This spring, Upper School history teacher Dr. Jonathan Wilson will join other teachers across the United States to develop lessons about Rev. Howard Thurman, a leader in the 1960s civil rights movement.
The initiative, called Teaching Common Ground: The Howard Thurman Curriculum Project, is based at the University of Virginia and Boston University. Twelve social studies teachers will meet to study Thurman’s life and ideas. Then they will develop lesson plans that high schools can use to explore related topics.
Dr. Wilson said he was drawn to the project by Thurman’s role in the Pilgrimage of Friendship, a 1936 tour of South Asia. Thurman spoke in more than 50 cities and met Indian leaders including Mohandas Gandhi and the Nobel-Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore.
“All our ninth graders at Wardlaw+Hartridge get to read one of Tagore’s books together when they take Global Humanities,” Dr. Wilson said. “When they do, I want them to understand that his life was part of a larger story in world history, which included the American civil rights movement.”
Dr. Wilson explained that Howard Thurman was influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance. In fact, Thurman helped bring Gandhi’s ideas back to the United States. He was a family friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and 20 years later, when King led the nonviolent boycott that desegregated city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, he carried a book Thurman wrote.
“This project is a great opportunity to make connections that can transform our students’ appreciation of history,” Dr. Wilson said. “What’s even more exciting is that it’s a way our students at The Wardlaw+Hartridge School can contribute to social studies education across America.”