Slavery: Not Quite Gone with the Wind
I met up with a teacher the other day that has the privilege of introducing the Civil War to her fourth graders each year. The word “introducing” is a little misleading, however. I live in Georgia where natives, no matter the ethnicity, are born with “The War” ingrained in our souls. We can’t escape it, we can’t deny it – it’s always there. Some of our earliest collective memories are filled with the statues around the town square, old family photographs; we hear the stories and see the preserved battlefields that dot our landscape. I haven’t met a fourth grade student yet who doesn’t know something about the Civil War, but the fourth school year is designated by the Georgia Social Studies curriculum to formally learn about the war in an academic setting. My own personal experience indicates students are eager to begin the process. A formal study helps them connect to family stories still lingering around the Sunday dinner tabl...