American History:  Muckrakers
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Progressives Can Teach Us about Ourselves: |
| The purpose of education is to see the worst of the world-- don"t fool yourself about the facts--and see that it can be organized in such a way that one can like [the world]. |
In the lesson I tell of now, about what is called the Progressive Era, we would be studying some of the ugliest facts of late 19th and early 20th century US history. I knew my students felt this time was far removed from their lives and problems, and the one way they would want to learn about it, was for them to see what the Aesthetic Realism method makes clear--that the subject had to do with themselves, through the opposites; and in this instance, centrally through the opposites of for and against.
In the chapter on the Progressive Era in our textbook
The
Americans, authors Jordan, Greenblatt and Bowes write:
| As cities and industries grew, the need for social reform and government regulation became overwhelming. Certain factories, such as the meat-packing plants, had become horrors both for the workers and for consumers of their products. Since these industries did not regulate themselves, it was time for the government to intervene. [P. 537] |
But far from intervening, the government actually supported the owners, using the army to brutally put down strikes.
In this lesson we learned about the courageous men and women called muckrakers --who fought against the unjust living and working conditions and for greater justice to working men, women, and children. And a big reason my students became excited by the subject and learned it well is that they saw it was about the question they and everyone has: How should we see what’s ugly and unfair? Should we use it to hate everything and feel superior? Or can we be against something accurately as a means of being for people and reality?
I put the word "muckraker" on the board and asked, "What is muck?" "Dirt" said Mei Li Chan. "Mud," Olga called out. And a rake, I said, stirs up the dirt. I asked, "Have you ever wanted to stir up dirt about someone?" At first there was silence, but after a few moments hands began to go up. Carla said she had a fight with her best friend, "and I told the other girls things she did she didn’t want anyone to know." Charles admitted, "Sometimes I tell things about my brother so my mom gets mad at him."
The important question, I said is, "What is our purpose? When we stir up dirt--or are against something--is it to have contempt, to get a false importance for ourselves by making less of someone else, or it is in behalf of greater justice to people?"
We learned about some of the muckrakers. Ida M. Tarbell wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company, describing John D. Rockefeller’s devious, cutthroat
| methods of eliminating competition. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a novel about people who worked in the meatpacking industry, exposing the unsanitary conditions under which meat was packaged. John Spargo described the inhuman conditions children as young as six endured laboring in the mines. Jacob Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives, with words and photographs showing the |
John D. Rockefeller |
Jacob Riis |
unbearable conditions in our very own
city's slums. These men and women were writing about some of the "worst
of the world," dealing with ugliness– children maimed and even killed by
unsafe machines, disease rampant in the city because whole families lived
in airless one room tenement apartments in neighborhoods that had no or
inadequate sewage.
"Was it only dirt they were trying to stir up?" I asked, "Or did these writers want to stir the consciences of people? Was their purpose to say, 'Aha, see how rotten the world is--how rotten people are?' Or were they passionately against the |
| injustice and for people getting greater justice? The students weren't sure. I read these sentences from our textbook: "[Some people] felt that the muckrakers were making people discontented by pointing out what was wrong with society. The muckrakers felt that unless people got angry at social wrongs, they would not fight for change" (p.538). And that is actually what occurred. With all the objection to what they were saying, increasingly articles by the muckrakers began to appear in some of the most popular magazines of the day: Ladies Home Journal, McClure's, Cosmopolitan. |
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These opposites of for and against confuse everyone. For example, the confusion showed in the way my students could go from hugging each other at the beginning of class to making sarcastic, disgusted comments.
Early in my teaching career I was troubled by the way I was for and against my students. I could go--in a heartbeat--from carefully and patiently explaining something to yelling and making demeaning comments, which confused my students and made them angry. Each time, I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again, but it did, and when, in an Aesthetic Realism consultation, I spoke about this, my consultants asked how I saw people as such. Did I feel I was made of superior intellect and sensibilities? Did I see my students as worthy of understanding as much as a person in history--say, Thomas Jefferson, or even George III? They asked me to write a soliloquy of a student I was having trouble with, and I saw that this young person had a whole life I hadn't granted--as real as my own--and that my job was to be for the best thing in him--his own desire to know and be fair. This was the beginning of a revolution in my life and my teaching.
