Tanya Elizabeth Kinigstein

American Studies
Fall 2009
San Francisco State University

Towards a New Historical Literacy

Introduction
 In this paper I examine how current ways of understanding and teaching history seize power

from marginalized communities in the United States, and how we can build historical understandings

and pedagogies that transforms this. I call this building a ‘new historical literacy’ inspired by the

theory of critical literacy, and attempt to outline the ways I believe that cultivating new historical

literacy in the history /social science classroom will have profound effects in how students realize their

own power, interact with schools and other institutions and see themselves as agents of change.

I am writing from personal experience of going to New York City public schools and seeing

Eurocentric ways of thinking and standards shape the entirety of the history/social science curriculum

and education system. This paper was born in high school, seeing my own history distorted, and

student’s power and anger manipulated, seeing half my grade drop-out, because they were bored, felt

dehumanized, or saw history class as places that ensured the status quo remains by diffusing their

indignation with blame. September 11 happened my first year in high school and I saw the same

manipulation that happened in the classroom, happen on a larger scale with clearer, immediate

consequences. I saw the power historical narrative had: how events were recorded and what could

result from that memory.

I am a light-skinned queer woman of Jewish, Mexican and Caucasian decent and middle class

upbringing and have used this writing as a space to think about healing from institutional violence and

recent experiences with sexual violence. I see our historical memory, and the institutions that cement it

in our daily lives, as a cause of this violence. I see healing from this in our daily lives as connected to

creating a new understanding of history. And this will allow the creation of identities and structures

that allow for different priorities. I hope I can offer something that reflects this, and affirms anyone

trying to get healed and anyone trying to get free.

 In this writing I am working with experiences in public education, projects in teaching

alternative education and social science courses. I have been especially inspired by learning how

history has been understood in different times and places, what a cherished, fundamental part of

people’s lives it has been to pass on community knowledge and experience to younger generations. I

have also explored the ways this exists in communities today, outside of institutional retelling of

history. I seek to prove the connection between mainstream historical discourse and how US

institutions are structured to divest power from communities as part of a process common in most

imperial nations.

I do not think that changing historical discourse can or should happen overnight, but through a

community process of healing and transformation, recovering and validating knowledge systems that

have been destroyed and creating new ones. I am interested in ways people marginalized by history

take the parts of their identities that are degraded most and use them as sites to gain power. This is

healing: thinking about power in ways that cannot be granted or taken from an outside body, but are

created internally. In this writing I attempt to outline the ways power has been and continues to be

removed from communities through historical discourse and how it is taught and offer some ideas on

where to move. Redefining what success, history, freedom, identity and power mean are implicit in

new historical discourse because these are all defined by how we remember the past. Changing this will

necessarily change the way we relate do all the definitions and ideologies that structure our life.

US Historical Narrative as a Seizure of Power

The United States historical record began with the arrival and colonization of “the Americas”.

Aime Cesiare defines colonization as "…societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled
underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations

destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out." (Cesaire, 1953:20). This initial violence has been

justified by creating a historical narrative that views it as the “natural order of things” and been

perpetuated through building institutions based this view. Physical killing of indigenous people

happened on a mass scale, and for those who stayed alive, a cultural and cosmological genocide took

place, partially through schools, to divorce Native people of an identity beyond that of exploitable

labor. The colonial power replaced an understanding of self and culture grounded in place, with an

identity that was totally defined by their views of Native people (Fanon 1963). The presence of

Indigenous people interfered with the virtue of ‘manifest destiny’, and the story of the birth of this

nation mythologized by the colonizing power (Cesaire 1953). Therefore they had to be destroyed

physically or psychically.

From the beginning, historical narrative in the US has created violence, through erasure, then

been used to justify this same violence. One manifestation of this violence is the validation of one

knowledge system that has specific cultural roots in Western Europe in the 1700s (Wallerstein 2006;

Cajete, 1994) at the exclusion of all others. Rational, linear thinking and scientific reasoning as ways

of understanding the world were radical when they developed in the 1700s in Enlightenment Europe.

This is mainly because they provided ways of looking at the world outside the medium of religion.

Greek thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle began to be reclaimed as part of a tradition of logic that had

emerged beyond the scope of the monarchy and the “divine right” of kings (Wallerstein 2006). This

new understanding was liberatory to many in Western Europe, because it affirmed everyone the right to

truth and dignity while feudalism concentrated this power in a tyrannical monarchy. The Age of

Enlightenment came about in reaction to religious movements in Europe like the Spanish Inquisition,
where religion could justify oppression and ethnic cleansing. Despite their differences, both the Age of

Enlightenment and the religious fanaticism of Spain, used their ideologies to justify colonization

because of the assumed deficiency of indigenous people versus their philosophies.

The “truth” was constructed in the Enlightenment period as singular, objective, and neutral.

Truth was determined by using scientific observation to discover the essence of something. In this

construction of truth objectivity, rationality, and empirical evidence were highly valued, and ways of

looking at the world and understanding “the truth” were inevitably denigrated. This understanding of

truth contradicts many oral traditional knowledge bases where the “truth(s)” is knowledge that has

come from one’s ancestors, that engage one physically and emotionally so one can retain information

and be able to pass it on again. (Based on lectures by C. Dumont, Fall 2009, SFSU). The “truth(s)” is

not necessarily something that is obtainable through scientific method alone, and history is not

necessarily a linear string of events that can be explained back to you. In destroying other knowledge

systems and ways of understanding truth, there is no way to grasp the world besides one where you are

inferior. The deletion or appropriation of knowledge systems can be seen toward indigenous to the US,

enslaved Africans, and has existed with nearly every immigrant group in the US. Their languages,

spiritualities, were erased and degraded, and schools are constructed to teach a history that supports this

degradation.

Gregory Cajete (1994) talks about the ways language, specifically, links to belief systems and

what happens when this is forcibly removed. “Language is a reflection of how we organize and

perceive the world,” (45). He shows that languages other than English have threatened historical

narrative by providing glimpses of other worlds ideologies. Devaluing or taking away the mother

language of someone is an assault, a deletion of experience (Delpit 1995), and reinforces “othering”,
where speakers of languages other than English see this a deficiency, something wrong and other about

them, a reason they must change to fit into mainstream values and institutions.

