History and Identity: Teaching for the Common Good 1&3

"Establishing who we are also means establishing who we aren't." (p.30)

I'll apologize in advance for this being rather rambly! As an aspiring history educator, I found these chapters moderately insightful, though connected to what we've been taught throughout the program. Chapter three's Identification Stance had some thought provoking points--particularly this quote. But the notion of teaching history through concepts of identity ties directly to the idea of making content relevant for students, which is hardly an earth shattering idea. The authors introduce a few interesting complications when discussing this idea of using the identity to teach history: that it can alienate students from a variety of perspectives, and the discipline, because it makes history less objective (which is a requirement of it being taken seriously, scholarly). They resolve this, too, through a familiar concept--a more multicultural understanding of American history and what it means to be American. What this selection did for me professionally was reinforce these previously taught ideas, and get me started thinking about how to hook kids in the classroom by having them self identify their "communities."

I guess I found this quote interesting because it is relevant in so many ways. When we teach a national identity, properly, we also teach the ills of the formation of America as a country and bust some myths of greatness and freedom (Native Americans, slavery, the treatment of most marginalized populations). When we learn about ourselves through family history, we are able to identify with some communities, and we also learn those which we aren't a part of. When we teach students to identify with something--be it a community, or a country, or their familial roots--we have to draw distinctions that may be alienating, or divisive, or cause us to make decisions about what a community, or an identity, is or isn't.

Pesonally, this passage made me reflect on my understanding of my family history as well. I have always understood it as simple; my mother comes from a fresh off the boat Italian heritage, and my dad comes from a Pennsylvania farming background, with roots in Great Britain. This year, however, my mother discovered that my father is a descendant of a man named Herman Husband, who was a representative and "rebel" in MD and NC right before the Revolutionary War.

This means I am unofficially a Daughter of the American Revolution, which complicates my understanding of my family heritage and where I--and my parents--came from. My father's side was blue collar--he didn't go to college. None of his family really know their heritage besides the name "Poole" is English in roots. Aren't DARs rich people? I thought of myself as the descendant of recent immigrants, until now. It took my mother, with skills, time and means, to locate this information online through genealogical records. My father, who still doesn't know how to use Internet, would have never discovered this.

This new discovery muddled my understanding of who I was, and served as an additional illustration of how important identity, even at the most personal level, is wrapped up in history (and vice versa).