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Textbooks often do a poor job when it comes to teaching students about slavery in the U.S. Dusan Pavlic from www.shutterstock.com

When it comes to teaching students about slavery in the United States, teachers often stumble through the topic. In the worst cases, they use poorly conceived lessons that end up inflaming students, parents and communities about a subject that is already difficult to deal with because of the inhumanity involved.

For instance, in 2018 a Bronx middle school teacher " shocked and traumatized" her social studies class when she had black students lie on the floor, then " stepped on their backs to show them what slavery felt like."

In 2012 in Georgia, a third-grade teacher resigned after an investigation found the teacher and three others had assigned math homework with word problems about slavery, such as, "If Frederick got two beatings each day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

As a former social studies teacher and now as an assistant professor who helps prepare educators to teach social studies, I have no shortage of ideas on how educators - or parents or anyone who is interested in learning more about slavery in the United States - can do a better job of understanding the subject and presenting it to others. Here are three of those ideas:

1. Identify the slaveholding presidents

Every American should know that several U.S. presidents - including some of the Founding Fathers - were slaveholders. Twelve U.S. presidents held anywhere from one to hundreds of people as slaves. The nation's first president, George Washington, enslaved over 300 people and held slaves for 56 years. Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, held 600 persons as slaves.

Everett Historical from www.shutterstock.com

This often comes as a surprise to students. In my experience, many students have also been taught that the presidents were nice and humane to their slaves. I would emphasize to students that treating a person as property is neither nice nor humane.

About three years ago, critics prompted Scholastic to stop distribution of a book, "A Birthday Cake for George Washington," that depicted "happy" slaves and which Scholastic itself admits may have given a "false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves."

Slavery should be taught from the perspectives of those who were enslaved. For example, the young reader's edition of "Never Caught, The Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away," sheds light on an aspect of George Washington's life as a slaveholder that is not widely told to children.

Similarly, students should contemplate the life of Sally Hemings, an enslaved house servant with whom Thomas Jefferson - author of the Declaration of Independence - fathered six children, beginning when she was 16. Jefferson never publicly acknowledged his children with Hemings.

2. Move beyond textbooks

When it comes to dealing with slavery, textbooks often use inadequate or inaccurate descriptions. For instance, in 2015, a high school freshman noticed that his geography textbook referred to Africans brought to plantations in the United States between the 1500s and 1800s as "workers" instead of as slaves. This sparked widespread outrage as McGraw-Hill is a major textbook publishing company. McGraw-Hill apologized and agreed to revise the textbooks.

NPR

The McGraw-Hill textbook controversy was hardly an isolated issue. In 2018, the Southern Law Poverty Center found that when it comes to teaching students about American slavery, "textbooks do not have enough material about it." Even the best textbook examined in the center's analysis scored just 70 percent on a rubric designed to assess how good the textbooks were teaching various aspects of U.S. slavery, such as how the nation's founding documents - the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution - contain protections for slavery, or how slave labor was critical to the nation's economy. The average book scored 46 percent.

Parents and educators would be wise to encourage the use of primary sources to fill in what the textbooks are missing. Primary sources include records and firsthand accounts.

Since slavery in the U.S. was not formally abolished until the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, today's student might think there's no way they could actually hear the voices of former slaves. But as demonstrated by Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves tell their Stories - a collection on file at the Library of Congress and available online - a person can actually hear firsthand accounts of life during slavery.

Hearing the voices of those who were enslaved is more powerful than what could ever be captured in a textbook.

Similar primary sources can be found in in the Framework for Teaching Hard History of American Slavery. Picture books and novels, such as those on a list titled " Slavery, Resistance and Reparations," are also a great way to engage children of all ages.

3. Get out of the classroom

Another way to learn about slavery is to visit museums and historic sites. Smaller state and local museums with exhibits, plantations, cemeteries, auction blocks and historical markers might be located in your state or local community. A librarian or archivist at a local library might be able to share unique local histories of slavery.

Jim McKnight/AP

Plan family trips or field trips to larger national museums that highlight the histories of slavery. In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has a "Slavery and Freedom" exhibition. There is also the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Lest We Forget Black Holocaust Museum of Slavery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama, all provide a more comprehensive lens on the systemic oppression of slavery.

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3 ways to improve education about slavery in the US

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When it comes to teaching students about slavery in the United States, teachers often stumble through the topic. In the worst cases, they use poorly conceived lessons that end up inflaming students, parents and communities about a subject that is already difficult to deal with because of the inhumanity involved.

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In this article, there is a real emphasis on the inhumanity that is apart of slavery, and how that is at the core of why it is so important to teach correctly. These people who lived through these horrifying experiences should not be pushed under the rug or simplified to not hurt peoples feelings. This article connects to the book because it talks about showing all sides of the story, even if it makes people uncomfortable. One example of this is talking about which presidents had slaves. This shows that the leaders of our country are not innocent to the injustices that occurred during their term, the injustices that they themselves were apart of.

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One of the key connections between the book and this article is the varying resources that teachers can use to teach about slavery correctly. Teachers must go outside of the text books. Giving first person accounts of the realities of slavery, like diaries, is a way to show slavery in a way where the students can understand better. It humanizes the slaves and how African American people during that time were more than just that; they had families hopes for the future and a better life. Also, you can take your students to various important historical places that give information about slavery, like museums. What is the most important part is that teachers are doing the research into where ever they take their students, and what resources they use to teach them.