US historical narrative seizes power in a style that is common, if not necessary, for imperial

nations. It must delete histories and memories that threaten its dominance. This is done, then and now,

primarily to justify economic exploitation. Oppressive treatment by the state and economic system

becomes a normal part of this constructed, defective identity, and there is no language or other history

to refute this.

The Education System and the Reinforcing of Historical Narrative

History is taught in US public schools as a linear course that moves forward with the power of

modernity and righteousness. Through this it deletes the experiences of people in the classroom that

contradict the view of a benevolent, just democracy that it wishes to project (Loewen, 1995:3). History

is taught in a way that is consistent with the attitude toward indigenous people because the majority of

people in the US still function primarily as exploited labor. The History/Social Science Framework for

California Public Schools (2001 alludes to experiences of oppression in the US by saying: “…our

national history is the complex story of many peoples and one nation of e pluribus unum, and of an

unfinished struggle (italics mine) to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the

Constitution.” (H/SS FCS: 44). People marginalized by the economic and social system become

blocks, stains on our otherwise pristine freedom-loving history. This discourse blames marginalized

people for their oppression, reinforcing the “neutrality” of our institutions and the inherent inferiority

for people who have not found success through them.

The framework for California public schools includes some potentially beneficial or liberatory

ideas such as encouraging students to “take pride in their own cultural heritages and develop a
multicultural perspective that respects the dignity and worth of all people, ” (15) and the “use of

community knowledge, and the importance of primary sources” (14), but it is founded on an

understanding of history that refuses to acknowledge the power and oppression that exists in the US.

Diversity is celebrated, the dead are mourned, the heroes are commended, and though pain existed no

wrong was ever done. An example of this:

From the first encounter between indigenous peoples and exploring Europeans, the inhabitants
of the North American continent have represented a variety of races, religions, religions,
languages, and ethnic and cultural groups. With the passage of time, the US has grown
increasingly diverse in its social and cultural composition. Teachers have an obligation to
instill in students a sense of pride in their individual heritages. Students must recognize
whatever our diverse origins may be, we are all Americans. (45)

Lisa Delpit (1995) observes, “To act as if power does not exist is to ensure that the power status

quo remains the same,” (39). This what is happening this retelling of history, not addressing power is

neutralizing and justifying it. There is no analysis of the physical effects of the conflicts between

Europeans and indigenous people, or the reasons for them. Abstract language such as “encounter”, and

“with the passage of time”, deny the existence of a power relationship or an understanding of struggle

and cause and effect. There is detachment, objectivity attached to historical figures and events that

normalizes their behavior, and obscures the fact they were acting in specific cultural and political

context (Dumont, Fall 2009). The feel-good, conclusive last sentence, “…whatever our diverse origins

may be we are all Americans,” indicates the premeditated ending to this story, which validates

whatever may have happened to get there.

Speaking of the education system in Mali, Coumba Toure says, “sending a child to a French

school was the closest thing to death, not a physical death, but a spiritual and intellectual death.”

(Toure: 213 in Hern 2008). Sending a Malian child to a French school would kill them because they

would be subjected to the representation the French had of the Malian people, and would only
understand their worth through the French, colonial lens. The constructions of school, achievement,

and history class in particular are places where colonial governments drill these inferior identities into

students, through methods and ideologies that support colonial dominance and ridded Malians, and all

native people traditional worldviews and ways of living. When subsistence or traditional economic

skills fade away, one’s livelihood gets based on the colonial economic system and dependent

relationship is cemented.

Toure’s quote about the education of Malians under French rule is poignant because education

has always been deeply tied up in how people understand themselves. Indigenous peoples all over the

world, for example have educated their people through methods that incorporate physical subsistence,

heritage, social customs, cultural art forms, all strongly based in the land and the local (Reagan 2001).

This reflects their world views: what they think is important, what they want to pass on to their

children, what skills and attitudes are needed for success as they define it. Cajete (1994) says that for

the indigenous people of North America“…their landscape became a reflection of their very soul,”

(84). People’s source of power has often been tied to the specific land and the evolution of culture that

had taken place there (Cajete 1994). To understand heritage this way is opposite from how people are

educated in most US public schools, where people learn their power or worth is granted to them,

objectively, by their position in a historical discourse that exists outside of themselves.

How students are oriented to success and achievement in schools have historical significance

and are also places in which they can be given power or denied it. The ways of thinking about

achievement and success that are cultivated in schools come from a specific culture and history and are

not simply the “natural”, “neutral” (Atalay 2006), or only ways of thinking about knowledge

attainment. These reflect the linear, competitive, hierarchical model that capitalism is based on.
Success is understood as highly individualistic, based on meritocracy, with a focus on social climbing

and material acquisition. This has historical roots in the economic aspirations which characterized the

founding of the US. Success in this country often means wealth and an ability to conform to

mainstream morals and institutions. This necessitates a de-identification with parts of self one has been

marginalized for, and can mean loss of identity, assimilation and alienation.

This model of success cultivated in school works to divest power from marginalized

communities through continuing to promote a framework that will allows violence to be committed to

gain material benefits. As children we are encouraged to look out only for ourselves, and achievement

and assessment are based on individualistic, competitive models, taking tests alone, discouraging the

sharing of resources and rewarding those who come to school with certain capital (ability to

communicate in the style of the majority, understanding of how to relate to authority, ability to get

enough sleep and food, having adults who have read to you, etc) (Delpit 1995). By rewarding those

who enter school with skills that are associated with the “culture of power” (Delpit 1995), you are

divesting in students who have been institutionally barred from accessing this culture of power.

Students are beginning on different levels in a system that is known as “the great equalizer”, and they

are finishing on different levels too. “Low achievement” in school is nearly always along racial and

class lines. These different levels of achievement are based on historical inequities directly connected

to the founding of this country and the initial subjugation for the profit of those in power.

