Together, the Franciscan priests and Spanish soldiers “built” a series of 21 missions along what is now coastal California. In 1769, after missionizing much of Mexico, the Spaniards began to move up the west coast of North America in order to establish claims to rich resources and before other European nations could get a foothold. Human beings have no other way of knowing that we exist, or what we have survived, except through the vehicle of story. What are students learning by building model missions? I don’t think the mission project has taught students about a very difficult time in our nation’s history.Ĭalifornia is a story. In “ The next generation of California public school students will skip the ‘mission project’,” ( SF Gate, August 31, 2017) Nancy McTygue, executive director of California History-Social Science Project and one of the lead writers of the new framework, states, Missions were sites of conflict, conquest and forced labor. The framework states,īuilding missions from sugar cubes or popsicle sticks does not help students understand the period and is offensive to many.
We are pleased to read in “ No more sugar cubes and Popsicle sticks? State urges teachers to scrap 4th-grade mission project,” ( Sacramento Bee, September 2, 2017) that California’s new history and social science framework recommends against the longtime tradition of building miniature replicas of the state’s Spanish colonial missions, calling it insensitive.
0 kommentar(er)
