THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: A Conversation On Social Studies Pedagogy (Tape 1 of 3)
INTERVIEW WITH: Drs. Jim Croft, Anna Carolina Crimm, Allan Kownslar, Sarah Massey
DATE: 16 June 2000
PLACE: 210 King William Street, San Antonio, Texas
TAPE 1, SIDE 1
M: My name is Sarah Massey and it's Friday, June 16th, in San Antonio, Texas, and I have here with me Doctors Jim Croft from Texas A & M at College Station, in Curriculum Instruction, Anna Castillo - Anna Carolina Castillo Crimm from Sam Houston University, Texas History professor and Allan Kownslar from Trinity University, who is a teacher of Texas History as well. I'm Sarah Massey from the Institute, who works on curriculum. We're here today to talk about pedagogy in the social studies. And that will involve, to some degree, what our experiences are in pedagogy, how we got to where we are, and what we're presently doing in our instruction now, in terms of pedagogy. So I'll just kick it off with...with the three words that I have here, to start with, are - I'm using dichotomies, Carolina's using value dilemmas, and Allan's using point/counterpoint. And I need to know what we're talking about. So I just leave it up to Pedagogy Conversation 2
you now. You want to start this off Carolina?
AC: I'm waiting to hear what everyone else has to say. I have taught on the high school level since 1969. I dropped out of the educational field for about fifteen years; went back and got my Master's at Texas Tech and my Doctorate at UT-Austin. When I began teaching at Victoria Community College I began to develop what I have called 'dilemmas.' Basically what they are is a series of periods in history, both U.S. and Texas history, in which there are controversial topics, or topics which have no right or wrong answer. The students are presented with a case study. I worked in the business field, and toyed with the legal field for a while, and from there I got case studies - the students are placed in a specific historical period. For instance, 1800. And they have to decide who they are going to vote for. They have to base their decisions on their own interpretation of the facts. Then they write a two-page paper in which they present their view. The first paragraph gives them a chance to develop their imagination and to develop their character. They have to decide how old they are, if they have a family - they have to decide what's happened to them, what they went through during the American Revolution or something about their background. And then, in the middle part of the paper, they have to review the facts. What are the facts that they have before them that Pedagogy Conversation 3
they have to consider. And then in the last paragraph they have to say what they would have done in that situation:
AC: would they have voted for Jefferson? Or, in perhaps in Texas history, what would they have done about contraband in 1810? What would they have done about siding with the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition, or would they have sided with Arrendondo? So each of these periods - there are eight; I use eight during the semester and each of these periods then lends themselves to a discussion in which the students have to prove and defend their point of view. And the discussions, admittedly some of them... For instance, the welfare one that we did on FDR at Victoria Community College, resulted in one of the little girls - one of the women who had been on welfare and was only going to school because of welfare - getting into a considerable controversy with a man who was in the class who was a businessman and was totally opposed to welfare. And they got into a screaming match that resounded all over campus. But it was so exciting for the students. And what the students' reactions to these dilemmas and the discussions is that they never forget. Because they have had to put their own emotions, their own feelings, their own beliefs into these dilemmas. In the discussion they are able to create their own views, to make their own decisions. To me that's what education should be about, is helping them to learn to makePedagogy Conversation 4
decisions. So these eight dilemmas... Admittedly the grading is difficult because having to grade a hundred papers, and I do restrict them to two pages. After awhile, AC: instead of complaining about two pages they want,
“Please let us do three; please let us do four.” “No, you can only do two.S” So, the students' reaction to these dilemmas has been outstanding. They love them. They think; and every time somebody comes back to visit, they say, "Are you still doing dilemmas?" And I always assure them that yes, we are. And they have been so supportive of the dilemmas. One of the reasons that I got the Excellence In Teaching Award was because of the dilemmas. I'm so excited to hear that you all are involved in this.
M: Well, we don't know that we're doing the same thing. Clearly, then, the structure for you is - the process that you use is that they have a case study to read.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Then they have to write a two-paper which you...two-page paper which you structure with background information facts and then take a position.
AC: That's right.
M: And then you move it into a discussion...
AC: Right.
M: ...around the pro and con based on the position they took. Pedagogy Conversation 5
AC: That's right.
M: They have to defend it and they talk about that.
AC: That's right.
M: How long do you spend on this?
AC: Usually, for each dilemma, they're given the dilemma on a Friday so that they have over the weekend to work on it. They turn it in on Monday and discuss it the day that they turn it in. A lot of them prefer to have the discussion on Monday and then turn it in on Wednesday or Tuesday, Thursday, whatever.
M: Yeah.
AC: Because a lot of them change their minds after hearing what other people have to say, and so a lot of them like to have the discussion first, but then I find that they don't write it beforehand; they just wait to hear what other people have to say and that's not what I want.
M: Carolina, do the dilemmas change from semester to semester?
AC: Yes. That way you don't have students copying from semester to semester. Because otherwise they would.
M: What kind of background resources do they consult?
AC: Oh, they don't. I don't expect them to do a whole lot of research. They use the textbook, they use my notes and then if they want to get on the Internet they can. Sometimes they do. But it's not a research paper, and I Pedagogy Conversation 6
don't expect them to make it a research paper. The textbook sometimes offers enough background material for them. And for the freshman classes, and even the Texas History classes, I just expect them to learn the basics. And that's what they get from the textbook and from the lecture. So, AC: no, these are not research papers at all.
M: And you have something like a hundred and seventy students?
AC: Uh, yeah. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. So, yeah, the grading is onerous; that part is hard. I grade for grammar and I grade for punctuation and I grade for content. That's one of the things that I've had some difficulty figuring out what to do.
M: How do you structure the case study?
AC: Usually I try to choose a time period that has an inherent conflict. In other words, either political or social, cultural - just a variety - any time period.
M: And then what do you do then?
AC: And there are, of course...all time periods have, you know...
M: Yeah. And then what do you present in a case study? You've got the conflict.
AC: It's usually just - the year is 1800 - you are in Massachusetts. Okay. Who are you? So the first question is who are you? What is your family? How do you make a Pedagogy Conversation 7
living? What is your...what did you go through during the American Revolution? Are you one of the Tories, are you one of the Federalists, are you one of the anti-Federalists - what is your background?
M: So it's a series of questions.
AC: A series of questions.
M: That asks them, what I would call a character development plan, or...
AC: Exactly. Exactly. You have all the right terminology.
M: Character development.
AC: The reason I came up with this was because I hated teaching U.S. history in high school, because it was all so rote. Of course, coming through the '60s and '70s, you did not dare question anything. You taught the party line. That was one of the reasons that I came up with this, because when I started teaching on the college level I was no longer bound by the restrictions of the school board, or whatever. So I felt like I could begin to explore some of the controversies that have faced people throughout history.
M: Okay. Allan, let's hear what you're doing with counterpoint/point.
K: I do the same basic stuff that Carolina does - different dilemma. It's point counterpoint. It's American history, but I've always kind of done point counterpoint. I did Discovery of American History in 1970, which was point-Pedagogy Conversation 8
counterpoint. But it was for the high school level. And that was strictly point counterpoint throughout.
M: See, I don't understand what you mean by point counterpoint.
K: For every argument on an issue, there is an argument against it and for it - its balanced. It has to be balanced so that the reader cannot tell where I stand on the issue.
AC: Right. That's right.
K: It has to be that balanced. So it means for every argument someone makes for something, then you get somebody else that makes an argument against. It creates a dilemma, because what you want to do is find the most powerful arguments for and against something that you can find, and from the most articulate people. Some require an incredible amount of research. Then I also write an historical overview pertaining to that issue. What's the overview? For example, I pit Montezuma II against Cortez. Well, you just can't say Montezuma II - you have to give the students a summary of the Aztecs. Otherwise it won't make any sense at all, and particularly the religion in their lives. And then you just can't say Cortez - it won't work. You've got to give the background to the history of the Iberian Peninsula literally, for the seven or eight hundred years up to the time of Cortez, with all the battles between the Christians and the Moors, and what all that involved. And Pedagogy Conversation 9
then you have to deal with mercantilism and it has to be explained. You've got to deal with the priests of Portugal, and what they were doing. Then you've got to give a history of the Spanish Conquistadors. You have to write all of this.
M: Yeah.
K: Then you get to Cortez. After I did the summary of the Aztecs I did the summary of the Life of Montezuma II. Who K: was this guy? What was he all about? Then I had to do a summary of the Life of Cortez, basically, all the way up to getting to Vera Cruz. And then how he behaved when he moved inland. Then they go from there; they've got that background. Then I give them what Cortez had to say about his invasion of Mexico and why, since Montezuma didn't leave us anything. I have to look for documents. They're written by other people - what they wrote about what Montezuma said. But the whole issue is the question. There's a question at the beginning of the chapter: to what extent is a violent clash of cultures inevitable? That's the question.
M: Uh-huh.
K: That's the first thing they read in a chapter. I've got a little thing introducing the question, and then you go and tell them what the chapter is going to be about. And then you go through all this rigamorole that I had to write - the history of the Aztecs, the history of the Spaniards, Pedagogy Conversation 10
the history of Montezuma II, the history of Cortez. And then what each one of them had to say about that issue. And then they get down to the very end; and then you come back and you pose this question again: To what extent is the violent conflict of cultures and values inevitable? So they look at it from that standpoint, and I ask the students,
“How could this conflict of cultures have been avoided in a war-like fashion? No, how could you have peacefully resolved this? What would you have to do with each side? K: Well, somebody's got to give. And neither side's going to give. It involves a lot of religion and religious concepts. It also involves the conquistadors' mental attitude. Anyway, we list on the board: how do you avoid the conflict of cultures that turns violent? How do you have to do this? And they end up - most of them - saying this was inevitable, because of their background. It's - who's going to give in on this issue. Give in on what? You see what I'm talking about.
M: Uh-huh.
K: Then we make it relevant. We talk about today. How many of these issues today apply to this question? They just come up with all kinds of stuff. India, Northern Ireland; you name it. They're going at it. So then we talk about that: about Africa; what about Africa? And on and on and on. You see what we're doing - what I'm doing is Pedagogy Conversation 11
getting them to think about it. So I deal more with a question, but they're abstract because every question is abstract - because it can apply to more than one situation. When students finish reading this they cannot tell where I stood on the issue; they cannot.
M: Right.
K: They said, “We have no idea where you stand on this.” My part is to be objective. And then if they ask me, I'll tell them, but otherwise I won't tell them a word. So I've structured an American History course, for two semesters,
K: around twenty-six different abstract questions. But it's done chronologically.
M: Uh-huh.
K: You go from the Spanish exploration of the New World all the way up to the 2000 presidential campaign. I'm going to pit Gore against Bush. That question will be: To what extent should society keep faith with the values it cherishes? That's the question for their chapter. I've written a two-volume book and it's ninety-five percent done.
And it's been hell. It's the biggest research project I've ever been in, because I've not only had to research all these eras, I've had to research all these people.
M: Uh-huh.
