Students

So, because it was my last section of class on a warm Houston afternoon, I felt it was only best that we enjoy our seminar on one of the lawns surrounding the HCHS campus. And, because it was a Friday, students have what we call free dress (no uniforms). A quick thanks to Patricia Jonesi of the Advancement Office for the action photo.

My Advanced Placement United States History classes are currently reading The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter. In this historical intellectual work, Hofstadter brings a more revisionist and realist account of America’s historical figures. Hofstadter, much like the Marxist historian Howard Zinn, taught and wrote history from the perspective of non elites: blacks, women, immigrants, workers, and the poor, who all had a voice in shaping the hitherto. Moreover, Hofstadter looked to end the romantic notions often used to describe the traditional white male hero of American culture (or WASP). Here is an example from his chapter on the founding fathers:

Democratic ideas are most likely to take root among discontented and oppressed classes, rising middle classes, or perhaps some sections of an old, alienated, and partially disinherited aristocracy, but they do not appeal to a privileged class that is still amplifying its privileges. With a half dozen exceptions at most, the men who had considerable position and wealth, and as a group they had advanced well beyond their fathers.

One of the things Hofstadter writes about in his many works is that of economic elitism. He described the framers as men who created an oligarchy via the Constitution only as an instrument to protect their wealth and status; he questions the democratic nature of the founders and the Constitution. Moreover, he discusses history as an entity protected by the very men who used it to enhance their status. Here, as also noted by Sociologists James Loewen, Hofstadter is critical about the intent for which elites built this (United States) country upon; he works to do what most textbooks and movies fail to do, eliminate historical heroification of dead white men.

On this warm Friday afternoon, my class as a whole drew a negative conclusion regarding good old Teddy Roosevelt. Hofstadter painted a picture of T.R. as a racist, imperialist, and one lost in the romantic notion of the gilded age.

Below: A section of AP US History takes a break after a productive exam review at the home of Hannah Turner (2008). See blog post here.

Above: Get together and cookout at Carson’s home (Dec. ‘07)

Above: AP US History students over to the house for an end of the year cookout & gathering on Memorial Day 2008.

Above: German student Charlotte Hartman in ‘06-’07

From left to right: William Morgan, Mark Cotham, Juliana Santiago, Sarah Voncannon, Haily Thomas, Shelby Callaway, and Kate Kreager. AP US History Sunday Review (2007).

Graduate Lerin Rutherford and Edward Carson [July 3rd, 2008]

Katrina Ong with Carson’s new puppy Abbey at Starbucks (July 9th, 200