Review: Becoming US, National Museum of American History
Last year during Day 2 of Smithsonian National Education Summit 2023, I learned about Becoming US, a high school level educational resource for teaching about immigration and migration. Based on the website of the National Museum of American History (NMAH), this resource includes classroom guides, a glossary, news articles, videos, and activities for students in 8th through 11th grade. Although I have not been in that demographic for over ten years, I enjoyed learning about these topics from multiple perspectives.
About
This section explained that the online project began in 2014 as part of a collection of in-person, print, and virtual productions. The exhibit Many Voices, One Nation and accompanying book Many Voices, One Nation: Material Culture Reflections on Race and Migration in the United States provided much of the material found in the lessons.
Resources
Preparing to Teach
NMAH provides a forty-four page guide made in collaboration with Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The guide focuses on critical conversation, which it defines as “any discussion about the ways that injustice affects our lives and our society… the relationships between identity and power”. Section I of the guide lays the groundwork for conversation, including vocabulary and mini-essays from teachers on how they approach difficult topics. Much of this information reinforced what I learned about identity and intersectionality while watching the MasterClass Black History, Black Freedom, & Black Love. The other two sections of the document give tips on how to manage classroom debates — or heated discussions in any environment — and places to find additional resources, such as Justice In Schools by Harvard University and Confronting White Nationalism in Schools by Western States Center.
Essential Understandings
The next section of the website described ten categories that teachers and students needed to know when discussing migration and immigration in the United States. Many of these topics were straightforward but viewed in a different light than traditional teaching methods. The section emphasized that Cultures are “a result of human socialization” and always evolving, rather than a single correct way of doing life. A discussion on Science, Technology, and Society described the importance of migration for exchanging knowledge, innovation, and technology, just as archaeologist K.D. White described in his book on Greek and Roman Technology.
Immigration Milestones
This PDF highlighted major immigration laws in the United States, beginning with the U.S. Constitution, which included the Three-Fifths Compromise allowing states to count three-fifths of their enslaved population towards numbers for their congressional representation, while the Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed free White people to become U.S. citizens after two years in the country plus court approval. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, last mentioned on this blog during the Parked at Home 2024 webinar #3: Amistad National Recreation Area, gave the United States control over 55% of the land formerly belonging to Mexico. Other highlights included the opening of Ellis Island (last mentioned during Parked at Home 2023), Japanese Incarceration during World War II, and changing levels of security at U.S. borders.
Deliberation Guides
To help students learn through interaction, Becoming US provides five topics for debate. Each top includes a guide for teachers, a guide for students, and connections to educational standards set by the National Center for History in the Schools, National Council for the Social Studies, and Common Core State Standards. During the debate on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, students must decide if the Californios — Mexicans living in what is now the state of California — should embrace the new opportunity to become an American citizen, passively resist the unfair rules brought on by American leadership, or actively fight against “manifest destiny”. When debating the Hart-Cellar Act, a change in immigration law signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson as a reaction against the growing power of the USSR during the Cold War, students must choose to allow more refugees into the United States, treat every country equally, or limit immigration to heighten national security.
For the Pueblo Revolt, a 1680 rebellion by Native Americans in what is now the southwestern United States against Spanish colonizers, students must decide whether they would start a just war against the Spanish, work peacefully to restore justice, or launch a surprise attack. Students pretend to be members of the NAACP having conversations with the Boston School Committee (BSC) about whether they should operate separate but equal schools for Black and White students, integrate schools immediately, or allow Black communities to have significantly more control over their own schools. Finally, when understanding how the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) explored options for reparations following Japanese incarceration during World War II, students must decide whether to ask for restored honor rather than monetary reparations, giving financial compensation directly to victims and their descendents, or creating a communal fund for all Japanese Americans.
Glossary
This substantial PDF included a myriad of terms also found in the Diversity Style Guide and was helpful to me as a writer. Unfortunately, the formatting of the PDF seemed unfinished and made the document difficult to read.
Units & Case Studies
This section utilized materials available in the popular Smithsonian Learning Lab, which unfortunately is slow to load. This resource includes links to Library of Congress, PBS webpages (sometimes listed as 404), and old Smithsonian Education websites (sometimes listed as “temporarily offline”). While the iframe containing all the Smithsonian Learn Lab material seemed like a good idea in theory, the materials are incredibly difficult to read in practice. Despite these drawbacks, the five overarching themes of Borderlands, Education, Policy, Belonging, and Resistance, each with three history lessons, given an incredible overview of immigration and justice in the United States.
Borderlands
The first lesson, “Borders with the World: Mexican-American War and U.S. Southern Borderlands”, overlapped with the Deliberation Guide on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and contained identical information.
The second lesson, “Borders within the United States: Indian Boarding Schools and Assimilation” was a fascinating look at multiple perspectives on education for Native Americans. While the content was not as dark as the AIA Archaeology Hour webinar “Finding the Children” by Kisha Supernant, the curriculum included “The School Days of an Indian Girl” by activist Zitkala-Sa, who was taken from her mother to attend boarding school, in parallel with the essay “Kill the Indian. Save the Man” by Richard Henry Pratt who founded Carlisle Indian Industrial School. (Incidentally the final boarding school of all-around athlete Jim Thorpe.)
“Borders and Community: Early 20th Century Chicago Neighborhoods and Ethnic Enclaves” shows the massive population growth in the United States between 1900 and 1965, along with how this development shaped the city.
Education
The first two lessons, “Separate Is Not Equal: Fight for Desegregation” and “Resistance to School Desegregation: Busing Crisis” overlapped with the deliberation on school desegregation. The third lesson relied heavily on a 2014 television episode and series of articles from the PBS show Frontline. While the information was current when Becoming US was originally created, this entire section could use an update.
Policy
“Us Vs. Them: The Chinese Exclusion Act” focused on “yellow peril” or xenophobia targeting Asian immigrants during the mid-19th century. The inclusion of political cartoons from Harper’s Weekly concerning the Johnson-Reed Act limiting Chinese immigration was a great touch. “A New America: The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965” overlapped with the deliberation segment of the same name. I appreciated the link to text of the original act, although I think this would be a boring read for the average high schooler. “A Dream Deferred: DACA” was a highly political look at Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and did not include articles or video past 2017. This section needs to be reworked with up-to-date information.
Belonging
“Hidden Histories: Mexican Repatriation During the 1930s” included great resources about this neglected historical topic, as thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were removed from the United States during the Great Depression. The YouTube video summary on the historical event and the interview episode from the radio show Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross on NPR were great inclusions, as was the surprisingly good article from Teen Vogue, although I question its use of the word “cisheteropatriarchal” in the opening paragraph, as this type of academic language turns off reluctant readers. The lesson “Racism and Removal: Japanese Incarceration During World War II” overlapped with its deliberation, while the “Targeted at Home: Islamophobia” felt more like a prolonged public service announcement than a lesson, although the videos and article were well done.
Resistance
I wish I knew what “Fighting for Freedom: The Stono-Rebellion and Free Frank McWhorter” was about, but all the information was stuck in an unreadable iframe. “Native Resistance Then and Now” linked to a fascinating timeline on the American Indian Movement hosted by Zinn Education Project. While Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” is excellent, I did not think it belonged in the lesson, as Adichie is a Nigerian writer, and I am sure American Indian writers have plenty of their own material to share. Finally, “Strength in Solidarity: Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Campaign for Fair Food” described the slavery-like conditions for produce harvesters in modern America. The main article for this lesson, written by The New York Times, was trapped behind a paywall.
Conclusion
I was amazed by the amount of effort put in to uncovering forgotten stories in American history and presenting them in a way suitable for students ages thirteen to seventeen. However, due to the age of some of the material and difficulty with using the technology, some lessons were not as impactful as they could have been. I hope a future update clears up these issues to allow this comprehensive, informative, and well-researched project to be accessible to an even wider range of potential learners.