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Another component that is linked to to the book is to teach slavery from the perspectives of the people that were affected by it. Teaching slavery from a white male perspective does no justice to the hardships that African American people had to go through to survive. In the book, they talk about how slaves should not be shown as people who all had one unanimous experience while enslaved, and instead show the varying struggles and circumstances that millions of people had to face.

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1. The knowledge that I learned through this chapter and the article will apply to my teaching because it has made me more aware of the pitfalls of teaching about slavery. Knowing what not to do, like role playing or dramatizing traumatic events, really has shown me the horrors of past teachings and how I want to be different from that. I want to teach my kids in a way where the real history is revealed, and African American hope is taught as well. I do not want to have white people be seen as anything other than the perpetrators of these horrors. 

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1. The knowledge that I learned through this chapter and the article will apply to my teaching because it has made me more aware of the pitfalls of teaching about slavery. Knowing what not to do, like role playing or dramatizing traumatic events, really has shown me the horrors of past teachings and how I want to be different from that. I want to teach my kids in a way where the real history is revealed, and African American hope is taught as well. I do not want to have white people be seen as anything other than the perpetrators of these horrors. 

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2.  I want to teach using first hand accounts of slavery, and show the realities of slavery from the African Americans perspective. Teaching my students about specific people, giving names to the slaves rather than just talking about them as a collective.

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2.  I want to teach using first hand accounts of slavery, and show the realities of slavery from the African Americans perspective. Teaching my students about specific people, giving names to the slaves rather than just talking about them as a collective.

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3. Whenever I teach about slavery, I want to have clear pedagogical priorities. What I mean by this is I want to know what my students will be learning, and how it will be interpreted by each of my students in regards to their backgrounds. I want to know what my students will ultimately take away from the lesson, and how the way that I am teaching it shapes the knowledge they are learning. I do not want to try to hide any hard truths from my students. While the use of Gamification and dramatization can be used to support learning about hard topics like slavery, without a clear end goal and purpose for using them, teachers should not use them at all. 

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3. Whenever I teach about slavery, I want to have clear pedagogical priorities. What I mean by this is I want to know what my students will be learning, and how it will be interpreted by each of my students in regards to their backgrounds. I want to know what my students will ultimately take away from the lesson, and how the way that I am teaching it shapes the knowledge they are learning. I do not want to try to hide any hard truths from my students. While the use of Gamification and dramatization can be used to support learning about hard topics like slavery, without a clear end goal and purpose for using them, teachers should not use them at all. 

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1. Why is the use of role playing and plays about slavery still allowed in schools? 

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1. Why is the use of role playing and plays about slavery still allowed in schools? 

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2. How can dramatization be used in a successful way? 

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2. How can dramatization be used in a successful way? 

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Gamification is when there is game like components intertwined with an educational component that
places the entertainment value over the learning. Dramatization goes hand in hand with the use of gamification. The use of gamification commonly reinforces the dominant perspective by trying to erase the reality of the marginalized ones. When teaching about slavery, teachers should make sure not to  re-traumatize your students. Teachers should work to develop students content knowledge and historical empathy as they learn about slavery rather than trying to make it a fun time. Any role play or game like activity should have a lot of context and the purpose of the activity should be very clear to students. Show both sides of the event.

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The Oregon trail game is a role play video game that is a prime example of problematic gamification. It is a game that further emphasizes white normality and the white perspective. The game teaches the concept of  “Westward Expansion” without talking about the fact that white colonists were not the first people to live on this land. They ignore the devastation of how the white men settled onto this land.  They also offer little to no information about the Native people who lived and still live on the land that the settlers trespassed on. This game only perpetuates the wite narrative that the settlers took over this land peacefully. The gamification of such a traumatic era is in itself horrible. As the book details, do not make genocide a game.

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Leah Slick-Driscoll (Meskwaki/Winnebago) is  a social studies teacher at Meskwaki Settlement School. With the Oregon trail in mind, this teacher created a more just and fair simulation. The base of the game has students imagine that there is an alien invasion of the Midwest. Rather than disconnecting the game from the horrors of reality, every part of this game that Slick-Driscoll created is analagous to real events that the Native people have had to life through. This is one of the key differences between these two games.

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While slavery is a heavy and serious topic, there are some ways to show that the conditions that African Americans lived through have gotten better, and there is hope. Particularly in elementary education, it is important for teachers to not only share the horrors, but the Black joy that was experienced, and is still happening today. The book describes Black joy as the many outlets of community resilience and ingenuity. Black joy is not a happy slave, but how African American people found solace and strength in their own lives to keep moving forward. The norm in America tends to take away the diverse individual communities that Black people created and worked to keep. They want to frame people of color as being the exact same; people who look the same act the same and have the same ideals. As teachers we must move past the one story lens that has been taught in the past, and create a new world of understanding and empathy.

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The way that historical events are spoken about and the wording used is so important in the way that the event is understood. Something as simple as using the term forced migration instead of slavery changes the way that the event is understood. Words have connotations behind them, and as teachers we must be careful with the phrasing that we use in our classrooms. Another example is the use of the word plantation; the reality of slavery is that the plantations that slaves lived on were really slave labor camps. Something as simple as using enslaved rather than slave reminds both you and your students that African Americans did not want to be slaves. They did not choose the life that they were living and being enslaved was a deliberate act by white American's.

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3. Why is there not a better common curriculum for teaching about slavery when it is such a core part of our Nations history?

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3. Why is there not a better common curriculum for teaching about slavery when it is such a core part of our Nations history?