This seems like the right choice. Seems it can be done without to much deviation into the nether regions.
This is semantics. We relate history through the telling of it. We don't teach or talk about history through the stating of random facts.
I'm not dissuading her from teaching it. What I'm saying is that it's easy to say just be "objective," but as a practical matter, that's quite hard to do with a subject like history. And the crappy laws passed by DeSantis and the Republicans legitimately have teachers afraid of being punished because a student or parent took something the wrong way or out of context.
There will be *some*political weeds when we talk about pay gaps and the fact that until relatively recently women couldn’t have their credit cards, bank accounts, and own property in some states. There’s no reason to avoid these subjects, they just have to broached appropriately.
There is no 'history' independent of oral history/chronical/narrative/eye-witness account, etc. written or remembered by people
But is it appropriate to teach that history from different perspectives? I went to school here in Florida from first grade to UF and minored in history and it was just recently that I learned about the Ocoee Massacre. It’s things like this that are an issue. Here in Brevard county we have a program for all middle schoolers to make a field trip to the Moore Cultural Center where they’ll learn about Harry and Harriet Moore and their fight for civil rights for which they lost their lives. https://www.harryharriettemoore.org/ Moms for Liberty is already making noise about this and it hasn’t even started yet.
I had to look up this specific group. Can't find a full version of the spreadsheet with their complaints but did read couple articles. Even the racial stuff aside (I think I know why they're defensive about that), most of this seems quite odd. Apparently, for example, they think kids can't handle knowing about the devastating effects of hurricanes. I wonder if they also object to active shooter discussions or tornado drills? Far-Right Group Wants to Ban Kids From Reading Books on Male Seahorses, Galileo, and MLK Accompanying that letter is an 11-page spreadsheet with complaints about books on the district’s curriculum, ranging from popular books on civil rights heroes to books about poisonous animals (“text speaks of horned lizard squirting blood out of its eyes”), Johnny Appleseed (“story is sad and dark”), and Greek and Roman mythology (“illustration of the goddess Venus naked coming out of the ocean...story of Tantalus and how he cooks up, serves, and eats his son.”) A book about hurricanes is no good (“1st grade is too young to hear about possible devastating effects of hurricanes”) and a book about owls is designated as a downer. (“It’s a sad book, but turns out ok. Not a book I would want to read for fun,” an adult wrote of the owl book in the spreadsheet.) **** In addition to broadsides against books about King and Bridges, the list takes a dim view of multiple books about Native Americans. One, The Rough-Face Girl, is deemed inappropriate because it includes an illustration of the protagonist bathing “with her hair covering her chest.” The book First Nations of North America: Plains Indians is also a no-no, because it “paints white people in a negative light.” **** MFL’s Williamson County chapter also takes issue with a picture book about seahorses, in part because it depicted “mating seahorses with pictures of postions [sic] and discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”
They got my principal to pull The Oxbow Incident from our library with no real explanation given except “it’s an adult book” Not sure what this means unless it’s just that the characters are adults I show the movie at the beginning of my AP Gov class to introduce the concepts of rule of law and tyranny of the majority. I will show it again this year
Hey kids, let me blow your mind ... guess who put that women voting thing over the top ... the state of Tennessee
Hat's off to the one person in Tennessee who could read and lied to the others about what the amendment said.
But it will make males in the class feel guilty or bad about themselves. You'll be hearing from Dads for Liberty.
Congrats on your pending retirement!! I appreciate the thought you are putting into the decision as to whether you want to take on this task or not. We may disagree politically about a lot of things, but I do believe the definition of a Women in today's political climate is an absolute definite part that needs to be taught. Otherwise, what history can be taught as "Women's History" if we can't even define a woman? I'm not arguing gender fluidity or trying to be a smart a$$ but when we can't all agree on a simple definition of a woman vs a man, someone needs to have the courage to define it.
I went to a really rough, under-performing inner-city high school in Miami and thanks to teachers like YOU, I came out the other side and have done pretty damn well all things considered. (You remind me of Ms. Barbara Maynard, my high school English Teacher who taught at THE toughest school in Miami for twenty years from the 1980s into the early aughts, she was AMAZING!) I would implore you to teach the class. Brevard is not Dade county, of course, but it could be the difference between some of these kids getting an understanding of the world we actually live in versus the sunken place the state seems to be drifting deeper and deeper into (in this case, a fact-based perspective on the work women of all races in this country have done to claim and reclaim their rights). I salute you
