RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Mission Project: Teaching History and Avoiding the Past in California Elementary Schools
JF Harvard Educational Review
JO herp
FD Harvard Educational Press
SP 109
OP 132
DO 10.17763/1943-5045-91.1.109
VO 91
IS 1
A1 KEENAN, HARPER BENJAMIN
YR 2021
UL http://harvardeducationalreview.org/content/91/1/109.abstract
AB In this article, Harper B. Keenan investigates the treatment of violence in elementary history education through a case study of a fourth-grade unit on the colonial history of California featuring “the mission project,” a long-standing tradition in California’s elementary schools that has students construct a miniature model of a Spanish colonial mission. Grounded in broader social and historical contexts, the study explores how the use of model making invites children to engage with colonial history and what the assignment reveals about how adults teach children about the violent past. Keenan argues that the mission project perpetuates a societal pattern of “ritual avoidance.”