My Grandmother - Grace Ott West - was a teacher 112 years ago. I have many of her things from back when she was studying to be a teacher. This poem below, though, was written for her when she was a young child in school at Mud Hill School in Mud Hill, West Virginia in 1907. She recited it at the closing of the school year. It’s pretty charming, don’t you think so?
I’m quite obsessed with primary documents! Did you know that one way to look at the history of schooling is to look at your own primary documents in your family?
Watch the rest of this wonderful series on the history of schooling.
School: The Story of American Public Education (4 of 6)
School: The Story of American Public Education (5 of 6)
School: The Story of American Public Education (6 of 6)
Indigenous Education
Here, then, is a major problem with even the delivery of “American” public education. So much of the work is - like everything else - centered on whiteness. What about the history of schooling in indigenous cultures? Well, it simply is left out of all traditional foundations of education textbooks. No surprise there, huh?
Here is an extraordinary 3-part series of videos that are only around 10-minutes long, but give a much stronger cornerstone about the history of schooling - and the colonizing of schooling.
Topic 1: Reconciliation Through Education
Topic 1: History of Indigenous Education
Topic 3: Learning from Indigenous Worldviews
Interestingly enough, my kid was given a summer reading list by one of her teachers and two of her must-reads are on Indigenous people. They’re fantastic reads and you might want to check them out. One Is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. The other is Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger’s Turtle Island.
Check off and track what you’ve done for the history of education responsibilities. Use this checksheet for this assignment.