Showing posts with label For the classroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label For the classroom. Show all posts
Friday, September 5, 2014
Ethnic Studies and Critical Family History
Posted on our new site: http://christinesleeter.org/ethnic-studies-critical-family-history/
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Teaching Critical Family History
We've moved! You can read the latest post, as well as all past and future posts, by going to http://christinesleeter.org/teaching-critical-family-history/. See you over there.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Internment of German Americans in the U.S. Heartland
(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/german-american-internment-in-the-u-s-heartland/)
I became interested in internment experiences of German Americans during the two World Wars when I found out that roughly 11,000 German Americans were, in fact, interned – a history few of us know. While none of my German-American ancestors were interned, one of my great-grandfathers, a German Methodist minister born in Germany, could well have been interned during World War I had flames of xenophobia had been whipped up more than they were, since everyone born in Germany were targets of suspicion. Over time, the xenophobia underlying the internments didn’t go away, but rather shifted to other groups, today principally Mexicans, Central Americans, and Muslims. Ironically, many people with German ancestry, unaware of our own history, participate in today’s xenophobia. This is why I believe that Critical Family History is, well, critically important.
So I was excited to discover Heartland: A Historical Drama about the Internment of German-Americans in the United States during World War II. Heartland, published by Sense Publishers in 2014, was written by playwright, dramaturg, and journalist Lojo Simon and political activist and playwright Anita Simons. The play has won several awards, including Dayton Playhouse FutureFest 2008, and Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival 2008. Sense Publishers recently released it as a book that can be read easily and used readily in schools.
The play tells a story of a German-born widow and her three children, living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Before he died, the widow’s husband had applied to employ prisoners of war through the U.S. War Manpower Commission. When the play opens in 1941, the family is notified that his application has been approved, and two German prisoners of war are on their way. The widow is thrilled, as she and the children cannot manage the dairy farm by themselves. As the story unfolds, the family gradually develops a friendship with the two German prisoners, partly because they share a language, and also because the two young men are good workers. But non-German townspeople begin to worry that the widow may be a traitor – she has become too close to the German prisoners of war, and speaks with them in German rather than English. She is arrested, then sent to an internment camp. She never recovers from the trauma of what she is put through.
The authors explain that they became interested in writing this play in 2005 after viewing a TV documentary about the internment of German prisoners of war, paralleling imprisonment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. They began researching German POW camps in the U.S., which led them unexpectedly to accounts of imprisonment of German-American citizens under the Alien Enemies Act, signed into law in 1798. The authors tracked down stories of German Americans who had been imprisoned, which they used to create Heartland.
Readers and family historians who want to know more about the interment of German Americans can consult the German American Internee Coalition, formed in 2005 for German-American and German Latin-American citizens and legal residents who were interned, and their descendants. There, you will learn, for example, where camps existed throughout the US and Central America that detained mixtures of German Americans, German Latin Americans, Italian Americans, and Japanese Americans.
If you are a teacher, there is much you can draw on. Heartland itself can be used in classrooms from high school on up. It is fairly short, and reads easily (although there is a fair amount of German dialog with translation available). The German American Internee Coalition provides curriculum guides for teachers. They are mapped against California's History-Social Science Framework, but could be used anywhere. The curriculum guide consists of seventeen lesson plans and three one-act plays. The lesson plans deal with issues such as the Alien Enemies Act, motives behind imprisonment, black lists, and stories of prisoners.
I believe this is a piece of U.S. history that all of us should know. To me, it demonstrates that none of us is safe from xenophobia, but also that our collective memory of imprisoning U.S. citizens continues to be eradicated, even when it's part of our own family stories. Perhaps if we knew our history better, we would be less likely to repeat it.
I became interested in internment experiences of German Americans during the two World Wars when I found out that roughly 11,000 German Americans were, in fact, interned – a history few of us know. While none of my German-American ancestors were interned, one of my great-grandfathers, a German Methodist minister born in Germany, could well have been interned during World War I had flames of xenophobia had been whipped up more than they were, since everyone born in Germany were targets of suspicion. Over time, the xenophobia underlying the internments didn’t go away, but rather shifted to other groups, today principally Mexicans, Central Americans, and Muslims. Ironically, many people with German ancestry, unaware of our own history, participate in today’s xenophobia. This is why I believe that Critical Family History is, well, critically important.
