"Why Not Talk About It?" Teaching Japanese American Incarceration in Elementary Classrooms

• In Event: 31.028 - New Directions in Curriculum Inquiry: Pushing Against/From/With the Margins

Abstract

Difficult histories create disequilibria that challenge existing historical understandings, as such histories may refute broadly accepted notions of the past, may connect with problems in the present, and often involve collective, and even state-sanctioned, violence (Gross & Terra, 2018). Although approaches to the teaching of difficult histories such as the Holocaust and slavery may be contested, secondary educators rarely debate the need for such content to be included in the curriculum. At the elementary level, however, educators are often hesitant to teach difficult histories to young learners. The extant scholarship on the teaching of difficult histories in elementary classrooms is largely focused on instructional resources and strategies rather than empirical analyses of how teachers and students may engage in such work.

Asian critical race theory (AsianCrit) frames this study of Japanese American incarceration as a difficult history. Drawing from critical race theory, which recognizes racism as a normalized part of American society ever-present in U.S. institutions (Delgado, 2013), AsianCrit attends to the unique racialized history and experiences of Asian Americans (Chang, 1993). The AsianCrit tenet of (re)constructive history underscores the importance of (re)constructing an historical Asian American narrative in recognition of Asian Americans’ exclusion from American history (Museus & Iftikar, 2014). This exclusion is especially notable in social studies curriculum, where Asian Americans are the most invisible of all ethnoracial groups (Hartlep & Scott, 2016).

This paper describes a comparative case study of two elementary teachers, Elyse and Virginia, who taught Japanese American incarceration to their second and third grade students in an urban Southern school district. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and student and teacher artifacts. Both teachers began their units with the same picturebook, The Bracelet, and ended with small group projects that utilized technology. In spite of these similarities, the teachers enacted different affective dynamics with their students. Elyse emphasized social-emotional learning and avoided issues of racism and historical context, while Virginia’s instruction was centered on social justice learning and explicit discussions about discrimination in the past and present. At the end of the unit, Elyse’s students demonstrated competency with technology and historical facts but showed little compassion for the Japanese American objects of their stop-motion animations. In contrast, Virginia’s students were deeply empathetic of the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated, connecting their experiences to those of Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. However, neither Virginia nor students explicitly named racism as the root cause of the discrimination and injustice faced by both groups.

This study offers a rare examination of how young learners can engage with difficult histories as well as the pedagogical complexities faced by their teachers. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s Muslim ban, for which Trump believed Japanese American incarceration served as a precedent (Keneally, 2015). In this post-truth era, educators at all levels must begin to engage with and critique difficult histories such as Japanese American incarceration as to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to work toward a more perfect Union.

Author

• Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, Iowa State University