![\"Abolitionist](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Abolitionist-1787.jpg\")
<\/a>Abolitionist icon, by Josiah Wedgewood (1787)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cThe Constitution is interesting \u2013 the slavery part I mean \u2013 how they never mentioned the word slavery and the inequality with the 3\/5 compromise.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0This is what makes the Constitution worth studying,\u00a0according to some\u00a014-year-old students in California. \u00a0I teach these eighth graders in addition to about 90 others and if there\u2019s one thing that I\u2019ve learned over the years, it is that even though teens are rarely intrigued by dry constitutional history or basic civics lessons, they are equally appalled and fascinated by how the Framers handled the various slavery controversies in 1787. \u00a0Because of this intrinsic interest, recent events in the news, and my own desire to have my students engage in thoughtful academic arguments, I created a lesson<\/a> in which students would answer an investigative question: Was the Constitution Pro or Anti-Slavery as it was written in 1787? <\/i>\u00a0For academic historians, this is a familiar discussion that just heated up all over again now that political figures like Bernie Sanders and scholars like Sean Wilentz have weighed in with provocative opinions. \u00a0As soon as I encountered some of these recent debates<\/a> on HNN and elsewhere, I knew I had to try to teach it because my students would be full of their own engaged and unique perspectives. \u00a0While far from perfect, this lesson<\/a> provided my students the structure and support to revisit a primary source of history, the Constitution, as well as analyze excerpts from two very recent secondary sources \u2013literally dueling \u00a0op-eds from September 2015– which present conflicting arguments regarding the\u00a0Framers and their original intentions over\u00a0the future of slavery.<\/p>\n As part of their assessment of this lesson, students wrote paragraphs outlining their arguments to answer the historical investigative question. \u00a0Unsurprisingly, the majority of my students came to the conclusion that the Constitution should be viewed as pro-slavery<\/a>. \u00a0Their sense of right and wrong at age fourteen is very clear\u00a0and the existence of slavery alone makes the Framers guilty in most of their minds. One student in particular argued<\/a> it was pro-slavery because he believes the delegates made sure that no living slaveholder would ever suffer real consequences from abolition. \u00a0What he meant by that claim was that compromises, such as putting off the possibility of abolishing the slave trade until 1808, simply guaranteed any still-living former delegate would probably \u201cbe too old to benefit from slavery.\u201d \u00a0While the \u201ctoo old\u201d may be an exaggeration, the evidence is valid in that it shows he understood that those who were making the rules had a stake in the decision and that many of the slave-owning Framers still had many years to benefit from the system they supported.<\/p>\n When assessing my students\u2019 work I am hoping they will be able to present a claim supported by historically significant and reliable evidence, following the model of academic historians. \u00a0Some were\u00a0successful<\/a>, others were not. \u00a0But that is OK, because the lesson was in October and they are still learning. \u00a0Those who were less successful simply restated claims from the historians they read and did not explain the significance in their own words or connect their thinking back to historical evidence. \u00a0Those who were more successful analyzed evidence and connected back to the primary source. \u00a0For example, one student who argued<\/a> in support of the Constitution as an anti-slavery document, suggested \u201cthe Constitution is anti-slavery because the delegates never said the word slavery. They never used the word slavery because they never wanted to give in to the idea that humans could be viewed as property.\u201d \u00a0<\/i>She was one of the only students to put forth this argument in her writing. \u00a0Other students saw this evidence as weak, but she agreed with Wilentz\u2019s assertions that the principle of \u201cproperty in men\u201d was not tolerated by the Framers. \u00a0<\/i>The strength of this analysis came from her ability to effectively cite Wilentz\u2019s argument, explain his thinking, and then connect it back to the Constitution.<\/p>\n The other major challenge with asking students to compose historical arguments related to such high-interest topics is that they often cannot separate their initial impressions or pre-conceived notions from the academic argument. \u00a0Many of my students read the title of Wilentz\u2019s article and scoffed, \u201che is wrong, slavery existed past the signing of the Constitution, therefore, the Constitution must be seen as pro-slavery.\u201d \u00a0This is why the public debate was helpful and why it\u2019s necessary to have students go back to the primary sources before and after reading secondary sources. \u00a0One student argued<\/a> the Constitution was pro-slavery because \u201cslavery<\/i><\/b> was not abolished, only the slave trade. Slaveholders could still get more slaves from the slave women and this is the real reason the Constitution was both racist and pro-slavery.\u201d \u00a0<\/i>While it is clear this student had passion for his claim (hence the bold<\/b>), his analysis was still grounded in evidence from a primary source \u2013 remaining an evidence-based argument.<\/p>\n How did my students come to such authoritative (if debatable) judgments? \u00a0Here is where I think the value of online platforms for academic history really can become transformative. \u00a0In this instance, they enabled a middle school teacher in California to engage and present a complicated and practically real-time\u00a0historiographical debate in terms that provoked some serious historical thinking from an eighth grade social studies class. \u00a0Without this heated online discussion among academics, I never could have provided such an\u00a0experience for my\u00a0students.<\/p>\n Stephanie Kugler teaches at Bridgeway Island Elementary School (K-8) in West Sacramento, California. \u00a0She has received permission from the students and their parents to share their work on this assignment with a wider online educational community. Stephanie\u00a0can be reached by email at\u00a0stephanie.kugler@gmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Stephanie Kugler \u201cThe Constitution is interesting \u2013 the slavery part I mean \u2013 how they never mentioned the word slavery and the inequality with the 3\/5 compromise.\u201d\u00a0This is what makes the Constitution worth studying,\u00a0according to some\u00a014-year-old students in … Continue reading