Teacher Brings Multicultural View to History Classes

To some students in Angela Newman’s history classes, every month feels like Black History Month.

While experts debate how to incorporate minority cultures into the curriculum and textbooks slowly change their European outlook, Newman and her students at Newport Harbor High School are a living laboratory in educational diversity.

World history classes include lessons on Mali as well as ancient Greece. Some unexpected details about Abraham Lincoln come out in U.S. history. And the results are sometimes surprising for everyone involved.

“I am an African American, and so I definitely teach history from an African American perspective,” said Newman, the first black teacher in recent memory at Newport Harbor, where there are 12 black students among the largely white population. “Some of the kids really resist hearing information they’re not used to, so it’s been quite an experience--for all of us.”

Her 11th-grade U.S. history students were taught in earlier grades that Lincoln was a uniquely moral man who freed blacks from slavery.

They have a new lesson to learn in Newman’s class. Newman, 30, teaches that Lincoln’s goal--as he stated in his first inauguration speech--never was to end slavery in the South. It was to save the union. He did not believe blacks were the equal of whites, he said in another speech, and felt the races should live separately.

Although Newman saw herself as teaching about Lincoln and the Civil War in their full complexity, some of her students saw the lessons as the vilification of a hero. If Abraham Lincoln isn’t worthy of reverence, who is?

Nationwide, educators and ethnic organizations are challenging curricula that assume most of the worthwhile literature and history are rooted in Europe. Columbus discovered America, students were taught 40 years ago; now they are more apt to learn about his role in subjugating Native Americans who had been here thousands of years. San Francisco public schools last year became the first in the nation to mandate that students read books by nonwhite authors.

Newman’s students are mostly unaware of these politics. In the classroom, where they struggle with astonishing new information, educational theory becomes personal. Many immerse themselves in these thought-provoking ideas. Others squirm as Newman pokes holes in their long-held beliefs.

They also strike back. Some students are so discomfited, Newman said, that they challenge her openly. They wonder aloud at her teaching ability or flatly state their disbelief in a lesson. One student said: “You just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

In interviews, her students almost unanimously say she is an excellent teacher. They like the way she makes them think. But some say the emphasis on oppression of African Americans is overdone.

“It seems like she ties everything back to how we [mistreated] the blacks over the last century,” said Chad Smith, 16. “I mean I’m sorry that happened, but it’s past generations that did that--it’s history--and it’s like she can’t release it.”

In the heat of one classroom debate that seemed to link past sufferings of blacks to whites today, Justin Reynolds, 16, said he felt pushed to the limit.

“Finally I just said out loud in class, ‘I take no blame for anything my ancestors did!’ ” Justin said.

Or the time she posited the idea that all Americans, except American Indians, are immigrants.

“I mean, I must be like a fifth-generation American,” Justin said. “I do not see myself as an immigrant.”

But students also see that much of their previous education has come from white teachers with their own, perhaps unconscious, perspective.

“In eighth grade, the teacher taught that blacks sold each other out in Africa and it was their fault for being enslaved,” Justin said. “He said if they hadn’t done that, it never would’ve happened.”

That teacher was a white man who grew up when segregation was still legal and largely accepted, Justin said. He was a product of his times.

Whose emphasis do they believe to be more historically accurate?

Chad smiles. “Miss Newman’s. I mean come on, it was definitely the whites’ fault.”

Although everyone knows exactly what side of an argument Newman favors, she is open to their points of view, the students said.

“She gives you both sides of an event and lets you decide for yourself,” said Jodi Dieckmeyer, 16. “It’s not like she just teaches one side of things and then requires you to agree with her.”

Their teacher’s cultural outlook comes through most clearly in her desire for them to empathize with suffering--a lesson they do not always accept.

Sneers aimed at one student during class led to a lecture on how such snickering starts wars. First people start talking about one set of people, then it becomes all right to hate them. Then it becomes all right to hurt them.

“That was just too much,” said Brandy Dutor, 16. “We were like, huh? A war from teasing? No, that’s going too far.”

Another lesson had better success. Newman brought freshly picked cotton for the students to remove the seeds. They had to clean the bolls as slaves did before the invention of the cotton gin.

“It was really hard, because you couldn’t tear the cotton boll,” the same requirement slaves had to meet, said Taighe Concannon. “But it helped show you what the slaves went through.”

Still, discussing the humiliations and hardships of slavery with an African American teacher, they said, was a little weird.

“It felt funny because, well, you didn’t want her to be hurt,” Concannon said. “You didn’t want to offend her.”

Principal Bob Boise sees that as a learning experience for his students.

When he hired Newman, Boise said, he had every expectation that her cultural perspective would be reflected in her teaching. He also anticipated that it would be a new and sometimes uncomfortable experience for some students.

“All teachers bring their backgrounds to the classroom and she’s no different,” Boise said. “The point is, she’s a great teacher.”