Today's guest columnist is Joy Hakim, a former history teacher and author of "The Story of Us," a 10-volume history of the U.S. for elementary and middle-school students. The column is a speech she delivered to the American Association for State and Local History. In it, Hakim talks about the value of presenting history as a story and the importance of facing its paradoxes honestly.
There is a central paradox in U.S. history. How could we have had slavery in the land of the free? Mostly our books are terribly simplistic and moralistic on that. Slavery was evil. Period. Of course it was evil -- but a lot of slaveowners were not bad people. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were not evil. Why would they do something they knew was wrong? Children need information to wrestle with that thought. Do we do things we know are wrong? How will future generations judge us? Did you know that Virginia's George Mason refused to sign the Constitution after protesting that it didn't prohibit the slave trade. Yet Mason was a slave owner who never freed his slaves. South Carolina's John Rutledge argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of slavery and the slave trade, won his point -- and then went back home and quietly freed his slaves. Is that boring information? Kids find it fascinating. They want to know more.
If possible we need to attack issues together -- not let them divide us. American slavery was racist -- there is no question of that. But there is the dilemma of the black slaveowners. At the time of the Civil War, some 12,000 slaves were owned by free blacks. That is a very small percentage of the total of almost 4 million slaves -- but it is significant. Why did blacks own slaves? In many cases, for the same reason whites did. It helped make them more prosperous.
History is valuable if we can learn from it. When I ask children, why would anyone do something so destructive as selling another person, they know right away that it was done for money. And then when I ask if there are people today who are selling others into a kind of slavery -- slavery to habit that destroys or kills -- they know I'm talking about drugs.
Why would anybody sell drugs and destroy another person? Is it for the same reason some people sold other people? Or are there are other reasons? Not that slavery and drugs are the same -- they're not at all. But learning about slavery can equip us to deal with dilemmas that we will face. You want kids excited? You want them to begin to think? You want them to argue and agree and disagree -- intellectually? Look to history for ideas and conflicts and real issues.
Yes, history, that "dull subject" is a natural with children -- with all of us. It is a natural if it is presented as I believe it is meant to be -- as a story. The tradition of narrative history goes back to Homer and Gilgamesh and the beginnings of time. It is the story of our mothers and fathers or our grandparents and great-grandparents; it is our story -- and what could be more interesting?
But what about stories. Sure, they're fun -- but is having fun the same as learning? Are we pandering to children if we think of history as a storytelling venture? I think quite the contrary. I think the imagination that good stories and good history demand is actually what learning is all about. A litany of the details of Abraham Lincoln's life is not very interesting. But imagine yourself living with your family in winter in an open three-sided hut with a fire going on the fourth side of the hut. When the wind blows, the flames and sparks head your way. When it rains or snows you get wet and cold. Can you imagine yourself there? Try that with some young friends and see if they want to know more about the 16th president.
"War, Terrible War" (volume 8 of The Story of Us) tells the story of one of the most tragic results of slavery. Abraham Lincoln called it God's punishment. Part of the story is the battle of Gettysburg, and you see it through the eyes of Gates Fahnstock, a real boy who lived through the fighting and the awful cleanup that came afterwards:
When Gates sees the bodies and smells the smells he throws up. A soldier gives him a piece of rag to tie over his nose, like a bandit's mask. Gates cuts wood and fetches water for those who are doing the burying (p. 119).
Compare that with most textbook accounts of the Civil War.