Teaching About Dr. Martin Luther King Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/12/2010 - 22:34
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Martin Luther King, Jr. is the only American with a unique, individual holiday—not even American presidents are so remembered anymore. It's observed on the third Monday in January—January 18 this year—and the path to creating this holiday was uphill. Corretta Scott King (1927-2006) considered the day as one of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. "Whether you are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian-American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America," she wrote.

The Martin Luther King holiday is a day of service, not relaxation.

Since 1994, it's also been a Day of Service, "a day ON, not a day off," when people are encouraged to come together with volunteer projects to move us closer to achieving the dream Dr. King had for the nation. Dr. King once said that what we all have to decide is whether we "will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life's most persistent and nagging question is 'what are you doing for others?'"

Communities throughout the country offer opportunities for volunteers—use the searchbox at Serve.gov to find programs near you—or consider planning ahead with your students to develop a school-based day of service for 2011.

It's a good time to ask whether we've progressed toward achieving Martin Luther King's dream.

Few commemorations of the Civil Rights leader will occur without citing King's moving and powerful I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, August 28, 1963. Few will fail to ask whether we have moved closer to achieving his dream that America is living out the "true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

It was a question Martin Luther King later asked in the sermon, "Unfulfilled Dreams," delivered at Ebeneezer Baptist Church on March 3, 1968 less than a month before his assassination. "I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable," he stated and he talked about Mahatma Gandhi, Woodrow Wilson, and various Biblical figures who died before seeing the fruition of their lifework.

Provocative questions about the meaning of Martin Luther King's life yield surprising answers.

The creators of Teach Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Western Michigan University MLK Celebration Committee believe that students K-12 are able to tackle this question and offer teaching ideas and resources grouped for elementary, middle and high school students. Materials encourage educators to move beyond textbook biographies to "...the years following 1963...years of tremendous growth and deepened insight. King was uncompromising in his stand against racism in the United States."

The site provokes discussion through introducing (and dispelling) four myths about Dr. King, including, "Martin Luther King, Jr. should be thought of as a great African American leader." "Compared to Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. was an "Uncle Tom;" rather than using "any means necessary" he believed in a passive non-violence." "Now that we are in the twenty-first century we have achieved the goals King fought for?" The phrasing of the myths is intended to jar; the commentary does not, but emphasizes the scope of Dr. King's work, placing his life in a global context of meaning and achievement.

Audiovisual resources posted on the site (and linked through YouTube) include "I Have a Dream," other speeches, and videos of historical commentary.

For materials that help relate Dr. King's work to the present day, explore a 2008 speech by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama at Ebeneezer Baptist Church. The half-hour video recaps the civil rights movement, Dr. King's life and impact, and present-day concerns.

And for comprehensive access to primary sources, white papers, and teaching materials, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University hosts the King Papers Project. As you might expect, a plethora of materials on King, his life, his speeches, and his work are accessible under this umbrella. Classroom Resources include document-based lesson plans, biographical essays, and an online encyclopedia of the civil rights movement.

A Day On, Not a Day Off

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Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Since 1994 and the signing into law of the King Holiday and Service Act, the holiday is a "day on, not a day off," a national day of service. According to the King Center, King's widow, Coretta Scott King, described the holiday this way:

Every King Holiday has been a national "teach-in" on the values of nonviolence, including unconditional love, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation, which are so desperately needed to unify America. It is a day of intensive education and training in Martin's philosophy and methods of nonviolent social change and conflict-reconciliation. The Holiday provides a unique opportunity to teach young people to fight evil, not people, to get in the habit of asking themselves, "what is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict?"

Maybe you've given your students background on the holiday and prepared them to get involved in the local community today. But Martin Luther King Jr. Day shouldn't be the only day your students are ready to serve—and King isn't the only topic that can connect service and history education.

More Than One Day of Service

President Barack Obama's United We Serve initiative calls on citizens to come together to improve their communities. The government Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service website reflects that call, and provides resources you can draw on throughout the year.

Helping to preserve history can be service, too!

