Rethinking Thanksgiving:
Myths & Misgivings
By Vera Stenhouse
This article is also from Ferlazzo’s list.
As a teacher-educator, Stenhouse describes the challenge she presented to student teachers about the traditional story of Thanksgiving. Not only is the story inaccurate, but it also omits the settlers’ thievery and the diseases they carried that destroyed many Native American villages.
Stenhouse first asked her student teachers what they knew about the holiday and then had them do research to discover the facts about what really occurred. From this, she encouraged them to change the narrative about the holiday.
She stated her goal as: “Confronting racism, injustice, prejudice, and stereotypes through a consciousness-raising education is a far cry from the fun-filled, feel-good activities characteristic of how schools approach holidays. With respect to indigenous peoples, I want my students to acknowledge the diverse and unique traditions among Native American cultures and to explore the historic and contemporary legacy of colonial intrusion, brutality, and cultural ignorance. As a teacher educator, I seek to invite my students on a journey of interrogating the fallacy of the ‘standard’ curriculum as neutral and push them to develop an understanding of official knowledge as politically constructed and contestable. Critiquing received facts, such as the first Thanksgiving, is an integral piece of an overall critical approach to teaching and learning. I want my students to recognize that the histories of indigenous peoples have been subverted, silenced, and misrepresented in the curriculum. Equally important: I want my students to recognize that we can do something about it.”
Find your own challenge by reading the article.
Note: Although the links in the article don’t work, the information is searchable.
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