Published Monday, October 4, 2004
Strom Helps Schools Face History
International Education Policy Monday Seminar Series
By Tucker McCravy
APPIAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“In the United States today, public schools are the largest interfaith community, but so often opportunities for dialogue are dismissed people are afraid of what might bubble to the surface,” says Adam Strom, Director of Research and Development at the non-profit educational organization Facing History and Ourselves. 

Strom's comments last Monday in Askwith Lecture Hall inaugurated this semester's International Education Policy (IEP) Seminar Series.

Originally from Massachusetts, Strom was a teacher in Los Angeles when he discovered the difficulty of bridging cultural and emotional issues in extremely diverse classrooms.  He followed his interest in these core issues to the organization Facing History and Ourselves, where he has been involved in helping teachers around the world overcome these challenges.

Facing History and Ourselves is an organization based on the belief that education must help students find meaning in history and recognize the need for participation and responsible decision making in the present.  The mission of the organization is three-fold: to engage students of diverse backgrounds in citizenship education, to teach that the study of history is a moral enterprise, and to provide resources for educators to relate past issues to the world today.  Since its founding in 1976, more than 18,000 educators from diverse locations have participated in its workshops and trainings. 

Based on the philosophical underpinnings of Hannah Arendt and her theory of the “benevolence of evil,” Facing History seeks to enact the moral imperative set forth by Arendt that we demand of people a critical awareness of their own thinking.  The greatest acts of evil, she asserted, were perpetrated by ordinary, unthinking human beings.  We as educators, therefore, have a fundamental duty to see that the civic education of our pupils is firmly rooted in a moral component through self-reflection.

Strom himself is responsible for designing curricula that can be used in a variety of classroom settings for a wide variety of historical moments.  During his lecture, he mentioned that his most trying moment was designing effective materials to be integrated into school use shortly after the tragedy of 9/11.  In fact he explained to the cohort that one of the greatest obstacles to open dialogue in communities that have faced terrific social upheavals (genocide, for example) is the unwillingness to address an issue because of the emotional trauma associated with it. 

IEP student Kimi Yoshida added her personal experience as a student in Japan where her junior high school and high school students seemed never to have time to cover the material in the syllabus related to World War II.  Another member of the cohort raised concerns about the difficulty of raising such sensitive topics in the classroom.  Umesh Sharma from India asked how we could bring up discussion of the history between Pakistan and India when any talk of that subject might possibly ignite old tensions.  Kasia Razynska, from Poland, followed with the comment that if you do not talk about a country’s painful history, the society as a whole cannot come to terms with its past. “Poland is still grieving and wanting something back,” she added. 

Strom concurred, adding another example of Rwanda where statistics show that in the 1994 massacres approximately 70% of the teachers In Rwanda were primary perpetrators of the genocide.  As a result, he continued, the Rwandan government has discontinued the teaching of history since that time.  This collective muteness, however, produces devastating effects from the internalizing of social grief.  The solution Strom proposed and the one adopted by Facing History is to use another lens or perspective -- perhaps that of another country’s problems -- to speak indirectly about the dilemmas of one’s own nation when doing so directly would be too difficult.

Peter Cooper of IEP commented afterwards that educators too often overlook what is happening in practice. “In order to enact social change,” he noted, “you need to confront some of the dilemmas. This movement is one way of addressing them.” 

Currently, Facing History is directing a special project at Harvard University which is focused on organizing book clubs, workshops, symposia and conferences that are open to the general public. Upcoming forums feature such speakers as professor Gary Bass and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power speaking on October 25th about the key issues in international justice.  Those interested in learning more about the Facing History and Ourselves / Harvard Law School project may visit the following link for more information: http://www.facinghistory.org/NEcalendar.html 

Future speakers of the IEP Seminar Series include Paulina Gonzalez-Pose from the Inter-American Development Bank, Katherine Marshall from the World Bank, and Professor Martin Carnoy from Stanford University.

Tucker McCravy is an Ed.M. candidate in International Education Policy.