Truth
Day three and I’ve already fallen behind. Writing at 05:10AM the next day instead of last night. Oh well.
Tuesday I have my two sections of American History back-to-back and I needed to launch the new unit. I’m calling this unit “The Truth about..” and I want this unit to be a mix of a number of things:
One, an exploration of historiography and how historians come to their particular truth. What steps do historians take to get as complete a picture as possible about the past? What holes exist that they know about? What are their blindspots?
Two, a way of approaching the current political moment. We read These Truths and the word from the latter chapters that’s made its way into our classroom conversation is polarization. What do we about this? How do we change things? How do we reconcile a truth we might hold as an individual with that of the larger society? What happens when your fellow human beings see and understand the world completely differently than you do?
Three, time to think about how far one can go in discussing a policy before disagreement occurs about what is true or not. That’s not quite right. What are the facts around a policy that you can get most people to agree upon and, from there, what steps might follow? For example, it’s a fact that the Second Amendment states “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” It’s also a fact that there were 502 homicides in Philadelphia last year. Where do we find a truth, or a common ground, or a way forward in such situations? How do we connect facts and form truth? (I know that this is going to get murky in a hurry. And I’m curious about which policies the students will elect to study.).
Four, space to consider their own approach to truth when thinking about policy, history, and the world. I’m trying to formulate an assessment that I haven’t figured out yet…some sort of checklist or graphic organizer or flow chart or even a short comic that lays out an approach to discerning the truth. I want to churn over potential questions, modes of thought, ways to create an understanding of the past. There’s a tension here that I have to manage and haven’t figured out: history, policy, personal life…there are similarities and differences we have to account for. (This is kind of advanced version of the primary source tool kit I’ve had kids develop in the past.).
So I have a loose unit plan and a vaguer idea about where I want to eventually get. But it’s teaching, and so the unit needed to start, and start today, on a Tuesday when our schedule had been compressed owing to a snow day.
I asked students to be a bit of writing and description of the ways they had been taught to approach the truth. I wanted them to start with things they’d been told (always tell the truth, the truth will set you free) and then move to more academic ideas that had come up in various classes.
I had three “traps” I wanted to discuss as well:
Everyone is entitled to their own truth, their own opinion.
There’s no changing anyone’s mind.
There’s too much information out there — how can I even tell what the truth is?
And once we got rolling, it was a solid discussion, or Zoom exchange, or whatever it is we do in class.
Some of the great points raised:
L: Individual truths make up a larger communal truth.
P: We can argue about the color of a dress, but society can’t function in the same manner. Truth is a tool, a stepping stone…
J: What do we do when people refuse to accept the truth?
K: There’s a difference between accepting the truth and what happens when people are hurt by (MC:or defensive) about the truth
M: We “get so into our own truths” so it’s hard to change someone’s mind. Extremely hard.
(There was a great thread developed about how and when humans get defensive and unwilling to confront elements from the past; several students mentioned slavery here, thanks A for driving that train.)
Next stream:
D: Many Americans are goal oriented; as a result they accept false information that serves them better.
A: “Truth loses power when few people know about it.”
R: “We need ground rules about what a fact is and what makes an undisputed fact.”
A: “It’s why historians are more important than a regular person: they’re preserving all of our memories.”
(These are my notes from the conversation; there are additional comments from the chats I need to pull in here.).
I didn’t even get to where I wanted: a comparison of the opening paragraphs from the 1619 project and the 1776 commission. I did get to a point where I could set up the homework, a kind of Venn diagram to get them thinking about the difference between personal and historical approaches to the truth.