Montana
Reconstruction Vignette
| The education of children of African descent shall be provided for in separate schools. Upon the written application of the parents or guardians of at least ten such children to any board of trustees, a separate school shall be established for the education of such children, and the education of a less number may be provided for by the trustees, in separate schools, in any other manner, and the same laws, rules, and regulations which apply to schools for white children shall apply to schools for colored children. |
In 1872, Montana’s legislative assembly produced a series of acts organizing the territory. A law on public schools included this section mandating school segregation.
Source: HathiTrust Digital Library
Montana
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Nonexistent
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 0 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Montana’s standards is nonexistent. The Montana Board of Public Education adopted new social studies standards in November 2020 and implemented them beginning in July 2021. Montana is a local-control state and its state content standards are extremely broad. They generally do not include specific historical events except for a handful of references to the Revolution and the Constitution. The standards do not mention slavery, the Civil War, or Reconstruction.
There are some standards that teachers could use as jumping off points to explore the themes of Reconstruction. One grade 4 standard asks students to “explain how Montana has changed over time given its cultural diversity and how this history impacts the present.” In grade 5, students “examine the diverse origins, ideals, and purposes of rules, laws, and key United States constitutional provisions and other foundational documents.” In grade 6, students “identify events and leaders that ensure that key United States principles of equality and civil rights are applied to various groups, including American Indians.” In high school, students should “analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights” and “evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in ensuring civil rights at the local, state, tribal, national, and international levels.”
Because Montana’s standards provide so little information about whether and how districts and schools should teach Reconstruction, we chose to investigate curricula at the district level. The Local Snapshot below is not meant as a judgment of these districts’ approach to Reconstruction. They were chosen largely at random and are not factored into the grade the state standards receive. The brief analysis of district-level curricula that follows is intended to simply provide a snapshot into how state standards, or lack thereof, can shape Reconstruction pedagogy in the classroom.
Local Snapshot
The grade 8 American History Course in the Billings Public Schools district requires students to “identify the policies that were created to bring the North and South back together after the Civil War.” Although there are relatively extensive references to slavery and economic and cultural differences between the North and South before the Civil War, there is no mention of such topics after the war.
High School
“Reconstruction and Industrialization” is mentioned as a discrete unit in the course descriptions for both the regular and AP U.S. History courses at Billings Senior High School. However, the districtwide standards do not mention Reconstruction and the course outlined by the learning objectives seems to focus on the 20th century. It is unclear how extensively Reconstruction is taught in these courses.
The grade 8 U.S. history curriculum emphasizes the national political elements of Reconstruction, particularly the various Reconstruction plans, Johnson’s impeachment, and “how the Radical Republicans gained power in Congress.” The curriculum asks “Why did the Republicans in Congress want a more severe Reconstruction plan?”
The central question of the Reconstruction unit is “How did the country repair the damage done after the Civil War?” The curriculum does contain a list of relevant vocabulary, including the Reconstruction Amendments and the Freedmen’s Bureau and extensive coverage of white backlash, disenfranchisement, and segregation.
The high school U.S. history curriculum in the Great Falls district contains several references to Reconstruction. Because Great Falls organizes its curriculum thematically, not chronologically, mentions of the Civil War and Reconstruction are somewhat scattered. Students are required to analyze the “factors that influenced” and the “regional reality of” Reconstruction. They are also expected to learn that the Civil War had lasting effects on U.S. society, and that “the issues of the Civil War did not end with the silence of the guns.” One interesting but unclear standard requires students to learn that “reconstruction is more than a Black and white issue.”
Educator Experiences
Teachers who responded to our survey explained that the greatest barriers to teaching Reconstruction properly are a lack of time to teach the subject and insufficient educational resources. One high school teacher reported creating their own interactive lesson using primary sources to help students understand what the South was like during Reconstruction and why many Black people chose to leave the region.
Assessment
Montana’s Reconstruction standards are nonexistent. The topic is not actually mentioned in the state standards, though some of the broad thematic standards can provide teachers and district curricula writers with a jumping off point for discussing Reconstruction. As our analysis of the Billings and Great Falls curricula demonstrates, the lack of state content standards contributes to wide variations in the depth of Reconstruction coverage.
Our district-level analysis reveals curricular questions framed around the debunked Dunning School. The emphasis on a “severe” Congressional Reconstruction plan implies that it was a punishment for the South, potentially an unjust one. Describing the “damage” of the war, but not the emancipation from bondage for millions that it also wrought, also reflects a flawed historical understanding of Reconstruction. More detailed state content standards that mention the existence of Reconstruction, mark it as a critical time period for districts to include in their curricula, and reject Dunning School framings would likely improve coverage of the topic.
Without guidance around key Reconstruction-era history, many students will not learn about the intensification of white supremacy, the Black Codes, the KKK, debates over who would control land and labor, and Black agency and political organizing. Teaching Reconstruction effectively requires centering Black people’s struggles to redefine freedom and equality and gain control of their own land and labor during and after the Civil War. Any discussion of Reconstruction must also grapple with the role of white supremacist terrorism in the defeat of Reconstruction and the negative and positive legacies of the era that persist to this day.
In May 2021, Attorney General Austin Knudsen issued a legally binding opinion that bans schools from asking students to reflect on privilege or lack thereof associated with racism and sexism. In particular, it prohibits “trainings, exercises, or assignments forcing students or employees to admit, accept, affirm, or support controversial concepts such as racial privilege, culpability, identity” or status. Several respondents to our survey expressed concern about the possible chilling effects on classroom education that such measures can have around the country, particularly on discussions of the history and legacies of Reconstruction.