K: And that's been tough. I have to find people that have good arguments.Pedagogy Conversation 12
AC: Yeah.
K: And in some cases - with Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth - they were illiterate. With Ann Hutchinson - John Winthrop wrote her stuff.
M: Uh-huh.
K: And so that has to be taken into consideration, very carefully, when you do this. So I've got biographies of all these people, I've got historical documentation of what they had to say about the issues. And it's not politically correct, none of it's politically correct, because I had to use what they had to say. I've pitted Paul Robeson, the
K: black, militant opera singer, against George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi, because I've got what both of them had to say on the issues of civil rights. And that's interesting. Because Robeson really leaned way out: he wasn't a communist, but he supported communism. Of course, Rockwell was a Nazi, good Lord! And the question in that chapter is: What rights should minorities have in a republic? See what I'm talking about?
AC: Uh-huh.
K: So...but there's also a dilemma associated with each one of these; it's a value conflict. And then, with the question I also start out with the value conflict issue. And those are generic. Everything's generic. I also point out to them that I don't think history repeats itself ever, Pedagogy Conversation 13
but human nature does. And in the time period we're studying, people looked at things differently than we do today and they accepted things that we wouldn't normally accept as being right today. And you've got to realize that. It's how they look at it in that time period. And so what I have them do is abolish hindsight on an issue.
M: Ah.
K: Well, they can't...they can't use anything that they know about that happened after that.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: They've got to stick with that time period - like you do with role play.
K: So what would you do in that case? Should Jefferson free slaves? Okay, let's free them, all of them. Then what? Well, I mean everybody frees the slaves. You can free them, but if we're going to free them in 1801, we're going to free all in 1801. Every slave will be free in the country, and what's going to happen? You know, how would you handle this? And who's going to free them, based on what? Are they going to be reimbursed? Lincoln wanted everybody reimbursed, and it didn't go anywhere. So what do you do in that case? And then, of course, they studied Jefferson in depth on the issue of slavery. They read almost everything he had to say about slaves - all the way through up until the time he died. But it's just part of the issue that theyPedagogy Conversation 14
deal with. And, of course, I've had to do Sally Hemmings also.
M: Well, is there a product? Do they generate a product? From these twenty-six?
K: No.
M: No products.
K: No. The exams are different. the exams are different. What I do on the exams - they're closed book. I'll say we're going to have an exam on chapters one through six. Okay. We're going to cover this. On the exam what I do is take contemporary examples - today. Sometimes I write them, sometimes they're direct quotes from newspaper articles. And they will have six to eight of these things on the exam; K: they've never seen this stuff before.
M: Six to eight contemporary questions.
K: Not questions, just examples.
M: Oh, oh.
K: But I know what they are, and they have to read each one and then draw an analogy between that and what we've been studying - in the form of an abstract question and a value conflict. And they've got to tell me how it relates. But it would be something contemporary. So they're also drawing analogies from contemporary times to historical times, but they've got to tell me how it works. It's very difficult to do, because they're thinking at the highest Pedagogy Conversation 15
cognitive levels. You can't think any higher than this. What they cannot do is use any of the abstract questions we've used in class.
I take these exams ahead of time. I sit down and take them, and write all this stuff out. And I can come up usually with ten abstract questions per answer - although they only give me one - but I can usually can go up to ten. And it's cheat proof - you cannot cheat on this exam. You come in knowing it...
AC: That's right.
K: Unless you copy somebody's paper, and that's not going to work. They have to come up with a new abstract question and a new value conflict and then tell me how it relates and draw the analogy. And so it's...part of the course is also K: not only learning about all this other stuff, but drawing analogies. It's point counterpoint.
M: Uh-huh.
K: And I'll pass out an article that will be the opposite of something we've been studying. Then they say...well, it poses this question between this issue today and what he had to say or she had to say. The Southern Baptists have helped me immensely this week, because my brother-in-law is a preacher, a first-rate preacher, and he's just written a statement in full - and that will be on the exam - they won't know it yet, but when we study Ann Hutchinson, that's Pedagogy Conversation 16
on the exam. So the students can play with it. Do you see what I'm talking about?
M: Oh, yeah, yeah. That helps, yeah.
K: We practice before they do an exam, because I only give two exams, that's all they can handle on this.
..: [whistle]
K: We practice it for six weeks. At the end of each class I give them a hand out, a little contemporary thing; and I'll say now you draw me an analogy between this and a question. So we practice ahead of time. When they get ready for the exam they know what they're going to have to do. And it takes a three hours to do one - three hours. I make them quit after three hours. They can take breaks - you cannot cheat on this or use the books. If I had them bring the textbook it would take six hours because they'd
K: start looking.
M: Uh-huh.
K: And I'd say, “No, no. You know...you know who these people are; we've been dealing with this. Every class period, I start with a full chalkboard, the length of the room, and I have the question on the board when they walk in. There's the question; and then I've got the person - like Montezuma here, Cortez over here. And then we diagram that whole issue, but they have to read my chapter before they come to class. So every class is a class discussion onPedagogy Conversation 17
that. When we get through, the board is full; we've broken these things down into microscopic points. And they argue back and forth. And always come out, well, whatever question we start with. So it's: question, hypothesis, test – generalize, synthesize, the synthesize, apply it to today.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: The question.
AC: Right.
K: But they cannot use any of those questions for the exams.
..: [whistle]
M: Do it again – question, hypothesis...
K: Test - test the hypothesis...
M: Yeah.
K: ...generalize about that issue. And then I give them a contemporary example, then they synthesize. And then...but Ks: it's always on that question. And we raise other questions, of course.
M: Yeah.
K: In the process they have diagramed this issue - I mean, down to the last adjective in some of those articles and stuff.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And they've written all the value complexities: cultural diversity, cultural conformity.Pedagogy Conversation 18
AC: Uh-huh.
K: Which of the two is going to work here? Religious toleration...
K: Well, what I don't want them to do is state a value in negative terms.
M: Uh-huh.
K: You may not agree with the value but state it and don't say male chauvinist pig - say male dominance.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: Male superiority. So I make them state it that way. Then many times we'll list all of the things each group values - that's different. We'll start here - Cortez and his group value this; Aztecs the negatives. Now we're not talking about just religion, we're talking about science and literature, because we have to come up with both of them.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And then we'll list all these values, and then I'll
K: come back and I'll say, “Okay, you've got two sets of values here, under this question. Which value seems to be the most important?” - in these two columns.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And they think about that. And then I'll say, “You've got to prioritize these. Who comes first and who comes last.” And all of sudden it dawns on them that they may like this value over here but this value over here seems Pedagogy Conversation 19
important, what about that? And sometimes they end up with a mixture of values from both sides and then I'll say, “Now, prioritize those. Which comes first?” See what I'm doing?
AC: Uh-huh.
K: So my classes are structured. I have the jump on you people. I teach in a private school. I have a maximum of thirty-five students in that Border Region course. And we will not take any more than that unless we have to. We can, but we're not required to.
M: You also have some of the smartest students in the world.
K: Oh, yeah, I mean everyone of these kids are bright. AC: If I tried that with my little freshmen at Sam I'd be in deep trouble right off the bat.
K: Yeah. I also taught slow learners in high school. I taught the slowest of slow. If you can get them to do this,
But...
AC: Yeah.
K: It's a cultural shock to all my students the first couple of days.
M: Yeah, oh, yeah.
K: Even though these are bright kids, and they're very bright, it's a cultural shock. They come thinking, "Good Lord, what's going on here?"
AC: You mean I have to think?Pedagogy Conversation 20
K: My classes, I've structured them so that we meet in three hour blocks.
AC: That's nice.
K: Meet MWF - Tuesdays, Thursdays...
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And I some control over what I...
AC: Right.
K: I have to teach, but I'll do this on a Monday afternoon - 2:30 to 5:20. Or a Tuesday from like 12:30, we'll do three hour block. When we reach a point in the discussions I'll say, "Now, ten minute break,", so we stop and take a ten minute break. But it's where we stop an argument that we take the break - we always take the breaks - we take one of two breaks in that three hour block.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And then we wrap it up. I've structured the course to meet what I was going to do in the first place.
M: So your twenty-six dilemmas that are based on twenty-six weeks of teaching in a semester.
K: Yes.
M: Two semesters; so you do one new dilemma every class?
K: That's all we do is that one question in three hours. But we have diagramed and analyzed the thing to death at that point. And also made the issue relevant.
M: Yeah. And they do no outside work? They just have to Pedagogy Conversation 21
have read these chapters, these pages before they come to class.
K: If they haven't, it's very obvious when we start discussing.
M: Yeah.
K: Because they don't know what to respond to.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: I look with volunteers at first and then those that are quiet, I call on.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And I'm very low key. I'm very laid back. And if they can't answer the question, if they're stumped on the question, then I'll say I'll come back to you later with something else. And then I always come back to them. And normally I start off asking questions that I know they can answer.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: This is the first part of the semester. I try to call on every one of them within two weeks time. And you can do that. We probably pose fifty to a hundred questions per
K: three hour session. But they respond. I build off their answers and then - that's why we fill that board up, all the way across. Then the next week they know they're going to get a different question with a different issue. But in the process... Pedagogy Conversation 22
M: But it's the same thing. So that you're re-enforcing, over twenty weeks, a method of critical thinking.
K: Yeah.
M: And you should raise...if they can't write an analogy when they first walk in the door, by the time they leave they should well be able to write an analogy.
K: Oh, yeah. Well, they do this on the exams. On exams.
M: Yeah.
K: On the exam they have to apply everything to the exam, everything we've learned, to the exam. By the way, no two answers are necessarily right.
M: Yeah. K: See, I take the exam first. M: Yeah.
K: And I've come up with eight to ten answers per question, but what analogy they want to draw as they relate it back to something. So it's open-ended. But you can't do the analogy unless you know the materials.
AC: That's right.
K: It won't work.
JC: What's the scope of that particular course?
K: We do 1519 to 1880. And then the other one is 1880 to the present.
JC: Do you teach both of those?
K: Oh, yeah. I'm the only one that teaches them at Pedagogy Conversation 23
Trinity. We have a curriculum that requires a values component. They have to take a course in values. I created this course on account of the curriculum thing, and I'm the only one that teaches this history.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: My problem is my chapters are too long for publication, so I'm having to go back and cut back. I have to re-write, and I'm finishing that now.
JC: Yeah. And still keep those essential.
K: You've got to keep the essentials. I don't think anyone has come up with this for a college level history course, anywhere in the country.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1
SIDE 2
K: Colleagues, they don't ask me what I'm doing; they're not curious enough.
AC: Mine avoid me just like I was the plague.
K: I've never even bothered with that either. I just don't care what people think. Isn't that awful?
AC: You can't worry about them, because they will be opposed.
K: They have different ways to teach, some just straight lecture, some is all discussion, but a different format. No two members of the department teach alike. And I know that,Pedagogy Conversation 24
since I was Chair.
JC: I had the same experience. They're going to be asking more questions and those questions are going to be very significant, and they're going to be very skeptical. They often are able to detect B.S. like crazy, you know.
