No, I haven't read the whole book.) The chapter I used is chapter 2--"The Hinge: Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson," and it is only 28 pages and will give you a solid background. The chapter goes back to back to the early days of the United States, through Jefferson, Madison and the expansion in the 1840s. Before he goes on to discuss the contrasting policies of Roosevelt and Wilson, Kissinger makes this astute observation:

America's desire for expansion and its belief that it was a more pure and principled country than any in Europe never clashed. Since it did not regard its expansion as foreign policy, the United States could use its power to prevail--over the Indians, over Mexico, in Teas--and to do so in good conscience. In a nutshell, the foreign policy of the United States was not to have a foreign policy.

You will see the points described above in the Google presentation. Then Kissinger goes on to describe the tremendous growth of the U.S. after the Civil War and how that growth led to an interest in overseas markets. You will learn some interesting points about that which I have put in the Google presentation, too. (e.g. U.S. coal production went up 800%! Even as we still had a dinky army that comes in below Bulgaria's!)

So then comes the 1890s and the Spanish American War. But I don't go into the Spanish American War here. Here is where I just set up the rest of the semester with this Essential Question:

 On what basis, or for what reasons, does the a nation intervene in the affairs of others?

Or its variation,

When does a country look to isolationism, and when towards intervention?

These questions will come up every time a question about a foreign "event" comes up: the explosion of The Maine, the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand which will lead Europe into World War I, the Russian Revolution, World War II, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Syria, we could go on and on.... And don't forget Mexico, about which Porfirio Diaz may or may not have said, "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States."

So it is worthwhile to examine the question with students before delving in.

One thing you can do to help students visualize is to draw something like the following on the board (an old-fashioned black or white board) after you have gone through the lecture:

The curves above the line represent time periods that are marked by an increase in intervention in world affairs and the curves below are those in which isolationism prevails. Note, however, that the first period of isolationism is really only in regards to Europe; the U.S. was quite busy during this time involving itself in Mexico and Nicaragua.

I like to go through this by adding the boxes and explaining BRIEFLY as we go. And then I conclude by explaining that ever since World War II, the U.S. has been a major world power and, therefore, has been rather involved in foreign affairs.

There is one last part of this lesson you can use either as the introduction or as the conclusion. Or depending on your time, you can use at the start of your next day's lesson when you get into the Spanish American War. And that is a discussion about what are the criteria for when a nation intervenes or not. This can be a short or longer discussion, depending on what interventionist crises the U.S. is engaged in at the moment and the extent to which you want to tie in present-day problems. But no matter how little historic or current affairs background they have, most students will be able to at least dream up answers like the following:

And then you can build on those...e.g. Oil, good. What other important resources might lead a country into an interventionist policy? What about Russia throughout its history? (i.e. warm water port). Or does anyone remember what was so significant about the Battle of Vicksburg? (i.e. access to the Mississippi River). What about World War II--even though we haven't studied it yet, most of you probably know that we fought against Nazi Germany even though Germany wasn't the nation that first attacked the United States (Japan was). Why might we have fought against Germany, too? Here's where a student might say something about the Holocaust, which you would correct them on, as that was not the primary motivation. But then you can bring up totalitarian and fascism. Or just make it simpler and talk about Hitler and his dictatorship as a threat to democracy. The point you are trying to get to is that part of what we fought for was AN IDEA.

And now you get to the crux of realism vs. idealism--two competing, and sometimes complementary ways of reflecting on foreign policy that we see over and over again throughout America's past. 

But because it is already March and this post is already long, I'm going to develop that more in the next post. . . .

The C3 Framework: the National Council for the Social Studies' answer to the Common Core

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on the C3 Framework at Northern Illinois University's New Ideas in Social Studies and History Conference yesterday. All the materials for that presentation have now been posted on this blog. You can find them on the tab at the top marked, "Teacher Presentations."

For those of you who just read this blog and have no idea what I'm talking about, my presentation was about the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) C3 Framework. The 3 Cs in the C3 Framework stand for College, Career and Civic LifeThe C3 Framework is, at its heart, a response to the Common Core Standards which had the unfortunate (and unintended, I think) effect of marginalizing the social studies. I don't know a whole lot yet about the new PARCC tests (but a quick glance at the news tells me things are not going too well!), but I suspect that the emphasis on ELA is likely having a negative effect on the attention that should be given to history.

My position is that the C3 is a thoughtful analysis of what good social studies teaching should look like. The downside is that it takes a very complicated 108 page document to explain all that. In these 108 pages you will find 3 pages about how to read the document, a glossary, brief biographical sketches of the 16 authors, a description of the 4 dimensions, 4 disciplines, an inquiry arc, 30 tables (not including the ones in the 5--yes, five!--appendices), something called a "Framework Disciplinary Inquiry Matrix" on page 66, and--just in case you were wondering--2 pages about what is not included in the C3.

If you want to figure out what the C3 is, but cannot or don't want to read all 108 pages of the thing, you can get the gist of it in the chart I put together below:

Note that the table and page numbers referred to in the chart can be found in the PDF of the framework. You can get that here. Those tables have more extensive information on each of the four disciplines: civics, econ, geography and history. (And if you were wondering why I haven't posted in over 3 weeks, trying to get that 108 page document squeezed into one chart is part of the reason!)

If you are interested to see how the C3 Framework explicitly connects to the Common Core (or need to explain it to your administration or department chair), see the following pages in the C3:

• pages 20-21 for the overall connections between the C3 and the Common Core.
• pages 26-27 for the connections between Dimension 1 of the C3 and Common Core.
• pages 50-51 for the connections between Dimension 2 of the C3 and Common Core.
• pages 56-57 for the connections between Dimension 3 of the C3 and Common Core.
• pages 63-64 for the connections between Dimension 4 of the C3 and Common Core.

And if you want to learn more about the C3, here are two good places to start:

• The obvious: the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). This link will give you the background on the C3 framework. Also on that page, you will find the link to the entire 108 page document.
• C3Teachers.org - this website includes lesson ideas, some links to blogs, and news and info about the C3
• for places to find good resources for lesson ideas and materials, read old posts on this blog, check out some of the lessons under the tab at the top under "Teacher Presentations," and check out the tab, "Other Useful Links."