AN INTERNET-ENHANCED CURRICULUM IN MULTICULTURAL HISTORY

Patricia Kidney-Cummins
Northern Kentucky University
U. S. A.

Introduction
Critical Assessment of Internet-Based Resources
Learning about the History of Native American Women
Learning about the History of African-American Women
Learning about the History of Asian American Women
Conclusion
References

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Introduction

Multicultural history learning can promote critical thinking skills.  By incorporating race, class, religion, gender, and ethnic perspectives into our teaching of historical events, we open the minds of our learners to acceptance and tolerance, developing less prejudiced and more discerning global citizens. Textbooks used before the 1970s rendered history in terms of the “great man theory,” which often focused on elite white men of European descent.  The textbooks once used as the primary teaching tools in history classes are now used as secondary reference material in many classrooms.  Today’s curriculum integrates a vast number of resources that contain historical content and contributions from a variety of experiences and perspectives of differing gender, racial, class, ethnic, and religious groups (Organization of American Historians, 2004).  Celebration of different cultures is a direct product of the multicultural exploration that has been taking place in education, demonstrating the importance society now places on social diversity and tolerance and recognizing the contributions of other cultures. [paragraph 1]

Educators strive to incorporate different voices of history by adopting cultural artifacts (i.e., photographs, recordings, websites, and trade books) as important educational resources, which allows them to move away from the single perspective of history presented by a single textbook.  Through these multiple materials history teachers encourage students to become more involved learners. Students are more likely to have active learning experiences by drawing their own conclusions on the basis of the reconstructed items or events of history.  For instance, a class may be divided into two groups, one given resources from the 1800s and the other modern-day tools, and then be asked to complete the same task.  A task such as this requires higher-level thinking skills as opposed to memorization of facts from books.  Students are taking on the responsibility of using critical thinking skills to conclude for themselves the historian’s primary concern of what has changed over time and why.  The combination of incorporating a variety of materials and multiple voices assists educators in providing a complete account of historical events. [paragraph 2]

By merely celebrating cultural diversity without taking into account multiple perspectives, we do not examine the past inclusively.  To examine historical events in a true multicultural setting, it is necessary to examine more than one aspect of the people involved and to  use more than one resource tool to study the events. The analysis of various perspectives that a host of authors, historians, and primary sources can bring to learning is equally important in acquiring a multicultural experience as the material itself.  Having students examine a historical event from contrasting viewpoints opens the door to the authentic analysis of history within the context in which it occurred.  For example, a student who examines slavery in the United States from the perspectives of a northern White female abolitionist, the wife of a plantation owner, and an African-American slave woman from the South would be better equipped to dissect slavery and understand the controversy it presented in a given time period.    [paragraph 3]

Critical Assessment of Internet-Based Resources

The computer-age has empowered educators with the ability to quickly access a greater variety of materials that allows them to present differing historical perspectives.  While it has made providing a multicultural experience easier through the vast number of resources now available, we must be more conscious than ever of the validity of that information.  Information published on the Internet, one must remember, may be maliciously inaccurate or incorrectly reported by a novice user.  Furthermore, given the lack of previous evaluation, editing, or review of any kind we must be leery and take this responsibility upon ourselves if we choose to rely on the material.  Therefore, it is our responsibility not only to provide multicultural history education enhanced by technology, but also to critically evaluate the content of our teaching resources.  This essay will explore the benefits of using the Internet in providing a multicultural history, specifically exploring gender issues intersected with ethnicity.  While Internet sites can ease the process of teaching history, they do so if, only if, they are properly evaluated and critiqued for content value before use. [paragraph 4]

