OPINION: Teachers are being deprived of chances to learn Black history and bring lessons back to the classroom
观点：教师正在被剥夺学习黑人历史并将课程内容带回课堂的机会。
As an English teacher in 2016, I spent a summer in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society learning about abolition and women’s suffrage efforts. I held original bills of sale of young Black girls from the 1840s in my hands, and I left inspired to teach high school juniors about the legacy of enslavement.
作为2016年的一名英语老师，我曾花了一个夏天在布鲁克林历史协会的档案馆里学习废奴运动和妇女争取选举权的历史。我手中拿着19世纪40年代年轻黑人女孩的原始贩卖单据，离开时深受启发，准备向高中十一年级学生讲授奴隶制遗留的影响。。
Another summer, I looked at 160-year-old whip indentations on the sides of live oak trees in Savannah, Georgia, as I learned how the Gullah/Geechee people have protected their African linguistic, culinary and spiritual traditions since the time of enslavement, due to their relative isolation in the Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. NEH summer teacher institutes helped me explore how Black people have fought to carve a future for themselves.
另一个夏天，我在佐治亚州萨凡纳市，看到了活橡树树干上160年前鞭子抽打留下的凹痕，同时了解到古拉/吉奇人自奴隶制时代以来，如何由于在佐治亚州和南卡罗来纳州沿岸海岛上的相对孤立，而保护了他们来自非洲的语言、饮食和精神传统。国家人文基金会举办的暑期教师研习班帮助我探索了黑人如何为自己的未来奋力开拓。
I had these opportunities thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which supports universities and museums across the United States in creating courses for K-12 teachers in which they learn historical concepts they can take back to their classrooms.
我能拥有这些机会，要感谢国家人文基金会。该基金会资助美国各地的大学和博物馆，为幼儿园到高中十二年级的教师开设课程，让他们学习历史概念，并将其带回自己的课堂。
The institutes gave me hands-on experiences and far more context for books on the American literature list, like “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” I fear other teachers will not receive such opportunities, as these transformative programs are now in danger.
这些研习班让我获得了亲身实践的体验，也为美国文学书单上的书籍（如《弗雷德里克·道格拉斯生平自述》）提供了更丰富的背景。我担心其他教师将无法获得这样的机会，因为这些具有变革意义的项目如今正面临危险。
Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.
相关阅读：从幼儿园到高中的课堂上发生的事情很多。欢迎订阅我们每周免费的教育新闻简报，了解K-12教育动态。
Alongside a series of drastic cuts, the NEH has announced funding for a new round of grants linked to more conservative thinking, and NEH’s website recently announced that it is only interested in “U.S. history more generally.” It noted that NEH-funded programs cannot promote a particular ideological point of view or “preference some groups at the expense of others.”
在一系列大幅削减预算的同时，国家人文基金会宣布将资助新一轮与更为保守的思想相关的项目拨款。该基金会官网最近还表示，只对“更广泛的美国历史”感兴趣，并指出受其资助的项目不得宣扬特定的意识形态观点，也不能“以牺牲其他群体为代价来偏好某些群体”。
Gone are popular race-based teacher education programs such as “Sailing to Freedom: New Bedford and the Underground Railroad” and “The Immigrant Experience in California Through Literature and History.”
诸如“扬帆自由：新贝德福德与地下铁路”以及“通过文学与历史看加州移民经历”这类广受欢迎的、以种族为主题的教师教育项目，已经不复存在。
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has slashed NEH’s $210 million budget and redirected that money for the federal government’s proposed Garden of Heroes, where future visitors will stroll through lush lawns to peer up at 250 life-size sculptures.
政府效率部大幅削减了国家人文基金会2.1亿美元的预算，并将这笔资金重新分配给联邦政府拟建的“英雄花园”。未来，游客将能在那里漫步于葱郁的草坪上，仰望250座真人大小的雕塑。
The irony? One of the Americans slated to be featured in the Garden of Heroes is Araminta Ross, most commonly known as Harriet Tubman. Even if her likeness is created with a hammer and chisel, the U.S. government has been quietly undermining the history she represents by removing funding for people to learn about some of the very people it hopes to carve into monuments. Honoring her with a statue means little if we simultaneously erase her from classrooms and public memory.
讽刺之处在于：即将被纳入英雄花园的美国人中，有一位名叫阿拉明塔·罗斯，她更为人熟知的名字是哈丽特·塔布曼。即使她的形象是用锤子和凿子雕刻出来的，美国政府却一直在暗中削弱她所代表的历史——撤回了用于让人们了解某些人的资金，而这些人恰恰是政府希望刻成纪念碑的对象。如果我们同时将她从课堂和公共记忆中抹去，那么为她立一座雕像也就毫无意义了。
Related: How do we teach Black history in polarized times? Here’s what it looks like in 3 cities
在充满分歧的时代，该如何教授非裔历史？以下是三座城市的实践案例。
Some state legislatures and local school boards throughout the U.S. are taking cues from the federal government by curtailing discussions of race and Black history in classrooms, under the guise of avoiding “divisive topics” or protecting the comfort of white children. Teachers in these districts will no longer have access to federally or state-funded professional learning about more expansive histories, even though teachers like me can attest to how the federally funded NEH summer institutes helped us deepen our students’ understanding of historical events.
