Why I’ll Be Talking to My Students About the Trump Assassination Attempt

In my ninth grade Global History class this past year, I connected the medieval Crusades with the current war in Gaza. I was nervous about teaching such a current and polarizing issue — one many students care deeply about — but I decided it was important to do it anyway.

When I asked in the end-of-unit survey of my Crusades/Gaza unit whether we should have learned about such a sensitive topic, one student wrote, “It is important to know about matters around the world.” Another explained that after our class discussions, “it doesn’t feel weird talking to people about it anymore.”

The shocking events have me considering how I might teach about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and about political violence generally. Although it’s tempting for teachers to leave it to news outlets and social media while we focus on the traditional curriculum, I think that this would be a mistake.

In addition to teaching high school history, I am an assistant principal who supervises social studies teachers. I will urge my teachers to talk about the attempted Trump assassination with their students, as I plan to do with mine.

Why teach such charged topics as political violence when we risk saying biased, even untrue, things in the process? When we risk voicing an opinion that is hurtful to others, or inciting an argument among peers?

Because engaging with current events, no matter how distressing or controversial, makes teaching and learning better. It connects the past to the present and helps us understand our world today.

The Southern Poverty Law Center asserts that schools should teach “hard history” topics, such as slavery. I agree and would add that schools must also teach the “hard present.”

The most powerful way to teach the “hard present” is to connect current events thematically with topics already being studied. After all, if we only teach history chronologically, students might never get to recent history, which is often the stuff they find most relevant and engaging.

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The attempted assassination of Trump can be connected to U.S. and world history in many ways. One way is to see the event in the context of the election.

In June, at our last social studies department meeting of the school year, I encouraged all teachers to incorporate the election into their curriculum this fall. I reminded them that this would be the only presidential election of our students’ high school careers.

We already have an elections unit in our 12th grade Participation in Government class, so we may use the assassination attempt to explore this cultural moment. We could discuss the extreme partisan divide or how Trump has united Republicans despite his felony convictions and indictments. Meanwhile, in 11th grade U.S. History, teaching about our election process and the attempted assassination dovetails with lessons about the American Revolution and drafting the U.S. Constitution. “What are the strengths and limitations of our governmental structure?” teachers might ask.

Engaging with current events, no matter how distressing or controversial, makes teaching and learning better.

In Global History classes, the election can be integrated into a thematic unit about forms of government. Our election could be taught alongside ancient Greek and Roman democracy in ninth grade or the French Revolution in 10th grade. Teachers could ask: “What kind of government is best? What role does political violence play in establishing, maintaining, or threatening different forms of government?”

Of course, the recent assassination attempt can be connected to historic political assassinations, such as that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the beginning of World War I, and that of President Abraham Lincoln at the close of the Civil War.

We may also consider the role that state actors have played in past political violence. The U.S., for example, participated in the Cold War-era assassination of heads of state such as Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Jacobo Àrbenz of Guatemala, as well as in failed assassination attempts, as with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

More recently, U.S. drones have been used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to target suspected terrorists. “Is it moral for the US government to assassinate its enemies in defiance of a U.N. resolution against doing so?” we might ask our students. “Where should we draw the line?”

It’s also worth noting how, in some other countries, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, and recently Ecuador, violence against political rivals is more commonplace.

If the Regents exams do become an optional pathway to graduating high school in New York, as state education officials recently proposed, then educators will have more time and leeway to delve into current events. Without the pressure to cover such a wide range of exam content, they can go deeper and make more contemporary connections.

And as that opportunity grows, so too will student learning.

Jeremy Kaplan is Assistant Principal of Supervision for Social Studies and Physical Education at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services in Manhattan. He has been a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator in the New York City Public Schools since 1994.