Educators today are expected to teach students to navigate the Internet as a tool for learning.  Many educators find this task tedious and time consuming.  As experienced Internet users are aware, we cannot simply allow children to surf the net.  Students given free reign of the Internet may find inappropriate or inaccurate sites.  Educators must therefore determine the value of a website before giving students access.  The Widener University Wolfgram Memorial Library posts on its website guidelines for evaluating web pages.  The guidelines include recognizing the type of a page as informational, factual, personal, or marketing/business pages by identifying the dot suffix ending in the URL, such as ".com," ".org," or ".edu."  After identifying the page type and, therefore, becoming consciously aware of the purpose of the page, one can apply further criteria to evaluate the site.   The Widener University site outlines a five-step criterion for evaluating sites.  First, by questioning the authority and objectivity, the evaluator of a site must identify the author of the site and his/her motives for providing the information contained.  Once this has been established, the currency or date of the information provided should be questioned to be assured of the continual review and updating of facts.  Most importantly in evaluating a website, educators need to establish the accuracy of the provided information by determining if reference sources or editors are listed to verify the factual data provided.  Finally, one must examine the coverage of the material and question the clarity, completeness, and presentation of the information provided.  These evaluative questions provide Internet users with a concrete criterion in determining the educational value of an Internet resource.  [paragraph 5]

Educators may also easily increase their use of the Internet in the classroom without drastically increasing the time spent searching for appropriate sites by relying on directories that have already evaluated and rated websites for educational value, such as Marco Polo, About, and The Librarian’s Index to the Internet.  Many times a site’s educational validity comes through its placement in one of these directories.  The Marco Polo website is sponsored by the Marco Polo Foundation, a national, nonprofit, educational association organized for K-12 educators, that provides resources, lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and links for students that have been already evaluated for “content, design, and educational impact in the classroom” (EDSITEment, 2003).  Marco Polo trainers work diligently with institutions of learning to provide educators with the proper training skills needed to effectively navigate and manage these resources.  Launched in 1997, this site reports tremendous user growth from just under 300,000 in 2000 to almost a million in June 2003 indicating its currency and upcoming status in the field of education. [paragraph 6]

Learning about the History of Native American Women

By committing to provide multicultural education, one is accepting the responsibility of addressing gender, class, ethnicity, or religion and multiple combinations of these in the content of the curriculum.  Studying Native Americans as savages in the context of the White men’s history was an acceptable practice before the 1970s when multicultural education movement emerged in the United States.  Native Americans, articulated as “Indians,” were merely defined as good or bad Indians.  Good Indians referred to those willing to assimilate into the White mainstream culture and bad ones were those who tried to preserve their own way of life.  The unique role of Native American women was not explored or even speculated upon.  All genders, tribes, and ages were included in this savage portrayal.  This early inclusion of Native Americans in terms of a White men’s historical perspective neglected the differing gender experiences of Native Americans.  As Native culture attempted to assimilate into the White patriarchic culture, Native women were stripped of their important place within their own society.  Once active political voices and decision makers in their tribes, these women became victims of the new patriarchy within their own culture.  The European men traded and negotiated with the males in the tribe while the Native women were left to domestic roles similar to those of the European women and as a result women’s social status within the tribe declined (Perdue, 1989).  The experience of Native men and women therefore were very different and through incorporating gender into the study of Native Americans educators provide the students with the opportunity to explore these differences.  [paragraph 7]

In searching for an elementary-appropriate website relating to Native American women, a strong and reliable integration of Native American culture and womanhood can be found at The Children of Changing Women.  The educational content of this website addresses the lives of the Apache women.  The Webmaster of the site is Maria Piacente of the University of Toronto and Ernestine Cody is curator of the site.  Cody clearly outlines her purpose of the site as a look into the spiritual existence of Apache women.  This site gives its viewers a unique look into the lives of her female Apache ancestors.  Clearly stated origin and author of the site provide this site authority as a valued source of information. The authority, however, could be furthered by the webmasters by including a physical address or telephone number for verification purposes. [paragraph 8]

The accuracy of this page is strongly supported by the listing of the author and her credentials.  The site is well organized and divided into sections, or links, by the aspects of Native American life, those of special interest being the Women’s Work and the Letter to Granddaughter/Grandmother links.  This site includes pictures and short paragraphs geared toward elementary students’ abilities.  The maps of Apache lands are labeled and can be easily read by young readers.  The site is continually monitored for accuracy and educational appropriateness as a link in the About directory, an index arranged by topics monitored and run by professional guides with expertise in their field. [paragraph 9]

