Category: Education

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Land Grants or Land Grabs?

You may have seen a statement similar to this one on a university website:

NC State University . . . respectfully acknowledges that the lands within and surrounding present-day Raleigh are the traditional homelands and gathering places of many Indigenous peoples, including eight federally and state-recognized tribes. . . .

Such statements are not purely the result of gracious sentiments. NC State’s acknowledgment and many others were added after a troubling study appeared. It was “Land-Grab Universities,” published in 2020 by High Country News, an environmentally oriented nonprofit  newspaper in the West. [1]

I learned about this report from Stephen M. Gavazzi, a professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University and a strong proponent of land-grant universities. In 2020,  Dr. Gavazzi had just finished co-editing a book about the land-grants’ “virtuous mission of meeting community challenges and solving society’s problems.”[2]

But then he read the High Country News exposé. Continue reading “Land Grants or Land Grabs?”

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Riots over the Bible? Yes. In Philadelphia.

When we think of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, we think of the wars following the Protestant Reformation in Europe, especially in the 1500s and 1600s. The United States, we assume, has followed a policy of free expression of religion, as promised in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[1]

Sad to say, that is not true. I would like to share with you (briefly) the story of the “Philadelphia Riots of 1844.” In two episodes in May and July of 1844, pitched battles occurred between two groups: Protestant “nativists” (people, including clergy, who feared foreigners, especially Catholics and their “popery”) and Catholic newcomers, most of them Irish immigrants. As many as 58 people were killed—Protestants, Catholics, and members of the militia that was belatedly sent out to quell the riot. [2]

Historians tend to blame the “nativists” for starting and perpetuating the riots and the Irish crowd for bringing out guns and killing the first victim, setting the stage  for retaliation. Continue reading “Riots over the Bible? Yes. In Philadelphia.”

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Charlotte Hawkins Brown: Education Under Difficulties

The year 1901 was not a promising time for Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a young black woman, to return to her native North Carolina and teach in a mission school.

White supremacists had overthrown North Carolina’s Fusionist government in 1900. The new  governor was proud of the amendment to the state constitution that had “the deliberate purpose of depriving the negro of the right to vote, and of allowing every white man to retain that right.” [1] Schools were separate and unequal in spite of the 1896 Supreme Court decision that said they could  be separate if they were equal.

Yet, given that environment, Brown’s experience is not as grim as one would think. Her life is not only inspiring, but it also sheds light on the many people—black and white, from north and south—who tried to help southern blacks. They were unable or unwilling to challenge the power structure, but they went around it.

Brown’s life also illustrates the cross-currents in black education represented by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, both of whom Brown knew.

Continue reading “Charlotte Hawkins Brown: Education Under Difficulties”

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Silencing the Past: From the Haitian Revolution to American Correspondence Schools

Drawing or etching of the Haitian Revolution

We’ve all heard that history is written by the winners.  In his 1995 book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History,  Michel-Rolph Trouillot both agrees and disagrees. He shows that  historical narratives, such as the story of the Haitian Revolution,  reflect differences in  power—”the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals,” from the initial event to the written word.[1]

In other words, the people who shape history are not necessarily the winners. But they usually have some kind of power.

About a third of the way through his book I realized that I had discovered  such silences in my research on, yes, American correspondence schools. Continue reading “Silencing the Past: From the Haitian Revolution to American Correspondence Schools”

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Toward a (Small) Theory of History

A library with books and statues.

Historians, both famed and anonymous, have developed theories that try to explain the course of history. The “Whig theory” of steady progress  was widely shared until the horrors of the twentieth century demolished it. Marx’s theory of one class replacing another had a long run. The “Great Man” theory (now, Great Person theory) still has some adherents.

I too am trying to develop a theory of history, but not a grandiose one. I’m trying to figure out if there are consistent ways to better understand certain historical outcomes. Why was St. Louis an “also-ran” to Chicago? Why did so many orphans work in the early factories of the Industrial Revolution? Was soil exhaustion a contributor to the Civil War?

In answering such questions, I borrow tools from my friends the economists. Economists don’t spend a lot of time digging into the past but when they do they come up with surprising findings. When Deirdre McCloskey explained the scattered private fields in medieval England, she solved a mystery that had stumped historians for decades, and  Eric Edwards and Walter Thurman just revealed an explanation for the U. S. Corn Belt that historians have largely ignored.

So let me see if a few basic economic tenets can expand our understanding. Here are three important ones (from the book Common Sense Economics).[1] Continue reading “Toward a (Small) Theory of History”