The Peoples’ Curriculum On Social Studies!: Focused on Our Why (Part 2)
Written by: Sondrea Singleton & Terrence Pruitt
PART 2: On This Work
“The narratives that students receive, or fail to receive, in a Social Studies curriculum have the potential to either condition students to accept the status quo or to fuel students to imagine and develop anew — learning from the failures, lessons learned, and triumphs of the past. That is the ultimate goal of our work. We want to empower future generations to build societies where humans flourish and thrive.”
On Social Studies
2020, and to be quite honest this first leg of 2021, was filled with a plethora of narratives concerning the value of human life, the true cost of racialized oppression, the fragility of the “American Dream”, the exploitative lean of our economic systems, and the importance of leadership centered in and with the people. The last year has gotten across to us quite clearly, that the status quo in no way serves us. The american status quo was built on the dehumanization and exploitation of human beings, so it has been and will continue to be harmful to the people. 2020 also taught us that we have generations of folx that have been “schooled” in myths, misconceptions, and misinformation. This “schooling” in our opinion, has opened the door for this recent rash of faux news folx who are willing to believe, support, and disseminate any myths that continue to prop up white supremacy and human exploitation. We believe that many of these myths began in classrooms — particularly social studies classrooms. We see Social Studies as a narrative factory! The narratives that students receive, or fail to receive, in a Social Studies curriculum have the potential to either condition students to accept the status quo or to fuel students to imagine and develop anew — learning from the failures, lessons learned, and triumphs of the past. That is the ultimate goal of our work. We want to empower future generations to build societies where humans flourish and thrive.
The Peoples’ Curriculum On Social Studies seeks to reinvest in historically disadvantaged communities, clear the air about wrongful land appropriation, and dismantle the white supremacy and american exceptionalism that is deeply rooted in the soil of American social science curriculum. Our goal is to support educators who want to dig deep into the niddy and gritty of American history. As creators of social science curriculum, we believe that Social Studies curriculum should provide an understanding of narratives, culture, and history without the presence of American exceptionalism and white supremacy. Additionally, The Peoples’ Curriculum communicates the value in developing and maintaining community resources and cultural wealth. If the purpose of curriculum is to equip scholars with the tools they need to flourish as citizens of democracy, then emphasis has to be placed on the narratives, representations, imagery, and truths of historically disadvantaged folx and communities.
The Peoples’ Curriculum will work to humanize Black bodies rather than commodify. Our curriculum will name those who are nameless and silenced in traditional American Social Studies curriculum. By building a Social Studies curriculum that is centered on racial healing and truth seeking, we will dismantle the Afro-Pessimism that is woven into the fabric of Social Science curriculum today. Current curriculum is ridden with American exceptionalism and Afro-Pessimism that does the work of upholding white supremacy in schooling and educational experiences by commodifying and criminalizing Blackness and erasing the history and culture of Indigenous folx. We believe Social Studies curriculum, or any curriculum for that matter, should not re-traumatize and act as an ally to oppression. We want to place high value on Social Studies curriculum because it is one of the areas where minoritized students begin to connect their identities to their schooling experiences. We hope to give educators and practitioners the tools to critically engage their students with content that is engaging, sustaining, and restorative in their classrooms. Furthermore, with this curriculum we want to do away with harmful social justice and anti-racist curriculum trends, that surfaced and re-surfaced during 2020 and 2021, which attempt to make cosmetic changes to curriculum rather than shifting towards truth telling and centering the lived experiences of marginalized folx.
Oftentimes, school personnel and parents feel that students are too young to learn about racism and it’s shape-shifting tendencies, but story-telling is captivating and is a tool The Peoples’ Curriculum will use to appropriately explain historical movements about migration, enslavement, theft, and the development of civilization at multiple levels. Social Studies curriculum should be alluring, honest, and deemed valuable, categorizing it as anything other does more harm to students of color than good. For educators who understand that racism is real and thrives in the pillars of white supremacy that uphold school buildings, The Peoples’ Curriculum is for you. We believe that The Peoples’ Curriculum will cultivate space for conversations and dialogue around shared experiences, activism, and community collective knowledge.The purpose of this curriculum is to reaffirm students. Providing students with curriculum based on historical events while continuing to do the work of oppression is an injustice. Quite frankly, we believe this curriculum is the starting point to a good education. That is to say, The Peoples’ Curriculum provides students with knowledge, language, and other tools to assist them as they begin to define what being a citizen in democracy, and citizen of the world, looks like for them.
