THH Director’s Comments on Choices Curriculum

Kate Shuster, director of the Teaching Hard History (THH) Project, provided the following comments on five Choices Program curriculum units from our U.S. History Series.

Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies

First edition. August 2020. Visit unit webpage here.

Overview of Alignment

Of all the Choices units we reviewed, this one was most closely aligned with the Hard History framework, covering 15 of the secondary framework’s 22 summary objectives. Nine of the framework’s 10 key concepts were covered at least 35 times in the unit, which only misses discussion of the ways that slavery was imbued in the country’s founding documents.

Major Strengths of the Unit

This unit is an excellent example of an instructional approach that, if used thoroughly, would introduce students to almost all of the high-level content in the Teaching Hard History framework. It is especially notable how much information is presented in such a compact unit. The student-facing readings include many well-chosen maps and images which bring richness to the presentation.

The unit goes over and above many similar instructional packages by including much detail on Indigenous peoples and Indigenous enslavement. In addition, it provides a much-needed global lens to help students understand slavery in the United States in context. The discussion of the Haitian Revolution and its consequences is essential and often overlooked or omitted even in major market textbooks. The unit is extremely strong in making connections to the present, including discussion of redlining and the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the unit does not shy away from teaching about the roots of racialization and notions of white supremacy that grew out of slavery and continue to shape the present.

How the Unit Fits with the Choices U.S. History Series

The Racial Slavery unit provides essential and foundational instruction. As such, it provides critical scaffolding for the other units in this series, including The American Revolution: Experiences of Rebellion; We the People: A New Nation; The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty; and Westward Expansion: A New History.

In turn, those units supplement the material presented here. For example, We the People: A New Nation takes students through an understanding of the ways that slavery was embedded in the country’s founding documents, and Westward Expansion: A New History brings its lens strongly to bear on the West and Southwest, including other examples of Indigenous resistance such as the Pueblo Revolt. The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty continues themes of agency and resistance begun in the Racial Slavery unit.

Teachers would do well to consider using these units as a series to take full advantage of the excellent presentation of Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies.

The American Revolution: Experiences of Rebellion

First edition. March 2016. Visit unit webpage here.

Overview of Alignment

This unit is well-aligned with the relevant parts of the Teaching Hard History instructional framework. It intersects with the framework in the appropriate timeframes, including 23 points of alignment with the Teaching Hard History key concepts and coverage of 11 summary objectives.

Major Strengths of the Unit

Beginning well before the American Revolution, this unit weaves the threads of settler colonialism and slavery through one of the most-studied eras in United States history. The selected sources include documents from this century, continuing thematic evolution across chronological borders.

Several other features of the unit recommend it for teachers interested in accomplishing the goals of the Teaching Hard History framework. First, because the unit begins before the European invasion, it contributes to an emphasis on Indigenous agency while subsequently recognizing the diversity of the new nation. Second, the unit takes care throughout to discuss slavery—not only as a reprehensible crime, but as essential to the ways that early colonies imagined and executed their successes. The American Revolution: Experiences of Rebellion shows how the trade in enslaved people was essential to both British and colonial economies.

The unit’s portrayal of the war itself explicitly includes loyalist and freed Black people, including in the centerpiece student perspective-taking exercise. Finally, the unit works to scaffold student learning about the social construction of our notions of freedom.

How the Unit Fits with the Choices U.S. History Series

The American Revolution unit serves a key function in the overall flow of this Choices series. Educators working to cover the Teaching Hard History instructional framework will find value in bringing the resources and strategies in this unit into dialogue with the materials in the Racial Slavery unit. As educators move on from the United States’ founding, they will find themes of racism and settler colonialism woven throughout units across the series, including the details of the Constitution (via the We the People: A New Nation unit) and the subsequent events of the Civil War and westward expansion, included in their relative units.

Students need to understand that while the American Revolution was about freedom, it was about a complicated and socially constructed version of freedom that still impacts us today. This unit sets the table for that discussion.

We the People: A New Nation

First edition. May 2018. Visit unit webpage here.

Overview of Alignment

This unit is well-aligned with the relevant parts of the Teaching Hard History instructional framework. It has solid coverage of Summary Objectives 4-13 and covers nine of ten key concepts. There are 26 sites of intersection with the Hard History key concepts overall, making this unit a good choice for teachers who want to take students through the middle part of the Hard History framework. The unit’s’ section on slavery and the Constitution is an especially important supplement for educators working to teach the full history of slavery in what is currently the United States.

Major Strengths of the Unit

Starting after the Revolutionary War, this unit approaches the early days of the new republic with a critical and careful eye. It does not shy away from the many ways that slavery and settler colonialism influenced both the nation’s founding documents and all that came later—including the domestic trade in enslaved people, the War of 1812, industrialization in the Northeast, and the American Colonization Society. It discusses the lived experiences of Black people in the early republic in areas such as religion and culture. Finally, the unit does an excellent job of discussing the diverse experiences of Indigenous people in several places, ranging from the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Indian Removal.

