In the New Haven Public Schools' 6th Grade Social Studies Curriculum, students are educated about the State of Connecticut and the history of the Civil War era in the United States. In their 8th grade year students once again turn their focus to the Civil War and Reconstruction in the third quarter of the school year. This disjointed and repetitive cycle of Social Studies education is in need of assistance and I believe that in a 6th grade classroom this unit is most applicable due to a combination of circumstances. Students already have background knowledge about the Civil War Era as a result of reading a book that is a part of their 5th grade literacy curriculum entitled, "The Brother's War," published by National Geographic. This text is a compilation of photographs and poetry from the Civil War era; it seeks to give readers a sense of the atmosphere of the nation during this crucial time in our history. The use of poetry and photographs gives students opportunities to use their analytical and inquiry skills while processing primary sources. This, combined with the focus in 6th grade Social Studies on the Civil War era, provides a great opportunity for teachers to build background knowledge in their students about this critical era in American history. This will allow students arrive in their 8th grade year well prepared to study Reconstruction and the racial discrimination that was faced by minorities in the legal realm post-Reconstruction.
In 6th Grade, curriculum focuses on our nation's founding and history through the early 20th century, but there is little attention paid to the struggle for basic human rights for African-Americans between the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1960's. Aside from their yearly discussion of who Martin Luther King was and what he stood for, students do not receive any instruction on the topic of civil rights. However, as part of the 5th grade Language Arts Curriculum students complete a unit centered on the book, Hana's Suitcase by Karen Levine, which chronicles the experiences of a young Czechoslovakian girl who was a victim of the Holocaust. One of the themes of this text is that the injustice done to the Jewish people was terrible, that they were treated as something less than human, and that building awareness about the injustices and discrimination done in the past will illuminate the present so that students can recognize injustice in the world around them.
The combination of this overarching theme of injustice and discrimination coupled with the Social Studies focus on American History provides a unique opportunity in 5th grade to present students with a curriculum unit that illustrates the sad fact that injustice is not something that America has been immune to, but rather had inherent discrimination as part of our legal and economic structure since the founding of our nation. This proposed unit will analyze the history of legal discrimination in the United States toward major ethnic and racial groups, with particular focus paid to African-American and Latino-American and American Indian history. The struggle for human rights and equal protection under the law with regards to public education will be researched through a variety of class activities and readings, drawing from primary sources, Supreme Court opinion excerpts, and other collections of race-related legal analysis and documents. This unit focuses on several historical incidents and court cases including Plessy v. Ferguson, Lum v Rice, and Mendez v Westminster.