美国一些州的立法机构和地方学校董事会正以联邦政府为风向标，以避免“引发分歧的话题”或保护白人儿童的情感舒适为名，限制课堂上关于种族和非裔历史的讨论。这些学区的教师将无法再获得联邦或州政府资助的、涉及更广阔历史内容的专业学习机会。然而，像我这样的教师可以证明，由联邦政府资助的国家人文基金会暑期研习班，是如何帮助我们加深学生对历史事件的理解的。
These cuts and changes are misguided and dangerous. They erase the diverse and complex history of the United States, undermine democracy through silencing marginalized voices and misinforming the public, and harm Black and Latine students through a lack of representation in their curriculums. They also doom future generations to repeat mistakes of the past, because if we do not learn about the harms of anti-Black structures like Jim Crow, redlining and mass incarceration, we risk reincarnating those legacies under different names.
这些削减和改变既是被误导的，也是危险的。它们抹去了美国多元而复杂的历史，通过压制边缘群体的声音和误导公众来削弱民主，并因课程中缺乏代表性而伤害了黑人和拉丁裔学生。它们还将注定让子孙后代重蹈过去的覆辙，因为如果我们不了解如吉姆·克劳法、红线划界和大规模监禁等反黑人制度所带来的危害，我们就可能以不同的名义让这些遗留问题卷土重来。
In the absence of NEH support, we must find our own ways to enrich students’ understanding. Teachers — particularly Black teachers — have long found ways to show their students the value of comprehending complex histories so that we can shift from a public that profits from Black suffering to one that invests in Black life.
在国家人文基金会支持缺失的情况下，我们必须自行寻找途径来丰富学生的理解。教师们——尤其是黑人教师——长期以来一直在设法向学生展示理解复杂历史的价值，以便我们能从一个从黑人苦难中获利的公众社会，转变为一个投资于黑人生命的社会。
As a research scholar, I study how Black teachers who teach social justice often find themselves teaching fugitively, employing subversive ways of talking about histories that are ignored or erased in mainstream teaching. Professor Jarvis Givens framed this concept in “Fugitive Pedagogy.” He opens the book with the story of history teacher Tessie McGee, who in 1933 was instructed by Louisiana’s all-white Department of Education to teach from the mandated curriculum, which was required to be openly displayed on her desk. Instead, McGee often taught passages from a book hidden in her lap. That book was by Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black history.
作为一名研究学者，我研究的是那些从事社会正义教育的黑人教师如何常常发现自己不得不以“逃亡式”的方式教学，采用隐秘的手法来讲述那些在主流教学中被忽视或抹去的历史。贾维斯·吉文斯教授在《逃亡式教学法》一书中阐述了这一概念。他在书的开篇讲述了历史教师泰西·麦基的故事：1933年，路易斯安那州全由白人组成的教育部门指示她按照规定的课程大纲授课，并要求将大纲公开摆放在她的书桌上。然而，麦基常常偷偷讲授藏在大腿上的一本书中的段落。那本书的作者正是黑人历史之父——卡特·G·伍德森。
As the federal government continues removing funding, we look for hope and resistance. Last summer, several of the cut NEH teacher summer institutes either rallied for private funding or taught their seminars virtually, refusing to let the federal government erase these histories. Today, academic groups, including the American Historical Association, are fighting the NEH budget cuts in the courts.
随着联邦政府持续削减资金，我们在寻找希望与抗争。去年夏天，几个被取消资助的国家人文基金会教师暑期研习班要么积极筹集私人资金，要么以线上方式开展研讨班，拒绝让联邦政府抹去这些历史。如今，包括美国历史协会在内的多个学术团体正在法庭上对抗国家人文基金会的预算削减。
Building monuments isn’t a substitute for accountability. A statue cannot teach or inspire growth, but education, especially the story of Black resistance practices, can do both.
建造纪念碑并不能替代问责。一座雕像无法教书，也无法启发成长，而教育——尤其是黑人抗争史的故事——却能做到这两点。
Historical figures like Harriet Tubman don’t just need monuments; they need people to understand why they are monumental.
像哈丽特·塔布曼这样的历史人物，不仅需要纪念碑，更需要人们理解他们之所以伟大的原因。
Jessica Lee Stovall is an assistant professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the director of The SoulFolk Collective.
杰西卡·李·斯托瓦尔是威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的非裔美国人研究助理教授，同时也是“灵魂民谣集体”的负责人。。
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