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Putting Citizenship Back in the Curriculum

8/4/2018

 
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Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University and Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship and American identity program. Photo by Vicki Cobb
On April 7, 2018, I returned to Teachers College, Columbia University for their Academic Festival, a celebration of the mission of this premiere graduate school founded on the principles of John Dewey as stated on the wall over the  TC reception desk: 
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photo by Vicki Cobb
The title of the keynote address by Eric Liu was "Teaching Civic Power." It was a rousing reminder that, as Dr. Liu quoted Sandra Day O'Conner: " 'Compulsory public education was instituted in the country in the first place to create citizens,' not wage workers, not customers, not capitalists, but citizens capable of governing themselves and their country." He believes that all teachers, no matter what subject, are also teaching civics through their own behavior.  He also recollected that in 1814, 25 years after the founding of the United States, John Adams said, "There never has been a democracy yet that has not committed suicide." 

On the up side, Liu said,
 "The United States today is not quite suicidal but it is definitely in a state  of self-inflicted fragility."  This is not a recent phenomenon but has been growing over the last forty years  "of erosion of common purpose of the leaders of both parties and .....of devaluation of public education in general and civic education in particular." 

We the people have ceded our collective power (the capacity to make people do what you would have them do)  over the years to special interests, to those who have wealth and to corruptive influences.  According to Liu, "Power doesn't so much corrupt as it reveals character."  The good news is that Eric Liu is optimistic about the future:  

 "Despite the sickness of the body politic right now, let me tell you why I am so hopeful.   In part, to be honest, it is because of the man who currently occupies the White House. After all, he alone, as he likes to say, he alone has sparked the greatest surge of civic  engagement this country has ever seen. Millions of Americans are stepping off the  sidelines and participating. .... People are swarming like antibodies to a virus … the immune system of the body politic is now kicking in.  The goal now has to be civic renewal—we need a new network of mutual aid, civic, social and moral character."  


How this can be done is by returning to the principles of John Dewey who believed that learning comes, not just from books, but by doing.  Eric Liu embodies these principles and he is speaking to wake us up. Thus the teacher, the writer, and the citizen of a democracy are all  practicing acts of faith, where learning and the thriving of a democracy become true through our best practices.
It will come, according to Dr. Liu, with the "savvy realization that we're all better off when we're all better off."

 
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I'm expressing my gratitude to the inimitable John Dewey.

Collecting a History

6/4/2018

 
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The point of view of most history taught to American children is the story of our collective past through the deeds and writings of mostly white men. It is the job of historians to examine written works of eyewitnesses and primary source documents to first figure out what happened and then surmise why it happened. As Africans were torn from their homelands to serve as slaves across an ocean, their history was at the least ignored and might have been lost forever, if not for a man I never heard of: Arturo Schomburg.

Now he is celebrated in a glorious picture book: Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Born in Puerto Rico in 1874, a descendant of African slaves, young Arturo hung out with the cigar makers, who always had a reader of literature in the front of the room to engage the minds of the workers while their hands did their repetitive craft.

Weatherford’s craft as a writer is lyrical:

“So when his fifth grade teacher told him that Africa’s sons and daughters had no history, no heroes worth noting, did the twinkle leave Arturo’s eyes? Did he slouch his shoulders, hang his head low, and look to the ground rather than the horizon?

“No. His people must have contributed something over the centuries, history that teachers did not teach.”


Schomburg became an auto-didact and a U. S. immigrant. He then began his search for the lost history of the African diaspora.

“So he haunted rare book stores, poring over fragile pamphlets with torn covers and leather books with paper mites between pages.”

On every page, Eric Velasquez’s illustrations brings the man, and his discoveries of great people with African heritage to life. Weatherford includes just a hint of the depth of Schomburg’s discoveries, because, after all this is a book for children. Black heros, poet Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass and Haitian revolutionary, Touissant Louverture are properly memorialized with art and discussion. But I never knew African blood ran through the veins of Audubon, Dumas, Pushkin, and Beethoven.
​

As you might have guessed from the title, Schomburg’s collection is now a library in Harlem, NYC. The richness and succinctness of Weatherford’s prose and Valesquez’s vibrant art indicate to readers how much more there is to black history if they only started digging for themselves.
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library belongs in libraries everywhere, including mine.



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     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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