Put history on the walls before the arguments start

Our nation’s schools spend a considerable amount of time thinking about what students see when they walk into their buildings. There are conversations about representation, inclusion, belonging, and identity, and most schools now understand that what hangs on a wall or sits in a lobby is not just decoration. It says something about the institution, presents its values and hopes, and tells the story of the people inside it.Schools put up flags, post slogans, and share statements about inclusion and aspiration, along with many other symbols meant to tell students something about the community they are entering. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but once we accept that walls have meaning, there is a larger question worth asking: What else can school walls do?Birch Wathen Lenox, a small K-12 independent school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, recently installed a series of large historical and civic panels in its lobby. Every student, teacher, parent, and guest who enters the building will see them. They are visually striking, but what really matters to me is less their appearance than the actual choices the school made in designing them. I say all of this because I still vividly remember the walls of the schools I attended decades ago.At my Jewish day school in Philadelphia, there was a portrait of Theodor Herzl. I remember being in second grade, seeing this man in profile with a large beard, and asking who he was. I distinctly recall my Hebrew teacher telling me about him with pride, and I wanted to learn more.Only a few years later, in sixth grade, I saw a striking, close-up image of the Lyre of Ur in my classroom. It had the face of a bull with golden horns, deep blue eyes, and facial hair made of lapis lazuli. I had no idea what that magnificent piece of art was when I walked into that classroom, but for whatever reason, I became fascinated by ancient civilizations, and that interest has only grown over the decades.Those are two minor and very specific memories, but there were plenty of others, from varied maps to images of trains and space exploration. My K-12 schools were wonderful and full of history, community, responsibility, citizenship, and belonging. And while some of these attributes and ideas came through lessons and books, some of it was simply there as part of the physical place itself and hanging on the walls. I certainly did not think about any of this at age 8 or 11, but more than 40 years later, I remember a surprising amount of what I saw.The new panels displayed at BWL brought all of this back to me.One panel at Birch is about the American experiment. Another is about building America, while another focuses on freedom and the First Amendment. A fourth goes much further back and looks at some of the roots of democracy, law, conscience, and self-government.George Washington and Benjamin Franklin are there along with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs appear, as do Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, marching together at Selma. There are immigrants, Apollo 11, the Brooklyn Bridge, the WPA, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Elsewhere, students see images of Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Baghdad, and Confucius.These panels are full of content, and I think that is part of their appeal. What must be stressed about the panels is that they are not just a collection of images or collages of famous people at all. Rather, they clearly show that ideas and institutions came from somewhere, that people argued over them and changed them, and that one generation inherited ideas, values, and frameworks from another.Of course, BWL is a K-12 school, and no one expects a first grader to stop on the way to class and work through Montesquieu — he happens to be featured on one panel for his thinking about natural rights and self-government. And no one thinks that a fourth grader should be particularly familiar with the WPA. I certainly wasn’t while in elementary school. But that ignorance and lack of familiarity are part of what makes the panels useful. Particular names and images are there, students pass by them constantly, and eventually, something that was once completely unfamiliar may come up in class, in a book, in a conversation, or even online and on social media. A student recognizes it, remembers seeing it before, and perhaps wants to know more. That was certainly my experience with Herzl and the Lyre of Ur.My own experience is why these panels strike me as so much more than decoration and worth emulating at other schools.Students do not need to understand everything they see right away, and they probably won’t. But over time, some of these names, places, and ideas become part of what they know, or at least part of what they recognize, and that matters pedagogically and can help ground them intellectually and help repair a knowledge deficit. As a professor, I see the consequences of this lack of historical and contextual background all the time. Despite media reports that all students are homogeneously liberal, I have found that my students are usually eager to argue about democracy, inequality, race, capitalism, rights, or the Constitution. I am thrilled when they want to argue — debate and disagreement are a huge part of what makes teaching worthwhile, and truth emerges from dialogue. But what troubles me so deeply is when I see so many students holding strong opinions on critical policy issues while having little historical grounding in the very issues on which they profess intense support. I see far too many cases where students hold firm views about Jefferson while knowing only a handful of things about his life, or talk confidently about the First Amendment without knowing much about how it developed or even what it protects.This historical context matters now because we talk endlessly in education about critical thinking. While I am completely supportive of critical thinking and problem solving, the fact remains that students need something in their heads before they can think critically about it. King walking beside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel across the Edmund Pettus Bridge is a good example. A student may know who King is, but seeing Heschel there raises another set of questions: Who was he, and why was a rabbi marching in Selma? Why were these two men together, many may wonder, and suddenly, there is more history to figure out, and a familiar story gets larger.The same dynamic holds when students argue about whether America has lived up to its ideals. That is an important argument, and one I have with students regularly because it rests at the roots of our culture wars. But the classroom debates are much better when students actually know the history and have a sense of how particular ideals emerged, who articulated them, and why, as well as who was excluded from them and how they changed over time. Knowing more history does not tell students what conclusion to reach. It simply gives them more to work with when they get there.YOU DON’T DEFEND MODERN MUSLIMS BY LYING ABOUT MEDIEVAL HISTORYAnd that is really what I like about the BWL panels. They are not telling children what to think about Jefferson, King, the Constitution, capitalism, or any of the other people and ideas they encounter. Students will eventually find plenty to admire, criticize, and argue about. The school is simply making sure that some of this history is around them before those arguments begin.I cannot remember most of what my teachers told me on any particular day in second grade or sixth grade, but I still remember that picture of Herzl and that strange bull with its blue eyes and golden horns. I had no idea at the time that either one would stay with me for decades. I only knew that I wanted to know what I was looking at. That seems to me a pretty good reason to pay attention to the walls, and I am thrilled that BWL has done just that.