The site is less objective and contains a personal narrative, as it is told from the viewpoint of Ernestine Cody, a Western Apachean woman who is also a curator of the Changing Woman Exhibit.  It is, however, free of bias of any sponsoring organization for profit.  The site’s copyright dates are noted and posted as 2003, making the currency valid.  The overall usefulness of the site comes from its ability to give a personal perspective and narrative to the lives of the Native American women’s culture.  It also provides an interesting site that facilitates both skills in technology via the Internet and core content in humanities.  The evaluation provided by the About site, along with its own useful content, makes it a trustworthy and easily found tool for educators.  The key in evaluating Internet websites is to keep in mind that the information should be evaluated for its usefulness and validity.  A variety of sources and perspectives contribute to the development of good research, but in a technological time so advanced that even novice computer users can publish on the Internet, educators must keep a watchful and evaluative eye on the information we choose to rely upon. [paragraph 10]

Learning about the History of African-American Women

African-American women’s identity, like that of the Native American women, was also left out of many history books. They were present in the illustrations side by side with their husbands, brothers, and fathers, but lacking a story of their own.  A multicultural history would take into account the differing experiences of these women.  The African-American slave family experienced hardship in the early nineteenth-century like that of no other group of people at that time.  The slave culture stripped the family of its right in defining its own norm and the rearing of children became the responsibility of an extended family or community.  Slave owners thrust the role of head of the family on mothers, which made the experience of African-American women different from White women and both White and Black males (Stevenson, 1991).  It is this role that multicultural educators need to include in the study of slavery and African-American culture.   The Underground Railroad (National Geographic Society, 2004) is an excellent interactive website for elementary students, reflecting African-American history.  It can be found as part of the National Geographic web page.  This site takes students on an interactive journey traveling via the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman.  Students read a paragraph at each point in their journey and are asked to make realistic choices as a fugitive slave.  Their choices determine their fate and the next part of the journey.  This journey allows students to experience Harriet Tubman as a leader and heroine, a role not commonly associated with African-American women in the nineteenth-century.  The site also contains many pictures to help students visualize their journey.  Links are also provided to Did you know? facts for kids to expand their knowledge of the Underground Railroad experience and Faces of Freedom, where students can read a brief sketch on the important leaders in the fight for freedom.  Included in this section are several women significant in the fight.  Links for educators are also provided to enhance their knowledge of the Underground Railroad, review lesson plans, and locate resources for additional use.  This site is of exceptional educational value for students and teachers in the elementary classroom. [paragraph 11]

Teachers can trust this site as a valid and reliable tool to use in their classroom because it has been reviewed by professionals in the field of education, which is a requirement for being linked directly from the Marco Polo website.  National Geographic, being a well-known publication of integrity, fares extremely well as evaluated by the most commonly used criteria for evaluating websites.  In addressing the authority of the site, The National Geographic page thoroughly addresses the author of the material, the purpose, affiliations, copyright date, physical address, and goals.  The advertising that appears on the Underground Railroad page entices the purchase of a subscription to the National Geographic Magazine, but does not impede the objectivity of the factual information presented on the page.  The copyright date of the material addresses the currency of the information in a clear and concise presentation suitable for its intended audience of students.  The coverage of the information is complete and clear in its attempts to increase understanding of the journey of the Underground Railroad. [paragraph 12]

The site portrays Harriet Tubman as a very important female figure in American history, but fails to address the differing experiences of men and women on their journey to freedom.  So while addressing race, this site leaves the task of recognizing and appreciating gender differences to the teacher.  It would not be difficult to culminate this lesson with whole class role-playing activities to address these differences.  Students role-playing females could be given children to tend to and care for, thus illustrating the different choices that had to be made from the start of the trip as to whether to even begin the journey.  By implementing a variety of strategies through the Internet, text, and active classroom learning, students will be able to fully understand and appreciate the struggles that African-American women experienced on their quest for freedom. [paragraph 13]