The play tells a story of a German-born widow and her three children, living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Before he died, the widow’s husband had applied to employ prisoners of war through the U.S. War Manpower Commission. When the play opens in 1941, the family is notified that his application has been approved, and two German prisoners of war are on their way. The widow is thrilled, as she and the children cannot manage the dairy farm by themselves. As the story unfolds, the family gradually develops a friendship with the two German prisoners, partly because they share a language, and also because the two young men are good workers. But non-German townspeople begin to worry that the widow may be a traitor – she has become too close to the German prisoners of war, and speaks with them in German rather than English. She is arrested, then sent to an internment camp. She never recovers from the trauma of what she is put through.
The authors explain that they became interested in writing this play in 2005 after viewing a TV documentary about the internment of German prisoners of war, paralleling imprisonment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. They began researching German POW camps in the U.S., which led them unexpectedly to accounts of imprisonment of German-American citizens under the Alien Enemies Act, signed into law in 1798. The authors tracked down stories of German Americans who had been imprisoned, which they used to create Heartland.
Readers and family historians who want to know more about the interment of German Americans can consult the German American Internee Coalition, formed in 2005 for German-American and German Latin-American citizens and legal residents who were interned, and their descendants. There, you will learn, for example, where camps existed throughout the US and Central America that detained mixtures of German Americans, German Latin Americans, Italian Americans, and Japanese Americans.
If you are a teacher, there is much you can draw on. Heartland itself can be used in classrooms from high school on up. It is fairly short, and reads easily (although there is a fair amount of German dialog with translation available). The German American Internee Coalition provides curriculum guides for teachers. They are mapped against California's History-Social Science Framework, but could be used anywhere. The curriculum guide consists of seventeen lesson plans and three one-act plays. The lesson plans deal with issues such as the Alien Enemies Act, motives behind imprisonment, black lists, and stories of prisoners.
I believe this is a piece of U.S. history that all of us should know. To me, it demonstrates that none of us is safe from xenophobia, but also that our collective memory of imprisoning U.S. citizens continues to be eradicated, even when it's part of our own family stories. Perhaps if we knew our history better, we would be less likely to repeat it.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Family History Books for Kids
(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/family-history-books-for-kids/)
How might teachers or parents guide young family historians? Just like considerable information exists in books and on the Internet for adults, so too are there many websites and books for kids. Here, I review three books for kids in the U.S. I selected them more or less out of a hat. When I realized how many have been published, I decided to start with three from Amazon that appear to sell well, and that differ from each other.
The Kids’ Family Tree Book (C. Leavitt, Sterling Pub Co., 2007) targets ages 7-11. This delightful, beautifully-illustrated book is loaded with detailed steps that appear very user-friendly for children. It begins with guidance on building a family history scrapbook; subsequent chapters flesh out various kinds of records and information that can be included. The book concludes with guidance for planning a family reunion and family website to share all that has been learned. Of the three books discussed here, this is the one I’d go to first because it is comprehensive without being overly detailed, and has nothing I’d be tempted to skip over.
Climbing your Family Tree, 2nd ed. (I. Wolfman, Workman Publishing Co., 2002) targets ages 8-12, and features an accompanying website that includes links mentioned in each chapter as well as downloadable charts and other tools. Chapters are organized around questions (such as what surnames can reveal or how immigration policy worked) and kinds of sources (such as family interviews, and libraries and archives). Each chapter is illustrated with photos and copies of documents, and includes specific guidance on what to do and questions to ask, as well as background information about relevant concepts (such as how to interpret conflicting dates in records). Chapters also include personal examples and interviews, connecting concepts with real people (including Alex Haley, who wrote the Introduction for the first edition). The book’s main drawback is that kids may find the amount of information and detail overwhelming, especially if just starting family history research.