2. For and Against Are with Self and World
This is how it happened. I read these sentences
from John Spargo's "Bitter Cry of the Children," about young boys
laboring in Pennsylvania coal mines:
| Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. ... The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrible shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. ... Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was [clear] and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and rivers. Within the [coal] breaker [where the children worked] there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything. |
There were audible gasps. "Children shouldn't have to do that!" called out Juan. Amanda had a lot of feeling as she said, "It’s horrible, some of them died!" Every student was listening attentively. Point # 19 of An Aesthetic Realism Manifesto about Education states:
| The subject that interests students most, whether teachers see it or not, is ethics. ... Eli Siegel has defined ethics as "the study of what the world outside of yourself deserves from yourself." |
That means ethics is a oneness of self and world. My students were thinking about people in the world outside of them--those children--and what they deserved.
About Spargo's description, I said: "This makes for a lot of feeling, but is it factual?" And we listed specific facts Spargo documents: "cramped positions" that made the children "bent-backed like old men," "boys mangled and torn."
"Spargo doesn’t just say conditions were bad," I explained, "he describes them very carefully. And what do you think people felt reading this?" "Mad!" Charles called out, and others agreed. I asked them if they thought this writing would have the same effect if Spargo was less vivid, left out the details. No way, they said. "You’re getting the dirt," I pointed out, "but is it different from the way you described yourselves before?"
"Way different," said Mario. Amira Ahmed said, "We wanted to make trouble for someone; he's trying to help those boys." They were seeing that horrors could be described vividly, for the purpose of people’s lives being better. And I asked them which they wanted for themselves-- "making trouble for people" or "helping them." "Definitely helping," said Amira. And I heard another student say, "Me too!"
There were no notes being passed, no heads on desks. And
they were eager to hear more. I read from
The Jungle by Upton
Sinclair:
| There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. ... These rats were nuisances and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke. |
| My students were appalled. "Upton Sinclair
is clearly against something," I said, "but is he for anything." "Sure,"
said Mei Li "he wants things to change." That's right I said and asked,
"Do you think this shows respect for people?"
"Oh yeah," said Charles, and other students agreed. They were seeing Yes! You can be against something not to be disgusted, but because you want to be clear, see it exactly, in order to have the world and people better off. And this did happen. I told the class that at first President |
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I didn't ask my students to read The Jungle, but some weeks later I noticed that many of them had gotten the book and were reading it. I respect very much how they changed throughout the term. It was dramatic! At the end of the semester they were no longer the agitated and bored young men and women of a few months earlier. And they showed they wanted to be fair to US History and people.
Very soon after the late bell rang almost every student was in their seat ready to begin the lesson. Amanda began to come on time and moved to the front of the room. "I'll talk to Myra other times," she said, "I want to learn this." I noticed as the term went on cell phones did not ring because students no longer had them on, and on the rare occasion that one did ring, he or she just turned it off.
My students' writing improved tremendously. In early April, Juan Vega, who had done no homework up to that point and had never written an essay on an exam, began to do both.
On the final exam many chose to write their essay about
the Progressive Era. They remembered the names of the muckrakers
and described working and living conditions vividly, and they showed feeling
about the meaning of the changes that occurred. For example, Justine
Kirby wrote describing working conditions:
| A time that changed the country was the Progressive Era ... Families were barely making enough money to get by the week. The mother, father and little kids were in factories doing work. Children's fingers were cut off by the machines. ... Family members worked long hours with low pay in order to make more money for the bosses. |
In June, 97% of the students in my US History classes, including Juan Vega, passed the Regents exam necessary for graduation, many with grades in the 80s and 90s.
I am convinced that through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, students in every classroom from kindergarten through high school and beyond will want to be fair to the subjects of the curriculum and to the people they meet and learn about.
This article was originally given as part of a seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City.
