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Margot Strom teaching in Brookline in about 1975

Margot Strom teaching in Brookline in about 1975

April 18, 2023

Margot Strom's Legacy: Rethinking the Role of Education

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By Adam Strom, Re-Imagining Migration

Margot Stern Strom, the co-founder of Facing History and Ourselves, died last month. She was an education entrepreneur, a founding board member of Re-Imagining Migration, and the best teacher I have ever met. She was my mother. My sister and I are deeply appreciative of the stories that have been shared since her passing. However, there is something missing. Teaching history, for her, wasn't about building memorials to the past, it was about ensuring a vibrant and equitable future.

My mother, a blonde, white Jewish young woman, grew up in Memphis, Tenn., during Jim Crow. She was privileged by race and marginal by religion, temperament and the interracial friendships her parents cultivated. Before she was socialized in segregation, she imagined that the water from “colored” water fountains in downtown department stores would come out in a rainbow or sparkle like a prism. When my mother learned the truth, she was deeply disappointed, her childhood imagination scarred by bigotry.

By conventional standards, Margot was a lousy, unmotivated student. It wasn't because she wasn't smart. For her, school didn't make sense. She noted the absurdity of sitting in civics class with the signs in front of the Memphis Zoo, which she could see from her classroom window, declaring "colored day" on Thursdays. Of course, that meant no people of color were allowed entry any other day.

Margot Strom as a little kid in Memphis.
Margot Strom as a little kid in Memphis.

She learned the rules of American apartheid from distorted history books, which taught racial hierarchies as science and referred to the Civil War as the War Between the States. She swore that she had never learned in school that the South lost the Civil War. During the last weeks of her life, my mother was infuriated by the organized attacks on teaching about race. She attended a school where politicians pushed a distorted view of history and white supremacy. Legislation banning the teaching of critical race theory felt awfully familiar.

From this, she developed a vision of what a classroom should be. It did not have rows and teachers lecturing up front. It wasn't a place where students were bullied because of who they were, what they wore, who they loved or where they were from. It wasn't a place where uncomfortable truths were whitewashed.

My mother trusted students. Moral and intellectual development came from engaging texts, truths and dilemmas.

For her, classrooms were places where important and difficult ideas were to be discussed and not glossed over. My mother trusted students. Moral and intellectual development came from engaging texts, truths and dilemmas. To her, students were budding moral philosophers who could and should engage with uncomfortable experiences from our past and present. Schools were the training grounds of democracy, whose job was to nurture the next generation and socialize them in civic engagement. My mother believed education needs to help young people understand human behavior, as revealed in the histories, art and literature she taught.

Classrooms were places that inspired curiosity. There wasn't a day that went by, even in recent years, where some idea or piece of news didn't catch her, and she'd say, "I wish I had a classroom to talk about this with." She loved learning. Ideally, learning for her was multidirectional. Students learned from teachers, and teachers learned from students. To strive to become a teacher was the highest calling and compliment she could imagine. I knew I had done something well when she'd turn to me and say, "You are a great teacher."

As an educator, she encountered resistance from people who feared change. First, when she highlighted how textbooks and school curriculum promoted gender stereotypes. And later, because Facing History students were equipped to think critically, and ask hard questions about racism, antisemitism and bigotry. None of this would have been possible had she not been protected and supported by colleagues and administrators. Without backing from bold education leaders, her work would have stayed inside her seventh- and eighth-grade classroom at the Runkle School in Brookline, Mass.

Margots copy of the first edition  of Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. It was completed in 1977
The first image is Margot's copy of the first edition of Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, 1977. The second image is her resource on gender stereotypes in school, 1975

My mother could also be difficult. She refused to use the standard language and tools of teacher education. She hated the term “teacher training.” To her, “training” implied obedience instead of critical thinking and lifelong learning. She also hated lesson plans, but not because she believed you shouldn't identify your goals and objectives. She feared that teachers would use lesson plans as scripts, getting in the way of the give-and-take between teachers and students that is central to learning. What we now understand as culturally responsive teaching was her way of being.

She came of age as a teacher when people were experimenting with what classrooms should look like; one trend was building classrooms without walls. My mother took that idea seriously. Everywhere was a classroom, and everyone was a potential student. She preferred working in whole school models, not just with teachers assigned to a particular class.

The word” student” was also an honorific in her vocabulary. We all should aspire to be students. And she looked for them everywhere. Like Urie Bronfenbrenner, whose work she only read a few years ago, she believed in creating an ecosystem of learning, linking students, families, cultural institutions and the community. Classrooms, she'd always remind us, don't exist in isolation.

What she saw was the future of learning. That vision is under attack. As I write, books affirming our students' identities are being stripped from libraries. And at the same time, public figures are unwilling or unable to differentiate between those spouting hate and those standing up to bigotry.

My mother's legacy is alive in the words and actions of two generations of educators rethinking the role of education in our fragile democracy. It is time for us—her students—to work together to ensure her vision becomes a reality for future generations of budding "moral philosophers" ready to take their place as upstanders in our communities, country and the world.  

getting an honorary degree with Basketball Icon and Civil Rights activist Bill Russell
Margot Strom getting an honorary degree with Basketball Icon and Civil Rights activist Bill Russell 

If you’re looking for educational materials for your next steps, consider using the Re-Imagining Migration collection of Project Zero’s action-oriented thinking routines for building inclusive and sustainable societies.

To learn more about Margot Stern Strom, read Facing History, Facing Herself, from the Harvard Ed. Magazine

Adam Strom

About the Author

Adam Strom has spent his entire educational career working to create communities of belonging within and outside the classroom. He is the executive director of Re-Imagining Migration, an organization whose mission is to advance the education and well-being of immigrant-origin youth, decrease bias and hatred against young people of diverse origins, and help rising generations develop the critical understanding necessary to build and sustain welcoming and inclusive communities.

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Re-Imagining Migration

Re-Imagining Migration'smissionis to advance the education and well-being of immigrant-origin youth, decrease bias and hatred against young people of diverse origins, and help rising generations develop the critical understanding and empathy necessary to build and sustain welcoming and inclusive com

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