In the study of the Civil Rights Movement, there exists a specific group of nine students from history that students of today can related to in this way.  The Stand Up for Your Rights link from the PBS website for children recounts the story of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American male and female students who exemplified courage and collectiveness in working together to achieve a common goal for the good of society (WGBH Educational Foundation, 2004).  Students are provided factual information on the experiences of these students at the beginning of the 1957 school year.  Also included is a picture of the nine children, which allows students of today to connect with those of 40 years ago.  The photo speaks volumes in the women’s history aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, portraying the female students side by side with males united for racial equality.  It was not uncommon in the plight of the Civil Rights Movement that students of the 1960s realized early in the fight for justice that organizing as groups benefited the common goal (Fleming, 2000). The value of The Stand Up for Your Rights site can be evaluated by using a predetermined evaluation criterion such as that found on Widener University’s site.  Its placement in the Marco Polo directory as well as the value of its reputable PBS relationship supports its use as an educational tool.  Given any of these aspects, it fares well as an excellent educational website to use in the classroom to provide an enriched view of history. [paragraph 14]

Learning about the History of Asian American Women

Asian American women’s culture has also largely been omitted from the history books and curriculum in the United States.  For example, Japanese and Chinese American women’s experiences illustrate yet another unique story left untold.  Both of these cultures started somewhat similarly in the United States.  They highly valued the family and both groups of women faced discrimination and hardship upon arrival in America. They were also consumed by Americanization that occurred to many immigrants in the early twentieth century.  Yet, the integration of these two groups of women in American life occurred in very different ways.  Chinese women’s concern for the family became the motivation for change within their culture in the twentieth-century United States, gradually infiltrating into the public sphere (Yung, 2000).  In contrast, Japanese women experienced a blow to their culture in confinement away from the public in the internment camps of Japanese Americans during WWII (Matsumoto, 1984).  These differences within the Asian American women’s plight illustrate the importance of defining and studying women within their own realm of circumstance and culture to fully understand their experience. [paragraph 15]

To teachers dedicated to providing an accurate history of so many groups, the wealth of information is overwhelming.  One would be foolish to believe that they were acquainted with all the knowledge of each culture’s unique experiences without referencing resources before teaching the material.  Here the Internet can assist us in accessing information in an efficient and timely manner.  Suffering Under a Great Injustice is a sub-section of the Library of Congress’ American Memory page that provides a photographic record of Japanese internment by Ansel Adams who described his work in 1965:

...to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.... All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.

Adam’s own words describing his project, along with the placement within The Library of Congress website, lend both creditability and authority to its educational use.  These photographs reveal a glimpse into the roles men and women played and give a realistic portal into history. [paragraph 16]                                        

While capturing many voices of women’s history through photography, written words are still essential in understanding the complete picture.  The Department of Ethnic Studies at Berkeley presents an essay, titled "The Life Experiences of Chinese Immigrant Women in the U. S.," by Poon (1998) on its website depicting the history of Chinese American women.  This narrative account provides educators with historical facts of Chinese immigrants in the twentieth-century and the personal experience of a 1960s Chinese woman living as an immigrant in the Unites States. Children can read much information on historical figures of the past, but for history to be truly meaningful they must make a connection to a real event or person.  [paragraph 17]

Conclusion

As previously mentioned, the study of history in elementary schools has long been textbook based.  Traditionally, students read chapters and were tested on their ability to memorize facts.  This assessment is valuable only in the aspect of evaluating what the student read and whether he or she can memorize facts.  A more appropriate assessment would come from an education that provides students with a critical understanding as to what has changed over time, why, and how this differs for different groups in society.  Elementary history classes are migrating toward this direction and use a variety of sources to further the learning process of history and make students critical evaluators of the material.  This is no small goal when addressing the learning needs and abilities of early primary students in particular.  It can, however, be accomplished  by not depending directly on one textbook filled with dates, numbers, and stories only of important male leaders who, as the books lead us to believe, single-handedly shaped history, but by using a variety of sources, such as items of material culture, diaries, letters, and oral histories.  [paragraph 18]

