Teaching Tough Topics: The South’s Real History
JohnMark Edwards steers his middle schoolers through a lesson at Birmingham's Phillips Academy.
Teaching subjects that trigger strong emotions and political divides is challenging. In the South, many of those fault-lines — racial, religious and otherwise — are intimately tied to its history. This week the Southern Education Desk is exploring how teachers tackle tough topics. WBHM’s Dan Carsen starts with an overview of some the major challenges, and some of the ways teachers can get around them. Listen above or read below. Please note this report contains language some might find offensive.
“It’s feeling and knowing that people have the convenience of ignoring the complexity of your identities. And oddly enough, the moment in which you don’t feel quite invisible is when the group of fraternity guys drives by in their truck on a Saturday night yelling ‘Roll Tide nigger!'”
That’s Elliot Spillers, president of the University of Alabama Student Government Association, speaking in a video he and other students produced in response to racial incidents there and around the country. In the same video, senior Amanda Bennett says she’s spent college in a pro-Confederacy environment and adds, “I go to class in buildings that are named for white supremacists, eugenicists, and slave owners.”
Now let’s be honest: hearing that puts some people on the defensive, and many others are at least surprised. But why? How did we get here?
I ask historian, educator, and author Robert Corley if the relevant history is being taught well. He answers in one word: “No.”
On the same question, award-winning Birmingham eighth-grade social studies teacher JohnMark Edwards elaborates, “There’s a lot that’s not talked about, not discussed. Sometimes administrators are interested more in the status quo, or in ‘easy’ … In my opinion, there’s a push in our culture to be politically correct at the expense of talking through really tough issues.”
Dan Carsen, WBHM/SED
Edwards says when it comes to touchy history topics especially, he prefers to be more of a “facilitator,” setting things up so students can explore and discuss the issues themselves.
Edwards studied resistance to Birmingham school integration for his masters degree. That there was such a long and intense struggle here and elsewhere hints at another hurdle to understanding history, one both he and Corley mentioned: the dominant group’s view has been around for a very long time, but other sides of the story have only recently been expressed, let alone studied comprehensively.
On top of all that, says Corley, “Public education, the way it was structured in this country, was designed in part to not only educate students about skills that they needed, but also to indoctrinate citizens.” He points out that history textbooks mainly include virtuous white men doing things on certain key dates, and that the material is often taught not by trained historians but by educators who themselves learned “history” that way. Combine all of this with teachers running out of school year before getting to key units — think Civil Rights Movement — and you get post-secondary history-slaps:
“If you do go to college,” says Corley, “then you begin to get a little bit richer and more complicated view of the past, and it’s oftentimes shocking to people. You’re going to hear about topics like slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the removal of Indian tribes … an enormous amount of violence in the American past.”
And since not everyone goes to college, teachers like Edwards are even more important. Besides being well-versed in civil rights history, he’s nationally certified, and he coaches football, lacrosse, and academic teams. It’s likely he’s earned some leeway from administrators at Birmingham City School’s Phillips Academy. Plus — and this is key — in eighth grade in Alabama, social studies isn’t the subject of standardized tests.
“I’ve had a lot of freedom to veer off track, to challenge students,” he says. “You can dive deep and really, it can be applied to today.”
His student Israel Mason says she appreciates the approach.
“It helps to know where you came from and know what process people went through to get you where you are so that you don’t repeat the mistakes they made, and you can repeat the good things they did,” she says.
For her, that history is about as real and personal as it could be.
“I come from a biracial family. Before, when segregation was around, I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be legal.”
She’s making these connections literally inside history, too. Civil rights activists were beaten and stabbed trying to enroll black students at Phillips Academy not even 60 years ago. And that’s part of a chapter countless students are never taught.
How Alabama Power kept bills up and opposition out to become one of the most powerful utilities in the country
In one of the poorest states in America, the local utility earns massive profits producing dirty energy with almost no pushback from state regulators.
No more Elmo? APT could cut ties with PBS
The board that oversees Alabama Public Television is considering disaffiliating from PBS, ending a 55-year relationship.
Nonprofit erases millions in medical debt across Gulf South, says it’s ‘Band-Aid’ for real issue
Undue Medical Debt has paid off more than $299 million in medical debts in Alabama. Now, the nonprofit warns that the issue could soon get worse.
Roy Wood Jr. on his father, his son and his new book
Actor, comedian and writer Roy Wood Jr. is out with a new book -- "The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir." He writes about his experience growing up in Birmingham, losing his dad as a teenager and all the lessons he learned from various father figures throughout his career.
Auburn fires coach Hugh Freeze following 12th loss in his last 15 SEC games
The 56-year-old Freeze failed to fix Auburn’s offensive issues in three years on the Plains, scoring 24 or fewer points in 17 of his 22 league games. He also ended up on the wrong end of too many close matchups, including twice this season thanks partly to questionable calls.
In a ‘disheartening’ era, the nation’s former top mining regulator speaks out
Joe Pizarchik, who led the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement from 2009 to 2017, says Alabama’s move in the wake of a fatal 2024 home explosion increases risks to residents living atop “gassy” coal mines.
