How do We Teach about Park 51?

I am looking forward to my first Model United Nations (MUN) Team meeting with my students today.  As a former United States History teacher and a current MUN coach, I am often faced with the dilemma of presenting a politically or socially charged issue to students and at the same time trying to keep my opinion out of it so they can arrive at their own conclusions.

It's not always easy to do this; I taught the Civil War in a West Philadelphia school.  The entire student body was black.  It was difficult to convince some of the students that I, at that time a 22-year-old white female from the Connecticut suburbs and straight out of the bubble of Boston College, had any authority on the issue.  Some students felt that it was not right for ME to be teaching about such a racially charged historical issue.  It was a great lesson in how important it is to handle these topics delicately.

The group of students I work with now are older and much more diverse, so I am not as worried about them questioning my identity in relation to bringing up the issue of Park 51.  However, I do question my ability to keep my opinions and biases out of this issue.  It is important for the students to come to their own conclusions about the controversy.  I imagine that most history, civics and government teachers face similar dilemmas on a daily basis.

Starting today and over the next few weeks, I will use this curriculum to guide the MUN students through  thinking about Park 51.  It will be a great warm up activity for thinking critically about other issues they will examine through out the year.  At the end of the day, I think it is most appropriate to teach a curriculum that promotes a "multi-cultural/coexistence" approach.  This is especially true for student living in New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world.  Further, one of the main points of the MUN club is to give students the tools they need to understand controversial issues from an array of perspectives.

I will do my best to teach this subject, but I worry about the rest of the country as the school year starts.  The content of history text books is usually determined by the Texas State Board of Education (Texas is the largest purchaser of history text books, so often whatever they determine should be in texts books is what the rest of the country typically gets).  Now Texas starting to think about the way they teach Islam.  Texas' Board of Education is known for being socially conservative, so I worry about how they will chose to present this information.  Educators (especially those teaching history, civics and government) have a responsibility to show all sides of an issues.  I hope Texas will handle this issue appropriately, but I have my doubts given their previous record.