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 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.
Above: My campus mentor group
Above: Edward Carson with Emily Driscoll
Above: Dillon and Carson chatting history.
Above: Students who elected to spend their morning with me at NCSS. Thanks Shelby See (under my right arm) for the picture. [Nov. 15th 2008]
Above: AP United States history seminar discussion [Fall 2008].
Above: Get together and cookout at Carson’s home (Dec. ‘07)
Below: Memorial Day gathering at Carson’s home with students (Spring 2008)
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).
Kate Kreager, my top student in AP European history and this year’s valedictorian, delivered an excellent speech to her peers. Kate, who will attend the University of Texas Phase II honors program in the fall, is set to study history. She will probably return and take my job. That gives me four years to enter the national market.
Katrina Ong, the class of 2009 class president and one of the most interesting students I have taught, will study at Vanderbilt University in the fall; I cannot count the number of excellent conversations I have had with Ong.
Below: Matt and Scott