Use this site to familiarize yourself (and your students, depending on their grade level and readiness to organize projects) with service opportunities in your area. Search by city, state, or zip code; register your own project; or read up on planning a project with the site's detailed Action Guides.

Now consider your curriculum and your local community. Don't limit yourself to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, or to the third Monday of January. Think about the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Progressive Era, the women's rights movement, the victory gardens and scrap drives of the World War II homefront, the Berlin Airlift. What sorts of projects might you guide students in initiating (or at least considering) for any of these topics or time periods that would also help them learn—and feel connected to—historical content?

Serving to Preserve

Helping to preserve history can be service, too! Listen to teacher James Percoco speak on teaching with memorials and monuments and think about your local history. Are there places that need young volunteers? Locations that students could research and then prepare their own interpretive materials?

Use Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a reminder not just to memorialize history, but to empower students to connect with, interpret, and preserve it in the service of the present!

Resources on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sounds good, you say, but maybe you need resources for teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, before you head off onto wider projects. Last year, we recommended a variety of online resources in our Jan. 13 blog entry. Here are those recommendations again—and a few new ones! Remember to search our Website Reviews and try our Lesson Plan Gateway for even more links to great materials.

Red Cross: Exploring Humanitarian Law aharmon Sat, 10/15/2011 - 18:20
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Photo, Type of German Prisoner Captured in the New Push, c. 1918, Flickr Commons
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The first question likely on your mind is, "How can I mesh humanitarian law with history? It's a bit off-topic, isn't it?" You may be interested in the topic, and see its merit, but not know how to include it in your classroom.

The Red Cross makes a point of listing ways that history and humanitarian law intersect. Their examples include

  • Prisoners of War: Andersonville and British POW ships of the Revolutionary War
  • Banned weapons: As part of the history of science and technology
  • Human dignity and bystander action: Las Casas, citizens against Native American removal in the 1830s, Helen Hunt Jackson, World War II, and women's and civil rights movements
  • Refugees: How have they impacted our history and culture?

Still not convinced? Try reading their standards guide.

The site contains a curriculum which specifically details factors such as the amount of time needed for each module component and the required preparation.

Maybe a full curriculum won't really fit in your classroom. That doesn't mean the site should be written off. Try their resources page. Here, you can find a glossary, a teaching guide, suggested supplemental films and videos, articles, websites, and examples of student work (art and poetry). Perhaps most useful of all, the site offers a series of lessons on the Civil War, as viewed from a humanitarian perspective.

Film and Video
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Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
General
Ideas & Ideologies
Legal History
Military History

Dynamics of Idealism: Volunteers for Civil Rights, 1965-1982

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These materials were collected for a study on the attitudes, backgrounds, goals, and experiences of volunteers participating in a 1965 Southern Christian Leadership Conference voter registration effort. Resources include questionnaires submitted prior to and following the project, as well as a follow-up survey conducted in 1982.

Participants were queried about why they volunteered, what they expected, their attitudes regarding race and politics, images they held of the South, expectations they had regarding the African American community, personal memories and effects of their participation, and subsequent attitudes regarding civil rights, violence, and social change. These resources offer insight into the Civil Rights Movement and some sociological aspects of American reformers.

Quantitative Evidence
Christians
civil rights
Civil Rights Movement
race
race relations
social reforms
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
volunteer organizations
voter registration
voters
voting
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Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
Ideas & Ideologies
Politics
Reform

Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project

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Featuring texts by and about Martin Luther King Jr., this regularly updated website currently contains more than 1,400 speeches, sermons, and other writings, mostly taken from five volumes covering the period from 1929 to 1968. (These are listed in the Published Documents section under Papers.)

In addition, sixteen chapters of materials published in 1998 as The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. are available. The website presents important sermons and speeches from later periods, including "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the March on Washington address, the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and “Beyond Vietnam.” Additional materials include an interactive chronology of King's life, two biographical essay, over twenty audio files of recorded speeches and sermons, and twelve articles on King. More than thirty photographs complete the website.

The King Papers Project is valuable for studying King's views and discourse on civil rights, race relations, nonviolence, education, peace, and other political, religious, and philosophical topics.

