‘We need to study this forever.’ How SLO County teachers taught kids about Capitol siege
The day after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrput the certification of electoral college votes, Atascadero High School teacher Dave Donati shared a quote attributed to President Abraham Lincoln with his class.
“‘America will never be destroyed from the outside, but it will come from within,’ ” Donati summarized.
Donati, who teaches advanced placement U.S. history at the North County high school, had just finished teaching his class of juniors about the American Civil War. The teacher found parallels between the events that unfolded in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, and the pre-war teachings of Lincoln.
“We do this all the time,” Donati explained. “For students to be able to fully grasp history, we often need to relate them to current day events.”
Donati was not the only teacher in San Luis Obispo County who found himself with a challenge on Thursday. Several local educators, particularly those who teach U.S. history and government, said discussing Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol in class was an “important” and “difficult” task.
Rioters at the Capitol began tearing down metal barricades at the steps of the building just after 11 a.m. Wednesday, around the time that San Luis Obispo High School teacher Jim Johnson’s Advanced Placement Government and Politics class began.
“We were going to start off with talking about the Georgia election results,” Johnson said. “I was all prepared, and then my kids started saying (that) I should look at what’s happening at the Capitol.”
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” he added. “There was no way we’re going to ignore this. So I pulled up the news during class and we all just sat there watching it — astonished, shocked.”
The next day, Johnson said he came to class with a plan to contextualize Wednesday’s events for his students to help them understand what exactly went on by looking at the U.S. Constitution and history.
Class started as usual with a discussion about what Johnson calls the “term of the day.”
On Thursday, the question Johnson said he posed to his class was, “What is Section 4 of the 25th Amendment?”
Johnson said his class discussed whether there are grounds to invoke that section of the amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of Cabinet secretaries to declare the president is unfit for the job, and what the ramifications of doing so would be.
“Some students said (invoking Section 4) could be done, but likely won’t,” Johnson said. “Others said there’s justification, but it shouldn’t be done. It was a really good discussion.”
San Luis Obispo High School teacher Seamus Perry, who teaches advanced placement U.S. history, said his class discussed historical elections versus those that have happened recently.
“One of the kids said, ‘Well, this happens every time, right? Last election, Democrats thought that they won and that Russia stole the election,’ ” Perry said. “And we sort of had to back up and say, ‘Well, that’s not really the case.’ I mean, Democrats had concerns over it, but nobody was going through the Capitol.”
“That was helpful to a lot of the kids to understand it better,” he added. “They got that what happened (Wednesday) crossed the line.”
Perry said that distilling the facts of current events has become increasingly difficult as more students come to class with a worldview garnered from the internet and social media.
“I’m usually on the safest ground when we can talk about the history and point to, factually, this is what happened,” he said. “And we can’t ignore any of the facts, even if they’re difficult to grasp or they surprise us.”
Teachers differed on whether Jan. 6, 2021, will live in infamy.
Donati said his class concluded that what happened Wednesday was not as impactful as events such as Pearl Harbor or the Civil War. However, what happens next from the U.S. government and its citizens will likely shape history, he said.
He and the other teachers agreed that the siege on the Capitol will be, and should be, taught in all U.S. history and government classes.
“We need to study this forever. We need to never have this happen again,” Johnson said. “This is outrageous. It’s terrible. So yes, we as history teachers, as government teachers, I am sure that it will be taught for a very, very, very long time.”
