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Showing posts from September, 2019

Critical Literacy in the History Classroom

By Alyssa Binns Gunderson, published on August 20, 2019 in the Auburn Citizen We are living in the midst of a huge shift in the way the world records and understands history. In the earliest days of human civilization, history was shared through oral tradition. Stories were used to create a shared understanding of the world and how it works. As humans progressed, history became a written narrative, with people whose education and circumstances allowed, sharing their observations, opinions and impressions on paper. As printing developed and publishing became an industry, this information was further filtered through the lenses of those who had the power and capital to distribute it. In America, this means that until recently, history has been funneled through the privileged minds and hands of wealthy or middle class white men. I don’t mean to imply that women and people of color haven’t passed along their own histories — we certainly have — but when we look back on the iconic heroes o...