The Great Ancestor Hunt (L. Perl, Houghton-Mifflin, 1990) targets ages 12-16. Published before the explosion of Internet research, this book focuses on analyzing paper and other hard-copy documents such as needlework and passports, in addition to more traditional documents such as census records and family Bibles. Of the three books, this one presents the most U.S. and world history, including a quite interesting introductory chapter about how and why people around the world have kept oral and written family records. Although the book contains much useful information, I would be less likely to choose it than the other two, partly because it is dated, but also because the others provide more hands-on guidance.
All three books begin by considering why family history might be personally relevant. Leavitt and Perl explain that it helps you understand yourself; Wolfman describes how he personally became hooked. All three then guide young people to begin the process of investigating family history with what they already know about their life and family. The books offer questions for analyzing available records, family photos, and other family treasures. They also help young people consider what their surnames might reveal about the family’s past.
The three books then provide detailed guidance for locating and examining public records, such as census records, old passports, birth certificates, death records, marriage records, and property records – kid-sized versions of the kinds of tools in this blogsite. Wolfman provides a particularly extensive collection of ideas about how to record data on family members and family groups. Leavitt and Wolfman give wonderful guidance for oral histories, along with encouragement for young people to talk with older family members. I enjoyed Leavitt’s interesting sections on medical history, what maps can tell you, and reflections on what life might have been like for ancestors when considering things that hadn’t been invented yet.
The books share some limitations. One is simply that availability of Internet resources has expanded since these were published. Wolfman’s website and chapter on use of the Internet are quite helpful in this regard. At the same time, however, since so many resources are not on the Internet (and some, such as family interviews and family documents never will be), and since many others such as census records look the same whether accessed digitally or in paper, the research and thinking process these books present is valid, even if one might add additional resources and steps today.
A second limitation is their largely shared, tacit assumption of two-parent, unblended families as the norm, particularly in presenting family tree charts, although Wolfman gives some attention to diverse family structures. Elsewhere, one can find useful tools that expand how families can look. I encourage teachers to begin with the assumption that there will be diverse family structures in any normal classroom, and to offer a variety of charts and diagrams children can use, as well as questions they can pursue, based on this assumption.
A third limitation of Perl and Wolfman is their assumption about what the “normal” historical experience in the U.S. has been. Both include history chapters about U.S. immigration, framed within a European immigration narrative to which “others” are added, similar to what one finds in U.S. history texts. Wolfman also includes a chapter near the end of the book for “special situations”: adoption, African Americans ancestors, American Indian ancestors, Jewish ancestors, blended families, LGBT families. These features “normalize” a European immigrant narrative about U.S. history, on top of the two-parent family template. My interest in Critical Family History attempts to destabilize such dominant narratives. While Ellis Island, for example, is more relevant to European immigrant ancestors than to anyone else, one can ask who was included and excluded by its very existence.
In sum, while teachers and parents should review kids' family history books carefully before purchasing, there is quite a lot available, as this sampling shows. What I haven't found yet, however, is a kid's book that situates family history within a critical social, cultural, and historical analysis like this website does. Maybe a reader will create one!
How might teachers or parents guide young family historians? Just like considerable information exists in books and on the Internet for adults, so too are there many websites and books for kids. Here, I review three books for kids in the U.S. I selected them more or less out of a hat. When I realized how many have been published, I decided to start with three from Amazon that appear to sell well, and that differ from each other.
All three books begin by considering why family history might be personally relevant. Leavitt and Perl explain that it helps you understand yourself; Wolfman describes how he personally became hooked. All three then guide young people to begin the process of investigating family history with what they already know about their life and family. The books offer questions for analyzing available records, family photos, and other family treasures. They also help young people consider what their surnames might reveal about the family’s past.
The three books then provide detailed guidance for locating and examining public records, such as census records, old passports, birth certificates, death records, marriage records, and property records – kid-sized versions of the kinds of tools in this blogsite. Wolfman provides a particularly extensive collection of ideas about how to record data on family members and family groups. Leavitt and Wolfman give wonderful guidance for oral histories, along with encouragement for young people to talk with older family members. I enjoyed Leavitt’s interesting sections on medical history, what maps can tell you, and reflections on what life might have been like for ancestors when considering things that hadn’t been invented yet.