K: I ask each one of them when we get through, “Are there any unstated assumptions? How do you begin to identify a hidden agenda when it's not obvious?” There are various techniques to that. One is: what would the opponent say with that person's hidden agenda? Look at it from that angle. The research required is just overpowering. I've never done this much research for a book, ever, on anything combined, probably all of them. And then people keep coming up with all this new stuff. You've got to be careful as they've got to be evenly matched, and with, “The women's rights issue was a tough one.” I do Tubman and Anthony and Stanton in one chapter. I need to do all three of them because there were three possible positions. Who can I get to oppose them, who's that good? And I got to thinking and I thought - William...[name?] - the Waco iconoclast, is perfect, because he opposed everything these women stood for. But most people don't know who he is. He had no use for feminine politics at all, and he was very articulate,
K: and very thorough, in his arguments. I introduced him by giving the basic arguments for/opposed to woman's Pedagogy Conversation 25
suffrage: - biblical, medical, scientific for that day and time. So I set him up and then I jump in with...jump in with...[name?]- do a biography of him and then what he had to say about women in politics in 1890. And he counter-points everything those women had to say and does it beautifully. And there it was,...[name?] - he's the perfect person for that. Not some screaming lunatic; this guy was knowledgeable. He knew what he was talking about. Of course, he was after the Baptists also. He said the only thing wrong with the Baptists is that they're water logged. He opened his newspaper across the street from Baylor University. So you see what I'm talking about. You've got to find somebody that's good, otherwise it won't work.
JC: I picked up a textbook the other day and looked at two sets of them, and I thought - does it work? Because students will see through it. And then they expected the answers there in glaring headlines.
K: What happens when the students read these things? They see that both sides - no matter who's making the arguments - have some valid arguments. And sometimes, even if you oppose somebody, that individual might have an argument somewhere in there that seems valid. I don't want to expose students to weak stuff if I can help it. And the people that I've picked on both sides they're all strong; no
K: problems with them. But they've got to be. Pedagogy Conversation 26
M: Let's move on. I will not be nearly as long on this, because clearly what I've done is not nearly as well developed as what the two of you have done. The first project that I did when I came to Texas was called "Fascinating Texans." What I did was pick out thirty people from Texas, put together a packet of primary and secondary research material around each person. And this was just the organizing chart for the teacher, so that they could get a quick handle on the contents. This was to be done with seventh graders, kids that were twelve years old. On each one of the packets there was a contradiction or a dichotomy. They were to write a biography of this person, using the materials in the research packets.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: But the part of the unit that no teacher did - that from my perspective did not work well with seventh graders was the contradiction - dichotomy. After they wrote the biography they were then to respond to what I called the 'driving question' for that person, which is that middle column. And they were all open-ended; there was no right/wrong answer. They were not questions that were historically important or the most important or a value dilemma or any of that. This question was just inherent within this person's life.
AC: Uh-huh.Pedagogy Conversation 27
M: They were to take a stand on the question one way or the other and then support their stand with material from the packet. There was no right or wrong position, in the teacher grading them. Very few of the teachers, in using this, got beyond writing the biography. That was all they could ask of the twelve year olds. First of all, they had to deal with, in each packet, a minimum of thirteen pieces of information. They were dealing with: How do you write a biography? How do you take notes? What is a biography? How do I write this three or four page biography? The middle, the introduction, the middle and the end? What do you do? What are the questions you need to ask? [inaudible] answers. If you write a biography, what should all of the biographies have in them? What happens if you don't have the answer to your question in your packet? So they were dealing with very low level skills.
M: But it worked, because they were working with primary and secondary material that's coming from all over. A seventh grader does not know what a dichotomy is. They can't understand the abstract concept of a dichotomy. So, for seventh graders, that was just too abstract for where the kids are today. But, for me, that was what was the most important part of the unit.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: But I didn't go any place in teaching it, either.Pedagogy Conversation 28
Because the skill level wasn't there. That's why I said I M: think I've got the beginning of where you guys are clearly working. But I didn't give them instruction in how to resolve the dichotomy. I gave them no examples. So I didn't take it the next step. But I think that I'm still in the same place. And where I'm coming out of all this - my twenty years in social studies - is that there has to be a product...
AC: Uh-huh.
M: ...which he's using his exams. I don't think that's good enough, you know. I come out is that the kid's got to write or draw or make or do something concrete. There's got to be a product. That grows out of what I told Jim earlier, that if all of us go through what we got in our student trunks...
AC: Uh-huh.
M: ...we will find those products that we did in school, the papers that we wrote or the charts that we made or whatever. That's what kids tend to remember - that stuff they created. And then the kids are all heavily skilled in the instruction, in the kits that I do; they are all skill-based. There is an open-ended driving question with no right or wrong answers. There's the materials that are provided on both sides of the issue in the packet. The research is done for them so the seventh graders don't spendPedagogy Conversation 29
all their time going to the library and, you know, looking at the comic books. All seventh grade teachers assign a
M: research project. It's always done the month of January. They schedule the library for three days; they turn the kids loose to go get the materials that they need to write their research paper on the topic, whatever the topic is. The kids goof off for three days or they quickly take a page of notes from the encyclopedia and then they come back and write the research paper and cite two, three encyclopedia citations. So this was an attempt to upgrade from that, and research in the library was not a critical factor. A lot of the rural libraries just don't have sufficient materials for research projects.
K: So you give them the materials.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Right. And you spend the time in the classroom with the kids helping them read. And then we got into the problem of half of the kids couldn't read the materials that were in the packets. So we had to pull in Special Ed. teachers, the Reading teacher, and all this other stuff. And what happened out of this project, that was totally unanticipated, was team-teaching among the teachers.
AC:Oh. M: All of them ended up seeking out other teachers. That was totally unexpected. But that was just to get help with Pedagogy Conversation 30
the reading, because a lot of these materials that were in here were written in the 1880s, 1810s, and it was using vocabularies that were just way beyond most students. Most M: teachers felt like thirteen pieces of information was too much for seventh graders to handle. They would have been happier if I had only put in six or seven. Just keeping track with a minimum of thirty to thirty-five kids in a classroom times five classes. That's a hundred and fifty kids a day. I created a system for how they kept all the materials in packets and didn't lose them. The first thing every kid did when they came into the classroom was they got their packet and they had to put all of their exhibits in numerical order. If one was missing they knew Susie had it first hour and Susie probably had them in her folder.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: So the teacher could make a note that when Susie came in the next day to be sure to get that exhibit from Susie. So, just the logistics of this for a seventh grade teacher was very, very complex and difficult. I also know that it worked at some level, because when I went to the regional history fair, the year after these were sold, I saw seven exhibits that were built on these characters, that the kids had extended the research to build their exhibits for the regional history fair. But, in terms of the dichotomy and Pedagogy Conversation 31
the dilemma, it was just a different way of doing inquiry, but I think all three of us are doing opened-ended driving questions that are inquiry oriented, where the kids have to go out and find answers. Jim - or Allan - has done more of M: providing the stuff for the kids, but I think Allan upgrades thinking process inordinately.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Now whether they could separate out a value dilemma from the generalization, and stuff like that, I'm not real sure. Maybe they can after twenty-six examples.
K: It depends on the questions.
M: Okay.
K: Everything to do with the questions.
M: Okay.
K: My experience with - I taught public school twelve years, six of them inner city...[inaudidible]
M: Yeah.
K: And we could cover any topic, even...[inaudible] questions. But you've got to think about those questions. But this requires very, very creative teachers, skilled in posing questions, because you can pose an abstract question - be very, very abstract - but few slow seventh graders could figure it out.
M: Okay. Now, Jim, let me throw this to you.
JC: I was thinking how I got where I am with my teaching, Pedagogy Conversation 32
because I can still clearly remember 1965. That was a long time ago, and frankly I should have been fired after the second day. I was in a little tiny - what is now a Chicago suburb - a little tiny rural town, Northbrook, Illinois. Twelve thousand people, all farm kids, they'd all sit in
JC: rows, they'd all keep their mouth shut, and I did a lot of talking, a lot of telling, lot of worksheets.
M: Uh-huh.
JC: Boy, I felt by the second year there, I had learned how to teach. And then I moved to Chicago. All Puerto Rican school, twelve hundred kids in grades K through 8, nine assistant principals, you know, one of those humongous schools up on the North Side. And I was teaching third grade in the balcony of the old auditorium with the curtain down the middle, there's another third grade teacher on the other side, there are two fourth grade classes down below. And we got fifth grade textbooks. And it took until March for Chicago public schools to get us third grade books. Well, I had no idea what we should be doing. I'd never taught third grade before, and it was a big adjustment to those little rugrats, 'cause I'd been teaching fifth and sixth before that. And I think that year started me searching a whole lot, and let me know teachers could survive outside of textbooks and the kids could be doing things. And the teaching went a lot better, because you Pedagogy Conversation 33
weren't responsible for everything. School was no longer the place where kids came to watch teachers work hard.
M: Uh-huh.
JC: You know. They could be doing some things too. And I stayed there a couple of years, then I moved down to Indiana, to Terra Haute. And I was teaching middle school, J: junior high school, and I had a world geography, an earth science, and a U.S. history. And that year somebody introduced me to the earth science curriculum project and to the Amherst History Project. And, boy, was that an awakening. And I think that's where it started to turn around. And I'd like to hear more from the rest of you, where it started to turn around for you too. Because I'm especially interested, since I'm dealing with pre-service folks almost full-time, how we turn those folks around so that they start asking questions instead of always giving answers. They're real well prepared to have the answers, and maybe it's because they're searching for security. They're scared to death the first time they go inside one of those classrooms, their first semester, their junior year. But they really want to pretend that they know some things, and they are very, very insecure.
M: Well, I've answered that for myself, in terms of that question. One is - I've got two or three flat answers - a bachelor's degree teaches you the what, the master's degree Pedagogy Conversation 34
teaches the how, and the doctor's teaches the why - in terms of teaching. Most of us - most of the people that enter teaching - are only hung up on the what, and they may get to the how after they've been in teaching four or five years, and they rarely ever deal with why they're doing it that way, in terms of the teaching field. Uh, the other...the other thing is that I think that students that are in
M: education come with a history of models that cannot be broken. I don't...so my answer is that I don't think you know. The only thing I think you could do for teacher preparation that would change what happens, is to force them to use a new set of material. That when you go out to teach, you don't get to use what's out there. You don't get to use what the teacher uses. You're getting a free-ride kit, you're getting six weeks, and you must teach these materials that's what? It would be...here's Allan's textbook - this is what you must do in this four-week block of your student teaching experience. And we will...I will support you in doing that and giving you the help you need. Because they're concerned about a...can they control the classroom? Can they keep the kids in their seat? See, I was director of student teaching and did the pre-service courses, and all that stuff. And their concerns are not with what; their concerns are - can I control the classroom?
JC: They really do believe the textbooks have already Pedagogy Conversation 35
answered all the...
M: That's right.
JC: That need to be...
M: That's right.
