Maybe white students deserve more credit than they get. Maybe – apologies to The Who – the kids are all right.
Leo Glaz seems to think so, based on a tweet I chanced upon last week. In it, he described himself as an educator who has spent his career in predominantly white private middle schools. “I think I teach history about as hard & honest as any teacher in america,” he wrote. “And when kids learn the truth about this country, they’re shocked and pissed off they’ve been lied to. Not uncomfortable.”
In so saying, he provided a voice, albeit by proxy, to the one group that’s been largely missing from the nation’s rancorous and ongoing debate over the teaching of African-American history. We’ve heard ad nauseam from lawmakers who say the subject must be banned because it makes white kids, yes, “uncomfortable.” And from parents who say it makes them ask painful questions.
But we haven’t heard from the kids themselves. If this teacher is right, maybe we should. Glaz, who told me by phone that he teaches at the Waverly School in Pasadena, said that in his experience, once kids – Black, white, brown and otherwise – learn this history, they tend to ask one thing: “How come they didn’t know this already? How come nobody ever told them this before?”
He’s convinced it’s not really because they’re too young. Rather, it’s because their elders themselves don’t know how to process America’s history of genocide, land theft, enslavement, rape, oppression and assault. Down that path lie stony truths that, of necessity, lend a mournful note to one’s singing of “God Bless The USA.”