Refreshingly, this unit also encourages students to think about evolving concepts of race and racialization as antecedents to mass enslavement. This will pair well with the more in-depth treatment offered in the Racial Slavery unit.

How the Unit Fits with the Choices U.S. History Series

We the People: A New Nation integrates well with the other units in this series to cover the entirety of the Teaching Hard History instructional framework. Educators who use this in combination with the Racial Slavery unit will find that many of its core concepts and ideas continue here. As learners look forward to trace the twin legacies of slavery and settler colonialism, they will find a natural transition to the Civil War and Westward Expansion units.

Those units also supplement the material presented here. For example, Westward Expansion picks up close to where this unit leaves off, adding depth and richness to the discussion of Indigenous peoples. Themes of agency and resistance among enslaved people will be reinforced by the content in the Racial Slavery and The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty units. Finally, these units will stitch together well with the inclusive narratives that the American Revolution unit offers to learners.

Westward Expansion: A New History 

Second edition. January 2021. Visit unit webpage here.

Overview of Alignment

This Choices unit aligns to the Teaching Hard History framework in several important ways. First, it is excellent for teaching most of the key concepts—there are at least 19 places where the unit aligns with those ten crucial ideas. Second, it covers 11 summary objectives. Third, it does an exceptional job of complementing the other units in this Choices series to tell the history of what is now the western United States and the stories of Indigenous peoples.

Major Strengths of the Unit

This unit offers teachers and students a history of the United States’ westward expansion that will supplement—and likely contradict—what is in many U.S. history textbooks. It is an extremely valuable resource for educators hoping to cover the Teaching Hard History framework with their students. The lengthy exercise about the area currently known as Southern Arizona is particularly useful for teachers hoping to help students understand the diverse and complex contexts in which Indigenous peoples encountered Spanish and United States settlers.

There are many other features to recommend this unit, including the following:

• Teaches historical thinking skills with its emphasis on “telling new stories about the past” while encouraging learners to make connections to the present.
• Directly asks students to consider the ways that the absence of Indigenous voices has shaped the controlling understanding of westward expansion.
• Relates the contours of the United States’ Indian policy backwards and forwards in time to show through lines.
• Discusses cultural assimilation, its consequences, and critics.
• Recognizes and acknowledges the diversity of Indigenous peoples, especially with the case study that focuses on specific groups and their encounters with the Spanish and the United States.
• Shows the global context and effects of westward expansion.

How the Unit Fits with the Choices U.S. History Series

The Westward Expansion unit provides essential support to extend the conversations begun in earlier units, such as the Racial Slavery unit and the Civil War unit, to make connections to the rest of what is currently known as the United States. It covers Indigenous resistance dating back to the Pueblo Revolt, and connects decisions related to slavery to multiple units, as it shows the reverberating impacts of slavery throughout the territories.

The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty

First edition. May 2019. Visit unit webpage here.

Overview of Alignment

This unit showed one of the highest levels of synchrony with the THH framework, intersecting 37 times with the Teaching Hard History key concepts and touching 13 summary objectives. It is an essential part of the Choices U.S. History Series, connecting units such as Racial Slavery to Westward Expansion. All U.S. history textbooks cover the Civil War; few balance depth with word economy to such a great effect.

Major Strengths of the Unit

The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty begins with slavery and settler colonialism. Starting with the Northeast and Southeast’s dependence on slavery, the lens appropriately turns toward Indian removal. As with other units in this series, an effort is made to treat Native nations as distinct communities. The entire second part of the unit examines abolitionist and resistance movements, including Nat Turner’s rebellion and the Haitian Revolution. As the unit turns to legal and legislative reactions it intersects in significant ways with the Teaching Hard History framework. This is not a military history; instead, it is a set of strategies and readings to help learners achieve a deep understanding of the causes of the Civil War. Student-facing readings offer diverse perspectives that complement resources recommended in the Teaching Hard History framework. The “Letters from Black Soldiers and Their Families” lesson is especially valuable.

How the Unit Fits with the Choices U.S. History Series

This unit provides an indispensable bridge between the earlier units and Westward Expansion: A New History. It is also a valuable supplement to textbooks that may focus more on the military history of the Civil War than its socio-political elements. In addition, the unit continues to weave central narratives of dignity, humanity, and resistance of the oppressed through its telling, For example, this is the third unit to discuss the Haitian Revolution—an under-explored and incredibly important piece of the story we must tell about the history of enslavement. Learners who have thought about the social construction of freedom (dealt with in earlier units) will find that idea picked up in this unit’s treatment of the wordsmithing around slavery and freedom.

High school teachers seeking to cover the benchmarks of the Teaching Hard History framework will find that this series of units offers near-complete coverage. The Civil War unit is an essential part of that series.