JC: Answered.
M: And what you've discovered, all these years later, is that they don't have enough grounding in the content to be able to design lesson plans. Okay? I think that's true. I M: don't think elementary teachers have the grounding. I think secondary teachers may have the grounding, but they don't even have a clue as to what's going on with the kids or what's important to kids. So we're still lost, you know. But the beginning teacher will always focus on - how do I keep control of my classroom? And then after they've done that and proven that after the first year, they move to - what should I be teaching. And then's when they look at the text and textbook, and they've got a core set of plans that they can then start to modify. By the end of the third year they now have it so-so - now I can teach pretty well, I'm doing what...now it's a question of can I do it better to raise the scores on the TAAS? So now I start looking at how do I teach the textbook? So you're really at year four of the teacher before you even can have input, I think, into the substance of the teaching profession. And by that time they're all done, and they're sure they are a teacher, and Pedagogy Conversation 36
they're doing it, and they don't want to work that hard, and they've got a husband and a baby at home...
JC: And half of them quit.
M: That's right. Or the other half quit because they couldn't do step A - control the classes. And so I end up real doom and gloomy on the teaching profession. What they have experienced for eighteen years is so overpowering in their lives.
JC: Well, I think so. True for me too. And you know we've J: all been through the stuff that the new social studies of the 1960s and 1970s failed. But, when you take this guy, take all his textbooks away for year...
M: Yeah.
JC: And then the next year give him Amherst History to work with - I only had two of the units but at least it was a hint of what was going on. And then two years later throw him into Seattle, and give him MACOS - Man A Course of Study, to work with.
M: Uh-huh.
JC: It worked.
AC: Now what are those two things? I don't know anything at all about them.
JC: They were some federally-funded projects that came out of the late 1960s, early 1970s; and the Amherst History Project was the series of units that was centered around Pedagogy Conversation 37
inquiry, problem-solving, problem - the one unit that I think I had to...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2. THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: A Conversation on Social Studies Pedagogy (Tape 2 of 3)
INTERVIEW WITH: Drs. Jim Croft, Anna Crimm, Allan Kownslar, Sarah Massey
DATE: 16 June 2000
PLACE: 210 King William, San Antonio, Texas
TAPE 2, SIDE 1
JC: It was a lot of disagreement about who was there, how many people were there, where in the dickens they were, what was said, how well they were equipped, what time of day it was.
M: And how were those used?
JC: Well, the truth is they weren't used very well by very many people. The last study I saw fifteen years later, twenty years later, was that maybe these had touched maybe twelve to fifteen percent of the classrooms across the United States. They were supposed to be used as in-depth inquiries as opposed to coverage of content and teacher talk models; they were supposed to be investigation models. The Man - A Course of Study (MACOS) was an elementary project that came out of Harvard, and it was centered on large case studies.
AC: Now what is that called?Pedagogy Conversation 2
JC: Man - A Course of Study.
M: You can't find it now - it's out of print - you can't find it.
AC: Oh.
JC: It had some wonderful films and a lot of small booklets, no textbook. The biggest thing about it were the teachers' editions. An anthropologist by the name of Nikko Ten Bergen had a lot of input on it. The case studies in it were about animals and animal communities and then a final case study, which had been done by Ten Bergen based on...
AC: Kalarahi Bushmen.
JC: Animals of the Kalarahi was one of the little booklets.
AC: I think I used that.
K: Yeah.
AC: I think I used that back in the early '70s.
M: Early '70s. I did too. See, these are all projects I used.
JC: But that whole thing just turned my thinking about teaching around.
M: Yeah, did mine too.
JC: And then when I came to Texas A & M later on, I found it real easy to do that kind of teaching in the geography courses that I was teaching. But I found it very difficult to do it in the social studies methods courses because we'd end up practicing technique rather than dealing with the Pedagogy Conversation 3
questions. And truthfully it's only been the last ten, twelve years where I've gone kind of soft on the technique.
M: Yeah.
JC: And say...you can develop that, here are the models real quickly, now here's some questions you can ask about that.
M: Yeah, yeah.
JC: And we started out the course with a curriculum question: what kind of curriculum content will best prepare kids for the kinds of lives they're going to live as teenagers, as adults. I don't give them any kind of background information with that kind of question, they have to go think and write. When they come back, we talk about it. There's generally a little bit of diversity, but most of what I find is a reporting of what they experience.
M: Experience.
JC: And then I try to jar them loose a little bit. Usually expose them to Montessori's Social Studies Curriculum Model.
M: Yeah.
JC: From what we do in America. And to some other international models. And maybe to some from California or one of the more unique models that we have in the U.S.
M: But the minute they hit that classroom, they go right back to...
JC: Then they have to react to that. And then I send themPedagogy Conversation 4
on a little real world verification. That's when they go look at the text for the first time, talk to a classroom teacher and find out what they're doing; and they find a
JC: couple of more dimensions of this: that the text say this and the classroom teachers are doing this. And they aren't even close to each other.
M: Yeah.
JC: But that sort of thing about the content, I keep going about five weeks with iterations of problems that we then debate for just a little bit. We don't take a whole class period; we might spend twenty minutes on that before we get on, go on something else because I'm trying to sustain the controversy and getting them to look at different points of view...
M: Well, I tried your model when I went to Hopi opening the brand-new school; we didn't have time to get materials and I had the strong feeling that teachers had to be a part of selecting materials. And the community was committed to looking at the materials before they went into...they wanted some say about the content of the material. And my job there was the curriculum and instructional specialist to design the seven, twelve curriculum, seven through twelve, for all courses of study, before the school opened in three months. Well, what I learned in that first year was, I saw it was a golden opportunity for teachers to teach without Pedagogy Conversation 5
textbooks. Yeah, that this is our chance, guys; we get to do whatever we want to do in terms of developing our own materials. Well, not only did the teachers go bonkers, the parents went bonkers. Because for them school equals a
M: book. And that's why I say the Internet will never replace textbooks, because of parents. I don't care if you never use that textbook, the kid must carry fifty pounds of books back and forth to school every day. Now that may have been a poor sales campaign but parents will always - especially for minority children, books equals learning. And so that's where I came out on that. And then we ordered in books as soon as we could. The teachers didn't know what to do. They just flat out didn't know what to do; they couldn't design their own courses, sequence, even with the guides.
JC: Can we explore that just a little bit further? I'd kind of like to know how Carolina and Allan got to that point, too.
M: Sure. Sure.
JC: I mean...
M: How did you get to where you are now?
JC: How did you get to where you are? And I'm also interested in why. Why are you doing it? It's a lot of work.
AC: Uh-huh.Pedagogy Conversation 6
JC: You have other things you could be doing with your life.
K: Try...
AC: I did it because I really...to look out at a class of students that are sitting there like lumps on a log, not
AC: getting, you know, zoning me completely out. I wanted them to be as excited about history as I was. But I wanted them to begin making decisions on their own about history. Because I don't believe that history is rote memorization, I don't believe - I'm with Allan - I believe that history should be a debate, a discussion about, you know, what decisions people made. So when I first started doing this at Victoria Community College and then brought it up to Sam [Houston University], for me it was a way of making history interesting again, and especially for my Texas history students who were most of them going on to be teachers. For them, it made history exciting again. And interesting in terms of imagination for them, imagining who...what their lives would have been like, and important for them in terms of using those questions, like Allan does. My dilemmas always have a modern component in which they're able to see how these ideas, concepts, may have existed back then, but also how they relate to the present day. I just wanted the kids thinking. I just wanted them...something other than sitting there like little, you know, nothing.Pedagogy Conversation 7
M: Allan?
K: Oh, I got started at teaching three years, and I was black-busted from teaching because of my civil rights activities.
AC: Um.
K: So I took two years off, as I couldn't get a job and
K: picked up a Master's degree in history, got married and Amherst called and offered me a job. And I told them I'd been black-busted, and they said they didn't care less.
M: That's Amherst College?
K: Yeah, well, it was the Amherst School System in conjunction with Amherst College.
M: Oh.
K: So I took the job at Amherst and went up there and had been up there about six weeks and Ed Fenton called me and Dick Brown asked me to come over and join them at the Amherst College...Study of History. And I said, “Why?” And they said they were thinking about ways to do history. And I said, “So?” And so we started meeting and I became a member of the Committee on the Study History. And we asked three questions: one assumption, you cannot lecture. Okay, now what are you going to do?
M: Yeah. That's right.
K: You cannot lecture. What are you going to do in history classes? So I posed three questions: one is, how Pedagogy Conversation 8
does learning occur? Real lasting learning. We had to answer that question, long-term. And what constitutes effective teaching? And then how do the two questions relate to one another? Those are the three questions that I posed. And so I got to thinking, well, what do you do if you can't lecture? I had been lecturing, and so I did two of the units: I did the unit on the Expansion in the 1840s
K: and I did the unit on the Progressive Era. In the meantime, I was picking up a doctorate at the University of Massachusetts in History. And I got those published, and then did Discovery of American History for high school level there at Amherst. Fenton showed up at Amherst and offered me a job at Carnegie Mellon, and I said I'm finishing up my PhD in history at the University of Massachusetts. And he said, “What have you got left?” And I said, “Just my dissertation, is all.” He said, “I want you to come to Carnegie-Mellon. We're putting up a new program called the Doctor of Arts.” And I said, “I'm almost done with my PhD.” And he said, “No, you're going to come to Carnegie-Mellon.” So he recruited eight of us from around the country to come to Carnegie-Mellon for that first degree, that Doctor of Arts degree in history. It wasn't education; it was history. We had to do everything you do for a PhD, but then you had to turn around and demonstrate how all that could be taught. So it was a double whammy. So we went, sold our Pedagogy Conversation 9
house, went to Carnegie-Mellon, and I was director of a project for slow learners in American history - with no lectures. So he put me in charge of the thing. We had our first meeting: it was fun. Had to wait two weeks to have our first meeting with the group, and I was running it; I was the managing editor and the senior author. And we got through with the first meeting, and I said, “Ted, these seven people sure seem to be independent.” And he said,
K: Allan I forgot to tell you - all eight of you had been fired from teaching, for insubordination.
AC: Which is obviously what it takes.
K: Yeah. And I said, “You want me to run this group for three years?” And he said, “You're going to run it.”
AC: How wonderful, how wonderful.
K: Civil rights - two black. So anyway, we put it together, we ran it, slow learners, peer inquiry, published it, with Holt, Reinhart and Winston, American Heritage, called The Americans, worked like a charm.
AC: Whatever happened to it?
K: No more than fifty percent of the teachers in the country have ever used any of this inquiry stuff - put out by anybody. And Fenton was doing his own program then, and so I was right next door to him. We were working all this stuff, we taught this stuff in the schools, we had trial-runs for two years with the worst kids in the worst schools Pedagogy Conversation 10
in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I know; I was there teaching with them. And we ran that thing through and revised it and published it. So that's how we got started. But...then we went on.
AC: Now, did you actually train the teachers? You went out to the schools and taught the teachers how to do this?
