This year marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Specifically, it is when the Continental Congress, the provisional governing body of the 13 colonies, adopted the Declaration of Independence.
It goes without saying that much has changed since then. But what would our founding fathers think of our society today? How should history, both past events and current, be taught in classrooms? To answer these questions more we’re joined by two Oregon history teachers. Jacqueline Pope-Brothers teaches U.S. government, AP Government and constitutional law at Sprague High School in Salem. Maurice Cowley teaches English and AP African American Studies at McDaniel High School in Portland.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We are now a little over a month away from the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and only a week or two away from the end of the school year. We were curious how history teachers have been thinking about this momentous anniversary, the challenges and the opportunities that it presents them as educators. So I sat down with two teachers to talk about our country’s founding, our ideals, and our reality. Jacqueline Pope-Brothers teaches U.S. government, AP Government and constitutional law at Sprague High School in Salem. Maurice Cowley teaches English and AP African American studies at McDaniel High School in Portland. I started by asking Jacqueline how she became a history teacher.
Jacqueline Pope-Brothers: So I was not very academic, especially in junior high, or middle school. My dad had me go to Lake Oswego High School because he lived there at the time and I was very against it. However, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I went from being like a D-F student to an A-B student all because of my teachers. And especially my social studies teachers that I had really connected with me and showed me that I had a place in our history and in our community. And so my sophomore year, I decided that I wanted to go into teaching and that’s been my path,
Miller: Because of the teachers you had.
Pope-Brothers: Absolutely.
Miller: Maurice, what about you? What made you into an English and history teacher?
Maurice Cowley: Yeah, it’s really similarly. I’ve always really loved reading and writing. It’s been the thing I’ve… like reading has been my favorite since I was very little, and …
Miller: When I just got you in the green room, you were nose deep in a book.
Cowley: Always. And then having similar experiences growing up with teachers who invested in me and saw, encouraged me in my brilliance that I didn’t really know that I had. And so I’ve always just wanted to be in a position to give back to young people and encourage them to learn and find value in their learning.
Miller: It’s interesting. So Jackie, do you feel the same way as Maurice? I mean, having that experience of having a teacher who changed the course of your life, who made you want to be a teacher, does that impact the way you think about the impact you could have on students?
Pope-Brothers: Oh, absolutely. And I remember being in high school and it was all because of Mr. Kepping, Gerrit Koepping, and he’s the best. And thinking, you know, if I could make a connection with one or two kids like I felt my teachers made with me, then I will feel successful. And I definitely have felt that throughout my career over the last 14 years, that when you are able to connect with kids that may otherwise not have that connection or support at home, or just maybe don’t believe in themselves or see what their potential is, it makes such a difference. And, being an educator, as Maurice said, when you get to do that, it’s incredibly special.
Miller: You’re nodding there, Maurice. Do you know when that’s happening?
Cowley: I think sometimes you can have a sense that, oh, this kid and I are connecting well day in and day out. And those are cool moments. I think there also are just as many times where I don’t really have that vibe. Like, there are bunches of quiet kids who are there every day who I’ll make an effort to connect with, but it doesn’t come naturally or easily. And you find out later like, “oh, you’re the reason I kept coming back.” or, “I really enjoyed being in your class. I love that you saw me or talked to me,” or whatever.
Miller But you only find that out years later or months later.
Cowley: Yeah, there’s, I mean, both happen and both are differently rewarding.
Miller: We could spend this whole time talking about the experience of teaching, but the reason that we wanted to talk with both of you today is because of just a fascinating, challenging time to be thinking about and experiencing history. I’m curious, Maurice, first, has the upcoming anniversary of the Declaration of Independence ‒ the 250th anniversary ‒ has it led you to do anything different in class this year?
Cowley: No. The class I teach is AP African American studies, and so we’re examining what has been the experience of Black folks from before colonization in Africa up until now. And that story is way bigger than our one country, and so we have talked a lot about the ongoing saga. We’ve talked a little bit about what’s happening now and projecting into the future, but mostly parsing through why are we here? More about what is this moment and how does our country function now and why would we expect that based on what we’ve seen previously?
Miller: Jackie, what about you? Has more of a focus… I mean, I’ve seen car commercials that mention the Declaration of Independence recently, and I’m sure there are others as well. And maybe there are always sort of fireworks. I mean, obviously there are always fireworks. It’s possible there have been advertisements that talk about the Declaration of Independence, but something different is happening now than I’ve seen. I wasn’t paying too much attention in 1976 when I was one. I’m curious if broadly, if the societal focus on a moment in our nation’s history has affected the way you’ve been teaching U.S. history and AP government this year?
Pope-Brothers I think so, because students and parents, and I think our society overall is a lot more engaged than maybe in 1976 because of the dissemination of information, as well as from top down what is kind of being provided as what is to be celebrated or noticed. I think that America 250 really is an opportunity for us to reflect on who we are as a country and not just where we started, but how far we’ve come and where we still need to go. Our founders, they created this system built around the idea of striving toward a more perfect union. And I think that phrase now matters more than it ever has before because it acknowledges the imperfection over time and that it was never achieved and still hasn’t been achieved today. And so I see us and in my classes, I try to talk about how America is this ever evolving project, and that we need to celebrate extraordinary progress we’ve made as a nation ‒ the expanding of certain liberties or broadening of participation in democracy over time ‒ by continuing to redefine who belongs in this American story or experiment. But at the same time, patriotism also means being honest about our shortcomings and being committed to improving them in the future.
