Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
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CAT Tracks for January 15, 2007
I HAVE A DREAM... |
...that one day this nation will abolish slavery?
From the Washington Post...
Despite Lessons on King, Some Unaware of His Dream
By Valerie Strauss
In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for "racial justice and brotherhood" in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.
That's the good news.
Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the abolition of slavery.
The findings indicate that years of efforts by primary and secondary schools to steep young people in the basics of the civil rights leader's life and activities have resulted in a mixed bag. Most college students know who he is -- even if they're not quite clear on what he worked to achieve.
Students and teachers say today's federal holiday marking King's birthday is the one that receives the most attention in schools, in part because the events surrounding the man it commemorates are the most recent.
"I think if there is one holiday on the calendar that is really reflective and thoughtful and has historical content, it is the King holiday," said Cynthia Mosteller, a history teacher at Deal Junior High School in the District. "It is a topic about which literally every student knows something."
How long students will continue to learn it, however, is open to question, students and educators say.
The recent survey of college students, conducted by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy for the nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute, suggests that schools are not doing as much as they could to go beyond a cursory history lesson. More than 14,000 college freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities earned an average score of 53.2 percent in the survey.
Many of the 10 federal holidays have become little more than days off school or work, even if they are dedicated to significant Americans, such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Many people have no idea what Labor Day commemorates, educators say.
"Honestly, I never knew what Veterans Day was until last year," said Taneisha Rodney, 14, a ninth-grader at William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts in Northeast Washington.
In many schools across the country, teachers say social studies has taken a back seat under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which stresses math and reading. Squeezing history into the curriculum can be difficult, educators say, and taking time out of a scheduled lesson to use a federal holiday -- even King's -- as a teaching moment can be tough.
"It depends on the teacher and how much they want to deviate from what they are doing," said Adam Zemel, 17, a senior at Yorktown High School in Arlington.
Mark J. Stout, a social studies curriculum coordinator for Howard County schools, said in an e-mail: "We really have a fairly tight and regimented curriculum, so most teachers will either try to integrate holidays into their regular instruction (if there is a connection), or spend a few moments in the beginning of the class talking to the students about the event or person being commemorated. Most likely, they do the latter, but there is no expectation or requirement."
King and the civil rights movement are part of the curriculum in many school systems, although lessons do not always coordinate with the holiday. This is true especially in higher grades where broad issues in U.S. history, such as social justice, are addressed in depth.
But for elementary school teachers, federal holidays sometimes are the only chance to teach students about subjects for which they otherwise have little time.
"One of the raps on elementary social studies is that it is all about heroes and holidays, and with standardized testing, it often becomes that," said Andrea S. Libresco, an education professor at Hofstra University in New York who teaches prospective teachers how to use the holidays as teaching opportunities. "People tend to concentrate on English and math."
A danger, educators say, is that lessons about King can become repetitive from year to year, especially when using the same theatrical performances and movies. As a consequence, many students know about King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech but not about his seminal "Letter From Birmingham Jail," also written in 1963.
That is why each year Deal Junior High rotates the focus of its assembly , Mosteller said.
Rachel Gillette, 17, a senior at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Va., said that although the holiday is not a focus in her school, the importance of the day remains strong.
"Despite the lack of class time spent on this day, Martin Luther King Day means much more than Lincoln or Washington's Birthday," Gillette said in an e-mail. "There are local breakfasts in his honor, and the street that he marched down has now been named Martin Luther King Boulevard. Everyone I know knows exactly who he is and what he accomplished."
But some students readily acknowledge that the holiday amounts to little more than a day off school. Some say they fear that King's message of nonviolence is losing relevance in today's violent world.
"It's fading away a little bit, but if we can keep the true value of Martin Luther King in schools, it may come back," said Shanay Miles, 14, a ninth-grader at Doar.
To honor King's legacy, a group of students from Shanay's school will spend today doing community service -- not lounging at home. They will be going to a Boys & Girls Club to help clean, do inventory and other tasks, Doar teacher Terrence Carter said, adding that giving back to the community is the best way to keep King's spirit alive.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Test What You Know About King:
1. Where did the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech?
a) Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta
b) Birmingham, Ala.
c) Lincoln Memorial
d) Addressing Congress
2. King was expelled from school in 1934 because he:
a) Hit a student.
b) Didn't know letters or numbers.
c) Didn't have immunizations.
d) Was only 5 years old.
3. The nonviolent teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi influenced King, but a difference was that King:
a) Believed in achieving goals through patience and non-cooperation with authorities.
b) Believed that some confrontation was necessary.
c) Believed that "separate but equal" was a worthy goal.
d) Believed that goals should be accomplished "by any means necessary".
4. When was King stabbed in the chest with a letter opener?
a) On a march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965
b) In a Harlem store while autographing books in 1958
c) During a 1964 arrest in St. Augustine, Fla., after trying to eat in a whites-only restaurant
d) On his street after his house was bombed in 1956
5. On June 8, 1948, King graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor' s degree in:
a) Anthropology.
b) Theology.
c) History.
d) Sociology.
