For two years, I did the “tell the story of the United States in one minute.”
For the past two years, I’ve done the “pick a piece of popular culture and explain how it opens up the American past.”
I am tempted to build my opening unit around this missive from the Trump administration to the Smithsonian.
I would assess the letter together and have the students assess the vision of the American past expressed here. I’d ask them to define some of these terms and then debate them:
Non-ideological
Divisive
Unifying
American exceptionalism
Partisan
And I’d like the kids to take apart many sentences, notably:
… empowers museum staff to embrace a revitalized curatorial vision rooted in the strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story.
…This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.
The deliverables: A short essay response to this letter — how you agree, how you disagree, what you own experiences learning American history have consisted of so far — and a debate, where we’d dig into the different ways of approaching history and what is (and is not) possible.
In a perfect world, I’d bring some guests in to listen and to ask questions as we go, a mix of museum people, historians, politicians, and activists.
