Early in his career, Mark Robinson taught American history. Since then, in over two decades at St. Pius X High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he has primarily taught honors and regular-level modern world history. Nevertheless, he eagerly attends Teaching American History seminars. “The seminars have been very valuable to me,” Robinson says. “Professional development opportunities for private school teachers of social studies are very, very thin. For me, TAH seminars are an intellectual spa.” During them, participants wrestle with many of the same questions that arise in world history, even though Americans bring a distinctive perspective to these questions.

In fact, world history study helps young Americans grasp “that not everyone accepts the basic premises behind our Constitutional system,” Robinson says.

In Robinson’s freshman-level courses, “we spend a lot of time talking about the concept of natural rights. As Americans, we believe that governments do not give people rights; those rights exist by nature. In possession of those rights, we are all equal. Yet in places like China, the Soviet Union, fascist Italy and fascist Germany, Iran under Khomeini, and South Africa under apartheid, this idea has been rejected.”

Studying World History Thematically, Through Primary Documents

Robinson adds that TAH seminars have influenced his teaching methods. “I don’t think the emphasis on primary source material that has developed in my classroom would have happened without Teaching American History” and other nonprofits who support social studies education.

Ten years ago, Robinson worked with two colleagues at St. Pius to redesign the content of the world history course. Due to budget deficits, New Mexico had stopped supplying social studies textbooks to private schools. Instead of asking parents to buy textbooks, Robinson and his colleagues saw “an opportunity to try something brand new. If we consciously covered less content, organizing it in a different way, we could incorporate primary sources into the world history course.”

They decided to focus on three themes: liberty, justice, and the strategies used by those attempting to reform or revolutionize oppressive and unjust political systems. In particular, they wanted to explore the question, “When you live in a profoundly unjust society, is violence an appropriate response?” Using primary sources would allow students to explore the motives and rationales of revolutionary leaders, comparing those who used violence to those who used nonviolent civil disobedience.

Since the Catholic lower schools that feed students into St. Pius cover the Renaissance and Reformation as part of religious education, Robinson and his colleagues could begin their course with a survey of Enlightenment political thought. During the fall term, they also cover the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the industrial revolution, Latin American independence movements, and European imperial expansion. Spring semester covers the world wars and the independence movements in India and Africa that arose in the wake of these wars—as well as the communist revolutionary movements in Russia and Latin America.

Robinson, who studied European and American history at Notre Dame and medieval history while earning an MA in at the University of Toronto, relishes discussions of political theory and practice. He took the lead in locating primary documents for each unit of the course. “By 2014, we had created our own reader,” he said, using documents available from the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Bill of Rights Institute, and the Watson institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University.

Contrasting Understandings of Equality, Justice, and Revolutionary Strategies

Excerpts of Enlightenment political theorists Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu and Voltaire give students insight into the ideas that laid the groundwork for modern revolutions. Reading the speeches of revolutionaries, students see these theories adapted to national circumstances and political agendas. To supply the historical context, Robinson and his colleagues wrote their own narratives. For example, during the unit on the Industrial Revolution, “we explain that technology creates a massive enrichment while at the same time widening the gap between the richest and poorest. We read responses to industrialization—excerpts from laissez-faire exponents like Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, and Samuel Smiles; then we read excerpts of Karl Marx, along with an excerpt from the defense at the trial of Francois Babeuf,” a French revolutionary whose ideas anticipated later socialist theory.

“Students see the initial thinkers of the French Revolution speaking of human equality in the sense of equal dignity and equal rights. Later writers speak of equality in terms of equal access to wealth. We ask, how do these ideas differ? Where does justice lie?”

Study of revolution challenges Robinson’s students. Most have grown up in Catholic Hispanic families whose presence in the area predates New Mexico’s entrance into the union. Their families value tradition and distrust those who advocate violence. At the beginning of the year, Robinson asks, “Is it ever okay to use violence to achieve a more just or free society?” Most students say, ‘No.’  “I respond, ‘Jefferson would disagree with you on this point. Lincoln would too.’ Some look quite shocked. They’ve been taught to love Jesus and revere Lincoln, and they don’t know what to do with this information.”

Discomfort Can Prompt Learning

However, “being made to feel uncomfortable can be a profound way to advance learning,” Robinson says. He recalls a student’s response to French Revolutionary leader Robespierre’s speech on political morality. Robespierre defends the use of terror to destroy opponents of the revolution. One student arrived for the class discussion of Robespierre “with a strange look on her face.” Throughout class, her troubled look remained.  “I approached her and asked, ‘You seem uneasy. What’s going on?’ She replied, ‘I read that speech last night, I listened to all the discussion, and I know Robespierre is evil. But I’m still pretty sure I would have followed him if I had been alive in France at the time, because he made such a convincing case.’”

Noting that “there are plenty of Robespierres” in today’s political world, Robinson told the student he shared her uneasiness. “But it’s powerful that you can see that about yourself,” he added. The student had discovered the appeal of dangerous but well-argued ideas—and the need to carefully reflect on them.

Robinson remembers his own experience of discomfort in a Teaching American History seminar on “Lincoln and Reconstruction” led by Professor Scot Yenor of Boise State University. Yenor challenged participants to consider whether Lincoln would have supported a “hard” or a “soft” plan for reconstruction of the South. “He pointed to letters Lincoln wrote concerning reconstruction plans for Arkansas and Louisiana and asked, ‘Are you sure Lincoln is committing to a multi-generational military occupation of the South, to ensure that freedmen’s civil rights are respected? Or do you think he would have accepted a quick reconciliation, sacrificing the freedmen’s rights?’ I had always assumed Lincoln agreed with Thaddeus Stevens and the other hardliners,” Robinson recalled. “But the more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder. The seminar showed me that Reconstruction was more complicated than I had thought. It pushed me to think in the way I’m always urging students to think.”

Replicating TAH Colloquia in the Classroom

Teaching American History seminars give Robinson “a chance to dive into what I did in graduate school, to take the primary sources and break them down, look at how they interact with each other, talk about them with other very smart people, have my own ideas challenged, and struggle with new ways to see the world. I know they are supposed to inform my classroom practice, but most of all they send me back to the classroom remembering ‘this is why I got into teaching; this is what I want my students to be able to do.’”

He tries “to replicate these colloquia on a small scale, helping kids interact with big ideas: ‘What does it mean to be a free person? What does it mean to be a just society? To achieve justice and freedom, should one use nonviolent resistance as Gandhi did, or violence as Nelson Mandela did?’ We talk both among ourselves and with the thinkers and leaders who shaped history. As we struggle to understand their opinions, we try to find our own.”

He hopes all students realize and affirm the meaning of natural rights, “that government exists to serve the people, and not the people to serve government.” Beyond this shared principle, “people of good will can disagree.”They may disagree about whether justice requires that “everyone share equally in the wealth of society” or that “everyone have equal opportunity.” Still, he tells students, “people you disagree with can help you think clearly.”