6. Where did King say , "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"?
a) "Strive Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story" in 1958
b) "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963
c) "Letter From Birmingham Jail" in 1963
d) "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in 1968
7. In what year did King win the Nobel Peace Prize?
a) 1963
b) 1964
c) 1966
d) 1967
8. To whom was King writing his "Letter From Birmingham Jail"?
a) White clergymen unhappy with his actions
b) U.S. legislators who had said he was inciting violence
c) Schoolchildren
d) His family
9. In a 1967 New York speech , King said, "Somehow this madness must cease." To what was he referring?
a) Racism
b) Poverty
c) Vietnam War
d) Segregation
10. Where was King shot in 1968 , and what had brought him there?
a) In Memphis, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers
b) In Atlanta, where he was to lead an anti-Vietnam War march
c) In Memphis, where he was to lead a prayer vigil
d) In Atlanta, where he was to lead a voter registration drive
Answers to this "Pop Quiz" appear below the following related article.
From the Houston Chronicle...
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Simple image, complex figure
Today, many will celebrate a version of King that omits pain and sacrifice
By JEANNIE KEVER
Maybe you have the day off work today, courtesy of Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe you'll even reflect on his most famous speech, made at a time when it seemed as if oratory could capture the hopes of the nation.
Almost 40 years after King's death, his place in popular culture is assured — a national holiday, hundreds of schools and thoroughfares across the country that bear his name, and his likeness on everything from posters to coffee cups. Dozens of documentaries and shelves full of books have examined his role in the civil-rights movement.
All that's missing is a Hollywood biopic.
That omission is fine with Brenda Davenport. She sees enough misinformation out there already.
Baptized by King two years before his death in 1968, Davenport is an executive with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, the organization King founded to fight segregation. Like many people, she worries about the gulf between King's image and the gritty reality of the movement in the 1950s and '60s. The real King, they say, spoke about issues at the top of today's agenda: war, the minimum wage, health care.
Davenport doesn't find the real Martin Luther King in fliers promoting holiday sales. She wouldn't expect to find him in a movie, either.
"I think if we put him in the movies, we would have to make him 'safe,' " Davenport said. "You would have to tone him down. Keeping him in books, on PBS, that may be a good thing."
Most Americans have at least a cursory knowledge of King, and a 2005 University of Connecticut study of students at about 50 colleges found that about 81 percent linked King's "I Have a Dream" speech with hopes for racial justice.
Most of the rest, however, thought he was talking about the abolition of slavery.
"We're such an image-oriented society. People know the icon, but underneath that, there may not be a lot of information," said Karen Bowdre, an assistant professor in the communication and culture department at Indiana University.
Pop culture has created a warm and fuzzy King, but people who knew him say that's not who he was.
"We all say we love him today," said Charles Steele, SCLC president. "But Dr. King was looked upon as being unpatriotic in (protesting) the Vietnam war. People younger than 30 really don't understand the sacrifices that Dr. King and his family went through, and that many other families went through because they supported him."
Made some 'uncomfortable'
Most people today know King from history books or the Internet, viewing the civil-rights era as ancient history.
That's what Michael James, a Houston lawyer who teaches political science at the University of Houston-Downtown, finds with his students.
"It's hard to convince a teenager or someone in their 20s of the bloody struggle in Selma and how this is still relevant," he said. "It's a tough sell to some students."
Davenport says they know only King the "the pop star," the image linked to his "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 March on Washington.
"America does this sort of feel-good thing with Martin Luther King Jr., primarily using that speech," said Nathan McCall, a member of the journalism and African-American studies faculty at Emory University and author of the best-selling memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America. "We forget that when King was alive, there were a lot of people who admired him, but there were also a lot of people who really hated him."
Today's celebrations, McCall said, will represent the "oversimplified Martin Luther King Jr., so that everybody can come away feeling warm and fuzzy. But when you look at his ideas, he was not preaching warm and fuzzy. He made a lot of people uncomfortable."
King's legacy remains his role in civil rights, starting with the Montgomery bus boycott to protest segregation on buses in Montgomery, Ala. That was the subject of Boycott, a 2001 HBO movie starring Jeffrey Wright as King. His story also was told in a 1978 TV miniseries, King: The Martin Luther King Story, starring Paul Winfield.
For better or worse, movies wield enormous power.
"My students reference history by movies they've seen, as opposed to books they've read," McCall said.
Whether or not a true biopic is ever made, fundraising is under way on an enduring reminder of King's work — a $100 million memorial for the National Mall in Washington D.C.. So far, organizers, led by Houston lawyer Harry E. Johnson Sr., have raised $72 million.
The memorial, like the release of King's private papers, will "place him in perspective in American history, so kids can understand why we celebrate him, his holiday," he said.
But it's impossible to say what impact the papers or the memorial will have. It may be that King's image, the "safer vision" that Davenport finds so tepid a reminder of the flesh-and-blood man, will be impossible to overcome.
Answers to "Pop Quiz" on Martin Luther King Jr:
1-c; 2-d; 3-b; 4-b; 5-d; 6-c; 7-b; 8-a; 9-c; 10-a
Houston Chronicle
