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Revolutionary Talk: Elementary Teacher and Students Discuss Race in a Social Studies Class

Posted on: Thursday, 9 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By Bolgatz, Jane

Key words: controversial topics, discussing race in elementary classes, race relations in U.S. history

"A merican history." writer James Baldwin told a group of teachers in 1963, '"is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it" (1963/ 1996, 227). Children, Baldwin argued, have "the right and necessity to examine everything." In particular, they need to examine the history of the United States so that they will question the systems of racial privilege and racial discrimination that exist in it. To exclude such questioning from teaching is, according to Baldwin, enormously dangerous.

More than forty years after Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers," race continues to be one of the most important and controversial issues in our society. Before and after Baldwin exhorted teachers to help children understand the pressing racial issues of the day, many educational reformers have argued that education in general and social studies education in particular should involve critical inquiry into socially relevant topics (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997). Students should not simply memorize facts but should engage in thinking about big questions that are of social consequence (Wiggins and McTighe 1998). In the United States, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS 1994) delineates standards requiring students to learn how to think critically, creatively, and ethically; to deal with "problems faced by citizens and leaders;" and to examine "conflicting perspectives on controversial issues." Nonetheless, educators continually downplay or ignore race and racism.

Teachers, particularly elementary teachers, are often reluctant to engage in lessons about race in history. Yet, when elementary teachers do broach the controversial subject of race, they have an excellent opportunity to invite students to learn historical content and engage in reflective inquiry. In this article, I explore what research has shown us about teachers' objections to raising serious and controversial issues with their elementary students. I then examine what actually happened when the topic of race was raised in a fifth-grade class. I describe how the teacher introduced provocative materials about race in the context of the history of the Revolutionary War. In allowing students the opportunity to grapple with controversy, the teacher opened the door to meaningful questions about slavery and freedom, and students demonstrated complex thinking about relations of power in United States history.

How Social Studies Teachers Might Talk about Race

Race and race relations in particular are critical aspects of the world of students and democratic society (Bolgatz 2005). Many social studies educators are concerned that teachers and students talk together about race and that students learn about multicultural history. Like Baldwin (1963). many educators want students to have a rich, accurate, and empowering view of American history. Banks (1997), for example, suggests that teachers present students with "examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups" (69). Wills and Mehan (1996) implore teachers to help students see underrepresented groups as social and historical actors rather than simply inert groups existing in a cultural vacuum. Rains (2003), Marri (2003), and others suggest that students should learn more about Native American nations and people of color than they currently learn. In coming to grips with the complicated history of the United States, Anderson (1994) argues that students must not only address the actions of various racial groups in history but also address the interaction.? among groups. Finally, we must understand that race and racism themselves are socially constructed and institutionalized (Omi andWinant 1986).

Why Teachers Do Not Address Racial Issues

Despite calls for the integration of multicultural history into social studies, teachers often are loath to talk with students about race or include discussions of race in history. Teachers often steer clear of the institutional nature of racism and the relevance of race (Thompson 1997). Sleeter (1993) found that, even when pointed in the direction of thinking about institutional racism, practicing teachers resisted seeing the institutionalized power associated with race. Consistent with Sleeter's findings, Ladson-Billings (1995) cited research that demonstrated that many preservice teachers lacked understanding of or rejected information about the nature and causes of social inequities.

Moreover, teachers often consider issues of race too sensitive or controversial. They worry that topics such as slavery are too complex for young children and that because students do not see race, talking about race might be harmful or offensive to them. Some teachers feel they lack expertise. Others, as hooks (1994) described, fear that allowing discussion of the topic will open up dangerous emotional ground. Teachers often find it easier to examine aspects of oppression in far-off societies and in cultures other than their own (Dipardo and Fehn 2000; Florio-Ruane and Rafael 1999).

Researchers has shown that textbooks, online lesson plans, and much of children's historical fiction have traditionally avoided the topics of race and racism (Loewen 1995; Apple 1997; Willinsky 1998; Anderson 1994; Marri 2003). There are, nonetheless, sources for information about these topics (see sidebar). Teachers, however, are often not prepared (Dilg 1999) or willing (LadsonBillings 2003; Chapman 2003; Wills 1996) to use those resources to talk about issues of power and difference. Moreover, according to VanSledright (2002), teachers often mistakenly believe that children can only handle little bits of information at a time or that children are not able to handle abstract ideas.

