Symposium

Malung Sense of Multiple Interpretations

10s

Jack Dougherg,

Some teaching innovations arise from a combination of good intentions, last-minute planning, and incredible luck. Colgate University hired me in late July 1997 as a visiting professor for the fall semester. As I scrambled to finish my dissertation and move my family, only a few days remained to pull together the syllabus for a course on Race and Education. I wanted to begm this contemporary course with an hstorical focus, delving into Afiican- American experiences with school desegregation during the mid twentieth century, but could not decide on which of the many excellent historical case studies to assign. The bookstore wanted my order as soon as possible. So I ordered two books-David Cecelslu’s Along Freedom Road and Vanessa Sid- dle Walker’s Their Highest Potential-hoping that at least one would arrive on time. When both magically appeared on the bookstore shelves a day before the first class, I decided to innovate and revised the syllabus. Half of the students would read Cecelski; the other half would read Walker. Despite some initial confusion, my students began to engage in serious discussions over historical interpretations of school desegregation, demonstrating a level of depth that would not have happened had I assigned only one book to the entire class.

What began as an accident has evolved into an intriguing learning exercise in historical thinking. Over the past four years at Trinity College, I have continued this approach in my history of education course, Educa- tion Reform: Past and Present, though with some modifications. First, I switched the book pairing and now assign Constance Curry’s Silver Rights to half of the class and David Cecelski’s Along Freedom Road to the other. These books better complement one another because both focus on how Southern Blacks responded differently to White-organized “freedom of choice” plans that emerged in the mid 1960s to comply with federal school desegregation mandates. Curry’s book tells the story of the Carter family, the only African Americans in Sunflower County, Mississippi, who defied intimidation and dared to leave their dilapidated Black schools for the

Jack Dougherty is Assistant Professor and Director of the Educational Studies Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He specializes in educational history and policy. Readers may contact him via the web at: <www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ/dougherty.htm>.

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better-resourced White ones. In 1967, they successfully sued to eliminate the so-called “freedom of choice” plan, demanding that everyone partici- pate in a mandatory school desegregation plan. But Cecelski’s book describes events that took place a year later in Hyde County, North Carolina. Under federal pressure to eliminate “freedom of choice,” local white leaders imposed a one-way desegregation plan that threatened to close schools that the African-American community had long supported, leading many of them to protest and call for the restoration of “fi-eedom of choice.” When my students read these books together, the underlying issue was not simply a pro or con on school desegregation, but how its implementation had differ- ent meanings in these two communities. My broader objective is for stu- dents to analyze Curry and Cecelslu’s competing interpretations of the past, evaluate the supporting evidence, and understand how these vastly differ- ent narratives might arise from particular contexts and perspectives.

Second, I inserted more structure in the course to help students rec- ognize the parallels between the book they had read and their classmates’ book (which they had not). At the beginning of the unit, some background lecture and a reader’s guide sheet briefly laid out Curry’s and Cecelslu’s perspectives, the community settings, and major historical actors, followed by four analytical questions common to both books. (See resources below.) After students had finished their respective book, I reorganized them into a two-part “jigsaw” discussion format. Students first met in small groups with classmates who had read the same book, to confirm each other’s under- standing and rehearse how they would summarize its essential points for the other half of class. Once they had developed expertise on their own material, students moved into new groups of four, with two representatives for each book to summarize their narrative. Then this new group compared and contrasted the two interpretations, relylng upon the broader ana lp- cal questions from the reader’s guide. The class typically closed with a whole-group discussion, where I drew out a common theme that African Americans were not simply struggling for school desegregation but rather for the power to uplift the race through school reform in a way that fit their particular community’s needs.

Teaching competing interpretations takes time and requires thought- ful assessment and support. One semester, amid record-breaking snow- storms that drastically cut back class sessions, I foolishly rushed my students through the discussions described above in merely twenty minutes. They revolted, and rightfully so; not only had each individual invested consider- able time in preparing for class, but I had cut short the time necessary for them to complete an interdependent learning exercise, where students relied upon their classmates to teach them about a book that they were not respon- sible for reading. Furthermore, student evaluations of this exercise have led me to redesign my assessment. My typical open-book midterm exam

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question for this unit asks why the Carter family in Silver Rights opposed “freedom of choice” while many African Americans in Along Freedom Road supported it. But I have added a line stating that students must identify which book they have read, noting that I will hold their supporting evi- dence to a higher standard for this book than for the other. Finally, I have experimented with requiring all students to read a third book, James Pat- terson’s Brown v Board of Education, whose broad synthesis of the NAACP’s evolving legal strategy over the twentieth century provides context for the case studies. In addition, the trio of Curry, Cecelski, and Patterson raises a new set of questions for my students about how historians writing nation- al-level studies face different issues than those who write community his- tories.

While I may have stumbled into this pedagogical innovation by acci- dent, the concept of teaching competing historical interpretations is cer- tainly not new. Looking back, I realize that it reflects one of the best parts of my graduate-level historical training a t the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where professors Carl Kaestle, Linda Gordon, and especially Jur- gen Herbst pushed our seminars to comprehend and evaluate two (or three or four) interpretations simultaneously, and sort out the arguments and evi- dence as a community of scholars. I can also trace its influence back to my years as a high school history teacher, working alongside more experienced colleagues who offered me worlung models and a richer vocabulary for organizing complex group exercises. Finally, much of my thinking about teaching multiple interpretations arose while contemplating my own schol- arly work on the evolution of conflicting and overlapping Black school reform movements.

The deeply symbolic fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision falls upon us at a pivotal moment. Present-day school desegregation proponents are under fire, often by advocates of private school choice, over the best strategy for uplifting African Americans and reducing inequalities across the nation. As educators, our mission is to bring the underlymg historical issues to the forefront of our students’ minds to help make sense of how we have arrived at our contemporary debates over race and school reform. Indeed, there is not enough time in the semester to read every book on the subject. But if we select two (or three) books and organize our students to teach one another about different historical perspectives on school deseg- regation and choice, perhaps they will also acquire some of the slulls nec- essary to ensure the survival of a participatory (and racially &verse) democracy, as we struggle with the educational policy decisions facing us today and in the future.

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Resources:

Cecelski, David S. Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Curry, Constance. Silver Rights. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Compa- ny, 1995.

Dougherty, Jack. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Refom in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming Spring 2004.

Dougherty, Jack. Educ 300: Education Refom-Past and Present, syllabus available at http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ

Patterson, James T. Brmn v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford Press, 200 1.

Walker, Vanessa Siddle. Their Highest Potential: An Afiican American School Community in the Segregated South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.