K: No, it was just a trial-run. But the eight of us picked for this were pretty tough teachers. And the schools we worked in, you had to be a volunteer to teach in these
K: schools - they wouldn't just let anybody in there without a warrant. And we were all pros by then; we were tough, could not be intimidated. And so we worked our way through. And then we had other teachers use it, and then we published it. It worked like a charm. But we couldn't get more than fifty-eight percent of the teachers in the country to use it.
AC: So it worked only with the teachers who were willing to use it, who saw it...
K: Who wanted to use it. But it had an extensive audio visual kit - we developed the kit - we did everything, we wrote everything, we wrote the teacher's guide, we did all the picture research, we did everything.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: But it had a big kit with it.
M: It worked. See, I was using those materials in the Pedagogy Conversation 11
classroom...
AC: Uh-huh.
M: ...When I was in Denver at that time.
AC: Okay.
M: And it worked with that percentage of the teachers that, I would say, are in the top ten-fifteen percent that are asking the question of, what do you do with all of these kids?
AC: Right.
M: Because they're sitting here bored and creating
M: discipline problems and is there another way to teach?
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Anyhow I call those the creative teachers - they've got the skills down pat, they can control the classroom, they're bored with teaching.
K: But this was for slow learners, not retarded...
M: Okay.
K: ...But kids that have difficulty in reading, writing. So the program I developed was sequential for a year: you started off with the most elementary skills, but it was all still inquiry. And then you worked your way through, raising that reading level, raising the listening ability, writing level, everything came in. And no lesson lasted longer than fifteen minutes. So you did three fifteen minute lessons every day, and they were different. You usedPedagogy Conversation 12
a different format, a different method. It could be listening. And the exams, we created all the exams. And they had to listen to part of the exam; they had to listen to a recording.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And then write some answers. And then they had reading. It was sequential and built so that you raised the reading level three or four or five grades levels by the end of the year.
AC: Right.
K: Writing levels and stuff. But we never got more
K: than...the publishers cannot publish this and make a profit.
AC: That's right.
K: And we went through one revision with it, and we revised it and then...but Holt, Reinhart and Winston and those publishers are interested only in making money.
AC: Right.
K: And if it sells, they'll keep doing it, but you can't get enough teachers to use it. And the people teaching the Methods courses in colleges won't...were all for it, but there weren't that many of them for it. And then most of the secondary people back then that were in social studies were coaches.
AC: Right.Pedagogy Conversation 13
K: And their livelihood doesn't depend necessarily on what they do in the classroom.
AC: That's right.
K: It's what they do on the field.
AC: Yeah.
K: And so that was different. So we ran into that.
M: See, what we did with that, though, we bought thirty-five supplementary copies; we have textbooks that we were required to use in that state - whatever state we were in. And then as the department chairman I was able to buy thirty extra, but we would buy classroom sets for each teacher that wanted to use these in a supplementary fashion, and then
M: some...
AC: But were the teachers ever trained?
M: No.
AC: Were the teachers ever taught how to do this?
M: No. MACOS - that was the elementary - one was the Eskimos, but that one ran into problems; that one was very short-lived, in my memory of it.
JC: It was shutoff by the Texas Congress...[inaudible].
M: That's right.
AC: Really? Why?
M: It ran into, yeah...
AC: Why?
M: It was too bloody and gory.Pedagogy Conversation 14
K: Bloody and gory.
AC: Oh.
M: Yeah, yeah. It died a slow death because it was too violent for young kids.
AC: Okay. But this other one, this Amherst Committee on the Study of the...Amherst History Project?
K: It died because not enough teachers could use it, would use it.
AC: Okay.
M: And then I used one more that isn't mentioned here, which was an anthropology kit that had a site map in it that the kids had to use inquiry to... The question, I think, was tell me about the people who lived here.
AC: Right. Yes, yes. That was the Kalahari. That was the Kalahari Bushmen.
M: No, no.
AC: Well, I did one that was on the Bushmen of the Kalahari. And I've never forgotten that...
M: Yeah. Well maybe that was it.
AC: ...because it was so fascinating.
M: And maybe it was produced...it was produced in Georgia, I think; it was a group out of Georgia.
AC: I have no idea who it was.
M: I remember it was based on a site map, and that kit was just wonderful.Pedagogy Conversation 15
AC: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.
M: And it may well have been Kalahari.
AC: Yeah. Because I remember those little postholes and... yeah, absolutely.
M: And then I laminated those maps so that they wouldn't get destroyed because they were critical. I mean, it was great hypothesis for them.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: You hypothesize the people who lived here.
AC: Okay. Well, my contention is that obviously this is what the best kind of teaching is all about, the inquiry method. Now, your textbook that you're going to publish, unless you train the teachers, are your students going to be teachers? No? They're all business people, or what are
AC: they planning to go into?
K: Well, they're all over - computer science, business, teachers...
AC: Okay. Because, see, my Texas history students have left my classroom with these dilemmas, and they are using these dilemmas in their classroom...
K: Yeah, they will.
AC: ...because they found it so exciting.
K: Yeah, almost all my Texas history students are using them. M: How do they come up with the contents, though, when Pedagogy Conversation 16
they get to the classroom?
AC: Well, they do revert to the lecture method and the text and whatever. But the thing is, if you can balance the textbook, the lecture, and the discussion, then you know there's a means of using it, of actually implementing it.
K: Well, I've got the jump, because I also teach the Methods Course.
AC: Okay. ...[inaudible].
K: It's a history course; it's a method of teaching history.
AC: Right.
K: But it's for the education department.
AC: Yeah.
K: So I've got all of the social studies, political sciences and history teachers - future teachers - they have K: to take my Methods Course; they're stuck with it.
AC: Now is your Methods Course similar to this?
K: Yes.
AC: Again, the same inquiries.
K: It's an inquiry course, and we do samples; but then they have to create their own curriculum.
AC: Is it exciting for them or is it frightening for them?
K: We educate them to create curriculum, not to use other curriculums.
AC: Right.Pedagogy Conversation 17
K: But the idea is how do you create curriculums from scratch?
AC: Right.
K: So we work our way through that. They require my Texas history course and they also require my Methods Course. It's a history seminar.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: It's for seniors.
AC: Right.
K: Usually they go from Texas history in the fall to the Methods in the spring.
AC: In the spring.
K: But I've also had most of these students in my American history class also. So I know them real well.
AC: So they already know how.
K: They know how. And then John Moore, who is head of our K: Education Department, told me my job is to prep these kids so when they hit their first real classes, in the master's program in the schools...
AC: Uh-huh.
K: ...that they know what the hell they're going to start doing with the curriculum.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: But he said, “I want you to get them to where they feel comfortable and start creating curriculum from scratch, on Pedagogy Conversation 18
the spot.”
AC: Uh-huh.
K: “Whatever it takes. But you've got to give them the background and the skills to do this. And make sure they run through it.” So that's my job.
M: They...those kids spend a year of...a year of student teaching, though, don't they?
K: Yes. The master's program is a year of student teaching. But what Moore wants me to do is to get them ready for their first day in August to where they walk in and they start sizing up the situation. They'll say, well, "I need to develop this kind of curriculum." And they already know; they've got the history background or the political sciences or social studies. But the problem with all this is, you can't reach over fifteen percent of the
teachers - that never bothered me. But if I could reach ten to fifteen percent of the teachers in the country - that's incredible when you think about it.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: That's a lot of people. And that's a lot of students. And there's some people you're never going to get to use any kind of program...
AC: That's right.
K: ...other than rote memorization.
AC: That's right.Pedagogy Conversation 19
K: They're just not built that way, and I don't worry about it. I never have worried about it. I think that some of us who have the time and energy to create these things ought to be creating them. If no one uses it, so what? If no one uses my new American history, well, I've had a great time doing it. And I have...and I've had hundreds of students go through this program at Trinity. If I drop dead today and that thing's not published, I still have had hundreds and hundreds of Trinity students use this program.
AC: That's right.
M: And the joy of doing it.
K: Well, they don't have to take it; they just have to take the one course, but many of them take me for both semesters, will sign back up for the second half.
AC: Sure.
K: But it never bothered me that I couldn't reach
Everybody. I don't care, you know, and I really don't want to impose on them.
AC: In other words you wouldn't want to offer this as a summer teacher internship - pay for the teachers to come and learn it?
K: I've run sixteen of them at Trinity in the past.
AC: Over the summers?
K: Sixteen. And each one of them lasted two weeks - all day long.Pedagogy Conversation 20
AC: Right.
K: Two weeks at a time. And we ran sixteen of them. And then we ran...for eight years, we ran those programs with the Institute of Texan Cultures.
M: Yeah.
K: The first two weeks, fourth grade teachers; and the second two weeks were the seventh grade teachers. That's all we did was this. In fact, they used the archives to create the curriculum that they duplicate - we duplicate it. AC: Uh-huh.
K: And then they all took back...everybody's stuff back from the classrooms. And we did it eight years with Bonnie Truax [at the Institute of Texan Cultures].
M: And the history of that...teachers are still talking about that.
AC: So it was worthwhile?
M: Yeah. There's a field of teachers out there that have done that. The Institute is known and remembered because of that experience.
K: I think it's a total of six hundred, maybe eight hundred teachers?
M: Yeah.
K: I know they wore us down. When we finished that fourth week we were crawling out of there. Golly, we were tired. Well, we'd start in the morning and go until evening and Pedagogy Conversation 21
then...
AC: Did you all get funding from...?
M: Okay, now that's the other half of the story.
AC: Yeah.
M: From the Institute's perspective and why the Institute won't get into significant teacher training now is because that cost them about five times as much as whatever money they brought in. It's perceived as a negative by the director.
AC: Does the federal government not fund stuff like that anymore?
M: No.
K: We'd just go year to year. Bonnie would look for this money - and it was before you got there.
M: Oh, yeah.
K: I've never had so much fun in all my life, but we had thirty fourth-grade teachers from all over the state.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: I mean, they'd come in from all over the state. And we charged them a hundred dollars.
M: Yeah.
K: For everything. And that was for meals plus a stack of curriculum materials that deep. We'd start them off on the first day, and my job was the curriculum development aspect. And what we'd do is, I would develop a unit or two extensivePedagogy Conversation 22
- in line with the Institute's theme - and then we'd go through that step by step by step. We did the original sources - the skills, the questions - and it would be geared for fourth grade. And then we'd do one for seventh grade.
M: Yeah.
K: We'd do that all day long. We'd work on this thing all day long.
AC: Well, were you using the same inquiry method that you're using now?
K: Oh, yeah. It's pure inquiry. Everything. But it was geared for fourth grade Texas history.
AC: Right. Right.
