Overview
In thinking about creating a curriculum unit which has to do with the history of enslaved Africans in the America, I considered what would be the best way to approach it based on the academic and social development of my students. I have decided that I will focus specifically on the Underground Railroad and the use of African slave narratives and Negro spirituals as purveyors of meaning which have both explicit and implicit maps that pointed the way to the physical and psychological freedom of some African slaves. I also want to illustrate the meaning and influence of these concrete physical images and the abstract images created with words, and then use them to develop learning activities which incorporate their use. These learning activities will be based on four of the Eight Principles of Montessori Education.
I teach sixth, seventh, and eighth grade Communications in a public K-8 Montessori magnet school. The student population at the middle-upper-level numbers about sixty-five students of which only four are Caucasian and they are all male. Interestingly enough, the white flight occurred due to the lack of Montessori trained and certified teachers at that level and not because of the comparatively high number of African American students. So, the white flight was not racially motivated, but in fact, the absence of Montessori trained and certified teachers precipitated the white flight which caused the racial imbalance.
However, even before these kinds of noticeable racial imbalances, I had long ago noticed an unjust imbalance and one sidedness in educational institutions. I had even participated in the imbalances in one way or another because most of the time I was a passive learner. Not until the late 1960's and early 70's did I develop the voice to question or contest the ways in which information about Africans, Africa and the institution of slavery was being transmitted as knowledge in school history books and in history classes. The view of history offered always showed enslaved Africans, through words or illustrations prostrate in a slave ship or on the ground; in chains and shackles; on an auction block being examined like an animal; working the fields; serving the master; or being hunted.
There is a certain way that information about each of the above descriptions has been justified and the justifications have been put forth and perpetuated as truth. As I said in my introduction, some of my memories have been born of my own experience and others have been transplanted from my parents, grandparents and even by people in the small town in which I grew up. So, I carry memories which interlock like warp and weft and then push and pull against my psyche. The memories intersect to create a netlike system of coordinates that chart the dynamics of my present conceptual understandings concerning Africans, Africa, African Americans and the institution of slavery.
For example, there is one of many particular memories that always comes to mind when in the classroom the dialogue turns to race and black history. I clearly remember sliding down in my seat and feeling the hot sensation of embarrassment wash over me as Mr. H. talked about slavery in my seventh grade history class. Even then I didn't really hear what he said about slavery. I had only heard the word slaves or slavery and that was enough to wish my African American self invisible in this class of all Caucasian kids and the Caucasian teacher on whom I had a secret crush. The teacher's talk was hard to handle because it twisted me into seeing my blackness through white eyes and this did not result in a good image of or feeling about myself. Yet, this was the early 1960's, not the early 1860's, and I did not feel free. I was bound by the perspective from which the story was told.
Comments: