Civil Rights Added to Schools’ Curriculum
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August 14, 2009
Mississippi students will study civil-rights history this year as part of a pilot program that will fully integrate civil-rights education into the state’s U.S. history curriculum by next year.
On May 15, the state Board of Education approved the new U.S. History framework, which school districts can voluntarily adopt this school year before becoming required for the 2010-2011 school year. That decision came nearly three years after state lawmakers passed a bill calling on the state to include civil rights and human rights in its K-12 curriculum.
The same bill created the Mississippi Civil Rights Education Commission, which brought together academics, educators and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement to help develop the curriculum. The commission wanted to use civil-rights history to bridge the gap between classroom and community, explained commission chair Susan Glisson.
"It's not just a matter of working with local school systems," Glisson said. "It's also a matter of helping to develop advocates amongst parents and community members for the curriculum. We want local stories—which are crucial and important to the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi—to be included in the curriculum. And you have to have folks who can come forward and tell those stories outside of the school walls.
Glisson, executive director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, said that the new curriculum is both more historically accurate and more empowering for students.
"So much of the way civil-rights history has been taught before is based on the "savior" narrative, the idea that some amazing charismatic leader has to come in and help you save your community," Glisson said. "That's just not accurate civil-rights history. The Civil Rights Movement was accomplished by ordinary citizens...we can learn from them how to accomplish social change on our own. That's what this kind of good teaching will do: show students how they can change their communities for the better."
The state Board of Education will solicit voluntary participation from school districts in the next week, Glisson said. Teachers in those districts, along with others who may be interested, will then have access to training and web resources to acquaint them with the new curriculum.
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