True Lessons in History

In Maine, educators look to integrate Indigenous, African American pasts in curricula

by ERICA CIALLELA

In a speech he gave in October 1963 titled “A Talk to Teachers,” writer, social critic, and activist James Baldwin said, “I would try to make him [the student] know that just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful, and more terrible, but principally larger—and that it belongs to him.” Baldwin’s talk, which he gave to an audience of educators and then published in the December 21 issue of Saturday Review, is as relevant today as it was then. American history is having a reckoning. Educators around the country must figure out which history gets told— the idealized, singular story or a full, complete narrative of the people and land on which we reside. This movement has seen great support as well as extreme pushback. One state that is taking the steps to move forward is Maine.

In June 2021, Maine mandated that African American history be taught in schools with the passage of Bill LD1664. “An Act to Integrate African American Studies and the History of Genocide into the Statewide System of Learning Results,” sponsored by Democratic Representative Rachel Talbot Ross, was passed as an emergency measure, making it immediately active. It states: “Instruction in American History, African American Studies, Maine Studies, Maine Native American History, and the History of Genocide must be aligned with the parameters for essential instruction and graduation requirements established under section 6209.”

Despite the immediacy of the bill’s passage, Maine will not see full implementation of the mandate for two to three years. Maine is a local-control state, meaning that each school district determines its curriculum, not the state. What the state does control is the learning standards that each district is required to meet.

Bill LD1664 requires that standards be updated to reflect the new direction. This step is crucial if Maine is to see effective implementation. In 2001, a statute was passed to include Indigenous studies in the curriculum. That measure (Bill LD291) did not include the revision of the learning results, thus leaving the statute unenforceable. A survey completed in 2018 found what “Indigenous leaders, educators, activists and presenters already knew: that the law was not being followed and when attention was paid to the Indigenous people of this area, it all too frequently reinforced the colonial narrative of extinction and the white supremacist narrative of inferiority.” Bill LD1664 aims to ensure that what happened with Bill LD291 doesn’t occur again. The new legislation requires the changing of the educational standards, which will be done in two years, when they are next slated for revision.

During the interim, Maine education leaders are doing the work to ensure that the standards address African American and Indigenous history as well as weaving their instruction throughout the school year rather than confining them to a specific month. In an interview on the radio show Maine Calling, Joe Schmidt, social studies content specialist for the Maine Department of Education, said, “If you’re going to teach the whole history of this country, it has to be threaded throughout” and that it shouldn’t be treated in an add-on fashion. Teachers don’t need to wait for the new standards to begin this process, either.

Tremendous work has already taken place to provide the scaffolding educators will need to help them create relevant and meaningful lesson plans. Maine’s Education Department website has a list of resources to use including links to the Wabanaki Alliance, the Abbe Museum, Portland Freedom Trail, and Atlantic Black Box.

Leaders such as Schmidt and Courtney Belolan of the Maine Curriculum Leaders Association are meeting with consultants and studying their own resources to make sure that what is presented to teachers will create positive movement forward. Belolan says that for this work to be done, a deep look at where the system can improve needs to be taken. “Where is it that we are reflecting ourselves and reflecting the faces and individuals in our classrooms and in our communities,” Belolan asks, “and where is it that we need to add more opportunities to include the voices and the faces and the people that aren’t necessarily included?” As an example, she says teachers can integrate this work through a second-grade lesson plan on American symbols and monuments; educators can use such an opportunity to showcase African American or Wabanaki monuments in Maine and throughout the country.

When it comes to the conversation of integrating African American history into the traditional curriculum, opposition has been quick around the country with terms such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) erroneously used as reasons why this work should not be allowed. Many states have passed legislation that limit how educators can teach Black history, barring lessons that might cause “discomfort” or “guilt” among some students. But as Belolan’s example shows, these changes are not about causing discomfort. They are about recognizing the multitude of stories that have helped shaped this country. While some of these changes may be difficult, they also allow the opportunity for a continuation of the efforts that have been made throughout the decades to ensure that all children receive an equal education.

It is easy to connect the work that Maine is doing with the larger narrative of the fight for equal education that New England has been at the forefront of since the 1800s. Some of the earliest court cases for school equality were fought in Connecticut (Crandall v. Connecticut, 1834) and Massachusetts (Roberts v. City of Boston, 1850). While the focus of school desegregation is often on southern states, many battles were fought in the Northeast. Boston attempted to solve its hard racial lines with a busing program that ultimately led to white families leaving the city’s public schools amid numerous protests over the years that it was in effect. In New York City, students such as Deborah Gray White were desegregating schools and honor programs. They led a boycott in 1964 for school integration, an action that heralded a message that Maine’s new bill addresses, that “the best kind of education for every American child is a racially balanced education where people of different ethnic groups are learning together.” In 2022, that balanced education is not just about integrated schools. It is about a curriculum where we learn that the founding fathers were fallible, that there was already bright and rich civilization on our shores when the Pilgrims arrived, and that human history is made up of individuals, just like our students, who fought and studied and created legacies, and that each of these stories is worth telling.

Maine is discussing integrating the use of traditional textbooks with other works that can speak to the multiple narratives in history. Districts that have found pathways forward will share resources with other districts, creating networks of scaffolding that will be supplemented with professional learning opportunities and working with Maine universities. The aspect that all leaders agree on is making sure teachers know that the state supports them fully. Belolan says that since the passage of the bill, there has been resistance but notes that it is important to have open conversations with parents so they can feel good about their children’s education and have full trust in educators. Public support is important in ensuring that educators feel confident moving forward with this work. However, a lack of support would not mean that the program plans would change. Georges Erasmus, a leader from the Dene First Nation, says, “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.” At its heart, this is what the mandate is about: ensuring that every student feels they are seen and has the full knowledge of the land on which they live. It is about creating a true community that has respect, empathy, and care for each of its neighbors.

“The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not,” Baldwin said in his 1963 speech. “To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.” It is the same idea that Belolan hopes the Maine bill will achieve—“to teach learners to think critically about the stories they are told,” she said.

There is still a lot of work to be done around the country on telling African American and Indigenous histories in our schools, but Maine is helping to inch that needle forward, becoming an example to others that the work can and should be done.