Educators should not only use the Internet as a tool to these resources, but also to build a strong knowledge base of the historical content they are teaching.  They must educate themselves in locating relevant credible information upon which to base their lessons.  By using reliable directories for searches, teachers can produce resources for themselves, parents, and their students in a timely manner.  If students are to benefit from the enormous amounts of knowledge and documentation on the Web, teachers must be able to competently navigate through and locate this material on the Internet so that they can access the information for students and instruct students in finding information. Locating this information is the first step, but the search is futile if they cannot rely upon the validity and credibility of the material.  It is, therefore, necessary to apply a process for evaluating any material they would potentially use in the classroom or as a reference for their teaching.  Professionally established criteria for doing so exists and are readily available on the Web to assist users in determining the reliability of a given website.  As one begins to incorporate directories of proven value into their Internet searches, part of this evaluation process will have already been completed.  Teachers must still remain critical of and responsible for any information they bring into their teaching and classroom. [paragraph 19]

History is a diverse subject and by simply addressing any one group as a collective whole we are neglecting critical components of the race, class, gender paradigm in studying history.  By combining any one or more of these components with another we are presented with a new historical perspective.  These unique experiences would be omitted from history if people were labeled by one characteristic alone.  Implementing an encompassing multicultural history into the curriculum requires both research and resources.  The Internet can become a time-saving tool in locating and producing both these components, but the enhancement of education it affords is only as valuable as the critique of the resources that the instructor provides. [paragraph 20]

References

About. (n. d.). Retrieved June 1, 2003, from http://ourstory.about.com/ 

EDSITEment. (n. d.).  Retrieved May 1, 2003, from http://edsitement.neh.gov/about_edsitement.asp 

Fleming, C. G. (2000). More than a lady: Ruby Doris Smith Robinson and black women’s leadership in student nonviolent coordinating committee.  In V. Ruiz and E. C. DuBois, (Eds.), Unequal sisters: A multicultural reader in U. S. women’s history (3^rd ed.) (pp. 542-553).  New York:  Routledge.

Marco Polo. (n. d.). Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.marcopolo-education.org/teacher/teacher_index.aspx

Matsumoto, V. (1984). Japanese-American women during World War II. Frontiers, 8(1),  6-14.  

National Geographic Society (2004), The Underground Railroad. Retrieved June 1, 2003, from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/j1.html

Organization of American Historians. (2004). Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.oah.org/pubs/teachingunits/index.html

The Children of Changing Women. (n. d.). Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/maria/Cwoman.html

The Librarians' Index to the Internet. (n. d.). Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://lii.org/

Perdue, T. (1989). Cherokee women and the trail of tears. Journal of Women’s History 1(1), 14-30.

Poon, W. C.(1998). The life experiences of Chinese immigrants women in the U. S. Retrieved June 1, 2003, from http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~ethnicst/esl/wcppaper.html

Stevenson, B. (1991). Distress and discord in Virginia slave families, 1830-1860.  In C. Bleser (Ed.), In joy and in sorrow: Women, family and marriage in the Victorian south (pp.103-124). New York: Oxford University Press.

The Library of Congress. (2002). Suffering under a great injustice. Retrieved June 30, 2003, from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aamhtml/aamhome.html  

WGBH Educational Foundation. (2004). On the front lines with the Little Rock 9 [Online]. Retried June 30, 2003, from http://pbskids.org/wayback/civilrights/features_school.html

Yung, J. (2000). Unbound feet: Chinese women in the public sphere.  In V. Ruiz and E. C. DuBois, (Eds.), Unequal sisters: A multicultural reader in U. S. women’s history (3^rd ed.) (pp. 257-266).  New York:  Routledge.