When Teaching Becomes Tricky

When I enter a museum – I can put on one of two hats. I can be the budding museum professional my graduate program is preparing me to be or I can suspend my disbelief and morph into a casual museum visitor. One allows me the freedom to examine exhibitions with a critical eye and the other lets me sit back and enjoy the ride. Before I entered the halls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. I knew that I wanted to explore the space unburdened by a flurry of emotions. It was my first time visiting, and I really wanted to analysis what all the hype was about without getting too invested.

Fortunately, that was not the case. I managed to maintain my composure throughout the main exhibit spaces and thought I was home free, until I stumbled upon Daniel’s Story: Remember the Children. Watching parents and their families follow one Jewish boy’s experience in Nazi Germany prompted many emotions and made me wonder: how do we deal with heavy issues such as the Holocaust in a way that children can connect to? I had not seen any adults crying in the main exhibit space but saw many distressed children trying to understand what happened to Daniel. As I followed this fictitious child from his home to a ghetto and concentration camp, I wondered what roles museums play in helping facilitate difficult discussions within families.

The Hall of Remembrance, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Daniel’s Story: Remember the Children, a special exhibition designed for children ages 8 and older, aims to engage a multi-generational audience and further communication about the Holocaust between parent and child. [1] But are kids more ready to have these conversations than their parents are? Parents want to protect and shelter their children from the harms and evils of the world – so I can imagine that taking on a subject as loaded as the Holocaust does not come easily. In my mind, it’s akin to having the sex talk – parents can build up difficult conversations so much that communication is overcome by fear of the unknown. Parents don’t know how to start the dialogue. Kids want the facts. Daniel’s Story gives parents a tool to explore a rather large and emotionally charged topic with their children in a safe and monitored environment.

Together, families can explore a chronology of events from pre-Nazi Germany to the Jewish ghettos to the Aushwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Visitors can walk into Daniel’s house from before the war, experience the streets of Germany as he would have, journey with him to the work camps, and follow pages of his diary as it explains the events taking place. The environment is multifaceted and features audio, video, text, photographs, historic objects, and interactives. Visitors learn from the start of the museum experience that Daniel survives to share his story with them. Museum exhibition designer Darcie Fohrman explains on her website that the exhibit is “sensitive to young visitors, telling children what they will see before they see it.” [2] In this way, the difficult topic of the Holocaust is outlined, explored, and able to be processed by families.

After visitors learn that the American soldiers liberated Daniel and his father from the concentration camp but we not able to save Daniel’s mother and sister, they are led to a reflection room. In this space, children can write letters or draw pictures for Daniel and families can sit to talk about the subject matter. The exhibit gives no inclination to why the Jews were hated so much, so the letters posted around the room reflect everything from encouragement for Daniel to questions not yet answered. How is a child supposed to make sense of something so complex? What responses can parents give? Daniel’s Story does not provide all of the answers, but its interactive nature and thought provoking premise helps bring parents one step closer to educating their children about the truth.

[1] http://www.darciefohrman.com/projects/daniels-story

[2] Ibid

My Activist Life

While in Taiwan in 2008, I went with several other Fulbrighters to support a protest by the Democratic Political Party (DPP) which promotes Taiwanese self-determination. Today, activism must be flexible to include traditional protests like pickets and marches but also conversations, education, and online organizing.

One April morning in 2004 it was announced that George W. Bush would be coming to speak in Buffalo. Adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq since the very start, several classmates and I decided that we wanted to go and protest in front of Kleinhans Music Hall, where he was speaking. Unfortunately, I was already committed to an overnight college visit that same day, nixing my opportunity to answer my internal call to picket. As my mom and I drove east from Buffalo that morning, I listened to the local NPR affiliate’s coverage until static broke up the station somewhere before Rochester. I felt like we were driving away from my civic responsibility.