Although some teachers do include discussions of race in their classes, they often incorporate limited and limiting views of the past. Lessons may deal with the histories of underrepresented groups, but racial groups other than whites are rarely seen as integral to the making of the main story of history (Wills and Mehan 1996). Students might read in a sidebar of the textbook about a Latino hero or spend February learning about African American leaders, inventors, and artists, but those people and events are outside the standard or mainstream narratives of history.

When teachers do address issues of race, it is usually within carefully controlled boundaries of scope and sequence. Textbooks, state standards and guidelines, and standardized tests neatly package and limit the treatment of race into confined arenas: Students learn that blacks were brought to this country as slaves, but then little more is said about African Americans until it is time to find out about the conditions in the country on the eve of the Civil War. Then there is another gap until the Civil Rights movement (Marri 2003; Colleary 2005). Even less attention is paid to Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans, and race relations among groups are rarely examined.

Elementary teachers have few models of how to conduct conversations about race. The preservice and inservice elementary teachers with whom I work often tell me that they do not know how to begin such discussions. Most of the research on students talking about race and racism is conducted outside the classroom (McIntyre 1997; Sleeter 1993; Ladson-Billings 1995; Florio-Ruane and Rafael 1999; Weis 1993; Epstein 1998; Schultz, Buck, and Niesz 2000; Tobin 2000) and therefore lacks insight into the interactive aspects- often the most daunting aspects-of what happens when teachers and students talk about race and racism in a classroom.

Most examples of teachers addressing the issue of race take place in either secondary school or college classrooms (Kuklin 1993; DiIg 1999; Mahiri 1998; Dipardo and Fehn 2000; Bolgatz 2005; Puidokas 2000; Ellsworth 1989, 1997; Davis 1992; Chapman 2003) and do not help elementary teachers visualize how they might handle the topic in elementary classrooms. Some descriptions of teachers talking about race with younger children (Van Ausdale and Feagin 2001: Paley 1979; Tobin 2000) do exist. Those make clear that race is a topic of interest to young children and that it is one about which children are not nave. Teachers, therefore, need fine-grained analyses of interactions in which elementary students and teachers engage complicated issues of race and racism. Examining interactions might allow teachers to understand better how to make the link between theories of social studies education and everyday practice in schools.

Agosto's Fifth-grade Class

To examine what happens when students talk about race in an elementary social studies class, I went to a public school in New York City. I conducted participant observation research with the same students and teacher, beginning in the fourth grade and continuing in the fifth grade. The class of twenty-five students reflected the demographics of the school: All students were Hispanic or black, and all were eligible for free lunches. Five students received special education services. By test measurements, the students exceeded their peers in the school, but they we\re still far from "successful" as a group. On the statewide language arts test, only one student (4 percent) had earned a 4 on a scale of 4 (exceeding the standard). 15 (60 percent) earned 3s (meeting the standard), and the remaining 36 percent of the students did not meet the standard (earning 1s and 2s).

Lorenza Agosto, the teacher of the class, (all names have been changed) had been teaching for four years, all of them at the school. She describes herself as being of mixed heritage: Puerto Rican and Pakistani. She has a MA degree in education and a reputation in the school for being tough and effective in working with students. Agosto had to follow a mandated, timed, communication arts curriculum in which she was to read aloud to the students. Often the five-minute read aloud lasted much longer than intended because students were engaged in a discussion of the material.

My role in the classroom was one of participant observer. I am a white university professor. The students described me as a teacher and friend and addressed me as Ms. Bolgatz. In the class I describe here, I was videotaping a whole class read-aloud discussion led by Ms. Agosto. Occasionally. I would interject with a comment or question, but Ms. Agosto was in charge of the lesson.

In the portion of the lesson that I focus on here, the class had a conversation about slavery in the context of the Revolutionary War. Agosto read aloud from Clinton Cox's (1999) Come All You Brave Soldiers: Blacks in the Revolutionary War and invited conversation about the text. Come All You Brave Soldiers is ostensibly the tale of the five thousand black soldiers in the Continental Army whose stories have been neglected in historical accounts of the Revolutionary War. The book, however, does not simply tack blacks into a colorblind narrative; it is a serious account of the racial and economic circumstances and dynamics that were important aspects of the conflict.

Agosto helped students understand the literal meanings of the book. She emphasized the racial conflict, and along the way, students came up with questions that took the conversation in new and interesting directions. This conversation exemplifies how students and teachers can talk about race in history in ways that are rigorous. Although there is evidence that the teacher was forced to stretch beyond her comfort zone, the conversation never got out of control or threatened her authority. At the same time, the students were able to deal with the regular content that the teacher was expected to cover.

