History teachers featured on radio
A panel of Los Angeles history teachers tackles the meaning of patriotism on a radio show that will air Saturday. The show, Deadline L.A., is co-hosted by L.A. Times education writer Howard Blume. In addition to taking on patriotism, the panel discusses problems with the teaching of history and the challenge of incorporating current events into the teaching of history.
The teachers on the panel are Alan Kaplan and David Steiner from Hamilton High and Steven Burr from Palisades High.
In the recorded broadcast, Burr, who is African-American, tackles head on the question of whether black students should feel patriotic toward a country that, through most of its history, enslaved their ancestors and excluded them politically and economically.
His answer is yes -- although, he added, that answer is easier to justify in 2008, when a black man could become the next U.S. president. Burr also makes distinctions between authoritarian patriotism, nationalism and the civic virtue of a true patriot.
This group of teachers is not the sort to hold back. Steiner was the subject of a June profile in The Times that recounted how the death of Robert F. Kennedy set his life adrift. Steiner talks about the importance of dissent. The assassinations of the 1960s taught him, he said, that a better world will never be presented as a gift. It must be fought for through activism, which, for him, means teaching students how to think.
Kaplan's aggressive classroom approach once got him into trouble when a small group of parents interpreted his teaching style as racism. That dispute dissipated when a much larger group of students, parents and colleagues -- from a rainbow of ethnicities -- defended him as a teacher who challenged students to question assumptions and become critical thinkers. He said his students must earn the right to an opinion by doing the work, by learning the history that would inform their views.
The show will air at noon on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara. The show also will stream live at kpfk.org and can be downloaded after the broadcast.
--Howard Blume
