Introduction
I have been fascinated by the dark history of the United States empire ever since a long-term substitute came into my twelfth-grade social studies class and taught history from the colonized perspective, upending everything I thought I knew. My anger at not being taught the truth grew when in college I read Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.1
Almost twenty years later, it seems that not much has changed. Students are still being taught a very distorted view of the U.S.’s role in world history, leading to many Americans having a very distorted view of the U.S.’s role in world politics and economics. I recently read the book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.2 While this book is twenty years old, it helped me to see that if America keeps acting as a colonizer, but telling itself it is a benevolent liberator, history will keep repeating. This will be to the detriment of ordinary people from underdeveloped countries, many of whom are my students.
To me, understanding history, true history, is essential to understanding all aspects of the modern world, especially how to change it for the better. As an educator, I need to (and have a great interest in) continuing to learn history, especially this aspect, and work on ways to infuse it into my English/Language Arts classroom.
I would like to develop a unit where students explore the effects of empire on immigration through first person narratives. To start the unit, I plan to focus on one colonized place for shared reading and whole class discussion. I am planning on focusing on the Philippines.
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