K: And then that afternoon, late, we'd get through and we'd break into groups, four apiece, four or five teachers apiece. And then we'd start working. And I'd come up with a topic and they'd come up with a topic - German foods or Germans or something - and then they'd pick an ethnic group and everybody'd have a different ethnic group. And then we'd fiddle around with that for a while. And then I'd say, K: “Okay, now what's the question? It has to be a question that's abstract and that a fourth grader would
K: understand the first time you ask him.” And that was tough. And then we would not leave until they came up with that question for each group. I was exhausted. And then once we got it down - you write everything down and you'd Pedagogy Conversation 23
make them write it down. Then I'd say, “Okay, now you have the topic and the question, now you're ninety percent done.” And they were; they didn't realize it. And then we'd do presentations...[inaudible] speakers; and then all afternoon was in the archives, in the library, developing this stuff. I worked with them every day. Everybody else did; we'd give them a deadline, and they'd get it done. They'd get a curriculum unit done, with a complete list of plans and all the sources that go with it, per group. And then we'd duplicate those for everybody. Then the last day was a workshop - each group presented its materials to everybody. And then they all walked out of there, plus not only with what we gave them but what everybody else developed. But you do it in two weeks. And it was modeled after the ones I'd done at Trinity. I had teachers there come in from all over the country. And, I mean, we'd do this for two weeks.
M: This is ten years later and these teachers are still talking about it.
K: These are already teachers in the classrooms.
M: Right. Exactly.
K: Occasionally we would have students who were seniors, going to be seniors in college, want to come and we'd let
K: them in. And then they would be working two weeks with these pros, these experienced teachers who were doing this.
AC: Right. Right.Pedagogy Conversation 24
K: But everything was inquiry. And the first day, trying to get these teachers to do this, never would give them an answer. I would rephrase the questions they would pose. I knew what the questions should probably be, but they couldn't leave until they got that question. They got very frustrated. And a couple of them told me later they were talking about killing me.
AC: Oh, yeah.
K: And I'd sit there, very calm and smile and have my coffee and be so pleasant. I knew what they were going through, and they just hated me that first day. God, they hated me. But when they got it done, they'd get excited.
There are some people you're not going to reach. END OF SIDE 1.
SIDE 2.
JC: There is almost no social studies taught in K4. It's almost disappeared from the curriculum. As has science. Everything's math, reading, language, arts, because of the pressure of the TAAS exam.
AC: Sure.
JC: I want to backup a little bit and ask you a question.
And that's in regard to a statement you made awhile ago, and you said, “Well, obviously this is the best way to teach, this is were the learning really occurs.” There are some folks in this state who would... Pedagogy Conversation 25
AC: Disagree.
JC: ...violently disagree with you about that statement. And a few of them are on the state board of education.
AC: Um.
JC: A few of them are associated with some important foundations here in the state; a few of them are active in politics and a lot of them are parents of kids.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Censorship still exists, in other words.
JC: Uh-huh. And some of their less cultured followers, I guess.
M: Yeah.
AC: In other words, those who believe in rote memorization.
JC: Yeah. And who believe history is etched in stone.
AC: Stone.
JC: And it will not change.
AC: It's all in the past.
JC: How do you deal with that?
AC: That was one of the things I ran into at Victoria Community College, because that is an area that is very conservative, and I think the fact that I required them to know the facts for the middle part of their paper - that can
be considered the rote memorization. In other words, they have to know the facts, but how they interpret the facts is AC: up to each one of them individually. And I know when I Pedagogy Conversation 26
first started teaching, like you all, you know, from the '60s and '70s. And when I first started teaching, I never got fired; I was a very good servant, you know, toe the line kind of teacher. I'm...coming from Mexico, I was born and brought up in Mexico and so my training has always been obedience and being a proper female - subservience and all this other stuff. So coming to the United States and beginning to have this questioning that began in the '70s, '60s and '70s, and the radicalism and the inquiries, beginning to ask rather than just accept it at face value - so I am torn because I do come from a very conservative background as a proper Mexican young lady. I obeyed. So that, for me, has been a real challenge to step out of the bounds of the straight lecture method. And you're right, there are many very conservative leaders in the education field, and I don't know how they would react to the dilemmas. I think the fact that the students are being required to know the facts, perhaps, would help. But the fact that the students are being required to make decisions, I feel, is equally important. Because if you believe in American democracy you believe in different people having the right to express their opinions. So, to me that is what the inquiry method is all about, is trying to help students to determine their own point of view. It is not my position as a teacher to Pedagogy Conversation 27
AC: tell them what they should or shouldn't believe. I'm
married to the most incredibly conservative Republican - you
know, red-necked Texan - that ever was. We don't discuss
politics anymore, so I know that there are people who
disagree, but he believes in the dilemmas. He says that the
students do have to learn. And for somebody that's as
conservative as my husband to believe in the dilemmas and to
encourage me in the dilemmas...
M: My doctorate was in Humanistic Education, and you focus
on the feelings of students and all of that. And I had to
come up with some type of response to that question,
because I'm teaching them a process that they will use and a
skill that they will use in their life. I have not taught
them what to believe.
AC: Right. Right.
M: And where they come out on that is up to them.
JC: Well, some people in Carolina - I mean those who are
interested in history education, social studies education in
public schools - is that history is not subject to
interpretation; what happened happened. And those
historians who insist that it’s subject to interpretation
are engaging in misguiding our youth.
AC: Uh...
JC: In other words, its a very small conception of what
history is about.
Pedagogy Conversation 28
AC: Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely.
JC: And likewise for geography and for the other disciplines...[inaudible].
AC: But I think the thing is that if you can at least offer this kind of inquiry method as you all have done to these teachers - and I don't know why it's not being done now.
M: It's not being taught now by most of the professors because they're not familiar with it.
K: You have to overcome those in the history profession. You've always got to overcome the historians.
M: Right. Right.
K: The State Board of Education have come after me and all of these protestors from the right and the left, and everybody else, no matter what the program is. This program emphasizes these thinking skills - or these basic skills are thinking skills for the lowest cognitive level to the highest. And I'll say, “Do you disagree that this program is missing this?” And they all say, “Oh, no, the program has that.” And I'll say, "Okay, those are the skills; we've established that. They are in this program. They can be developed. Now, what do you have against the student acquiring these skills, the ability to think?"
AC: Yeah.
K: Why would you have any opposition to having students think critically?Pedagogy Conversation 29
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And it always gets them. They cannot answer any way
K: but agree with me.
AC: Yeah.
K: We've established it - those are the skills. And that's my standard comeback every time.
AC: Sure.
K: And when those people were after me about the pros and cons of a woman president - right and left - coming at me.
K: I took them on and beat them back. I said, “If you'll look at the questions that I've posed, they emphasize these skills, these skills.” And then I looked over at the State Board of Education people and I said, “Do you think students should not have these skills when they leave a Texas public high school?” And all of them said, “No; they should have those skills.” And I won my argument. But I focus a lot on the skills.
AC: But you have faced these kinds of questions that Jim's asking from the people.
K: Oh, I've faced the State Board of Education sixteen times, in Austin, sixteen times.
M: The response should be, "I agree that you need those skills; I disagree with the content you're using to teach those skills."
K: Oh, then I always come back and say, “Okay; then should Pedagogy Conversation 30
we eliminate this question totally?” You know. But you
always pick up allies on the State Board; there are always some people that agree with you.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: And they're going to help you. I've won every time. That's why I quit. I batted a thousand and I quit. I also have written social studies programs for grades five through twelve and I wrote myself out of the market. I got my fifteen percent of the teachers to use it.
AC: Right. Right.
K: One of them came up to me once, one of those protestors who had been after me every time I had a book up, and she said, "Kownslar, you are a son-of-a-bitch, but you're our son-of-a-bitch and we've got to put up with you." I said,
“I'm a native Texan.”
AC: Uh-huh.
K: “I'm a native Texan. I grew up in East Texas and graduated from a Texas high school, and when I go before the State Board, I'd put on my coat and tie. I had my hair cut short, and I had my Athens, Texas, accent.”
AC: Uh-huh.
K: “I have it, still have it, and I resort to it when I'm tired. And I go in with this East Texas drawl...”
AC: Good ole boy.
K: “I am a good ole boy. I'm right there with you and I Pedagogy Conversation 31
can take you people on." But I would talk about the skills basically. And I would win it - I'd win my arguments on
that basis.
AC: Yeah.
K: You're going have that opposition every time you go up there with some of those State Board members.
AC: Sure. But in this case if you're offering it as the ITC did, with these sorts of seminars, these summer workshops; oh, no one is going to hassle about that.
AC: Exactly. That's why I'm wondering why those are not being held anymore.
M: There is no social studies funding money now at all. There hasn't been for like ten to fifteen years. They've been gone for years.
K: We had a group formed with the American Historical Association called The Texas Association for the Advancement of History.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: Glen Linden at SMU was head of it first and then I was head of it, and we did everything that we could to get the history profession in Texas involved with it. And they weren't interested, because we kept saying we're talking about the teaching of history.” And they just sort of went their own way. But there were five or six of us in the history department that worked very hard, did everything we Pedagogy Conversation 32
could - we ran workshops, everything - and we finally had to close because the history profession wouldn't support us.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: The Texas State Historical Association wouldn't support us.
AC: Uh-huh.
K: I mean, they said, “Well, you're a nice little group,” and patted us on the head. And that was that.
AC: Well, if you're addressing these fifteen percent of the teachers, then, does it matter? In other words, you were asking for funding from...?
AC: TSHA.
K: We were just asking for support.
AC: Oh.
K: Emotional support.
AC: Yeah.
K: Intellectual support.
AC: Yeah. You won't get it from people like that.
M: Let me move this discussion now to the next step, okay? All of you sitting here are familiar with the People in Texas Project, okay? That's the People of America funding that may or may not come to the Institute...
AC: Oh, oh, okay, uh-huh.
M: ...Within the next few months. And Allan is taking on the writing of the European-Texans, okay? Pedagogy Conversation 33
AC: Uh-huh.
M: Which is collapsing thirty-five books to fifty pages.
AC: Good luck.
M: And you, Carolina, have the responsibility, if we get
the funding and we get that far, to take the six separate booklets to make them one total booklet which looks like the M: social and ethnic history of Texas. From these six booklets which are the European-Americans, the Native Americans of Texas...
AC: I didn't know I had to do this.
M: Uh-huh. Asian-Americans, African-Texan, Asian-Texan, and the Mexican-Texan, and then the sixth booklet which is the New Texans will focus on the people immigrating in the 20th century. And your task is to pull all six of these separate booklets, written by six different people, into a standardized book, uh, which we had anticipated you would do next summer. And then...then you're putting together the introduction and the conclusion and the transition and standardizing the languages. Well, that goes under editing, okay? And that's what we...that's what we...that's what my hope is that you will be able to do. And we will discuss the ins and outs of that later.
AC: God, I guess.
M: Okay. And what Jim is doing is he's assuming responsibility for the K12 Instructor's Guide... Pedagogy Conversation 34
JC: Good Lord.
M: ...which is how the teachers will use all of these materials that we are giving free to all the schools in Texas - K-12. Okay. That's the scope of the project I call The People of Texas Project, which is being done in forty-
nine other states. Each state is doing their own state's ethnic and social history. And then...and we have a
M: chronology, five hundred photographs and a poster and, you know, several other products involved...