Throughout my college visit, I forgot about the missed protest. I found my academic home for the next four years, and was excited about the prospect. In the fall of that year I eagerly began the courses of a poli sci major and stayed up all night to hear the results of the 2004 election on one cold November night. I thought I would become involved in political change.

Again, I thought wrong. By the next semester, I switched away from a political science track to history and education. Trading in my continually-felt frustrations about the challenge of fighting for change, the combined study of historical successes and failures and how to teach them gave me new light. I could leverage my desire to make a difference through other avenues—including the classroom.

Still, I have always felt that the activist inside of me has been hidden away in a box. Sometimes she will come out through personal conversation or classroom coursework such as a movie I made in the fall of 2007 about my cousin’s experience in the Army. Instead of carrying signs in a picket line, I have studied and traveled and listened.

Therefore, I was excited to meet Iris Morales in class last week. A member of the Young Lords Party in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ms. Morales’ activist resume is impressive. Illustrating collective action to meet community needs, her 1996 documentary Palante, Siempre, Palante adds the Young Lords to a lengthy list of groups advocating for change at the time. I expected my inner activist to hear a call to action and begin picketing my inactivity.

Instead, I was struck by our conversation in class about the meaning in activism. Today, Ms. Morales works for a non-profit that funds grassroots activism. She described being perplexed to receive so many proposals for teaching English as a Second Language, a task that would not likely have been considered radical by Young Lords standards. But, Morales explained, with the 1990 immigration law and subsequent English-only controversy, teaching English as a Second Language is an important grassroots action. For Morales, this took a shift in her own understanding of activism.

Something clicked for me. My idea of an activist has always been someone walking a picket line, taking intermittent breaks to write letters and meet with officials. In reality, the tiny activist that I thought was hidden away inside is actually part of my daily practice, exercised most regularly in daily conversation and as an educator. Today, activism must be flexible and responsive to meet the needs of the cause and the continual media cycle. Instead, we must live activated and ready to respond.

Bringing History Home

Noongar Elder Uncle Angus shared his personal experience as a child of the Stolen Generations with Colgate students at Marribank, formerly Carrolup, in Western Australia. June 2008.

“How can you criticize our history? You did the same thing in America to the Indians.”

I was on the Perth subway with several classmates two days after arriving in Australia. In a casual conversation with the stranger, a classmate had explained that we were spending time with members of the Noongar tribe in Western Australia. “Oh, watch out for those aboriginals. They steal,” he had told us.

This answer had taken us aback. While we knew Aboriginal people in Australia still faced racism in daily life, we didn’t expect to encounter it ourselves in the first days of our trip. Further, we had not anticipated this criticism of our own history when another classmate mentioned that we had been studying Australia’s Stolen Generations. But the man on the subway was right about one thing: both our nations have checkered pasts in terms of the treatment of our native populations. Even our country’s history with Indian Boarding Schools mirrors Australia’s efforts to “smooth the dying pillow” of Aboriginal cultures through harsh, assimilatory educational efforts.

As I read Sherman Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I started to think about this encounter on the subway and I realized we were both wrong. In so intensely focusing on Australian Aboriginal issues, we had forgotten to look at home, while by treating the Stolen Generations as a historical issue, the man on the subway failed to see the continuing issue of racism. Moreover, we were speaking in broad institutional terms, instead of the daily lives of people whom none of us represented.

Based on his own experiences growing up, Alexie’s novel is told through the eyes (and cartoons) of fictional teenager Arnold Spirit, Jr. who lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Urged by his high school teacher, Mr. P, Junior leaves the reservation and enrolls at the all-white Reardon High School 20 miles from his home. Throughout the rest of the book, Junior grapples with his outsider status both racially and socio-economically at school and amongst his community on the reservation.