Angela Valenzuela (1994) analyzes the success and achievement of Chicana/o and Latina/o

students in a large Houston high school. She notes how “not caring about school”, characterized by

lower achievement can be seen as resistance to assimilation, and refusal to believe lies about their

communities. She says, “…Teacher’s definition of caring [about school] which involves a
commitment to a predetermined set of ideas is equivalent to cultural genocide. Success in school

means consenting the schools project of cultural disparagement and de-identification,” (94). She sees

these students’ resistance to getting schooled as them holding on to parts of themselves that the

education system attempting to erase. Valenzuela asserts that low achievement in school can be used

as a way of holding on to one’s humanity; this reflects a knowledge, whether conscious or unconscious,

of the danger schools are to some communities.

This argument illustrates the way the dialogue of “low achievement” further objectifies these

students, relegating them to the identity of “victims” who are getting used by the education system and

lack agency. She also demonstrates that a key to realizing greater achievement of students of color in

schools may involve changing a historical discourse to one in which their identities are not degraded.

She rejects the idea that these students are simply “less smart” or culturally incompetent, and shows

that changing school culture to properly reflect and respect students of color and their communities

may be the only thing that that can reverse achievement. Doing this would construct models of

achievement and success that are for and by community members and students. This is reclaiming the

placed-based education that Gregory Cajete talks about, giving space within the education system for

communities to have a hand in raising their children by creating pedagogy with the historical memory

and values they want for them.

Literacy, Critical Literacy, and Historical Literacy

To change the education system to reflect a historical discourse that invests power in

communities instead of seizing it, we must look at how we think about literacy. Literacy is an essential

that is taught in all US schools, and forms a foundation for how we interact with the world. Literacy

has always been politicized, how it was defined, who had access to it, what could be gained by barring
access. In this section I look at definitions and political implications of literacy and historical literacy

and how these definitions cement success in and outside the education system, and as uphold inequities

based in historical discourse.

To fully understand how literacy is taught in schools, it is essential to pay attention to not just

what is included, but what is excluded and why. Allan Luke (1993) says, “Literacy ... is as much about

ideologies, identities and values as it is about codes and skills,” (10). He refutes the idea that literacy is

just about “possessing ability to read and write” or ““having knowledge or competence” as the

Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines it. He says how a society defines literacy has much to

do with their definition of citizenship, how a they define a skill set necessary for a membership, and

how these skills are acquired or barred from access.

Critical literacy takes the above into account and addresses power dynamic implicit in a nation-

state’s responsibility to educate it’s public. This body of thought was first articulated by Paulo Freire

(1987) who based his work on the ideas that one could use the process of learning to read and write to

gain skill to decode the hidden structures of power that make up the world. Critical literacy is “an

insurrection of subjugated knowledges,” says Michel Foucault (1980). He says that literacy or

knowledge can never be apolitical and seeks to create a literacy that gives teachers and students agency

in understanding and creating their reality.

‘Historical literacy’ is defined in the History/Social Science Framework for California Public

Schools as “research skills, imaginative study of past, understanding the meaning of time and

chronology…understanding reasons for continuity and change, understanding importance of religion

philosophy and other major belief systems in history...” Though I would agree on the importance of

certain elements of this definition, it lacks a power analysis, which makes it dangerous to use as the
only framework for understanding history. As Lisa Delpit (1995) says, “To act as if power does not

exist is to ensure that the power status quo remains the same,” (39). The H/SS FCPS poses this

historical literacy as neutral, and uses that basis from which to promote it at the expense of other

understandings that reflect “special interests”. Following the definition of the H/SS FCPS and rejecting

an analysis of power, and therefore maintaining the “status quo” through teaching history is a political

act, and it is deceptive to pose this as “normal” or “objective”.

Historical literacy as defined by the History/Social Science Framework invests in historically

powerful groups and divests in marginalized groups because it obscures issues of power so they cannot

be analyzed critically. This works to justify them as permanent and does not proved language to

understand they are subjective and can be changed. It naturalizes the power structures by rendering

them invisible. As with critical literacy with reading and writing, building a new historical literacy

must educate to understand power. This includes connecting personal power to institutional power, and

learning the reasons why understanding this is systematically distorted in schools.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade says, “You have to teach because you know that if you don’t you will die.

But not just you, your students too, but not just them, but the whole community. And you know they

will die, because we are already are dying in all kinds of ways everyday,” (based on lectures, Spring

2009, SFSU). Acritical historical literacy is literally killing communities by justifying physical and

psychic violence everyday. With no analysis of how power is structured in this country, it is difficult to

examine oppression as it exists interpersonally and institutionally, and the high levels of violence that

characterize the lives of many marginalized people in this country is validated as normal.

This creates a profound disconnect between many marginalized communities and institutions,

specifically the education system. There is communal memory of oppression, but this is not
acknowledged when teaching children how to understand their histories in school. The attitude and

achievement of many marginalized communities reflects that participation in US institutions has often

worked to justify their oppression, rather than help them move out of it. W.E.B. Dubois speaks about

this in reference to the African American experience of “double consciousness”. He speaks about the

neurosis of living in a country that lies to people who are told everyday about what is available to them,

even though experience tells them the opposite about the possibility for success for them. They get

blamed for their “failure” even though it is built into historical narrative and institutions. In this context

the education system proves to be a farce, a so-called “equalizer” that will only allow success to people

who remove parts of themselves that contradict the historical record it maintains.

Paulo Freire (1970) talks about praxis: a dialectic of action and reflection. He says nothing can

be learned just cerebrally, it must result in a visible change for people, through their own actions; this is

what will create an authentic learning process. Neither can provide consciousness alone-they must exist

together. The cause and effect action piece is entirely missing from the H/SS Framework. This keeps

the power of praxis out of it-students are not encouraged to understand their role in shaping history, just

reacting to it, the center of power remains distant.

New historical literacies must have praxis as an essential element, connecting school knowledge

with its implications in the rest of life. I have developed a framework for cultivating new historical

literacies that can inform work in and outside the classroom and in creating institutions that reflect this

new literacy and are critical and transformative. This framework is based on the Raza Studies

Paradigm (Cuellar 1998) which presents guidelines for the teaching of Raza Studies in an way that

contradicts much of what is promoted in higher education. The Raza Studies Paradigm says study must

be 1. Reflexive, 2. Community Centered, 3. Holistic, 4. Critical. The framework I developed says new
historical literacies must reflect the following four principles: 1. Humanization, 2.Power, 3.

