(NAME-MCE) Mississippi schools to roll out civil rights curriculum

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Mississippi schools to roll out civil rights curriculum

Mississippi education officials have announced a plan to test a civil rights
curriculum in K-12 instruction and make the instruction mandatory in the
future. Four school systems have requested to participate in a pilot
program, and the state Department of Education will name the selected
schools in September. Mississippi, the setting for many pivotal events of
the civil rights movement, may be the first state to offer specific
instruction on the topic.

http://wjz.com/wireapnewsmd/From.kindergarten.to.2.1137108.html



Aug 20, 2009 2:53 pm US/Eastern
Miss. Making Civil Rights Part Of K-12 Instruction

*SHELIA BYRD, Associated Press Writer*
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- In Mississippi, where mention of the civil rights
movement evokes images of bombings, beatings and the Ku Klux Klan, public
schools are preparing to test a program that will ultimately teach students
about the subject in every grade from kindergarten through high school.

Many experts believe the effort will make Mississippi the first state to
mandate civil rights instruction for all k-12 students.

So far, four school systems have asked to be part of a pilot effort to test
the curriculum in high schools. In September, the Mississippi Department of
Education will name the systems that have been approved for the pilot. By
the 2010-2011 school year, the program should be in place at all grade
levels as part of social studies courses.

Advocacy groups such as the William Winter Institute for Racial
Reconciliation and Washington-based Teaching for Change are preparing to
train Mississippi teachers to tell the "untold story" of the civil rights
struggle to the nearly half million students in the state's public schools.

"Now more than ever we are engaged in national debates about race and so
much of those debates are impoverished in their understanding of history,"
said Susan Glissen of the Winter Institute. "We want to emphasize the
grass-roots nature of civil rights and the institution of racism."

The program is the outgrowth of a law passed in 2006 by the Legislature. The
state moves forward with statewide implementation in the 2010-2011 school
year, despite an unsuccessful legislative effort to eliminate the plan this
year.

Education officials looked to other states for a model, but couldn't find
one that included anything as comprehensive as what Mississippi has in mind,
said Chauncey Spears, who works in the curriculum and instruction office of
Mississippi's education agency.

The Education Commission of the States didn't know of any other state with a
such a program, although it does not specifically track social studies
curriculum.

Some states, including Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas, have placed an
emphasis on civil rights instruction. New Jersey created an Amistad
Commission to ensure the history of slavery is taught in schools.
Pennsylvania's Philadelphia school district requires students to complete an
African-American history course before graduation.

"We're behind time. Students don't know about what blacks did. They're not
taught anything about culture, about our history," said Ollye Shirley, a
member of the commission created to research the Mississippi curriculum and
a former Jackson Public School board member.

History classes will be the proving ground this fall, and the state Board of
Education is expected to approve expansion of the curriculum to other grade
levels in spring 2010, said Spears.

Deborah Menkart, executive director of Teaching for Change, said it's
important to help students understand that Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. weren't the only important figures in the civil rights movement.

"The traditional version would be that it started in 1954, thereby leaving
out the fact that a lot of groundwork had to be done before that," Menkart
said. "The other part that gets left out is the struggle for economic
justice, like Martin Luther King's support of the sanitation workers in
Memphis."

Menkart said classrooms activities can include role-playing in which
students act out civil rights protests such as the Montgomery bus boycott,
improving their critical thinking and social interaction.

Those are the types of lessons being taught in Vickie Malone's "Local
Cultures" class in the McComb School District, which began civil rights
studies before the law was passed. The state's curricula will be modeled, in
part, after the district.

Classroom assignments for Malone's students, who sit around tables rather
than desks, include interviewing local activists, questioning their
relatives about their role in the fight for integration, or studying the
plight of migrant workers. The students are reading "Mississippi Trial,
1955," a fictionalized account of the murder of Emmett Till, a Chicago youth
who was mutilated in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman.

Kindergartners in McComb are introduced to the subject through lessons on
diversity, discussing differences such as hair texture and skin tone, Malone
said.

"It helps kids understand that however you are that's a great way to be,"
Malone said.

Spears said the curriculum changes don't require new textbooks and teachers
will be allowed to develop their own lesson plans. There will be added
achievement goals for students. For instance, high school students should be
able to evaluate the impact of the civil rights movement in expanding
democracy in the U.S.

Spears said teachers can also call upon people in their community who lived
through these historic events.

"There are people in local communities who can give great insight into the
civil rights movement. There are various things that teachers can do to
incorporate this into their classrooms."