The true highlight of Alexie’s young adult novel is the complex portrayal of a life on and off the Spokane Reservation from the perspective of multiple characters. Many characters like Rowdy, Junior’s best friend, do not support his decision to attend Reardon High School and feel that he is abandoning his community and Indian culture. Yet others such as Junior’s father’s best friend, Eugene, support the teenager and recognize the bravery that it takes to try breaking the cycle of poverty on the reservation by pursuing a better education elsewhere. Ultimately, Alexie’s novel clearly presents the tension between the individual and community, personal and collective experience.

In 1969 a non-profit organization called Indians of All Nations occupied Alcatraz Island. Courtesy of nativelegalupdate.com

This complexity is an important part of American Indian history, which so often focuses on the collective while neglecting the individual perspective. In the late 1960s a Pan-American Indian movement began to develop, influenced by the Civil Rights movement of the previous decade. In 1969 a group of Bay Area Indians occupied Alcatraz Island under the banner of “Indians of All Tribes.” Through the 1970 “Planning Grant Proposal to Develop an All-Indian University and Cultural Complex on Indian Land, Alcatraz,” the group asserted that “we don’t speak for Indians all over the country. The Indians all over the country speak for themselves.” Indians of All Tribes recognized the need for an overarching movement to lobby for the greater American Indian community, while also still representing individual voices and perspectives.

Bringing varied individual perspectives into a community history certainly presents a challenge. For Indians of All Tribes, the similarities of personal experiences across the country became a rallying point for the Pan-American Indian organization, while for Sherman Alexie’s Arnold Spirit, Jr., the varying personal perspectives created a challenging social web for him to navigate as he set out to find personal hope and freedom through an education off of the reservation.

By the end of my study trip to Australia, I found my understanding of the Aboriginal issues had been equally complicated, bringing the historical into present day and the community story to the individual level. Intimate conversations with members of the Stolen Generations in culturally significant spaces only underscored the serious problems that still exist today. The conversation on the subway now stands out as an example of confusing institutional faults with individual perspectives. Change must come from both sources, though at times they may seem diametrically opposed. However, without the Sherman Alexies a la Arnold Spirits of the world in tandem with larger movements like Indians of All Tribes, we have no chance at making even the smallest change.

Hidden Elves in Denver: The Artistry of the Museum Diorama

There are elves hidden in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. They live amongst white-tailed deer, pronghorns, and blue herons in the museum’s dioramas. Some hide in trees, while one is perched on a dinosaur’s back. But all of these elves are the creation of one man – artist Kent R. Pendleton.

According to museum lore, Pendleton was not allowed to sign his name to diorama backgrounds he painted. Instead, he hid the elves as a way to leave his mark on the exhibitions. Interested in finding all of the known elves? A “Seek and Find” of museum secrets is available at the front desk, as the DMNS has truly embraced the tiny, mythical creatures.

This acceptance signals two recent trends in museum dioramas: the reconsideration of dioramas as composed artworks and the recognition of those diorama artists. Today museum dioramas are problematic for many museums, as they generally represent turn-of-the-century colonial views within museology. However, for many visitors, dioramas continue to offer moments of wonder inspired by the natural world. By considering the artistry behind dioramas, museums can redefine the place of these exhibitions within the contemporary museum.

Created as scientific educational tools, dioramas pose taxidermied animals in a natural scene to offer a sense of the animal’s native habitat. At the American Museum of Natural History, artists went into the field to collect animal and plant specimens; each diorama is representative of an actual place in the natural world.

Artist Raymond deLucia works on a diorama at the American Museum of Natural History in 1939. Source: the American Museum of Natural History website

Still, taxidermy, background, and foreground artists played a huge part in crafting the scene: how are the animals posed? Do they interact? How does the weather reflect the mood of the diorama? What is the spatial relationship between the taxidermies and the botanical models?

AMNH has developed online exhibition resources to shed greater light on its beloved dioramas. From biographies of the diorama artists to virtual tours and behind the scenes views, the dioramas website is replete with information about the creation of these composed scenes. The online video collection ranks among the best of these features. Many are recorded by Stephen Quinn, author of Windows On Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, and use the backdrop of dioramas to situate historical research on their creation.