A Challenging, Provocative Text

In the fall, Agosto had to teach her fifth graders about the Revolutionary War. When she noticed Clinton Cox's (1999) Come All You Brave Soldiers in her class library, Agosto was excited to be able to examine a history of the war that included black people specifically. Agosto often remarked that her students needed to learn about "their history."

Agosto used the book for the readaloud portion of her morning class. On one Tuesday in October. Agosto read aloud a section about Southern whites' fears that slaves would revolt against them. This was not an issue addressed in the students' social studies textbook. Agosto then guided the students in a discussion.

AGOSTO (reading from the book): Most Southern whites seemed to feel, as the earliest English settlers in the Carolinas once put it. that "there must be a great caution used [in the military employment of Negroes] lest our slaves when armed might become our masters."

The same month Lemuel Haynes and other Patriots were fighting at Lexington and Concord, officials in several Southern colonies issued guns to put down any attempt by slaves to fight for their freedom.

At almost the same time the Battle of Bunker Hill was being waged, whites in North Carolina arrested dozens of slaves they feared were going to rise up and fight for their freedom. (Cox 36)

Agosto asked comprehension questions to be sure that the students understood the facts that were explained in the text. Agosto's primary concern was that students understood the literal meaning of the passage. She and the students dealt with the information in a forthright manner. I include here a direct transcript of the discussion to illustrate the straightforward approach that Agosto used.

AGOSTO: So. what is going on? We touched on it, but what is the concern here? And by whom?

ROBERT: They're arresting slaves.

AGOSTO: Who's arresting slaves?

ROBERT: North Carolina.

AGOSTO: Ok. so Southerners are arresting slaves. Why?

ROBERT: Because they had weapons and they might use them to kill somebody.

AGOSTO: Ok.

JENNIFER: Southerners are afraid that if they give blacks the weapons, they'll . . . they think that they'll turn into their masters or something.

After the students summarized what had been read, Ms. Agosto explicitly directed the conversation to the racial dimension of the reading. She made sure students knew that the slaves were black and masters white. In doing so, she gave no sign that anyone needed to feel guilty or victimized because of the history. Rather, her tone signaled that racialized economic relations were open to examination.

AGOSTO: Very good. Ok, you have the slaves. Who's the slave? And what kind of person is usually the slave?

STUDENTS: Blacks.

AGOSTO: And who were the masters?

STUDENTS: Whites.

AGOSTO: Ok, so do you understand that? Do you understand what they're saying, if we give them the guns, they may become our masters. If you give who the guns?

STUDENTS: Blacks.

AGOSTO: If you give blacks the guns and they may become the masters, and who may become the slaves?

STUDENTS: The whites.

Once again, the teacher was helping the students make a literal translation of the phrase in the book.

After they summarized, one student, Roderick, extended the idea that had been stated. He imagined that the blacks would band together: "And the blacks are probably gonna gang up and fight for freedom," he said excitedly.

Roderick's statement is the kind of response that teachers might see as threatening or intimidating. In it, he got excited about the idea of challenging authority, in particular blacks challenging white authority. Whereas the subject was clearly about centuries- old history, some teachers find any mention of conflict about race uncomfortable and possibly divisive or volatile. Beyond the content itself, teachers find it difficult when children get spirited in a way that teachers think is potentially disruptive. In this example, learning about slaves fighting for freedom energized Roderick, and he spoke loudly and animatedly.

In response, Agosto ignored Roderick's affect and emphasized the object of the struggle, recapping that the slaves might want to fight for their own freedom from slavery: "Ok, so they're saying they're gonna use these weapons to fight for their own freedom. Ok." Agosto ignored the emotion of Roderick's comment. This allowed her to continue the conversation without being concerned that she was losing control of the discussion.

Students Make Sophisticated Connections

Not only did the students remain engaged and calm-important concerns for Agosto-but also they were able to move the discussion to sophisticated levels. They did what thoughtful historians do; they saw connections between events and ideas. This is a complex skill that we do not often expect of ten-year-olds.

Related to the discussion of slaves having weapons, one student, Jessica, contemplated the ambiguous status of indentured servants. If slaves were going to rise up to fight for their freedom, would indentured servants, whose lives were in some ways similar to slaves,' also want to revolt? "Were they giving indentured servants weapons to fight [in the Revolutionary War]?" Jessica asked. Her question shows her willingness to participate in the conversation about slaves: She did not avoid the topic, but rather, she built on what had been said. Although the connection was not explicit, Jessica's question invited the comparison of white colonists' responses to indentured servants having weapons with their responses to slaves having weapons. The question opened the door to comparing indentured servitude to slavery. Although Jessica's question could have spurred a new discussion, little was made of the question because immediately after she spoke, another student, Frentrees, came up with an idea that captured the class's attention.