Miller: Maurice, you’ve a lot of hmms and nodding there. What was going through your mind as you were hearing Jackie?
Cowley: I think just this idea that we started this interesting project with a promise or a hope of equality and liberty and freedom for all people. And the question that I always ask my students is like, at what point have we been successful in that? And the answer is really never. And even in thinking about getting ready for this conversation, thinking like, well, okay, if I were to go to therapy or on a date and be like, let me tell you all the ways that I am killing it in life, that would be a pretty terrible conversation. But reflection is to say, this is the truth about who I am and what’s going on and you can’t grow if we aren’t acknowledging shortcomings. We can’t do something different if we aren’t trying to assess, well, where are we a little bit off?
Miller: The news site The 19th had an interesting article about this issue that we’re talking about recently, about what it’s like to be teaching history now, and it talked about the challenge that history teachers face. It had this line: “The task of teaching in a politically divided nation that now holds a microscope to the founders, casting them as less than heroic slaveholders and capitalists, even as advocates for patriotic education urge teachers to exalt them as godlike heroes.” It was, it was interesting to see sort of these two poles as described here in The 19th, that the founders were either these sort of less-than heroic slaveholders and capitalists, or these godlike heroes. Jackie, how do you think about these two polls?
Pope-Brothers: Well, I think it’s easier for us as humans to put people in categories of good or bad, right? Instead of seeing the complexity of individuals, like good people can do terrible things or terrible people can do good things. And that’s what you just read, what it reminds me of. I think that’s kind of the easy way out to just categorize and have that be the end of the story rather than looking at the complexity of what the founders and the framers really brought to this American experiment.
Miller: Maurice, is there also an idea that young people, they can’t handle complexity, that we have to boil things down for them? Is that an adult notion of what young people can handle?
Cowley: Maybe, but not the adults that I talked to, like not the teachers that I work with. I think we’re always pushing for more complexity. We’re, in my classroom, certainly, I’m inviting students to think about, like it is really easy to say this person is bad or that is bad, but just to say, “okay, well, tell me what actually is not good and tell me, like, point out what they’re trying to do with this thing. Like what is it? What’s the ideal that somebody is trying to push or live up to? Where do they fall short?” The more complex an issue, the more fun and engaging our conversations are. It’s not very fun for everyone to be like, this person is bad. Well, now we just have to move on to the next thing because there’s no like back and forth. And so our kids are actually really good at that.
Miller: We asked folks on Facebook how the country’s early history should be taught. Barbara Gordon wrote. “More honestly and comprehensively than I was taught in the 1950s and 1960s as a public school student when the nation’s glories and positive achievements were emphasized and many of the negatives and horrors were glossed over.” For example, she wrote, “I was taught that the Civil War ended slavery, but not how practices such as redlining were instituted all over the nation in order to continue discrimination long after.” And John wrote, “The truth should be told, warts and all. No pleasant lies, no glossing over the hard truths of how this country came to be.”
Jackie, one thing that I’ve been wondering about is the focus on July 4th, 1776, the signing of the Declaration of Independence as opposed to other big days. I mean, I, as an American, I do recognize that it is Independence Day. It’s not like all of a sudden we’ve started focusing on the signing as a thing. This has been a thing for a long time. And I did recently learn that there is such a thing as Constitution Day that Congress established in the 1950s. But I didn’t know that until very recently. It’s not something… we don’t have barbecues on Constitution Day. What do you think about different kinds of days that we could celebrate from around the same time? That was what, 11 years after the signing of the Declaration was the ratification of the Constitution. I’m curious how you think about the days that we have chosen to focus on and the ones that we haven’t.
Pope-Brothers: I think it goes back to who’s in charge of making decisions at the time and what it means to be a proud American and how that’s evolved. You know, today, that pride comes from pretending sometimes for some that we are flawless, but I would say more so it’s that we are indeed flawless and that’s where I think a lot of pride personally for me comes from. Because it shows that growth, and also believing in our capacity to grow. When you look back in the history of our country, people were calling themselves Americans before even the Declaration was signed. So then if you’re thinking about certain days, and when does this identity, this American identity begin to develop, I think that becomes more difficult.You know, Constitution Day, you know, 1787, I think would be great if we actually celebrated it, but I think because of who was making decisions about celebrations throughout time, we’ll continue to see July 4th be that day for our country.
Miller: How do you think we should celebrate Constitution Day? It’s in September or so. I don’t even remember what day ‒ maybe you do, maybe you remember the day that it was ratified ‒ but what would be a good commemoration or celebration of that day?