Community Education, 4. Transformation.

1.Humanization. New historical literacies must create ways of learning history that frame

people as whole, not broken or culturally deficient, and encompassing multiple identities. This means

analyzing people as the dynamic between our individual selves and the communities we were born into.

It must acknowledge the violence that can exist in representing or reciting one’s history to them and

ground pedagogy in the understanding that we are all experts of our experience and encourage self-

representation. It should work to understand all people as struggling toward humanization in different

ways against the backdrop of an in human social structure.

2. Power. Building an understanding of the micro and macro power relationships that structure

our life, and the roots of them. Working to transform oppressive power relationships in our classroom

and life, and create new ways of understanding and holding power.

3. Community Education. This entails seeking to understand the breadth of history, and see

historical foundations in all the ways life is shaped for different people. Community education means

looking at the ways education has been used by societies throughout time, and redefining what it can be

in our lives. It is creating institutions where people can educate each other, and reclaim that right from

the state. It is acting outside the classroom, bringing knowledge outside, and welcoming community

knowledge/people in with us. It frames our understandings of history as trying to understand our

people and all people and privileges voices that have been silenced and realize why this is so.

4.Transformation. Teaching for skills we to be empowered, competent, to create the change we need

and want on an individual/community/world-wide scale. This denies the existence of an “apolitical” or

“neutral” historical discourse and cultivates an understanding of history that empowers and implicates
one as an agent in their world. This element illustrates how we can take what has been violence against

our communities and transform it into the power to redefine, understand, be critical and create.

This guideline highlights what I see as the most explosive possibilities for empowering individuals and

communities through understanding history. It reiterates that a new historical literacy will necessarily

reach beyond history/social science class and develop individual praxis in how one behaves and

interacts with power. This framework outlines how I want to base my work in education in the future,

and how I want to learn to live. It is individual, based on my own experiences and needs, but I hope it

can provide the basis to think of other ways of framing historical literacy how that can affect every part

of how we live.

The humanization aspect of the framework is especially important in that it can cultivate

emotional literacy as well, learning how to treat each other and ourselves in ways that are not

thoroughly mediated by violence. Duncan-Andrade’s quote about magnitude of teaching connects to

Lerone Bennet who says, of the African-American experience “…the question of education for black

people is a question of life and death,” ( in Hale1978:7). How people think about themselves is

political, and has real consequences in terms of the perpetuations of violence. Schools are acting

politically by not challenging a discourse that takes away the worth of certain students. Humanization

and emotional literacy in the classroom contradict the objectification that mainstream discourse

promotes and asserts that students have the right to be taught in school how handle emotions and fear

and pain and violence instead of having them erased through their omission. A critical analysis of

history is necessary to see how marginalized groups have been denied their humanity and emotional

needs, left to reproduce violence, and it is essential to address this.

Emotional literacy and social skills have been parts of education systems around the world,
fundamental in rearing children, teaching them how to take care of themselves and hold up the values

of the society (Cajete 1994). ‘Social skills’ goes beyond the shallow definition that includes and ability

to share, interact with people, or follow directions that is taught primarily in elementary schools. It

includes how to take care of our communities emotionally, how to handle crisis and violence, how to

process feelings. Emotional literacy in other times has outlined generational methods for surviving and

thriving as defined by that community. Valenzuela (1994) talks about “aesthetic vs. authentic caring”.

She says that in the population of Latina/os and Chicana/os that she has worked with, large reason they

do not invest in school is that they see only “aesthetic” or surface caring, coming from their teachers.

The students often say that if the teachers really cared about them they would pay attention, and be

teaching them to develop themselves as people and grapple with the issues facing their communities.

Most teachers fail to do this, and then still insist that they “care” about the students. These students say

that it is impossible to care about people us and expect them to “care” about school if you bypass

opportunity after opportunity to teach skills that students need to navigate and shape their lives. I see

emotional literacy, being able to look at and struggle through the depths of the violence of our history

and learn how to be conscious and strong and capable as part of what the students in Valenzuela’s book

are asking for.

Using Historical Literacy to Critically Understand US Institutions

Multicultural education was a movement to address the school system’s treatment of children of

color that came out of the struggles of the 1960s and got put into practice in the 1980s. James Banks

says that to create a “multicultural school environment,” everything about the school must be analyzed

and changed to reflect a shift away from previous Eurocentric models. This includes changing

“teachers' attitudes, instructional materials, assessment methods, counseling, and teaching styles”

(1981; 1989). I grew up in a multiculturally-based elementary school and though it may have had
some of the above elements in its theory, in practice I saw rarely more than content integration:

celebrating black history month, the work of famous individuals of color, acknowledging the different

foods, clothing and languages that existed around the classroom. Though I see the importance of this, I

also see how it can be dangerous to analyze histories of survival and struggle in ways that reduce them

to just differences in aesthetics. It can also take away analysis of power and how people have related to

aspects of their culture as ways of gaining power and why. Children of color in this discourse are being

told stories about their people’s resistance to extermination in ways that discourage critical thought and

obscure more than they highlight about why things were happening.

These attempts at multicultural education appropriate communities’ culture and survival

mechanisms against state power and use them as evidence for the “egalitarian, democratic” (H/SS

Framework) nature of the institutions in this country. While espousing multicultural education for

empowerment, the way it often plays out, and it did in my life, was that it discouraged empowerment

by not providing us language to talk about the roots and effects today of racism and oppression in this

country. We were not encouraged to understand the painful side of our multicultural nation: genocide,

assimilation, white supremacy. We remained on the side of food, and “how far we’ve come”, and “the

fact this could only happen in US” (H/SS Framework: 12). Multicultural education has served to

neutralize and delete people’s experiences, even the one’s it was created to highlight. That is why this

and other attempts at multicultural education cannot lead to “empowerment” because they do not

fundamentally “decenter” power. They remain relatively uncritical, advocating for the education

system as it is by making surface changes. This is why it is so easy to revert to simply content

integration and still call it multicultural education. Multicultural education comes from a place of

attempting to improve on the education system but leave its fundamentals intact, even though the
inequity is structured into these fundamentals and attacking anything surface will not address the

problem.

