Visiting Chutchui: The making of a colonial counterstory on an elementary school field trip

Keenan, Harper Benjamin

doi:10.1080/00933104.2018.1542361

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Educators must be prepared to explore with their students the continued survival of Indigenous communities in the face of systemic violence and engage the meaning of Indigenous sovereignty on colonized land. In this regard, some of Canada's recent curricular reforms in response to their national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Stueck & Alphonso, 2017), may provide some useful preliminary models for attempts at national-level curricular change, and the work of Indigenous educators to teach colonial counterstories presents crucial potential models of alternative pedagogical approaches (Keenan, 2019). And, while I believe that educators must reckon with the undeniable violence of the colonial era and consider how to address that with their students, there are also larger policy questions here: Why do schools use textbooks to teach history, especially ones that are typically approved for public use through a process of corporate competition for profit opportunity?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective Memory: California Mission History and the Problem of Historical Violence in Elementary School Textbooks

Keenan

2019

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context Across the nation, people living in the United States are embroiled in conflict over the meaning of its past. Many of the most fervent conflicts relate to acts of historical violence: war, enslavement, conquest, and colonization among them. Elementary school students commonly study the early colonization of the land now known as the United States, the nation's Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and other periods of history that historians describe as rife with violence. In the field of California colonial history, there is virtual consensus among historians that the Spanish mission system was a period of violence and devastation, most especially for California Indians, but school history curricula have been criticized for avoiding this history of violence. This raises questions about the role of intellectual honesty in teaching elementary-aged students about U.S. history. Though a small body of scholarship engages with questions of whether and how to talk with young children about human atrocity, few studies have empirically examined what state-recommended elementary school curriculum actually say about historical violence in the formation of the United States. Research Questions/Focus of Study This study examines the representation of violence in state-recommended elementary school history textbooks on the topic of the Spanish colonization of California. Specifically, the study responds to the following questions: How do the textbooks’ content address the topic of violence? Are California Indian and Spanish acts of violence represented differently? If so, how? Research Design Data were derived from a content analysis of fourth grade-level history textbooks recommended by the California State Department of Education in public use at the time of the study. Data Collection and Analysis Using qualitative coding software, chapters on California colonial mission history in each of the four state-recommended textbooks were coded and analyzed at the level of the sentence (n = 1,601). Coding and analysis took place in two stages. First, each sentence was coded for references to violence and ethnic group(s), which allowed for analysis of the number of references to acts of violence and ethnic groups throughout the entirety of the text. The second stage more closely examined the set of sentences that referred specifically to violence, allowing for comparison of the representation of violence according to the ethnic group with which it was associated. Findings/Results The study shows that violence is only minimally addressed in California fourth-grade history textbook content on the topic of Spanish colonization. Although generally underrepresented throughout the text, California Indian people are disproportionately over-represented as perpetrators of violence in the early colonization of California, a framing that is drastically out of alignment with the historical record as it is agreed upon by historians. Conclusions/Recommendations This study makes two key conclusions. First, the article argues that, in this case, elementary school history curriculum presents a distorted vision of violence in the colonial past. Second, the article complicates the issue of when young children are old enough to learn about violent histories in school by revealing that they are already learning about violence in the past, although such representation is both minimal and problematic. The article concludes by recommending the design of learning activities that engage in preparatory version of a more intellectually honest investigation of the historical record, as well as its relationship to the present.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective Memory: California Mission History and the Problem of Historical Violence in Elementary School Textbooks

Keenan

2019

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…In recent years, scholars have pursued the study of educational engagement with difficult history in public settings relating to how students learn, how they understand the emotional dimension of their learning, and the pedagogy most appropriate to elicit critical scrutiny of museum displays. Keenan (2019) concluded that historical visits, when studying indigenous Canadians, were a fruitful way of helping students to understand the counter-stories of minority groups. The studies of Reich (2015;Reich et al, 2020), examining encounters with US Civil War heritage, confirmed affect as central to the use of history as a way for students to orient themselves in time and space and that students were more emotionally engaged with content pertaining to their own identity.…”

Section: Difficult Histories and Museumsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“But it wasn’t like that”: The impact of visits to community-based museums on young people’s understanding of the commemorated past in a divided society

McCully

Weiglhofer

Bates

2021

Theory & Research in Social Education

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But it wasn't like that": The impact of visits to community-based museums on young people's understanding of the commemorated past in a divided society McCully, A., Weiglhofer, M., & Bates, J. (2021). "But it wasn't like that": The impact of visits to community-based museums on young people's understanding of the commemorated past in a divided society. Theory and Research in Social Education, 49(4), 510-539.

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“…Many Americans regard such accounts as central to understanding the ‘founding’ of the United States (U.S.) and how local communities came to be. Similarly, themes of settler-colonialism as ‘progress’ often permeate school field trip experiences from PreK-university (Keenan, 2019; Kissel, Miller, Byker, Good, & Fitchett, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, however, early childhood scholars have called attention to notions of place and argue that long-hailed narratives of communities—on the local and global scale—must be critically (re)evaluated to become more inclusive of the histories of all peoples and to transform existing power systems (Keenan, 2019; Nxumalo, 2019). Drawing on contemporary scholarship in early social studies education alongside Indigenous Studies (Andersen & O'Brien, 2017) and critical literacies (Vasquez, Janks, & Comber, 2019), we read across the week-long learning experiences children had during a field trip to a state historical museum as part of the state history curriculum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Troubling state (of) affairs: A critical analysis of a state-approved, elementary field trip

Brownell

Wong

2022

The Journal of Social Studies Research

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This article presents an analysis of one docent's discussion of Michigan history to a group of third-grade children as part of a week-long state-sponsored history program. By analyzing the docent's presentation about Indigenous and Fur Trade history at the Michigan History Museum, the authors argue that the docent forwarded a violent, settler colonial worldview. Using a dual-lens of Indigenous Studies and critical literacies, the authors detail how these narratives asserted a white supremacist national and state history. The authors offer a critical historical method rooted in the Lands and Waters that constitute Michigan, and propose potential sites of historiographical disruption, contestation, and critical thinking. In turn, they highlight the possibilities for museums as rich spaces for children to examine their relationships to community, nationhood, and social justice through stories told from multiple perspectives.

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Visiting Chutchui: The making of a colonial counterstory on an elementary school field trip

Cited by 11 publications

References 31 publications

Selective Memory: California Mission History and the Problem of Historical Violence in Elementary School Textbooks

Selective Memory: California Mission History and the Problem of Historical Violence in Elementary School Textbooks

“But it wasn’t like that”: The impact of visits to community-based museums on young people’s understanding of the commemorated past in a divided society

Troubling state (of) affairs: A critical analysis of a state-approved, elementary field trip

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