However, the website also includes archival footage of background artist James Perry Wilson painting the scene for the Fisher and Porcupine diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals. By illustrating the process and challenges of painting a large-scale diorama background as Wilson works, the narrator emphasizes the technical technique and artistry in the exhibitions.

In sharing the archival footage on the internet, the museum is able to recast the dioramas as artworks derived from scientific observation and study. This artistic perspective helps alleviate some of the problems of maintaining exhibitions of a different era. Above all, it elevates the work of talented museum professionals, obviously illuminating personal perspective and curatorial decisions to dioramas intended to mimic nature.

Day Care Through The Nose

Children reading at a Head Start center in St. Louis, MO.

In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about Maddy, a young single mother in Portland, Maine, who used her boyfriend’s sister as a babysitter. She paid this babysitter fifty dollars a week, instead of paying ninety dollars for a “real day care center.” [1] Affordable child care is a problem, especially for single-parent families living on a meager salary.

Parents bracketed in the lower class (even those in two-parent households) must have jobs to pay the bills. This means that their children must attend some sort of child care while their parents are away. Most national organizations suggest that children not be left home alone until they are at least twelve. Yet there is a catch-twenty-two here: to make enough money to pay for childcare, parents need jobs. To get a job, your children need childcare services. What comes first? Ehrenreich found herself in a similar (yet slightly less dire) situation when she described her need for both work and a place to live: “I need a job and an apartment, but to get a job I need an address and a phone number and to get an apartment it help to have evidence of stable employment.” [2]

If parents are lucky enough to find childcare, how much will it cost them? The Head Start program is an option for those who meet the federal poverty level eligibility requirements. As of 2008, a family of four must earn less than $21,000 per year to qualify. [3] However, for those not under the federal poverty level, the average day care cost in the United States is $8,150 per year for infants and toddlers. [4] The price is slightly lower for pre-schoolers. By visiting the Child Care Aware site, I used their nifty budgeting option to find out that if I lived in Massachusetts, had one child, and worked in a job that paid $30,000 a year, I would be deep in the red by now.

What happens to single mothers (or fathers, or even two-parent families) who are forced to get a job, but are unable to pay for childcare during the eight (or more) hours they are gone? It is illegal and dangerous to leave children alone for extended periods of time. Shifting children from place to place (grandmother, friend, babysitter, etc) results in under-developed emotional capabilities in children; if they cannot be at home with at least one parent, it is best for their development to attend an accredited childcare facility. Yet these places are rarely affordable to people living near the poverty line (and even many in the middle class), and both children and parents suffer for it. As Ehrenreich’s experience documented, a single person has a hard time “getting by” in America. But what happens when you have children counting on you, too?

[1] Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001), 80.

[2] Ehrenreich, 54.

[3] Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, “Head Start Family Income Guidelines, 2008,” <http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/Program%20Design%20and%20Management/Head%20Start%20Requirements/IMs/2008/resour_ime_005a1_020508.html>.

[4] National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, “2008 Price of Childcare,” <http://www.naccrra.org/randd/docs/2008_Price_of_Child_Care.pdf >.

Texas Textbooks Revisited

Given Audrey’s post on the Texas textbook controversy several weeks ago, I was excited to see the issue pop up again, this time framed in an interesting context and with some connection to this week’s discussion.

“Studies in Crap” is a weekly blog written by Alan Scherstuhl for The Pitch (a Kansas City news/entertainment/events website). This week’s find is a 1932 Texas history textbook entitled The Lone Star State: A School History, by C.R. Wharton. Given this week’s emphasis on issues of Native American and Latino identity, the post’s focus on these two groups was particularly interesting.

