And last

We ended the last full day in Chicago with a bus tour of to different sites dealing with the Haymarket Affair, and then after a Lithuanian lunch we toured the Pullman Museum, church, hotel burned out factory, and administrative building. 

While listening to the accounts of the people involved in the Haymarket Affair, and how they were arrested, convicted, tried, and eventually hung (not all but four).  I was flabbergasted at how their basic rights as given in the first amendment of the Constitution were trampled to death.  They were not allowed to assemble and had no freedom of speech, and for some the minor involvement in the actual bombing itself was no justification for the death sentence.

As a fifth grade teacher, I am often trying to boil difficult concepts into easy to understand portions for my students.  That’s what good teachers should try to do – bring understanding.  However, upon reflection, maybe I have been given my students too easy of a portion as concerning our rights and how they have evolved over time.  A fifth grade student might get the simplistic impression that after the political battles at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, all was well and the rules worked great except for slavery.  Later, that slavery issue would be finally resolved once and for all after the Civil War.  I think our plan (Paul’s and mine) to anchor history in fifth grade around three key events (Revolutionary War, Civil War and WWII) is solid, but maybe we are leaving out an essential component.  That component would be how our Constitution has evolved and how the rights of the people have and continue to evolve over time.

I now want to impress upon my students how many of the rights we take for granted have been slowly developed in our nation’s history, and were earned and not just granted after a piece of paper was signed.  The Haymarket Affair should strike right at the heart of us as history teachers.  I know as I was listening in the lobby of the courthouse, I was saying to myself, “Hey this is so unfair..this ain’t right…I can’t believe no one intervened…how can they ignore the Constitution?”  I often forget that many people had to sacrifice to claim these rights.  I take for granted the American Civil Liberties Union, and our Miranda rights.  We are so free and able to question that we become complacent, and I guess my teaching of history became complacent as I need to instill in my future students the struggles of the workers of America, the minorities, and the downtrodden.  Some of these brave people dared to cross imaginary lines of social injustice drawn in the sand by the people of power, and initially paid dearly for crossing those lines. But once those lines were crossed, we continued to move ahead crossing other lines. 

It is not perfect now.  We have sacrificed some freedoms in America at the alter of safety recently, but we are still progressing even if some small steps are occasionally taken backwards.  I know my teaching of my anchor points will definitely change starting next year to emphasize how our rights have evolved over time.

~ by marksims on June 14, 2009.