The neutralizing of experiences of marginalized people that is one manifestation of

multicultural education is also seen repeatedly through the History/Social Science Framework for

California Public Schools. We are encouraged to “…understand the American creed as and ideology

extolling equality and freedom…” (131) and see that “…Few if any, nations can match the US when

compared on a scale of social heterogeneity; few, if any have opened their doors so wide to

immigration and provided such relatively easy access to full citizenship,” (131). We are assured that,

“…This framework incorporates a multicultural perspective throughout the history-social science

curriculum…” (8). This effectively erases all experiences that contradict or criticize this idea of how

marginalized people “should” fit into our national history.

Most intimately, and perhaps a better way to start the exploration of how history is trapped in

institutions is to see how it is trapped in relationships and us. We are living representations of a

historical discourse that has wished and tried to annihilate us. We can use that point from which to

move. We can create a discourse where we represent ourselves, and see that power translate into how

we use and are used by institutions.

“Historical Literacy Must be About Recovering Power”

New historical literacies must be built in awareness how power is seized and be actively

transforming it on the classroom, institution, and interpersonal level. This requires building analysis of

the cultural aspects that have resulted in a 500 year long power seize. Hierarchies, and binaries of

good/bad, black/white, man/woman Eastern/Western, are tools to erase experiences and keep us in

narrowly defined boxes. It is important to see the violence in this, to politicize it, it hasn’t always been
that way, and it remains because it is profitable to a specifically powerful group.

In this section I look at power starting from the micro, individual reactions and internalizations

of historical discourse. Then move to the macro, looking at ways the education system is effected, and,

how dialogue about transforming power in education can help recover what has been lost in other areas

of our lives. I attempt to highlight projects that have taken aspects of the guideline for new historical

literacy and enacted it, and how it has changed things on these various different levels.

As mentioned earlier ‘place based education’ is current, Western term for educational practices that

have existed throughout time and all over the world (Reagan 2001). One’s self and physical location

becomes the focus of how to mediate and learn about the world. To ground one’s power in connection

to place means finding a way to define and think about yourself. Place based pedagogy is the opposite

of the paternal aspects of multicultural education or other movements to “improve the achievement of

marginalized students”. It is not asking these students once again to change their behavior, or be

different, but to acknowledge that inequities in the education system should be the focus, not the

presumed deficiency of lower achieving students. To continually analyze marginalized children and

children of color in terms of how we can improve their achievement is to reiterate that they are the

defective ones. These institutions and their historical roots are what define students as deficient

(Nandy 1989). We need to institutionally acknowledge the power that exists in marginalized

communities and place based education could give space for survival mechanisms and cultural power

to shape pedagogy instead of denigrating them as has been done historically.

Educational traditions throughout the world emphasize knowledge of self as (sometimes the

only) true education that helps you create a path and give you a purpose. Krishnamurti (1981), says,

“freedom is nothing but the absence of fear” and the only way to achieve such a state is through
cultivating self-knowledge (39). Krishnamurti says the only way to discover one’s power is through

cultivating knowledge of self, and I would add, emotional literacy, learning ways to engage how one’s

psyche has been eaten away over time. Self-knowledge has been deleted from curricula in US public

schools for a political reason: it does not benefit the state to have generations understanding themselves

and their conditions holistically and critically.

Schools are places where definitions of achievement and “success” get cemented. These

definitions help define what a worthwhile person is, how you must be to “make it”. It is here that a

lack of self-knowledge makes students specifically susceptible to a construction of success that may be

detrimental to them. These constructions of success are violent in that they privilege specific value

systems like individuality, materialism, competition, hording knowledge and resources, which are

known to have destructive effects on communities. To counteract these violent elements, it is essential

as part of historical literacy to understand create our own, both ways of assessing progress in the

classroom, and plans for what “success” can look like in the rest of life. For marginalized communities,

(inside and outside of the classroom) success is often equated with distancing yourself from your roots,

and identifying with the ‘mainstream’ (Duncan-Andrade, 2009). James Loewen (1995) talks about the

difficulty of building alternative models of success for people who have been privileged by their

treatment in mainstream institutions. It is hard, he says, because once someone has used an institution

to their benefit they become invested, it is difficult for them to divorce their success from their

participation in it, it is difficult to be critical. Conversely, people who have seen institutions betray

their promises generationally, have built alternative models of success, alternate moral systems and

identities that do not rely on mainstream standards for power. As teachers it is important to validate

this institutionally, to build on alternative models of success, as redefining survival. These are the two
words most often used to justify what we need the education system for, what it is doing for us. When

one can make their own model of success and own model of survival, they can decide how they want to

use “school” and be less liable to school using them.

Teachers must challenge themselves to create ways of assessing student work that support

people’s visions of success and achievement. To create a space out of a classroom where power is

rediscovered instead of divested, teachers must use their power in a way that does not inherently

disempower students. Teachers are experts in certain areas, as are students, and both need to have their

expertise validated by how power is expressed in the classroom. Assessment must reflect a change in

consciousness, so students can praxis and see the changes it has in their world.

The Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School was actively engaged in ways of

redistributing power in regards to school, specifically in regards to a black community in Oakland

being able to determine how their children were educated. Ericka Huggins, the director of the school

from 1973-1982, says of the school, “The…students would use their education as a stepping-stone to

become world changers. Every child was appreciated for her/his innate wisdom and unique talents. A

guiding principle…was The World is Our Classroom. This principle sprung from the school’s

philosophy that children at OCS “will learn how, not what, to think” (1999). The BPP engaged in

projects that celebrated communities’ survival skills, and reframed them as revolutionary work against

systemic oppression and exploitation. Their programs got people’s needs met with a revolutionary

ideology that illuminated the reasons behind their needs, and poverty and violence in their

communities. The BBP projects are relevant to new the creation of new models of achievement and

success because they were explicitly rejecting standards that had branded their kids as deficient.

One of the most important successes of the Oakland Community School was that it evoked the
power of the community-control-of school movement, which has been particularly strong in African

American and Latino communities. Of the community-control of schools movement in Philadelphia in

the 1970s led primarily by students, Dominique Johnson says, “…it would be a source of community

cohesion. Instilling a strong and cohesive sense of Black pride in self and community was seen as a

major hope for this reform movement, with ramifications into other areas of the social structure,”

(2007).