Pope-Brothers: I mean, truly, it’s when we formed as a nation. So any sort of celebration around that. I guess, I’m not a party planner. I can’t think of the right answer here, but I think that that date is when, if we’re thinking about not just the idea of our nation, but the actual groundwork that we continue to come back to and that guides our nation, you know, with this document today, we should do something to commemorate it. Do you guys have any ideas yourselves?
Cowley: I’m also not a party planner at all. And I think…
Miller: Well, I mean, but it’s funny that you guys both use that word. It’s a great line, but I wonder if we’re talking about a party.
Cowley: Yeah. I think that we can and maybe should. Like there are things that are worth celebrating. We can’t pretend that just because we weren’t perfect in 1776 or on Constitution Day, you can’t pretend that those weren’t monumental days. And so I think the question isn’t, “should we celebrate?” The question more is “what are we celebrating? Like what is at the heart of this?”And one of my favorite readings to do with my students is the speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” Because it’s like, okay, this is a day. It happened. It’s worth, you are celebrating it. And at the heart of this celebration is a little bit of a lie or a misunderstanding?
Miller: You know, I’m glad you brought that up. I actually printed out some lines from the speech because I wanted to talk about it as well. So for folks who aren’t aware, this is a famous speech Frederick Douglass gave in July of 1852, “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” That’s sort of become the name of the speech. And he said this to a predominantly white audience of abolitionists, right? Okay, he says, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” He added this, “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.” Why did you bring that up?
Cowley: I think because it is… the 4th of July is the moment where across the country, folks want to say, this is when our country was born. This is like the most important of American days. And that’s in a sense true and that’s that oversimplification of what happened, right? That we aren’t celebrating freedom and independence for all people. We are celebrating a move towards independence and towards freedom for a lot of people. But if we aren’t willing to look at, well, who was excluded from that or who was not included, then we’re celebrating something that’s very false and it gives this like, everything is OK and there isn’t still work to do. There aren’t still people that we’re trying to include. Which is why I think it’s important to also think of, well, what are the other days that we’re celebrating? What other stories do we need to commemorate? Why things like Constitution Day and Juneteenth and Pride and like all of our other inclusive moments of celebration matter, because it acknowledges that for a lot of people, July 4th is the birth and for others it wasn’t. Those days happen throughout the year and throughout history, and some are yet to come.
Miller: I want to read part of another comment that we got on Facebook. This is from Donna Cohen, a former guest on the show and a civics teacher. She wrote this about our founding: “It was the first attempt at a large scale, albeit partial, democracy. The vast majority of the world consisted of empires and monarchies. The framers compromised because only one thing mattered, that the country survive. Under the Articles of Confederation, things were falling apart and there was a serious question as to whether we would continue. No one who signed the Constitution walked out and thought they had a perfect document, but they expected or hoped its flaws would be corrected in the future.”
She added this: “As Madison said, the institutions and laws of the country must be adapted, and it will require for the task all the wisdom of the wisest patriots.” She says, “It is the wisdom of the wisest patriots that we now desperately need to get get us back on track to reforming our political structures so that they can become a more truly representative democracy.”
Jackie, what has this year been like for you as a teacher? We’re almost done with it now. It’s time, I guess you can look back.
Pope-Brothers Well, it has been interesting, I can tell you that much. What I have found difficult in the last year or year and a half is with the dissemination of information and the changes in technology, as well as algorithms and how they influence our youth as well as everyone in our society. We continue to see more and more polarization of ideas and ideology and with what we’re consuming. So these echo chambers, when then you see that in the classroom, students come in after, you know, being on their devices or with what they consume at home, have very different perceptions of reality. And so, going back to what you were just saying, I think that it’s difficult to get back to having those individuals making a big impact on our society when the technology, algorithms, data, all of these things are really having an impact on our day-to-day lives and our individual perspectives.
Miller: Maurice, I saw you nodding there, so maybe then what I’m wondering is, given what Jackie just said, what gives you hope?
Cowley: I think the most hopeful thing about my students is their willingness to engage in critical thinking around why they think what they think and willingness to try on other perspectives, to engage with other perspectives, and to adjust their thinking.
Miller: It’s hard for anybody to do that.
Cowley: Yeah, it is hard. And I think that I have encountered students who are willing to go with me and like, “okay, well, what is that? If I think X, well, let’s apply that new thing to this new scenario. Let’s apply it to a different set of individuals. Does it still work there?” And for students to engage with each other and with me to say, “okay, well. What does this actually look like?” It’s easy to have a platitude. It’s way harder to actually consider what it means in multiple different parts of our society. And the fact that kids are willing to do that with me, that’s great. Like keep exercising that muscle. I don’t need you to land somewhere at 15 years old, but we do need to practice questioning our assumptions and being more well rounded in our inputs.
Miller: Maurice Cowley and Jackie Pope-Brothers, thanks very much.
Cowley: Thanks for having us.
Pope-Brothers:Thank you.
Miller: Maurice Cowley teaches English and AP African American studies at McDaniel High School in Portland. Jacqueline Pope-Brothers teaches U.S. government, AP Government, and constitutional law at Sprague High School in Salem.
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