Learning Lessons

I showed these videos in class yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlZkL_0lZ1Q [9500 Liberty trailer]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvFhB1k3x0 [invasion--watch 1:45-2:00]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7bnHb4wASM [9/11 and 7-11]

They debuted during my first semester of teaching. When I watch them now, I see California in the 1920s and 30s. I see the hatred and fear of manongs and Mexicans. But when my friends Annabel Park and Eric Byler first started posting them, I could not watch more than a few seconds. Too much hate and ignorance. I didn't want it on my laptop.

(For those not familiar with Virginia, Prince William County is home to Ikea and the largest outlet mall in the state. It attracts more tourists than the amusement parks. It also saw a housing boom in the last 20 years and attracted all the people needed to build them.)

But, you know, it's a privilege to be able to turn the hate on and off at my convenience. A year later, I was looking at my lesson plan for Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart and decided that showing these videos would help put my students in that time period--and unexpectedly bring the book to the present. My students, like the manongs, wouldn't be able to just turn it off.

I've become more transparent about the lessons that Fil-Am history teaches me. When I started, I felt the need to stay close to the facts, offer a few well-supported interpretations, and let the students draw their own conclusions. The problem, though, is that the students don't draw any.

It's not their fault. A lot of them don't have the life experiences (jobs, racism, poverty, involvement in politics) to connect personally to the material. Or if they do, they've "othered" it as an exception or thing of the past: the world is better now. I find students who have taken a year or two off connect more readily.

Also, I think the most powerful disincentive to learning is the need for testing and grading. The students really just want to make a connection between my slides and my exam questions.

Finally, history is not taught as lesson. Most students experience history as a recitation of facts and figures. To include "lessons that history should teach us" is to invite accusations of imposing my values on others.

Oh well.

I've decided it's not an imposition. I'm showing how I think Fil-Am history is relevant. They're adults and I'm not holding them responsible for parroting my views. A lot of students reflexively react with that tired adage, "history repeats itself." I don't believe that. Sounds like an excuse to do nothing. History repeats itself because we write it that way. How about we write it differently? Ultimately, the people of Prince William County neutered the anti-immigrant statute (but all sides paid heavily).

I felt for my students as they watched. I gave myself a year. Here I was making them squirm in their chairs. I watched their faces: confused, disgusted, awed. Some of them laughed. That took me aback. But to them, the testimony was just so ignorant or unbelievable that it seemed like caricature (there goes that othering again). I assured them it was real.


ps--congrats Annabel and Eric on a great premiere.