Frentrees drew an association between the colonists' fight with the British with the slaves' fight with their masters. The question of the hypocrisy of the colonists fighting for freedom while simultaneously supporting slavery is compelling. Historians have worked to understand the very contradiction that Frentrees was drawing to the class' attention in her comment (see, for example, chapter 2 [29-45] in Foner [1998] and chapter 5 [147-88] in Onuff [2000]):

FRENTREES: Miss Agosto, this is also making a connection between the war between the British and the (pause), and the colonists, because the British were paying taxes to England, the colonists [she corrects herself. She means the colonists were paying taxes to the British]. It's the same thing as when the colonists are slaving the blacks. They want liberty so they're fighting for the liberty.

This provocative idea is one that rarely gets discussed in elementary school textbooks. It is a sophisticated idea, and one that other students wanted to understand. The teacher and students were attentive. There was a silence when Frentrees spoke, as the students, teacher, and I tried to understand the implications of the statement. Roderick, who usually quickly grasped whatever was said in whole class discussions, was openly curious about the statement. "I don't get her," he stated.

Frentrees repeated the idea that there was a similarity in the struggles of the colonists and the slaves: "[I'm saying] that the colonists and the slaves are both, were both fighting for li\berty because someone else wanted to enslave them."

Ms. Agosto was eager to grasp Frentrees's meaning. The dialogue is a model of the kind of genuine exchange of "big ideas" (Wiggins and McTighe 1998) that we hope teachers will engage in with students:

AGOSTO: Oh, I see. Tell me if I'm understanding you. You're saying that the reason why the Revolutionary War was taking place was that the colonists didn't want taxes, they wanted to be free of Britain, right. So you're saying because we're paying taxes to Britain, the colonists are sort of slaves to Britain?

FRENTREES: Because King George was also trying to rule the Americans, so that's what I'm trying to say.

Robert, another student, joined the discussion. Robert tried to explain what he thought Frentrees meant. In doing so. he returned to the issue of taxes, and a thought-provoking interchange about the similarities between taxation without representation and slavery ensued.

ROBERT: She says that. I think she means that the colonists are probably like the slaves. . . . They're being taxed by the British.

AGOSTO: Ok. so how would that make them a slave?

ROBERT: The British were taxing them. . . . The colonists [couldn't do anything] and slaves, they can't do nothing either.

AGOSTO: I'm kind of understanding you. You're saying because they didn't want to pay taxes, they were doing something that they really didn't want to do, like the slave. . . . Is that the connection that you're making? Ok.

The discussion got more complicated when a student disagreed with the contention that slavery was similar to taxation without representation. Jessica argued that the parallel would only be justified if the colonists were unfairly taxed. Taxes on goods, she argued, was not like slavery: "The taxes are for food. But if the British were making them pay taxes just for nothing that would be like slaves." The class then delineated the kind of taxes that the colonists had to pay and debated whether it would be more of a problem to have to pay taxes for goods or in order to pay for British troops.

This discussion of slaves revolting against masters fostered debate of abstract questions and enabled the class to review critical aspects of the Revolutionary era. Exchanges such as these, which require students to use higherlevel thinking skills of synthesis and evaluation allow the teacher to see how well students understand basic facts and more abstract ideas. In this case, Jessica had misconstrued the colonists' resistance to the British as being based on what they were being taxed for rather than the notion that they would be taxed without representation. So, not only did the discussion of race foster critical thinking it also allowed the teacher to cover the required content in a meaningful way.

Conclusion

Social studies educators and researchers promote the teaching of meaningful social studies that is connected to real-world issues. In Ms. Agosto's class, the topic of race was a springboard for vital discussions. Through conversations such as the one in Ms. Agosto's class, students are able to grapple with pervasive and enduring social and political questions. Rather than thinking they should avoid the topic of race. I argue that teachers should invite these discussions in their social studies classes.

Many teachers are wary that talking about race will lead to unwieldy interactions, particularly when working with elementary students. Indeed, there is no recipe for talking with students about racial issues; having discussions in a classroom with white students might, for example, present distinct challenges for a teacher, challenges that Agosto did not have to address. Moreover, the racial make-up of the students and teacher influences the idiosyncratic nature of classroom dynamics in conjunction with a plethora of factors such as geography, class, immigration status, and gender. Yet, although every group of students is unique, we can still learn from the example described here.