The books share some limitations. One is simply that availability of Internet resources has expanded since these were published. Wolfman’s website and chapter on use of the Internet are quite helpful in this regard. At the same time, however, since so many resources are not on the Internet (and some, such as family interviews and family documents never will be), and since many others such as census records look the same whether accessed digitally or in paper, the research and thinking process these books present is valid, even if one might add additional resources and steps today.
A second limitation is their largely shared, tacit assumption of two-parent, unblended families as the norm, particularly in presenting family tree charts, although Wolfman gives some attention to diverse family structures. Elsewhere, one can find useful tools that expand how families can look. I encourage teachers to begin with the assumption that there will be diverse family structures in any normal classroom, and to offer a variety of charts and diagrams children can use, as well as questions they can pursue, based on this assumption.
A third limitation of Perl and Wolfman is their assumption about what the “normal” historical experience in the U.S. has been. Both include history chapters about U.S. immigration, framed within a European immigration narrative to which “others” are added, similar to what one finds in U.S. history texts. Wolfman also includes a chapter near the end of the book for “special situations”: adoption, African Americans ancestors, American Indian ancestors, Jewish ancestors, blended families, LGBT families. These features “normalize” a European immigrant narrative about U.S. history, on top of the two-parent family template. My interest in Critical Family History attempts to destabilize such dominant narratives. While Ellis Island, for example, is more relevant to European immigrant ancestors than to anyone else, one can ask who was included and excluded by its very existence.
In sum, while teachers and parents should review kids' family history books carefully before purchasing, there is quite a lot available, as this sampling shows. What I haven't found yet, however, is a kid's book that situates family history within a critical social, cultural, and historical analysis like this website does. Maybe a reader will create one!
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Adoption
(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/adoption/)
My grandson has six grandparents, only two of whom he is biologically related to. Sometimes I wonder how he might handle a family history assignment a teacher may give in school. Let me explain his family situation; odd as it may sound, it is increasingly common.
My partner and his former wife adopted and raised a boy, now a married adult with a beautiful young son. After they divorced, she remarried. My partner and I have been together for over twenty-five years, although we are not married. Legally and biologically, I’m not related to my step-son or my grandson, but we still claim each other as family, which for us is the important thing. My grandson, because his father was adopted, is not biologically related to his father’s parents, although he is biologically related to his mother's parents.
It is estimated that about two percent of the U.S. population is adopted. About one-quarter of the adoptions are from other countries. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, about 40% of adoptions in the U.S. are transracial, the majority involving international adoptions. These statistics bring to mind many families in my own life, such as my biracial (white-African American) step-son; one of my niece’s sons, adopted from Guatemala; two daughters adopted from India by a Jewish couple; and two white sons adopted by a white couple that is now divorced. Adoptions, a common part of increasingly nontraditional family structures, can pose challenges to family historians.
Before returning to the question of what the teacher or family historian might do, we should acknowledge that adoption is by no means a new arrangement. Indeed, in my own family tree it took me a while to work out what at first appeared to be the puzzling situation of a couple past child-bearing age with three young children during the 1800s. It turned out that the three children had been adopted by their grandfather and his second wife after their father died.
Genealogist Maureen Taylor explains that adoption has always played a part in family structure, although historically in the U.S. it was not widely discussed. Until the nineteenth century, adoptions were more informal than today, often taking the form of apprenticeships or guardianships. For example, relatives might take in a child whose parents were not able to care for the child, or if they were seeking an additional laborer in the household. Some of the ways historic adoptions may be identified in records include “AD” in the relationship column of census records, wording in probate records (including wills), the legal section of newspapers in which cases having to do with adoption or parentage are posted, or records of agencies (including churches) that were involved with adoptions.
It is beyond the scope of this blog to provide strategies for locating birth parents today. Processes vary somewhat from place to place, and there are websites such as Find My Past, and other resources, that focus specifically on locating birth parents. I will say that sources recommend starting the process by talking with members of the family that adopted you, to gain some idea of where to look. Also be aware that biological parents may not wish to be found. For the family historian, tracing a birth family tree may prove very difficult, perhaps impossible, particularly if birth parents wish to remain anonymous.
