Teaching Civic Virtues

“My students come into class knowing we will have a discussion,” says Allan Aubrey, a 2016 graduate of Ashland’s Master of Arts in History and Government (MAHG) program. “They know they will get some really tough questions and will have to be on top of the assigned reading.”

Aubrey teaches both Advanced Placement and regular US history at Sullivan East High School in Northeast Tennessee. The surrounding area was once home to tobacco farms; today it hosts only one Eastman chemical manufacturing plant. Unless they go on to college, students at the small school will face limited job opportunities. They deserve an education equal to that in more prosperous districts, says Aubrey, now in his 22nd year teaching at Sullivan East. “My MAHG degree has given me a solid base to be an effective educator. I feel it’s my mission to be here now.”

Understanding History through Primary Documents

In Aubrey’s classroom, history education begins in the reading of primary documents and continues in discussion. Aubrey models his approach on that of Ashbrook professors. “They are not just scholars; they’re top-notch teachers. To watch good teaching helps you become a good teacher.”

Aubrey’s first exposure to Ashbrook seminars occurred in a three-week summer program Ashbrook ran as it was launching its Masters program. An intense exploration of primary documents related to the American founding, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Era, it took a select group of teachers to Philadelphia, Gettysburg, and Washington, DC. Aubrey was impressed that the program “treated teachers well,” not only offering them guided visits to historic sites, but also inviting them to converse with their instructors as colleagues. When he was later awarded a James Madison Foundation Fellowship to cover Masters work, “it was a no-brainer for me to enroll in MAHG.”

Before this, Aubrey seldom taught from primary documents. “The program really opened my eyes to a better way of understanding history. My students have embraced the idea of reading the actual documents from an historical era. They like reading this evidence and making their own judgments about it.”

Prioritizing “Civic Virtues”

Aubrey admits to a somewhat loose adherence to curriculum guidelines. Rather than covering every moment in the American story, he prioritizes teaching the “civic virtues” citizens of a democracy need. This means covering the founding, including the ideals of those who designed the Constitution, even though Tennessee directs that 11th graders shall study only the part of US history from 1877 forward. Aubrey also covers the greatest test of the founders’ design, the Civil War.

Tennessee mandates that the nation’s earlier history be taught in 8th grade. Aubrey’s students bring little memory of that to his class. “It’s craziness to think that an 8th grader can understand John Locke”—a political theorist most delegates to the Constitutional Convention had read—“or even some of Jefferson’s writings. These texts are layered and difficult and need to be treated with care,” Aubrey argues. Of course, many MAHG graduates who teach history in junior high find ways to bring the Founders’ concerns alive. But few 8th grade teachers have such an education. “I teach the founding and the Civil War, because if you don’t understand those things, you can’t understand what comes after. This may mean hurrying through the Gilded Age.”

Lincoln’s Reasoned Convictions and Careful Public Speech

Aubrey devotes special attention to the writings of Abraham Lincoln, his favorite statesman. “Lincoln’s speeches are not difficult to understand; he was a leader for the common man,” Aubrey notes. Still, like other speeches of the nineteenth century, Lincoln’s can tax the patience of 21st century listeners because of their length. “The Cooper Union Address went on for hours!”

During a course on Lincoln in MAHG with Professor Christopher Flannery, Aubrey learned of some much shorter texts. Called “fragments,” they are pithy memos Lincoln wrote to himself. Several summarize the reasoning behind his deepest convictions.

Aubrey began using the fragments in class and found his students loved discussing them. Planning his thesis for the MAHG program, Aubrey realized scholars seldom wrote about the fragments in themselves, instead citing them to reinforce interpretations of other things Lincoln wrote. Aubrey wondered if Lincoln’s notes to himself might actually differ from “what Lincoln was saying publicly at the time.”

His thesis discussed, for example, a note from April 1854. Lincoln counters arguments made to justify slavery:

. . . You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. . . .

A few months later, Lincoln publicly denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers in the two territories to decide for themselves whether to admit or prohibit slavery. Lincoln argued for prohibiting slavery in the territories, since any new slaveholding states would increase the power of the slave block in Congress and delay the eventual abolition he hoped for. Yet he admitted obstacles to freeing the slaves already in bondage:

Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question . . . . A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.

The clear reasoning in the fragment contradicts Lincoln’s reference in the speech to his “feelings” about the black race.

Aubrey wrote that the contradiction results from Lincoln’s political caution. “Lincoln believes in human equality, he believes slavery is wrong, and he may even believe civil rights should be given to blacks. But his audience is not ready to hear that yet. He has to be very prudent and selective in what he says publicly; yet privately, he remains one step ahead of his audience’s thinking, trying to pull them toward his understanding of equality.”

Aubrey does not impose this interpretation on his students; he asks them to compare the fragments to excerpts from the speeches and then propose reasons for the differences.

Cultivating Moderation and Courtesy

Yet he hopes that students will arrive at a balanced view of the past, one that admits mistakes made while honoring the achievements of statesmen facing political obstacles. “It’s hard for those who believe in American exceptionalism to talk about such things as slavery—but that’s part of our story. But to paint the founders as evil” for failing to abolish slavery when the republic began “is just not true either. The founders were extraordinary—extraordinarily flawed but also extraordinary. They created a regime that does strive for good.”

Meanwhile, Aubrey works to teach the “civic virtue” of courtesy. “The founders believed that republican society can’t function unless citizens give up a bit of their self-interest to serve the greater good.” This may mean quelling the impulse to triumph in argument while listening respectfully to opinions they disagree with. “I let my students express themselves. I will call them on it if they are being hateful, but I tell them I want to hear differing opinions.

“Take the Affordable Care Act. I ask students to research what it provides for, and then we discuss it. Then I provide some of the founders’ insights, both in support of and in opposition to sweeping actions from the central government. Students begin to see it’s all right that we disagree today. The founders disagreed on many of the fundamental questions we still debate. Yet they were civil to one another.”