In an attitude derived from the philosophy of states’ rights, Wharton decries the reservation system as an example of unnecessary federal spending: “Nor did this handling of the Indians suit the white people. They worked hard to make a living without the assistance of the government and they resented the government’s aid to the Indians.”[1] Nowhere does it mention the forced relocation, broken promises, and crippling poverty that have too often defined relations between the US government and Native Americans. According to Wharton, this “aid” was purely benign and completely undeserved. Looking back a couple weeks to our discussion of feminism, Wharton’s argument is resurrected by the Reagan administration 50 years later in the form of the lazy, conniving welfare queen.

Shifting focus to relations with Mexico (specifically the Mexican-American War), Wharton’s words provide an interesting dimension to the arguments surrounding Hispanic immigration to the United States today. He decries Mexican President Bustamante, who in an effort to halt American migration into Texas (then held by Mexico), passed an 1830 law “prohibiting further immigration from the United States.”[2] Such a measure was cruel, Wharton argues, since “[s]uch an act would have kept relatives and friends of the settlers from joining them in their new homes.”[3]

Keeping them on the fields

The Legislative Black Caucus of South Carolina is not calling for a worldwide class revolution, or even organizing a demonstration of thousands to demand bread. These lawmakers are, however, hitting white elites where it hurts by urging black football recruits to reconsider attending the University of South Carolina (USC). The caucus is responding to the university’s board of trustees, which is likely to lose its lone black member.

State Rep. David Weeks, the chairman of the caucus, told the AP, “We are asking young athletes to be aware … there are folks in this state who say it’s fine to play ball but not to be on the governing board.”

damali ayo: The 21st Century Richard Wright?

damali ayo

Moving into the present, I stumbled upon the websites of damali ayo (her capitalization), a writer, performer, artist, comedian and activist, who uses what she describes as “Now Art” to engage audiences in discussing current race relations in America.  ayo created the website “Rent-A-Negro” as a type of performance art and followed it with the companion book, How to Rent a Negro in 2005.  The website and book raise questions regarding racial relationships in a satirical and witty way by providing humorous tips, quizzes and terms. 

ayo also created, “I Can Fix It!” a free guide that outlines ten solutions for increased public participation in positive race relations.  Like Richard Wright her work relies heavily on her own experiences growing up in a white-centric America.  She captures the attention of the public through humor, then candidly opens up and encourages discussion of taboo topics.  Instead of trying to describe her interactive work in detail, I highly recommend viewing the following clip of ayo’s interview with Bill O’Reilly, and visiting her websites to learn about her art and programming.

Brown Eyes vs. Blue Eyes: Discrimination in a Third-Grade Classroom

One Saturday a few weeks ago, while having a documentary mini-marathon on my couch, I came across A Class Divided. What it showed was so fascinating (and sad) that I found myself searching for more information it ended. Given this week’s discussion on white hostility and violence toward blacks, I thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss.

Members of Jane Ellliot's 1969-70 third-grade class, featured in A Class Divided

Jane Elliot was a third-grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The day following Dr. King’s murder, in an effort to make her young, all-white class understand the issue of racism, she divided the students into “blue-eyed” and “brown-eyed” groups. On the first day, blue-eyed people were superior.  Brown-eyed students went to lunch last, were not allowed second helpings, had five fewer minutes of recess, could not use the drinking fountain (they could use paper cups), and were forced to sit at the back of the classroom. Students of different eye colors were not allowed to play with one another on the playground (brown-eyed students were not allowed on the playground equipment), and throughout the day Elliot made comments about the shortcomings and inferiority of brown-eyed students. The following day, the roles were reversed, with brown-eyed students prized as the superior group.

A Person is 60 Percent Water, the Rest is Blood and Iron (and Education)

All Sara Smolinsky wanted was to be a person.

For our Russian Jew immigrant protagonist of Bread Givers, it would take much of her formative years to figure out how to do that.  She had to become independent of the ways of her family, and the Old World, where “only men were people.” [1]  For Sara, she finds that her only path to achieving the independence necessary to being someone in America is through education.

The most striking issue with Sara was her insistence that, for most of her story, she was not yet a person at all.