AC: [whistles]
M: ...which we then package into four separate packages, K-3, 4-8, and 9-12. We have four separate kits, and then we deliver all of this material in its raw form to the funding agent who then puts it on their Web site called Americans All. Then we provide staff development to all the teachers who have received all these materials in year three. And the funding totals - one million, eight hundred thousand, or something like that - for the three year life of the project. The training that we provide additionally will provide training in the Americans All Project which they also get free. It is a synoptic history - ethnic and social history of the United States. Okay. And so my...when I wanted to get the three of you together was to see where our experience pushed us. This meeting was scheduled before I even knew about this project.Pedagogy Conversation 35
K: Yeah.
M: I simply wanted to talk about pedagogy to see how did we all end up in relatively the same place. Now this People of Texas Project will come to be and sometime within the next year funded someplace in Texas, I wanted to know what the implications of what we have learned in terms of putting together the Instructor's Guide, that Jim will be responsible for getting done, on these materials. He's M: coming off of a three-year staff development project with teachers in the state of Texas in terms of implementation of the TEKS. So, he knows what's going on in the field, he knows where the teachers are, he's got his learnings from those years as to where the field is. You guys have got the experience and we could try this approach. So my question becomes, are there any things here that have applicability - not to how Jim gets his task done.
AC: I've wanted very much to have some kind of workshops to help people with the inquiry method, and I had no idea that, you know, it had been done or was being done. That's why to me it's wonderful to hear, you know, what has been done and it's frightening to know that it's not being done any more.
JC: But no, no one at my place wants to - or has time to.
AC: That's right.
JC: I mean, we're always running.
M: All of us have been working independently and yet our Pedagogy Conversation 36
life and our soul is in our work, but yet we don't talk to anybody about it.
AC: Nobody wants to.
M: I think it's serendipitous that the four of us are in Texas and that we're relatively unique in terms of who we are in this profession. And I see that The People of America Project, which hasn't gotten started yet, I see it
as in our favor. Because there's forty-nine other states out there, and we could have the potential out of what we do M: here of driving the national project. Okay? Because we are in advance of where Allan and them are. He has a great start in the Americans All Project, but they are random, isolated activities going no place.
JC: That was what was going to be my first suggestion, that what we end up doing has to be sustained inquiry, sustained problem solving throughout the approach. That People in America materials that I took out to the truck already are potshots - one here, one there, one up there, one down here, and they look like the Friday learning task in the week sort of thing. That we're going to talk four days real good and listen and take good notes and we're going to do this stuff on Friday. I mean, they're not intended that way but they will be used that way.
AC: Right.
JC: They're capsulated lessons that could be finished in Pedagogy Conversation 37
probably thirty-five to fifty-five minutes.
M: So what was your statement, Jim? You said - sustained?
JC: That it has to be sustained over a period of time.
M: Okay.
JC: To get to the size of a problem that Carolina and Allan were dealing with. You can't do that in half an hour.
AC: No, no.
M: That's where Americans All is. And most of the other
states in terms of The People of Texas, or The People of America have not got started. But my assumption is that M: Allan - Allan Kullen with The People of America - is going to fly in from California, Texas, New York and Florida, those are your four; and then Illinois was the fifth state. So in terms of population and ethnic diversity, if I was running a national project, I would solidify the leadership of the people of those five states first, because those five states will equal about sixty to seventy percent of the population of this country.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: We will also have the most diverse ethnic issues. But he has buy-in from all fifty states, that's not the issue - it's just getting his eight million dollars worth of funding, which I think he'll get before Christmas. And then he's ready to go. But he's already got in place, I think, his five key states. And that's why I think we're ahead of Pedagogy Conversation 38
the game. The person who chairs his curriculum group that I sit on is Carl Grant who's an old Teacher Corp friend. So whatever meetings or whatever happens about curriculum, I think we can influence and Jim knows the two people from ASCD. So with those two guys, with ASCD implementing that, I think if we ever come up with...with our component of the project which would be People of Texas. -If we can get approval to do it the way we think it should be done instructionally, I feel confident about the materials that we'll get. But the pedagogy of it, doesn't add up to anything. Can we move it beyond where The People of America M: materials are to get some substance of learning. The money for year two is the design and staff development plans for the implementation. I mean Jim will have to write or all together will write whatever's going to happen, and we can build on his existing network plus any new networks that he builds on. He knows where the field is and what needs to happen for the staff development. So I think we have a potential for making significant and major impact.
AC: So you're saying this will be using the inquiry method?
M: I'm not saying that yet.
AC: Oh.
M: That was the basis for this discussion and wherever we choose to go with it. Ultimately Jim becomes the decision maker because he's got to be the writer of it.Pedagogy Conversation 39
AC: Right. Well, the way we write it sounds like it would be like the way you've written your U.S. history thing if you were going to go with the inquiry method.
JC: Each of those six volumes, we'd have to structure.
M: I don't think we can lay that on; we can't lay that on him, I don't think. But the six people that I have met are historians that are writing, have been chosen because they're writers. I laid on the criteria of primary source documents. I've laid on the criteria of biographical sketches. We've figured out a way to add the chronology to the booklets. We'll have a map on the back. So I think we can plan, that we have all the components, and it will only
M: be grades seven through twelve that have five each - there will be thirty, five each of these parts in each kit. And you can group them with each group having one ethnic group, or you could put one person in each group that has one copy of each booklet of the raw materials.
AC: Um.
M: Okay. Then we create the driving questions...
AC: Um.
M: ...that somehow will apply across these booklets. I cannot lay that on writers; I can lay it on however we decide to do the pedagogy.
JC: And I would think with the variety of groups that each author has to address, there ought to be enough material to Pedagogy Conversation 40
result in case studies problems. I mean it's just a problem of where you start.
M: Yeah. It won't be as clean as what Allan has designed now. I don't even have expectations of moving that far. But he starts, the word that I think of that came from the K3, K4, if you just start with the word disagreement and build on. Instead of point-counterpoint just call it a disagreement. We have a disagreement here, or we have a problem here, how are we going to resolve this problem?
AC: Um.
M: Where we were before, you guys all came was looking at themes. I didn't know if you could come up with a K12 theme or not. But the one that I - it was just playing in my head M: and this is nowhere close to resolution - was the theme of Freedom. “Freedom's just another word for nothing else to lose.” And that can be the driving force for immigration, especially in the life of seven to twelve grade kids, freedom today...[inaudible]. You start with where they are in their lives around Freedom - the restrictions on clothing and dress and how they look and getting along with their peers and all of that, and they feel like they don't have any freedom at all. Then moving on to new immigrants and something on the Internet and then to the past - Freedom ...[inaudible] of the past, whether it's religious freedom, cultural freedom, whatever freedom is...[inaudible] Pedagogy Conversation 41
Economic freedom - I think that's a possibility as a theme. I don't know if it'll hold up for K12, Allan's experience is that...[inaudible] much greater could give us better direction. But, you know, all I had looked at was or I had thought of in terms of guidance for Jim; and I still, I guess, I'm still there is that it had to be product-based, had to culminate in something that the students had to create. That if a unit could do something sequential K12, not only sustained over time but do it sequential, that it had to be skilled-based, not content-based, and the materials that we provide are merely the content for teaching the skills. And that we give explicit directions on how to teach the skill and that we use a driving question with no right-wrong answer that the student has to resolve
M: in some way in whatever kind of product that they create. And that's as far as I have gotten.
JC: May I make one observation?
M: Sure.
JC: About making another criteria or screen. During the time I was teaching that world cultural geography course over at A & M, things often ended up being strange lands and funny people.
M: Yeah, yeah.
JC: Unless you could have a contemporary, U.S.-based comparison - analogy which they could jump off from, either Pedagogy Conversation 42
starting with that or finishing with that - bring it home. Because...
M: You mean, start with a strange land, funny people, create...[inaudible] country?
JC: Well, start with an issue that exists right here and right now for these kids, or at least in Texas or in the U.S., so that they are a little more acquainted with them, because otherwise they just seem to think...[inaudible].
M: Oh, okay.
JC: Or at least I got the impression that people don't do any better than they do in Ecuador just because they're dumb.
AC: Uh-huh.
JC: Or they're corrupt or they're uneducated.
M: So you start with something here in this country that M: they can't use those as rationale - yeah, I don't have any problem...[inaudible].
JC: Or end with that sometimes.
M: Yeah. Well, the one that I just did on LaSalle, I think, on the explorers, which is, “We're going to Mars, space shuttles going to Mars and you're never coming back.” “Are you going to volunteer to go with this space shuttle mission to Mars via satellite and then follow up with LaSalle to Texas who took X-number of settlers to come to the New World to settle a colony that ended up being in Pedagogy Conversation 43
Texas?”
AC: What you were saying in terms of strange lands-funny people, I think, plays back to what Allan was saying about the...history doesn't repeat itself, human nature does.
END OF TAPE 2
SIDE 2.THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: A Conversation on Social Studies on Pedagogy (Tape 3 of 3)
INTERVIEW WITH: Drs. Jim Croft, Anna Crimm, Allan
Kownslar, Sarah Massey
DATE: 16 June 2000
PLACE: 210 King William, San Antonio, TX
TAPE 3, SIDE 1
AC: Look at the ethnic responses to how they resolve problems, perhaps this is a way to address that. To make the strange lands/funny people less strange. Because they are human beings and they are going to respond; they're going to move to an area where they have family and friends. Or they're going to do anything they can to feed their families. Thinking in terms of the Mexican-Americans of Texas, they're going to fight for their lands. Or they're going to sell off their lands because they need the money and therefore they don't have the lands and the lands are gone. No, it wasn't that the gringo stole them all, it was that they sold it because they needed the money at the time, and they weren't thinking in terms of passing on to my descendants. Then suddenly the Mexicans are no longer these strange people who claim that. Richard King or whoever stole the land from them. Pedagogy Conversation 2
JC: I had been at A & M a couple of years, I guess, there JC: was a historian from the University of Nebraska down here creating some film strips in the state. Guy's name was Bob Manly. And he said that in Nebraska as a high school teacher, one of the things that he had to overcome with his kids in teaching history was that the conception of history was something that happened to people a long time ago, far away, that didn't have any impact on what happened today. And so he struggled with turning that around, and he taught most of his U.S. history courses starting with contemporary events and then working backwards on those, on the series of case studies. And I think that makes some kind of sense. I mean, I don't know design-wise whether that would work or not. It's going to be really tough, I think, in some cases. But I would certainly like to see something.
M: When I taught seventh grade, it was the strange lands/funny people idea. It was the cultural history and geography of the world. We did Africa for six weeks. We did Asia for six weeks - whatever. And I started that with the unit, “What does it take to create a group of people when you get together.” So we started with, you know, here's an island you have to populate this island, where are you going to build your towns? You know. There was a High School Geography Project that came out about that time. So we started with this. They put in the rivers and the Pedagogy Conversation 3
mountains and the people and the language and the religion and the government and all that. They didn't have the data M: base to be able to create that, but that's what we did. We started with creating an island and then you name your island. It may have been better if I had taught that at the end rather than at the beginning, after we had studied all of these other cultural groups and looked at the religion and looked at the government and looked at all of these things. I was trying to get what is culture and what are all the parts of culture and what are all the things that you need to look at in terms of building a culture. But they didn't have the content; all they were doing was just playing games. They didn't have any reasons for why the river was there or why the city got built on the river or...they didn't have any idea. But if we had done the other countries first and then ended up there, we might have gotten to that point. So that's my concern there.