The issue of adoption raises a larger question concerning what makes a family, and why a person might be tracing one’s family tree. If one’s purpose is to understand the origins of physical characteristics or the likelihood of genetically-transmitted diseases or other characteristics, tracing blood relationships makes sense. If, however, one’s purpose is to understand one’s place within a web of family relationships that have a history, adoptive relationships may be more important than biological relationships. In her novel Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen has this to say about family:
To return to the classroom, teachers contemplating activities that involve family structure and family history should be clear in their own mind about the purpose of the activity, and assume that a variety of structures that may well include adoptions will be represented within any classroom. The website Adoptive Families shares several responses by parents of adopted children whose teachers assigned activities related to family; while some teachers showed interest and empathy when finding out about varying family situations, others did not. Family Tree Templates provides a useful array of family tree diagrams including adoptive family trees, step-family trees, blended family trees.
In other words, adoption is one process that has always been used to constitute family. It isn’t a process to ignore, but rather one to approach with some sensitivity, and with respect for the relationships make family.
My grandson has six grandparents, only two of whom he is biologically related to. Sometimes I wonder how he might handle a family history assignment a teacher may give in school. Let me explain his family situation; odd as it may sound, it is increasingly common.
It is estimated that about two percent of the U.S. population is adopted. About one-quarter of the adoptions are from other countries. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, about 40% of adoptions in the U.S. are transracial, the majority involving international adoptions. These statistics bring to mind many families in my own life, such as my biracial (white-African American) step-son; one of my niece’s sons, adopted from Guatemala; two daughters adopted from India by a Jewish couple; and two white sons adopted by a white couple that is now divorced. Adoptions, a common part of increasingly nontraditional family structures, can pose challenges to family historians.
Before returning to the question of what the teacher or family historian might do, we should acknowledge that adoption is by no means a new arrangement. Indeed, in my own family tree it took me a while to work out what at first appeared to be the puzzling situation of a couple past child-bearing age with three young children during the 1800s. It turned out that the three children had been adopted by their grandfather and his second wife after their father died.
Genealogist Maureen Taylor explains that adoption has always played a part in family structure, although historically in the U.S. it was not widely discussed. Until the nineteenth century, adoptions were more informal than today, often taking the form of apprenticeships or guardianships. For example, relatives might take in a child whose parents were not able to care for the child, or if they were seeking an additional laborer in the household. Some of the ways historic adoptions may be identified in records include “AD” in the relationship column of census records, wording in probate records (including wills), the legal section of newspapers in which cases having to do with adoption or parentage are posted, or records of agencies (including churches) that were involved with adoptions.
It is beyond the scope of this blog to provide strategies for locating birth parents today. Processes vary somewhat from place to place, and there are websites such as Find My Past, and other resources, that focus specifically on locating birth parents. I will say that sources recommend starting the process by talking with members of the family that adopted you, to gain some idea of where to look. Also be aware that biological parents may not wish to be found. For the family historian, tracing a birth family tree may prove very difficult, perhaps impossible, particularly if birth parents wish to remain anonymous.
The issue of adoption raises a larger question concerning what makes a family, and why a person might be tracing one’s family tree. If one’s purpose is to understand the origins of physical characteristics or the likelihood of genetically-transmitted diseases or other characteristics, tracing blood relationships makes sense. If, however, one’s purpose is to understand one’s place within a web of family relationships that have a history, adoptive relationships may be more important than biological relationships. In her novel Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen has this to say about family:
What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.In other words, family historians working with adoption or other nontraditional structures or relationships need to think about what makes family “family,” in relationship to why one is interested in investigating family history.
To return to the classroom, teachers contemplating activities that involve family structure and family history should be clear in their own mind about the purpose of the activity, and assume that a variety of structures that may well include adoptions will be represented within any classroom. The website Adoptive Families shares several responses by parents of adopted children whose teachers assigned activities related to family; while some teachers showed interest and empathy when finding out about varying family situations, others did not. Family Tree Templates provides a useful array of family tree diagrams including adoptive family trees, step-family trees, blended family trees.
In other words, adoption is one process that has always been used to constitute family. It isn’t a process to ignore, but rather one to approach with some sensitivity, and with respect for the relationships make family.
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