Educating Educators in the Age of Trump
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ISSN: 1941-0832 Educating Educators in the Age of Trump by Erika Kitzmiller PHOTO COURTESY OF AUTHOR RADICAL TEACHER 65 http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 111 (Summer 2018) DOI 10.5195/rt.2018.475 n January 11, 2018, the day that our president learned in this course into our own classrooms. I wanted uttered his reprehensible comments about Haiti to teach this course to give students an opportunity to O and Africa, I received an email from an explore the history of racism and white supremacy that investigative reporter affiliated with Campus Reform. was visibly on display during and after the 2016 Campus Reform is a conservative website under the presidential campaign so that they, a group comprised direction of the Leadership Institute, a non-profit founded primarily of white educators, could explore this history with in 1979 to teach “conservatives of all ages how to succeed their own students. This history is rarely, if ever covered in politics, government, and the media.”1 Campus Reform in schools, because most white educators do not know it. I has daily reports on what its authors claim to be incidents wanted to change that. of liberal bias, political indoctrination, and restrictions on free speech in American college classrooms.2 I was their new target. The reporter asked me to answer several I wanted to teach this course to questions about my upcoming course, “Education in the give students an opportunity to Age of Trump.” In his email, the reporter asked me if my explore the history of racism and course might “alienate students who may have supported white supremacy that was visibly the current U.S. President.” The reporter than asked me to on display during and after the expand on my personal views “on bias in academia” and 2016 presidential campaign so that whether I thought that “educators have a responsibility to they, a group comprised primarily exclude personal political opinions from the classroom” or of white educators, could explore whether “academia has a responsibility to oppose Trump this history with their own and the social trends that led to his victory in 2016?”3 students. As an individual who has shifted between my rural, conservative Pennsylvania hometown and my adopted, urban New York City residence, initially I wanted to The Origins of the Course: Trump 101 respond. I thought that the questions that the reporter had and Trump 2.0 posed were important ones to discuss and deliberate the various challenges teaching under our nation’s current “Education in the Age of Trump” was based on and political climate. However, about an hour after he sent me inspired by the Trump 2.0 crowd-sourced syllabus that his initial email, the reporter had already posted his article historians N.D.B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain put together 5 without my input.4 and published on the Public Books website. These scholars called their syllabus the Trump 2.0 syllabus because it was As I read the article I was filled with several emotions. assembled in reaction to the Trump 101 syllabus that the I felt angry that I honestly thought that this investigative Chronicle of Education had published a few weeks earlier.6 reporter actually wanted to know what I thought about my Many scholars, including Connolly and Blain, felt that the course and pedagogy. Even though I have privileges that Trump 101 syllabus failed in its attempt to explain the most bourgeois white women enjoy, I felt anxious that this roots of Trumpism, the fractures in America, and the future article might jeopardize my job or cause harm to my of politics. The Trump 101 syllabus’s failures stemmed family, particularly my young children. And I was furious from the fact that none of the recommended readings on that I lived in a country that felt more like the fascist Italy the Trump 101 syllabus analyzed the contemporary racial that my grandparents and mother had left than the and gender inequalities that the Trump campaign democratic nation that I, as a first generation American, exploited. The Trump 101 syllabus did not include any felt so fortunate to be part of. At the same time, I felt works by scholars of color, LGBTQ intellectuals, or scholars cheated that I had not had the opportunity to answer the from other marginalized groups. The scholars who opposed questions that the reporter raised. the Trump 101 syllabus wrote a letter to The Chronicle of Through a careful examination of the reflections that Higher Education which asserted that “by erasing the my students wrote and the discussions that we had in history of non-white scholarship, non-white political class, this article addresses the questions that the reporter commentary on Trump, and its own history as a form has posed and how my course, “Education in the Age of meant for teaching, the ‘Trump 101’ syllabus failed to Trump,” aimed to educate educators in the Age of Trump contextualize Donald Trump’s rising political influence and so that they, too, could use our nation’s history as a way to becomes instead an extension of the racism that has come 7 name and address injustice. The course focused on the to define much about Trump’s presidential campaign.” history of racism and white supremacy to push students, As a historian of race, inequality, and education, I most of whom were white and middle class, to think followed the debate on the Trump 101 syllabus and the critically about the ways that white conservatives and subsequent publication of the Trump 2.0 syllabus with liberals have promoted policies and practices to uphold great interest. After the election, I decided to use the racial inequity and injustice throughout American history. Trump 2.0 syllabus to educate myself on the roots of The second aim of my course required us to think about Trumpism, which the syllabus defined as, “personal and how we might incorporate this history, which many of us political gain marred by intolerance, derived from wealth, (including myself) never learned in our public schools, into and rooted in the history of segregation, sexism, and our own public-school classrooms as an act of racial and exploitation.” 8 The syllabus contained many books that I social justice. In other words, learning this history was had already read, but it also contained many other books step one; step two was the implementation of what we had RADICAL TEACHER 66 http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 111 (Summer 2018) DOI 10.5195/rt.2018.475 that I hoped might push my thinking about the structural school teachers. I had to replace many of the historical and historical roots of Trumpism in this country and around works with works that were better suited to the kinds of the globe. I wanted to learn, but I also wanted to support questions that my students, who were training to become the practitioners and researchers that I taught and worked secondary school teachers, might have and the kinds of with at Teachers College. situations that they might face. My students at Teachers College were not working in archives; they were working in The 2016 election ushered in a wave of anxiety and public middle and high schools. The readings had to reflect stress among teachers and students. 9 I listened and this difference. watched as conversations emerged among my personal networks of educators who were deeply concerned about Like most of the courses that I teach at Teachers the welfare of their students. I heard stories about College, “Education in the Age of Trump” was a seminar- students who were worried about their safety in this style class organized around a weekly set of thematically- democracy. Black and brown students worried that they or based readings. The class was capped at 15 students to their families might be deported. 10 Jewish and Black allow for robust and deep discussion of the readings and students were terrified when swastikas and racist epithets the application of these readings to their own teaching and appeared on their school buildings and churches. 11 research practice. I had 15 students in my course—12 Administrators, teachers, and families felt paralyzed in female and 3 male students; 12 white and 3 students of their attempts to safeguard their children from xenophobic, color. Fourteen of the 15 students in my course were misogynist, racist, and homophobic words and deeds in training to become middle and high school social studies their communities and schools. My students at Teachers teachers. Most of these students were student teaching in College, who were student teaching in New York City public high-needs, low-income public schools in New York City schools after the 2016 election, struggled with many of and taking coursework to earn a Master’s degree in social these same questions and challenges. I wanted to find a studies education. Most of the students attended selective way to support them. In April of 2017, I asked my colleagues if it would be possible to create a course which I called “Education in the Age of Trump,” based on Connolly and Blain’s Trump 2.0 syllabus. They agreed. I submitted a draft of the syllabus to the curriculum committee, which reviews and approves new courses at Teachers College. In the summer of 2017, I learned that the committee had approved my class to run in the fall of 2017. I culled through the Trump 2.0 syllabus over the summer, again, and pulled the readings that I thought were most appropriate for the students I teach at Teachers College—students who want to become teachers, policymakers, and researchers.