Johnson posits community control of schools not just as an end, but also a means for

demonstrating what community control can look like in all parts of life, and challenge traditional power

structures and institutions with that vision. This is an articulation of acknowledging historical truths

and redistributing power based on different ways of understanding history and how institutions can

look. The BPP understood how much misinformation and historical violence gets transmitted through

the education system so they interrupted that with the Oakland Community School and various other

community education projects aimed at using history for critical consciousness.

I am interested in what a student/parent/community run school would look like. How would

this be the ultimate expression of decolonization and using education to create self-determination?

What are the different ways that history and social sciences would be taught, to expose systematic

oppression and use this understanding as a point of growth. What are the steps that are necessary to

take in the interim to make sure that schools do become sites of self-determination, that the classroom

structure as well as the organization of the school and school system are empowering spaces that are

creating new ways of interacting not just acting in reaction to the old?

One way to address this is through the active recruitment of teachers of color. There are just

over 10% of teachers of color in an education system where there are around 40% students of color and
in some places 100% (Ramirez 2009). There has been a 66% decline in Black teachers since 1954-the

year of Brown v Board of Education (Foster 1993:3). Teachers of color, especially Black teachers are

seeing their roles deleted and divested in. There are wonderful and terrible teachers of all colors, but

there are specific reasons that teachers of color might be consciously or unconsciously discouraged

from the field. Everett Dawson (in Foster 1997) says, “I got disillusioned with integration because I

could not get to my people and tell them the things that they needed to know.” Controlling teachers of

color, limiting them or making the experiences so uncomfortable that they quit is a way of controlling

these communities and breaking off a point from which alternative narratives may alter the institution.

Recovery of power in education means recruiting teachers of color as well as supporting the teaching

capabilities of parents and community members and students themselves who do not get recognition.

These issues are addressed in the fourth part of the new historical literacies framework:

community education. This speaks to the way the public education system obstructs education

happening outside of it. Teacher and student are defined specifically in relation to the school system

and all the power of those roles is retained by the state. Besides improving the school system

community education projects, which utilize the principles of new historical literacy are important in

taking back the meaning of education and keeping it community based, created by and in service to the

community as it has historically been.

Cultivating new historical literacy through community education could look like reclaiming

institutions which have cemented historical discourse in this way, such as museums, higher education,

churches and other houses of worship, even hospitals and banks to reflect the ideals of humanization,

power, community education and transformation. I have been outlining plans for a “community

museum” where diverse individuals and communities will have a place to tell their stories, be
represented and define their power. This would be a place where communities can engage with each

other and create identities for themselves, in resistance to the colonial discourse museums often help to

reproduce. What would decolonial hospitals, banks, religious institutions, and conceptions of sexuality

or family look like? How can we understand history so we are implicated in exploring these

possibilities?

Community Education Case Study: The Sex Positive Discussion Group

I am currently engaged in a community education project called Sex Positive discussion group

in which I am trying to organize reflecting a new historical literacy. A portion of this writing is based

on my experiences with this group, drawing together the threads of colonization, sex and gender

violence, alienation, fear, shame, and feeing myself heal and transform these things into self

determination.

I started the Sex Positive Discussion group through the East Bay Free Skool, a community

education project where anyone can give a class or take a class for free. In most free skools power is

handled differently, the roles of teacher and student are understood differently, they were created in the

context of mutual aid between community members, valuing the knowledge and resources we possess.

I started this group for several reasons. I have experienced sexual violence recently, from a

previous boyfriend and from a family member. I knew in my mind the ways my sexuality and being

were still in shock from those experiences. I did not feel like I had skills or models for how to deal it. I

felt conquered and reactionary, stuck in a place of self-hatred and shame even as I was aware and

critical of these feelings. I wanted to frame my sexuality in an empowered way, not in reaction of being

violated.

I see sexual violence as an important element of historical discourse, in that by not giving us
tools to think about or address issues that are extremely common across lines of class, race, sexuality or

geography schools and discourse is allowing it to happen. The reasons and roots sexual violence are

obscured, even from the people who are facing it, and this once again, justifies it, and pathologizes the

survivors for attempting to understand their experience against the curtain of popular discourse. The

extreme levels of sexual violence in US culture is manifestation of colonization, and deep hatred and

fear are making us act out against anyone perceived to be weaker or lesser.

The Sex Positive Discussion group took place on Sunday nights from 8-10pm for two months.

Though I had specific issues I wanted to address, I wanted the group to be participatory in terms of

decision-making, to distribute power. I facilitated each week, with changing co-facilitators. At the end

of every discussion the group would come up with a topic for next week. The group developed this

structure and the guidelines on the first day.

The group started out as a young, diverse group in ethnicity and sexuality. As the workshop

went on it got older and less ethnically diverse, which interfered, for me, with the safety of the group.

There was a pretty large turn out 10-25 people at each discussion group. I was interested in the fact it

seemed especially acceptable to a certain sub culture. It was advertised in the free skool calender

which is most popular in younger, punk/anarchist circles. I analyzed myself a lot, how was the way I

went about organzing the group too culturally specific? Is this style a product of my generation? Do

people already feel sex positive enough? Did they not like the location or the flyer? Did I not put it in

the right places? What did I do that made people not come back? How could I have been more

explicitly critical of power while still making it accessible to people with a variety of political beliefs?

In the group we covered topics like Communication and Consent, Violence-Survival and

Support, Pornography , What is Sexy?, What is Sex Positivity, Objectification, all were designed to
challenge people in a safe space to explore parts of themselves in a supportive way.

As a facilitator I struggled a lot with power in the group. People were speaking intimately,

often with strangers and unique closeness and gentleness was formed, but there were still harsh abuses

of power, lightly concealed, and I did not always know how to address that. There were no “good

guys/bad guys” or creating of enemies, but it was difficult to figure out how to confront someone who

seemed like they were unconscious of how they were affecting people. I paid close attention to how I

managed these situations, attempting to be supportive to everyone involved, but being honest about it if

things felt triggering or I felt unsafe or uncomfortable by people’s words. I did not try to claim

objectivity, but tried to honor my subjectivity and what my experiences brought to the group.

