Nov 22 2006
Thanksgiving
THANKSGIVING …
It reminds me of some special moments I (had to) attend when I was at American Studies Graduate Program of Gadjah Mada University. After graduating, hmm … I miss to attend such an occasion.
The following article is taken from yahoo search engine. For myself, to ‘re-enact’ the moment I used to attend with my classmates and the lecturers.
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class
wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up
pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now
belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan
expects: The kids get angry and want their things back
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional
Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and
act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.
He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship
between Indians and white settlers.
Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San
Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a
different point of view."
Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.
"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean
and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for
America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their
country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of
Thanksgiving."
Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some
believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.
Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O’odham tribes who works as
a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be
burdened with all the gory details of American history.
"If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can
learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving — that is
what was originally intended."
Adam McMullin, a member of the Seminole tribe of Oklahoma and a spokesman for
the National Congress of American Indians, said schoolchildren should get an
accurate historical account.
"You can’t just throw an Indian costume on a child," he said. "That stuff is
not taken lightly. That’s where educators need to be very careful."
Becky Wyatt, a teacher at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, decided
to alter the costumes for the annual Thanksgiving play a few years ago after
local Indians spoke out against students wearing feathers, which are sacred in
their culture. Now children wear simple headbands.
"We have many mixed cultures in Long Beach, so we try to be sensitive," Wyatt
said. "What you teach little children is important."
Laverne Villalobos, a member of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska who now lives in
the coastal town of Pacifica near San Francisco, considers Thanksgiving a day of
mourning.
She went before the school board last week and asked for a ban on
Thanksgiving re-enactments and students dressing up as Indians. She also
complained about November’s lunch menu that pictured a caricature of an Indian
boy.
The mother of four said the traditional Thanksgiving celebrations in schools
instill "a false sense of what really happened before and after the feast. It
wasn’t all warm and fuzzy."
After she complained, it was decided that pupils at her children’s school
will not wear Indian costumes this year.
James Loewen, a former history professor at the University of Vermont and
author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook
Got Wrong," said that during the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag Indians and
the pilgrims had been living in relative peace, even though the tribe suspected
the settlers of robbing Indian graves to steal food buried with the dead.
"Relations were strained, but yet the holiday worked. Folks got along. After
that, bad things happened," Loewen said, referring to the bloody warfare that
broke out later during the 17th century.
Morgan, a teacher for more than 35 years, said that after conducting his own
research, he changed his approach to teaching about Thanksgiving. He tells
teachers at his school this is a good way to nurture critical thinking, but he
acknowledged not all are receptive: "It’s kind of an uphill struggle."
KPDE 12.50 231106
