Educators grapple with lessons on anniversary of riot
On Jan. 6, the anniversary of last year’s riot in which hundreds stormed the U.S. Capitol intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election results, teachers across Humboldt County spoke with their students in history and social studies classes about it.
Ferndale High School social studies teacher Jeff Michael taught a lesson on source evaluation and media literacy aimed at improving students’ critical thinking and educating them on how to analyze and consume news media.
“This will be done by having students evaluate the event through left-, center-, and right-leaning sources. The goal is to get students to understand what pushed people to commit the illegal acts they did on Jan. 6, how it was reported at the time, and how it is shown today. By using this divisive event as a point in time to study the cause and effect, I am hoping students will be able to see the bigger picture of what sources they trust and how to better evaluate sources,” Michael said in an email to the Timesstandard.
This strategy of media analysis was one of the recommendations for teaching about the riot by Facing History and Ourselves, an educational nonprofit with the goal of demonstrating the connection between past injustices and current issues. The group notes on their website that
breaking news coverage is often incomplete, and that students need to understand what misinformation is and the difference between legitimate and illegitimate sources.
Within 18 hours of the publication of the page with tips for educators, it had 100,000 page views — a level of interest that Abby Weiss, who oversees the development of the Facing History and Ourselves’ teaching tools, said was unlike anything
the group has seen before.
In the year that has followed, Weiss said, Republican lawmakers and governors in many states have championed legislation to limit the teaching of material that explores how race and racism influence American politics, culture and law.
“Teachers are anxious,” she said. “On the face of it, if you read the laws, they’re quite vague and, you know, hard to know actually what’s permissible
and what isn’t.”
Teaching about the riot, in which five people died, one was killed and 138 police officers were wounded, could be a politically fraught topic, and the Northern Humboldt Union High School District taught it in their history classes to help students improve historical analyzing skills regardless of political affiliation, according to Roger Macdonald, the superintendent for the district.
“Like everything else with history, we provide the facts to students and help them see how that ties into our democracy and our constitution,” he said. I talked to a couple of our history teachers today, and they said it was good, it was an important lesson, and students were receptive.”
Racial discussions are hard to avoid when discussing the riot because white supremacists were among those descending on the halls of power, said Jinnie Spiegler, director of curriculum and training for the Antidefamation League. She said the group is concerned that the insurrection could be used as a recruitment tool and wrote a newly released guide to help teachers and parents combat those radicalization efforts.
“To talk about white supremacy, to talk about white supremacist extremists, to talk about their racist Confederate flag, it’s fraught for so many reasons,” Spiegler said.
He said it’s a matter of discerning fact from fiction.
“I think the biggest takeaway from the whole thing is that it’s not a lesson where you’re talking about politics, per se,” Macdonald said. “It doesn’t really matter what your political persuasion is, it’s a matter of taking a look at the facts and how people responded and helping the kids understand that, and understanding how our democracy is supposed to work.”
“It’s tremendously important for students to be able to analyze events as they happen, and to be able to look back and critically evaluate that. It helps them make decisions themselves and helps them understand our nation,” he added.