In some cases I had a difficult time distributing power in the group, as I would have liked to. I

heard from several friends that when talking about difficult personal things, it is good to have a single

facilitator from beginning to end, to build trust and accountability. I also challenged myself to let go of

judgements, to not assume a correct ending place for people, based on my vision of empowerment, but

be part of a defining what that looks like for people individually.

I found myself at times scared to voice a single clear, stance on issues especially non-

mainstream ones, because I did not want to be “telling” people what was right and wrong or “how to

be”. However, not expressing my ideas, and not challenging people is making a choice too, to follow

mainstream non-confrontational interaction styles mediated by fear. I am figuring out a way that I can

hold the space of facilitator in an empowering way, for myself and participants, why I do not shy away

from power, but learn how to express it in an egalitarian, supportive fashion.

One of the workshops I am most proud of was the one on ‘violence and healing’ (See appendix

2). We split up into groups of people talking about ‘surviving personal experiences with sexual
violence’ and ‘supporting survivors’. What resulted from the ‘survival’ group was an extraordinarily

intimate space, five or six people sitting close to each other in a circle, speaking about experiences with

long, full silences between them. As a facilitator, people would sometimes stare unblinkingly into my

eyes as they spoke, perhaps rooting themselves in another person for strength. We all shared

experiences and I was amazed by the intimacy created by the quiet words followed by silence, even as

the other group laughed and made noise just a few feet away. The diversity of how people had been

violated, how it had affected them and how they were healing was amazing. Hearing my own

experiences come out of the mouth of someone else was so important to me, as was hearing how

people are keeping their life together, demanding not just to survive, but to thrive. I learned that

experiences of sexual violence can be opportunities to reclaim sexual agency, that are especially potent

because they come from the context of having it seized totally, and needing all your strength to get it

back.

After listening and sharing I feel like I can’t go back to the desperate, broken, person I was in

the months and years following those instances of sexual violence. Speaking with everyone taught me

its ok to be hurt and be healing and figure out how to protect yourself, and express to people exactly

what you need. And it’s ok to take as long as you need to heal, and seek support for as long as you

need it. It was this class that taught me about what healing can look like in this context of community

education, using shared experiences and histories of pain to build together new definitions of ourselves,

new identities.

Another workshop I am proud of was the last one, a workshop on pornography where we

watched three clips of porn, one recommended by each facilitator. We did one minute free writes for

each and then wrote reactions, ‘what we liked or didn’t like’ to be read anonymously later. We spoke
about the power of having sexuality captured on film, and how it could be empowering, how people

felt disrespected by it. After wards, to close the group we did an exercise of drawing: ‘what is sexy?’

followed by drawing ‘the sexual person you want to become (and already are)’. We put them around

the room to be seen by everyone art gallery style. They were so beautiful! And people started literally

glowing from seeing sexuality expressed in such diverse ways. For an example of a drawing, see

Appendix 3.

The group that was most difficult for me to lead was one with only two female bodied people

there talking about consent. Some men expressed so much violence and anger toward women that it

was really difficult to hear. I was trying to respect his experiences and give him a place to speak but it

was hard to feel so much anger being pointed towards me. Men were often very condescending,

paternalistic minimizing women’s experiences, changing them, not believing them, saying they felt

sorry for us. I didn’t come to any conclusions, just realized the complexity, we all have many different

identities, ways we feel powerful and ways we don’t. It was reiterated to me that blanket theories about

who is “the oppressor” or the enemy or the powerful one is way too simple when dealing with things

that are this tied up in peoples’ bodies and minds. But the power that is granted to you by society is

always present in how you interact with the world, but you don’t know what people been through. How

does ‘privilege voices that are not heard’ when we all have so many identities from which we gain

power or have it taken?

I am proud about a lot about the Sex Positive Discussion group, and fascinated by the large

group it attracted each week. My biggest challenge was figuring out as a facilitator how to make the

safest space possible. Can a ‘safe space’ for everyone at once exist? A facilitator’s job is to take this

question and still structure conversation and interactions in ways that inspire greater understanding,
analysis and respect, and being explicit about what those mean to us. See Appendix 1-4 for documents

from the Sex Positive Discussion

A major way that history is trapped within us is our sexuality, and how it has been disfigured

and hidden, or manipulated and used against us. Healing from sexual violence has taught me a lot about

the process of taking raw, painful experiences and turning them into a source of power.. Our

experiences, all of them become resources, and the nastier it’s been the more powerful you can become

through the transformation. This is what I saw first hand from the Sex Positive Discussion group, and

his is what I hope for and what I believe for cultivating new historical literacy.

Though this writing I grappled with the H/SS Framework for California Public Schools and

was mainly thinking about teaching history in a K-12 classroom format, the experiences in the Sex

Positive Discussion group are essential to the analysis of community education. Taking back sexuality

is an important part of reclaiming history, using it to understand yourself as whole, not deficient, and

understanding the roots of sexual violence and patriarchy as keeping people divorced from themselves

and communities.

Conclusion

I believe that unlocking the power that colonized knowledges and identities have will transform

totally how we relate to each other and think about education and history. Historical discourse justifies

the enormous violence we live in daily, including how people are educated and taught to swallow this

violence. When historical literacy is just about understanding chronology or political systems,

memorizing names or battles as it is now, it succeeds in deleting the violence or beautiful things we

need to help us understand why our world looks this way now.

In this writing I attempted to synthesize ideas, study, projects from the past five years in a way
that presents a way forward. The ‘framework for a new historical literacy’ is a guideline that points the

direction I want to go in work inside and out of the classroom.

Much of my analysis of history comes from debates about “knowledge” politics, the psychic

violence of suppressing different cosmologies and ways of defining what is important and true. I see

this a historical root of mainstream historical discourse that movements that address the surface of the

problem, such as multicultural education, do not address. I also see one of the most inspiring processes

is recovering or exploring different ways of seeing the world and institutions rather than augmenting a

static historical record with “minorities”. To do this is to validate the same system we are oppressed

by, and I believe we can find our authentic power somewhere else.