When teachers initiate conversations or bring in materials that allow students to initiate conversations about race and other controversial issues, children are not necessarily overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues. Rather, they have the opportunity to develop criticalthinking skills. By examining interactions between colonists and slaves, Ms. Agosto and her fifth graders engaged in what NCSS and state standards call for: going beyond factual understanding to make connections between ideas and events. Indeed, given appropriate opportunity and materials, elementary students not only handle controversial questions but are often able to stretch intellectually. When Jessica asked about indentured servants and Frentrees made the connection between slaves and colonists, the students began to address interesting philosophical questions about the meaning of freedom.

Embracing controversial discussions invites students to engage at new levels. Teachers and researchers can also look beyond the conversation-in which only a fraction of students might speak-to investigate the thinking and ideas of all students. As a follow-up to discussions such as this one. students might write responses to factual, higherlevel, and metacognitive questions such as "Why were the whites in the South worried about blacks fighting in the Revolutionary army?""How is the blacks' struggle for freedom from whites similar to or different from the colonists' struggle for independence from the British?" and "What was most surprising or confusing to you about this morning's discussion?" Such questions can help teachers determine what students have learned.

Studying race relations specifically outside of the limited topics of slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement encourages students to deal with the whole of history. In Agosto's class, students used a book about race relations to spark an engaging discussion about details of the colonial period and the buildup to the Revolutionary War. The students were able to reinforce prior knowledge about history, but also deepen their understanding of the era.

As we see here, it is possible to broach topics such as race relations with students. As teachers, the first step is to convince ourselves that we can begin. Examples such as this one can be helpful in thinking about what teachers can do to engage students in controversial conversations. Ms. Agosto was straightforward in her approach with students. She taught in ways that social studies researchers argue teachers should: she provided provocative materials, she asked specific comprehension questions, and she allowed students to grapple with the implications of the words and stones they heard. As a result of her initiative, students were able to examine some of the terrible and beautiful history that is the history of the United States. That history and that country, as Agosto and Baldwin both point out, belong to the students, and should be theirs to examine.

RESOURCES

Several books are available to teach about slavery in colonial times and blacks in the Revolutionary War.

Berleth, R. 1990. Samuel's choice. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman.

Cox, C. 1999. Come all you brave soldiers: Blacks in the Revolutionary War. New York: Scholastic.

Davis, B. 1976. Black heroes of the American Revolution. San Diego and New York: Harcourt Brace.

Haskins, J., C. Cox, and B. Wilkinson. 2002. Black stars of colonial times and the Revolutionary War: African Americans who lived their dreams. New York: Wiley.

Katz, W. L. 1992. A history of multicultural America: Exploration to the War of 1812. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn.

Myers, W. D. 1991. Now is your time! The African American struggle for freedom. New York: HarperCollins.

Nardo, D. 1994. Braving the new world: 1619-1784: From the arrival of the enslaved Africans to the end of the American Revolution. Philadelphia: Jennifer House.

Williams, J. K. 2002. African Americans in the colonies. Minneapolis, MN: Compass Point Books.

Particularly good teacher references are the online materials offered in conjunction with the PBS series Africans in America. See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/ home.html. See also chapter 3 of Takaki's A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Little, Brown, 1993).

In a discussion about slavery, the ten-year-olds made comments that moved the discussion to a sophisticated level and saw connections between events and ideas. They were acting like thoughtful historians.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. D. 1994. How we learn race through history. In Learning history in America: Schools, culture and politics, ed. L. Kramer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Apple, M. 1997. Consuming the other: Whiteness, education, and cheap French fries. In Off white: Readings on race, power, and society, ed. M. Fine, L. Weis, L. C. Powell, and L. M. Wong. New York: Routledge.

Baldwin, J. 1963/1996. A talk to teachers. In City kids, city teachers: Reports from the front row, ed. W. Ayers and P. Ford. New York: New Press.

Banks, J. A. 1997. Educating citizens in a multicultural society. New York: Teachers College Press.

Bolgatz, J. 2005. Talking race in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Chapman, T. 2003. Stopping at the edge of the cliff: A white teacher's attempts at discussions of race, class and gender in an English class with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial student population. Paper presented at the NCTE Assembly for Research Midwinter Conference: Teaching and researching across color lines, Minneapolis, MN.

