Counter-Narratives:

Dominant narratives, Counter-narratives, and Resistance Narratives

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Lesson Objectives

Students will be able to:
  1. Define dominant narratives, counter-narratives, and resistance narratives
  2. Identify dominant narratives, counter-narratives, and resistance narratives in both history and contemporary society

Learning Standards

  • LfJ 13. Students will analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today.
  • LfJ 14. Students will recognize that power and privilege influence relationships on interpersonal, intergroup and institutional levels and consider how they have been affected by those dynamics.

Learning Activities: If you have 15 minutes

Greeting:

If you could get rid of one food forever, what would it be and why?

Reading:

"Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984.

Ask Students:

  • What does this quotation get you thinking about?

Initiative:

Define dominant narratives, counter-narratives, and resistance narratives.
Use Christopher Columbus “discovering” America as an example of a well-known dominant narrative, Columbus’s brutal treatment of the Native Americans as a counter-narrative, and the replacement of Columbus Day (in some places) with Indigenous People’s Day as a resistance narrative that emerged from that counter-narrative.

Ask Students (Slide 16):

  • Why do counter-narratives and resistance narratives matter?
Two possible answers. Counter-narratives matter when:
  1. The dominant narrative is concealing something true and important
  2. A group is going unrepresented or under-represented

Learning Activities: If you have 45 minutes

Initiative:

Ask students in pairs/small groups to think through the holiday of Thanksgiving.
  • What is the dominant narrative?
  • What is the counter-narrative?
  • What types of actions could students take to turn the counter-narrative into a resistance narrative?
Share out.

Learning Activities: If you have 2 hours

Initiative:

Question for discussion: Can you think of other dominant narratives you’ve learned that have counter-narratives hidden underneath them?

Ask Students:

  • Who comes to mind when you think of the Civil Rights era? 

(Students will likely say Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.)

You can share with students that there are more books written about King and Parks than everyone else involved in the Civil Rights movement put together. King and Parks are part of the dominant narrative of the Civil Rights movement. (Note that King and Parks are important, courageous, and impressive historical figures, but they were not the only people involved in the Civil Rights movement.)

Ask Students:

  • Have you heard of the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama?

Show Slide 18: On May 2, 1963, 1000 children and teenagers skipped classes to march through downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor directed police and firefighters to attack with firehoses and dogs. Became known as Children’s Crusade. Visuals of police attacking and jailing children pushed JFK to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ask Students:

  • Have you heard of Freedom Day in New York City?

Show Slide 19: 460,000 students (predominantly Black and Puerto Rican) stayed out of school to protest school segregation in NYC, led by Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker.

Ask Students:

  • Why do you think the history of the Civil Rights movement is so often focused on just two people?
  • Who benefits from this dominant narrative? 
  • What is the impact of counter-narratives about the Children’s Crusade and Freedom Day not being known? 
  • Why might society not want YOU (as students) to know about the important parts of the Civil Rights movement?
  • What do you think we should do with what we know? 
  • Who is one person that might not know about these counter-narratives that you could share them with?

Debrief (Slide 22):

  • What did you like about today’s lesson?
  • Did you learn anything new about yourself or anyone else?
  • What could make it better?
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