The concept of literacy is vital because access to reading and writing is politicized in a way that

access to accurate history and heritage is not. There is the same body of knowledge on the effects of

keeping people divorced from their history as there is from the effects of denying them ability to read

and write. Both skill sets are crucial in the industrial world for maintaining agency, and as Freire

illustrates in his concept of critical literacy, the process by which one becomes literate is as important

as the result. It is there that one has the chance to construct what it can mean for them.

I tried to write this paper in a way that reflects my ideas about expression and a new historical

discourse. Focusing on the subjective, personal experiences, using this writing as a tool for my own

work and definition of survival. In referencing the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School

and community control of schools movement in Philadelphia I illustrate ways I see new historical

literacies being institutionalized, and creating new ways of getting educated and holding power.

The Sex Positive Discussion was a stab at community education, taking learning outside of the

structure of “school”. It is an effort at humanization, reminding us we do not have to live with all of
this violence, and make a space for envisioning sexualities that we create for ourselves. Sexuality is a

manifestation inside of history, and it’s a place I need healing and am proud that I could use ideas

developed in this writing to do so. Included in the appendix are curriculum material and a project from

this group.

I had a difficult time writing this paper, I wanted it to bring together several bodies of ideas and

try to chart my course forward. I wanted to study some people’s ideas and reflect and see if I could

create something I could use in the future to remind me how I got here and where I want to go.

Stay dangerous! Eyes to the sky!

References

The History and Social Science Framework Committee. “The History/Social Science

Framework for California Public Schools.” The California Department of Education. 2001.
Atalay, S. “Indigenous Archeology as Decolonizing Practice”. University of Nebraska Press.
American Indian Quarterly. 2006.
Baldwin, J. “A Stranger in the Village” in Notes of A Native Son. New York: Beacon Press.
1955.
Baldwin, J. “A Talk to Teachers”. Delivered October 16, 1963, as “The Negro Child -His Self-
Image”.
J. Banks & C. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon. 1989.
Banks, J. Education in the 80s: Multiethnic Education. Washington, D.C: National Education
Association. 1981.
Cajete, G. Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Asheville: Kivaki
Press.1994.
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.1953.
Cuellar, J. SFSU’s La Raza Studies Paradigm: A Multidimensional Model for Multiethnic
Latin@ Education Into Y2. Presented at Taking Control of Our Destinies - El Desarollo de Chicana and
Chicano Studies: A Symposium on Standards, Processes and Assessment for Developing and
Maintaining Chicana and Chicano Studies in California, San Jose State University. October 12, 1998.
Retrieved 9/9/09 from HYPERLINK "http://online.sfsu.edu/~josecuel/paradigm.htm"
http://online.sfsu.edu/~josecuel/paradigm.htm.
Delpit, L. Other People’s Children. New York: The New Press 1995.
Esteva, G., Prakash, M. S. Escaping Education: Living as Learning with Grassroots Cultures.
(2008). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.2008.
Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.1963.
Foucault, M. Power and Knowledge: Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. (. Morris, M.
and Patton, P. (Eds.) New York: Routledge. 1980. In Shor, I. “What is Critical Literacy?”. The Journal
of Pedagogy, Pluralism and Practice. Vol. 4. Num. 1. Massachusetts: Lesley College. 1994 Retrieved
12/18/09 from http://www.lesley.edu/journals/jppp/4/index.html
Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum International. London: Continuum
International. 1970.
Freire P., Shor, I. Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. (1987).
Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey. 1987.
Foster, M. Black Teachers on Teaching. New York: The New Press. 1998.
Hale, J. Cultural Influences on Learning Styles of Afro-American Children. In L. Morris, G.
Sather & S. Scull (Eds.) .Extracting Learning Styles from Social/Cultural Diversity: A Study of Five
American Minorities. Southwest Teacher Corps Network Printing. 1978.
Hern, M. (Ed). Everywhere All the Time. Oakland: AK Press.2008.
Huggins, E. “The Liberation Schools, the Children’s House, the Intercommunal Youth Institute
and the Oakland Community School”. (2008). Retrieved 12/02/09 from
http://erickahuggins.com/OCS.html.
Luke, A.& Gilbert, P. (Eds.) Literacy in Contexts: Australian Perspectives and Issues. Allen and
Unwin. 1993. Retrieved 12/01/09 from HYPERLINK
"http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/English/critlit.htm"
http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/English/critlit.htm.
Johnson, D. The Promise of Reform: Community Control, the Philadelphia Public Schools and
Student Agency. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New
York City, 9/11/07. Retrieved12/03/09 from HYPERLINK
"http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/research/index.php"
http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/research/index.php
Krishnamurti, J. Education and the Significance of Life. (1981). New York: Harper One. 1981.
Loewen, J. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong. New York: The New Press. 2007.
Nandy, A.S. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 1989.
Payne, C. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom
Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press.2007.
Ramirez, A. “Survival Guide for New Teachers of Color”. In The Nation. New York. August
31, 2009. New York. Retrieved 11/09/09 from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/ramirez
Reagan, T. Non-Western Educational Traditions: Alternative Approaches to Educational
Thought and Practice. Lawrence Erlbaum. 2000.
Solórzano, D.; Delgado-Bernal, D. “Examining Transformational Resistance Through a Critical
Race and LatCrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context”. Urban
Education. Vol. 36. Num. 3. 306-342.
Valenzuela, A. Subtractive Schooling: US Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. New
York: State University of New York Press.1999
Watkins, W.H. Black Protest Thought and Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 2005.
Wallerstein, I. European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. New York: The New Press. 2006.
I attended Dr. Jeffrey Duncan Andrade’s Raza 580 class, Educational Equity in Spring 2009 at
San Francisco State University. References to him denote knowledge he imparted as a teacher in that
class.
I attended Dr. Clay Dumont’s American Indian Studies 490 class, NAGPRA: Ancestors or
Data? in Fall 2009 at San Francisco State University. References to him denote knowledge he
imparted as a teacher in that class.

Appendices
Guidelines for Sex Positive Discussion as developed by group.
Introductory questionnaire. Defining ‘sex positivity” individually and as a group.
Introductory writing on violence and support.
Drawing by participant of ‘the sexual person you wish to become (already are). These were done at the
close of the group and hung up art gallery style.

PAGE

PAGE 37