Critical Learning: Unearthing and Uplifting the Untold Narratives
As a Virginia citizen, I was receiving countless messages from gubernatorial campaigns on the issue of critical race theory (CRT) being taught in K-12 public schools. The spectrum ranged from teachers being trained professionals to parental choice. As a PhD student studying sociological institutions and inequalities, I have used CRT to investigate social phenomena that were previously studied using social theories that did not capture racial experiences. As a result of past social research not fully incorporating the study of race, societal assumptions were built that were embedded in policies and practices that perpetuate inequalities among specific populations.
I say this to make the point that my elementary school-aged children are not learning racial theories. I am confident that my children are learning multiple U.S. and world history narratives to have a diverse understanding of society instead of a sole narrative. My children are learning the critical thinking skills to understand the diverse world that surrounds us.
As I reflect on my own educational experience in a rural part of Northern Maryland, I reflect on missed opportunities to gain critical thinking skills. For example, I had an eighth-grade choir teacher not cast me in the school production of Grease because no one looked like me in the movie. Fortunately, my parents were able to teach me the skills that set Grease to take place in Los Angeles in 1959, five years after Brown v. Board of Education, California was one of the last states to fully desegregate when it was established bussing policies in the 1970s. While my music teacher’s belief that there were no Brown and Black characters in Grease, there was no discussion around why that was the case or the use of imagination to create a production during an era that was more representative of the current student population. Our country’s history and societal structures are complex and diverse. Therefore, teaching these lessons require more than one storyline if we want our children to be full of learning and navigating the complexities of our world.
As we prepare to celebrate Veterans Day on Thursday, I want to provide another example of how we can use a counternarrative to fully understand U.S. history. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion women were the first and only all Black female Women Army Corps (WAC) unit to serve overseas in World War II. Led by LTC Charity Adams Early, 824 women were assigned the impossible task of sorting warehouses of millions of pieces of mail stored in Birmingham, England, that were addressed to personnel serving in the war—not only did the battalion complete the mission under physical and emotional conditions, they cleared a six-month backlog in three months. Despite being assigned a “remedial” task of mail sorting, it was not lost on the women on the importance of their mission by creating the motto, “No Mail, Low Morale.” These women volunteered to serve to provide emotional morale to the men serving on the front lines of the war, despite the country’s infrastructure embedded with policies to reduce women and people of color as less than equal. In fact, when the unit returned home from deployment in 1946, there were no ceremonies, awards, or GI Bill benefits awarded to the women.
The context of when and how the Six-Triple Eight served our country and how they were treated during and following their service is just as, if not more important than the service itself. Just as I learned the context of high school complexities in Los Angeles during the 1950s, I am reminded that I should do the same when reflecting and honoring veterans on Thursday and throughout the year. It’s on us to ask “whose stories are not being told? Why are they not being shared? How does surfacing these stories bring new meaning to our understanding?” While this learning approach is not CRT per academic definitions, it is a form of critical thinking that we are all responsible for doing if we are to make our communities genuinely diverse and inclusive by not allowing the historical inequalities to repeat themselves.