Personal Accounts
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Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s

Portrait of Medgar Evers

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Smithsonian curators examine a photograph of civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963), looking at what it says about the tension between racial groups at the time and the call for social change an accumulation of such media objects can communicate.

Confronting the "Official Story" of American History

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"Washington Crossing the Deleware". Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. 1851 oil on canvas
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Keith Barton of Indiana University and Linda Levstik of the University of Kentucky wanted to understand the "official" story of American history so often presented in classrooms and textbooks. What happens to aspects of history that don’t fit the way we usually teach U.S. history? And how do students respond?

Barton and Levstik interviewed 48 children, grades 5–8, to see how middle-schoolers understand the significance of particular events. Students were asked to choose from a number of historical events in order to determine which eight to include on a timeline of the last 500 years.

Many students alighted on a central theme in U.S. history: steadily expanding rights and opportunities. While stories like this help structure students' thinking about American history, traditional themes (such as perpetual progress or expanding freedoms) left them ill-equipped to deal with issues like racial inequality or political dissent.

While stories . . . help structure students' thinking about American history, traditional themes . . . left them ill-equipped to deal with issues like racial inequality or political dissent.

This study suggests that middle-grade students may need help grasping the complexities of the past or finding a place for stories that don’t fit common narratives. The authors proposed that teachers expose students to more complex and diverse perspectives by identifying what such narratives leave out. How has progress not been achieved? Where have freedoms not been expanded? What are the exceptions, the outliers, the cases that don’t fit? The researchers believe that students can learn traditional thematic narratives, while at the same time exploring the richness and complexity of history.

Thematic Trends

When Barton and Levstik interviewed the students, they found a core group of themes emerged from the events students chose as the most significant. Stories of national origin, American exceptionality, expanding freedoms, and technological progress consistently appeared among the students' choices. Such themes represented an "official version" of American history that all students seemed to recognize.

Alternative Stories

Some students viewed events as important despite the fact that their themes did not easily fit into the more popular narratives. Racism and sexism directly contradict themes of progress and expanding freedoms. Other events like the Great Depression and the Vietnam War fly in the face of American exceptionality. In both cases, however, students found it challenging to explain why they found these events significant. While students were convinced of the importance of such events, they struggled to reconcile them with common themes of U.S. history.

Two Ideas in Their Minds

American history presents a wide variety of events and themes. Some, like our nation’s heritage regarding race, class, and gender, pose particular challenges. Accustomed to justifying the importance of events by referencing a few common themes, many students find themselves at a loss when confronted by events they know are important, but which don’t seem to fit the stories they are used to hearing. Lacking an overarching framework to help make sense of such events, they develop overly simplistic explanations to reconcile jarring events with the official story. As the sample application below shows, their explanations may put events together, but at the expense of historical accuracy.

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Photomechanical print, Progress, Keppler & Schwarzmann, c. 1901, LoC
In the Classroom
  • Have students create a timeline of important events in American history, asking them to explain why they make particular choices.
  • After students create their timeline, discuss the major themes that arise from their picks. Do they seem to represent an "official" history?
  • Once they have identified common historical themes, ask students to pick out events that don’t fit the "official story." What might explain this lack of fit?
Sample Application

When learning about the Great Depression, one group of students demonstrated a characteristic dilemma. As far as they knew, throughout its history the United States had been on a steady march of economic progress. Consequently, students weren't sure how the Great Depression fit into this story:

  • "It wasn't a good part of history."
  • "It was something to learn from."
  • "It was the first time our country had become really poor."
  • "They realized that they weren’t the god of all countries."
  • "It’s not going to be perfect all the time."

As these quotes demonstrate, students had accumulated a wide range of conceptions about the Great Depression. They knew bad things had happened, but thought these occurred uniformly to all Americans. As a result, they concluded that the nation had been punished for being too prosperous or self-satisfied. They entirely missed the fact that the Great Depression occurred for many specific and complex reasons, and affected different Americans in dramatically diverse ways.

Bibliography

Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik, "'It Wasn’t a Good Part of History': National Identity and Students' Explanations of Historical Significance," Teachers College Record 99, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 478–513.

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