K: There are major themes running through European-Texan thing that would be similar or identical to the same themes for everybody else.
M: Yeah, yeah. See, that's what I'm thinking is there. And from those themes we come up with the driving question, the inquiry question, that it can then be applied across the ethnic groups, across chronology.
K: So start thinking about themes. Pedagogy Conversation 4
M: Themes across grades with a different driving question for each level that will work across chronology for all ethnic groups. So if we have the theme, we have the
M: driving questions, different at each level, that relates to the theme. For each chronology, for each ethnic group, that results in a product. Then I think there will be different skill development or levels of skill development for each level.
AC: Go over that again.
M: Okay. We identify a theme that will work K-12. And we come up with different driving questions for each level that will work across the chronology for all ethnic groups that results in a product using skills that we develop sequentially across, or we add skills or whatever. We either have a skills development sequence or we have a getting better at doing the same skills across the grades.
JC: Strengthen. That makes some things easier.
M: And I remember...[inaudible]. Now, going back twenty, another twenty-five years, I mean I must have asked fifteen people in the pedagogy for a skills sequence in the social studies. All I got was five hundred ways of saying ‘thinking skills’. And I could get no sequence out it. It was just random isolated. Okay, now I'm going to another level for me. If we've got random isolated content, we've also got random isolated skills. We don't have sequential Pedagogy Conversation 5
skill development any place in the curriculum now, at all. And it's my best guess that some of those skills are hierarchical as kids develop, that it's not the same skill that they can't understand. I mean, that's where I was with M: kids that couldn’t understand the word dichotomy in seventh grade. I mean, forget it. If I had called it a disagreement, I'd have been okay. I called it the wrong thing.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: They didn't understand the word reconcile; they don't understand what you mean when you say ‘reconcile the differences here.’ You know, they can't do that; they can't understand that yet. But anyhow, sequential skill development or in-depth development is where I was when I got to what I'm sharing with you this morning. I think that the two key words for me in skill development that are just as fuzzy as hell are: teaching for depth and complexity. If you want depth and complexity in thinking, whether it's about content or anything else, what makes up the word depth? What do you mean when you say you want depth and complexity in thinking? And the stuff I shared with Jim this morning was looking at patterns, was looking at repetition. There were about eight or ten components. Relationships, was another component I was looking at; details was another aspect, and I had never seen this list Pedagogy Conversation 6
before, in terms of trying to define in-depth and complexity. If I was to go back to Allan in terms of critical thinking skills - what are the specific skills that he's using and how is he increasing their use of those skills, I guess, would be it. And I think that has
M: ramifications if we do a skill-based curriculum that we get a handle on, because Texas doesn't have a skill-based curriculum. It's down there at the bottom of the chart; we have to teach these skills and they are saying K-12. Yeah. Virtually. They don't progress and they're not defined.
JC: They got better. Science books are still a mess.
AC: What are they using in social studies now?
JC: We work real hard with the library science books, believe it or not,...
AC: Um.
JC: ...to make sure that they are sequential and developmental across the grade levels. But when we got down to the end, the committee from the state board kind of squelched it just a little bit. It lacks detail right now, but it's at least good research.
M: The next step of that for me, what I've been proposing in the workshops, that I've been doing with teachers, is that you must have a parallel scope and sequence. That you have to teach skills in tandem with content; you don't teach them in isolation. So, just getting teachers to think that Pedagogy Conversation 7
they've got to teach skills - that's not my job. It's social studies, that's somebody else's job; that's one issue. And then how do you teach the teachers how to teach skills? Because they truly do not know and there is nothing in the Social Studies textbooks that teaches them how to teach the skills. So I spent the last three years in every M: conference in the exhibit area trying to find books on skills development, because teachers are not getting that kind of help.
JC: We were talking about that a little bit this morning. It seems to me that most of those things they call skill-builders in K-12 textbooks are actually little skill tests to see whether or not the student can do it. But then there's no instruction provided.
M: Just practice some more of these worksheets.
JC: Yeah. Practice, practice the same thing that you don't know how to do. They're real, real problems. And I think that's a problem across the curriculum.
M: I agree. My hypothesis with teachers where you could buy-in is, when was the last time anyone taught you how to take notes? Fourth grade maybe. When was the last time you had formal instruction in learning how to outline? Fourth grade maybe. That has sustained you for the rest of your life. And that's the beginning; and that was probably the English teacher or the language arts teacher. And so, Pedagogy Conversation 8
teachers are in social studies; in terms of skill development, say, that's somebody else's job. My job is to teach content. I think that anything that is skill-based is a winner and especially if we can help them learn how to teach skill-based instruction.
K: This gives me a good idea what to do with structuring these European-Texans...
M: Well, you have to realize that none of the other authors will do that. You've got to have some compatibility across authors.
AC: Now, who are the other authors and what are the other authors writing on? Allan Barr was going to do the Black Texans - planning to start this fall. David McComb had agreed to do the Twentieth Century one on New Texans - he wanted to start this summer with a research trip to Austin. And I think I've stalled that because of the funding. And his next time will be Thanksgiving and Christmas. He has to do research before he can do that because there is no existing publication to start from on the New Texans. And a lot of that is new stuff.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: And the other one was T. Lindsey Baker had agreed to do the photographs and the text, and there is confusion around that. It's possible that we end up with a thousand photographs because the packaging is separate photographs Pedagogy Conversation 9
with text on the back with a photo-text book so that the teacher has all the text in one place. The existing materials from Allan have the photo-text information at the back of each of the ethnic series. I don't want to do that. I think that's a page filler, it's unnecessary; the kids have it on the back of the photograph if we need it. I think we're going to do other things in ours and make them bigger, so I didn't see that; I didn't want to do that. But M: it's going to take research time to do the text and stuff, to do whatever we do there. And then what visuals we use in the ethnic series is based on the writer, we may have identified some that are inappropriate. We may want to go pick some other ones, so we may end up with different visuals in the book - in the booklets than we end up with in the packets. We can go either way on that.
AC: So Allan, Dave, T. Lindsey...
M: Marilyn Brady is doing the Asian-Americans.
JC: DeLeon, possibly.
M: I have...the other one that I had down that I want to contact was Alzono De Leon for the Mexicans. But I'm real hesitant, because you had told me that he was on sabbatical this year writing a book. If you didn't tell me, somebody did, said he was taking a sabbatical. So I don't know if I can get De Leon or not, but he's clearly the consensus choice for doing the Mexican-American. And the other personPedagogy Conversation 10
that I haven't contacted yet that I wanted to on the Native Americans...I had thought and my plan was to go to Jim Smallwood in Oklahoma and with two research assistants - Ken Howell, who was his graduate student, is now a doctorate student at A & M and Stephanie Decker who is presently a graduate student that submitted a Hidden History article. And I thought if those two did the field work and the field work for me is Foster's book on LaSalle by Henri Joutel, Henry...[inaudible] that was written 1684. That has been
M: transcribed for the first time into English a year ago, which has more information on the native Texas tribes than has ever been available to any historian before. And I'm committed to presenting Native Americans, both past and present, that you walk away from that series, knowing that each one of these groups of Native people were different; they are not just Indians.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: That they each had a different language, a different government, different ceremonies, different land, different clothing and that they were different and that there will be enough substance, beyond a paragraph, that is currently in the Texas history textbooks. They had huts and this and junk and they lived here and we're done with the Indians. That somehow we deal with them and the kids walk away knowing that each Indian group is different, as well as the Pedagogy Conversation 11
reasons they no longer exist. Because all the tribes in Texas were exterminated except for the three imported tribes. But I've done nothing with Jim Smallwood, and I've done nothing with De Leon because of the delay in the funding. And I thought that I needed to be a little bit further down the road. We may lose T. Lindsey. I don't know who we will lose because of the delay in the funding. You know, it's possible...and then I had you [Caroline] doing the totality of it all, pulling it all together. But I think that you've got consummate writers. I can tell you M: how I got to you. One is a twenty page summary of The Mexican-American history in The Voices of Wild Horse Desert. That was the best twenty page summary I've ever read, from beginning to end of a culture, in my lifetime. And the second was the seventh grade piece that you submitted for Hidden History. The language and the wording was a hundred percent appropriate for seventh grade as well as the content. It's the first piece I've read that I could read and say, “Yes, that is seventh graders.”
JC: That's great.
M: And so that was how I got to you. Where are we time-wise? I'm late. We're...I mean I leave it up to you guys.
JC: Do you have any help to get that transcribed?
M: I can get this transcribed, but I don't know how soon - not really. It's going to take me three or four months to Pedagogy Conversation 12
get it transcribed.
JC: I was thinking it might be worthwhile to look at the transcription and do a little thinking about that and then plan on getting back together again.
M: Okay.
JC: There's a lot of things we haven't explored yet.
M: I've spent my life looking at curriculum developing here for five years. It would be nice if before I died I could say, “Gee, I know that. I was right about that.”
AC: [laughter]
M: You know. I mean these are just plain old personal
M: curiosity questions. You don't talk about this stuff with anybody else in the world.
AC: That's true. I'm sure there are other people out there; it's just that we don't know who they are.
JC: And it might be that we want to get a little bit of this down on paper some day too.
M: I know that nobody is currently writing on the level of anything I understand on the topic of pedagogy in the social studies.
AC: Um.
M: And for three years my driving question has been, “pedagogy on the Internet”. I mean everybody is putting every thing and their mother on the Internet.
AC: Right.Pedagogy Conversation 13
M: And kids are going to go sit there and read text in front of them instead of a book.
AC: Yeah.
M: And that's supposedly the wave of the future, more reading; it's what the teacher is going to do with it. If we don't do anything exciting with it, it's a dead duck.
AC: It's useless.
M: The Internet is useless if we don't do something pedagogically with it. So I developed six web sites playing around with pedagogy. You know, here's content, and I created random isolated activities.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: You know, around these sites. And I've now stopped. I've done six of them - I'm done. Until I can move myself forward pedagogically, I’m not doing anymore web sites, because if we do one more web site it's going to move us pedagogically. And all of this stuff is going on The Americans All web site.
AC: Uh-huh.
M: So let's see if we can move it forward pedagogically. We didn't even begin to address that.
AC: Right.
M: “Pedagogy on the Internet,” which for me is a different media. And that's where these materials will ultimately go. And so, Allan's got this wonderful web site...well, what is Pedagogy Conversation 14
anybody going to do with it, besides go find out there's fifty Vietnamese in Texas?
JC: Thank you for doing this.
AC: Yeah.
END OF TAPE 3, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2 - BLANK.