Colleary, Kevin. 2005. Personal communication. January 28, 2005.

Cox, Clinton. 1999. Come all you brave soldiers: Blacks in the Revolutionary War. New York: Scholastic.

Davis, N. J. 1992. Teaching about inequality: Student resistance, paralysis and rage. Teaching Sociology 20: 232-38.

Dilg, M. 1999. Race and culture in the classroom: Teaching and learning through multicultural education. New York: Teachers College Pres\s.

Dipardo, A., and B. Fehn. 2000. Depoliticizing multicultural education: The return to normalcy in a predominantly white high school. Theory and Research in Social Education 28 (2): 170-92.

Ellsworth, E. 1989. Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59 (3): 297-324.

_____. 1997. Teaching positions: Difference, pedagogy, and the power of address. New York: Teachers College Press.

Epstein, T. 1998. Deconstructing differences in African-American and European-American adolescents' perspectives on U.S. history. Curriculum Inquiry 28 (4): 397-423.

Florio-Ruane, S., and T. E. Rafael. 1999. Culture, autobiography, and the education of literacy teachers. Report #3-003. Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement.

Foner, Eric. 1998. The story of American freedom. New York: W. W. Norton.

hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge.

Kuklin, S. 1993. Speaking out: Teenagers take on sex, race, and identity. New York: Putnam's Sons.

Ladson-Billings, G. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal 32 (3): 465-91.

_____. 2003. Still playing in the dark: Whiteness in the literary imagination of children's and young adult literature teaching. Paper presented at the NCTE Assembly for Research Midwinter Conference: Teaching and researching across color lines, Minneapolis, MN.

Loewen, J. W. 1995. Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Free Press.

Mahiri, J. 1998. Shooting for excellence: African American and youth culture in new century schools. New York: Teachers College Press and National Council of Teachers of English.

Marri, Anand R. 2003. Race, social studies, and the World Wide Web. In Critical race theory perspectives on social studies: The profession, policies, and curriculum, ed. G. Eadson-Billings. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

McIntyre, A. 1997. Making meaning of whiteness: Exploring racial identity with white teachers. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Nash, G., C. Crabtree, and R. Dunn. 1997. History on trial: Culture wars and the teaching of the past. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

National Council for the Social Studies Task Force on Standards for Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies. 1994. Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.

Omi, M., and H. Winant. 1986. Racial formations. In Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study, 3rd ed., ed. P. S. Rothenberg. New York: St. Martin's.

Onuf, P. S. 2000. Jefferson's empire: The language of American nationhood. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Paley, V. G. 1979. White teacher. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Puidokas, C. 2000. Spinning the web: Relationships, talk, and learning in a diverse classroom. English Education 32 (4): 299-308.

Rains, Frances V. 2003. To greet the dawn with open eyes: American Indians, white privilege and the power of residual guilt in the social studies. In Critical race theory perspectives on the social studies: The profession, policies, and curriculum, ed. G. Ladson-Billings. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Schultz, K., P. Buck, and T. Niesz. 2000. Democratizing conversations: Racialized talk in a post-desegregated middle school. American Educational Research Journal 37 (1): 33-65.

Sleeter, C. E. 1993. How white teachers construct race. In Race, identity and representation in education, ed. C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow. New York: Routledge.

Thompson, A. 1997. For: Anti-racist education. Curriculum Inquiry 27 (1): 7-44.

Tobin, J. 2000. "Good guys don't wear hats:" Children's talk about the media. New York: Teachers College Press.

Van Ausdale, D., and J. R. Feagin. 2001. The first R: How children learn race and racism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

VanSledright, B. 2002. In search of America's past: Learning to read history in elementary school. New York: Teachers College Press.

Weis, L. 1993. White male working-class youth: An exploration of relative privilege and loss. In Beyond silenced voices: Class, race and gender in United States schools, ed. M. Fine and L. Weis. New York: State University of New York Press.

Wiggins, G., and J. McTighe. 1998. Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Willinsky, J. 1998. Learning to divide the world: Education at empire's end. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Wills, J., and H. Mehan. 1996. Recognizing diversity within a common historical narrative: The challenge to teaching history and social studies. Multicultural Education 4 (1): 4-11.

Wills, J. S. 1996. Who needs multicultural education? White students, U.S. history, and the construction of a usable past. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 27 (3): 365-89.

JANE BOLGATZ is an assistant professor of curriculum and teaching at Fordham University in New York City. Her e-mail address is bolgatz@fordham.edu.

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Nov/Dec 2005

Source: Social Studies, The

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