ARTICLE: Schools updating lessons on 1st Thanksgiving
Interesting little ditty from the Chicago Tribune last week...
Schools updating lessons on 1st Thanksgiving
By Angie Leventis Lourgos - Tribune staff reporter
1:48 PM CST, November 25, 2009
The second-graders spent two school days aboard a faux Mayflower ship in their auditorium, braving simulated storms, seasickness and even the birth of a baby.
The pretend Pilgrims at William Beye Elementary School in Oak Park kept journals to explore their fears of moving to a new land. One student wrote, "the king is very bossy, so I got on this ship with my family."
Before the mock journey, they role-played and kept journals in a similar fashion as American Indians while studying different tribes. The students also learned how some of the English settlers' choices harmed indigenous people, examining the more tragic aspects of American history as well as the bright moments.
Many educators are striving to celebrate a more historically accurate Thanksgiving, ditching the stereotypical Pilgrim-and-Indian stories in favor of true social studies lessons. Teachers say a nuanced approach helps debunk popular myths and can add cultural awareness to the holiday.
"This makes history more real," said Amber Schweigert, a second-grade teacher at Beye Elementary.
Third-graders at Fox Meadow Elementary School in South Elgin are immersed in a six-week unit studying several American Indian tribes, focusing on their use of natural resources. Second-graders at Centennial Elementary School in Bartlett learn about the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people through "Teaching Thanksgiving," a research interactive Web site from the Plimoth Plantation museum in Plymouth, Mass.
It can be difficult to perfectly replicate the era. For instance, a few students at Beye wore buckles in their Pilgrim hats, which wasn't actually the fashion at the time; teachers say they covered proper period dress in class but didn't want to overburden parents with too many costume restrictions. Despite some imperfections, these kind of history lessons illustrate a marked shift from how the holiday has traditionally been taught.
"It shows there are different perspectives and (the teachers) do a good job of weaving it together in a way that makes sense at their age," said Mignon Nance, whose son attends Beye Elementary.
For the past century or so, the standard school Thanksgiving celebration featured pageants with students dressed as stoic Pilgrims and comparatively savage Indians. Children were served "traditional" holiday meals such as cranberry sauce and pie and stuffing, most of which weren't available in the 1600s. And the culture of American Indians and mistreatment of indigenous people were rarely discussed.
These customs began as an "Americanizing impulse" during a wave of heavy Immigration in the 1890s, said Elizabeth Pleck, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied and written about the holiday.
The traditions were introduced at schools as part of a melting pot strategy, so children would bring them home and assimilate their immigrant parents, Pleck said. The purpose was building nationalism, not gaining a deeper cultural understanding, she said
While the Wampanoag shared a harvest celebration with the Pilgrims in1621, most practices today represent idealized, Victorian-era concepts that have little to do with that event, said Jennifer Monac of Plimoth Plantation, which provides the online lesson used by students at Centennial Elementary.
Monac said it's important to remember the Pilgrims were real people, not "perfect demigods," and the Wampanoag had lived and held harvest celebrations and days for giving thanks for thousands of years before the settlers arrived, she said.
"To ignore that history is to ignore the culture of an entire people," she said.
Particularly troubling are stereotypical costumes or fake ceremonies, which are inaccurate and disrespectful, said Megan Bang, director of education at the American Indian Center of Chicago. Instead, Bang encouraged classes to study one tribe in-depth and include contemporary American Indians in the lesson, moving beyond static or purely historical images.
She warned that glossing over the European settlers' unjust treatment of American Indians to preserve the holiday story discounts grave injustices. "That feel-good myth presents a big problem," she said.
Monac added that students and teachers often find a deeper, researched context for Thanksgiving more interesting than simplified stories and plays.
"It's not about taking away from the holiday, but getting to an understanding about where the holiday comes from," she said.
eleventis@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
SOURCE: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-web-thanksgiving-historynov2...
Schools updating lessons on 1st Thanksgiving
By Angie Leventis Lourgos - Tribune staff reporter
1:48 PM CST, November 25, 2009
The second-graders spent two school days aboard a faux Mayflower ship in their auditorium, braving simulated storms, seasickness and even the birth of a baby.
The pretend Pilgrims at William Beye Elementary School in Oak Park kept journals to explore their fears of moving to a new land. One student wrote, "the king is very bossy, so I got on this ship with my family."
Before the mock journey, they role-played and kept journals in a similar fashion as American Indians while studying different tribes. The students also learned how some of the English settlers' choices harmed indigenous people, examining the more tragic aspects of American history as well as the bright moments.
Many educators are striving to celebrate a more historically accurate Thanksgiving, ditching the stereotypical Pilgrim-and-Indian stories in favor of true social studies lessons. Teachers say a nuanced approach helps debunk popular myths and can add cultural awareness to the holiday.
"This makes history more real," said Amber Schweigert, a second-grade teacher at Beye Elementary.
Third-graders at Fox Meadow Elementary School in South Elgin are immersed in a six-week unit studying several American Indian tribes, focusing on their use of natural resources. Second-graders at Centennial Elementary School in Bartlett learn about the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people through "Teaching Thanksgiving," a research interactive Web site from the Plimoth Plantation museum in Plymouth, Mass.
It can be difficult to perfectly replicate the era. For instance, a few students at Beye wore buckles in their Pilgrim hats, which wasn't actually the fashion at the time; teachers say they covered proper period dress in class but didn't want to overburden parents with too many costume restrictions. Despite some imperfections, these kind of history lessons illustrate a marked shift from how the holiday has traditionally been taught.
"It shows there are different perspectives and (the teachers) do a good job of weaving it together in a way that makes sense at their age," said Mignon Nance, whose son attends Beye Elementary.
For the past century or so, the standard school Thanksgiving celebration featured pageants with students dressed as stoic Pilgrims and comparatively savage Indians. Children were served "traditional" holiday meals such as cranberry sauce and pie and stuffing, most of which weren't available in the 1600s. And the culture of American Indians and mistreatment of indigenous people were rarely discussed.
These customs began as an "Americanizing impulse" during a wave of heavy Immigration in the 1890s, said Elizabeth Pleck, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied and written about the holiday.
The traditions were introduced at schools as part of a melting pot strategy, so children would bring them home and assimilate their immigrant parents, Pleck said. The purpose was building nationalism, not gaining a deeper cultural understanding, she said
While the Wampanoag shared a harvest celebration with the Pilgrims in1621, most practices today represent idealized, Victorian-era concepts that have little to do with that event, said Jennifer Monac of Plimoth Plantation, which provides the online lesson used by students at Centennial Elementary.
Monac said it's important to remember the Pilgrims were real people, not "perfect demigods," and the Wampanoag had lived and held harvest celebrations and days for giving thanks for thousands of years before the settlers arrived, she said.
"To ignore that history is to ignore the culture of an entire people," she said.
Particularly troubling are stereotypical costumes or fake ceremonies, which are inaccurate and disrespectful, said Megan Bang, director of education at the American Indian Center of Chicago. Instead, Bang encouraged classes to study one tribe in-depth and include contemporary American Indians in the lesson, moving beyond static or purely historical images.
She warned that glossing over the European settlers' unjust treatment of American Indians to preserve the holiday story discounts grave injustices. "That feel-good myth presents a big problem," she said.
Monac added that students and teachers often find a deeper, researched context for Thanksgiving more interesting than simplified stories and plays.
"It's not about taking away from the holiday, but getting to an understanding about where the holiday comes from," she said.
eleventis@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
SOURCE: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-web-thanksgiving-historynov2...
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