An alyzing picture book biographies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Doing the work of citizens

Introduction

Throughout my teaching career, I have sought to nurture students to do the work of citizens, that is, to determine where they can find reliable knowledge and then act, based on that data. One aspect of assessing the reliability of sources is recognizing that people with different perspectives may have different stories to tell. I have introduced this understanding of multiple perspectives in an activity where students write about an important event in their lives and then interview someone else who was present at the same event to get that person’s take. Students often find that the two versions of the same event reflect differences in tone. For example, to one fourth grader, a block party meant playing in the street, free from anxious parental warnings about cars; the student’s mother, on the other hand, remembered the party as a lot of work, including the lugging out of lawn furniture, grills, and coolers, followed by the lugging back in of everything at the end of the night, not to mention getting a permit to close down the street, as well as signatures from neighbors. Even more memorable was the student who had taken a fishing trip with his father; their two versions went beyond different perspectives to a difference of fact: The father remembered seven fish caught, while the son insisted that the number was ten. Obviously, father and son could not both be right (though they could both have been wrong), so I led the now highly motivated students to figure out what sources might give us the reliable data we sought (Libresco, Balantic, & Kipling, 2011, p.82). In a similar vein, literature circles using biographies can provide students with an opportunity to compare different picture books about the same person with respect to tones, facts, omissions, and perspectives. Supplementing those books with still more sources can provide students with fuller pictures of the people studied, as well as the times in which they lived and the institutional obstacles to their achievements.

The Research

I have worked with literacy colleagues for years, introducing students to citizen-role models, people who made a difference, through the vehicle of biography-literature circles, in the hope that students will be inspired to look for ways to make a difference, themselves.

Students sign up for an individual (three or four students read about the same activist); select a picture book biography of their own choosing from the library; read it actively, interacting with the text; then come in ready to participate in a literature circle with their classmates who have read different biographies about the same individual. Students’ discussions in their literature circles address the content of their person’s life, including personal factors that led to activism, as well as the society in which s/he lived, including systemic barriers to equality and social justice.

Because students select their own books, there are different biographies representing the same figure in each group. This variety produces rich discussion among students as they examine each other’s books, debate the value of artwork versus photographs, notice the omission of certain data in different books, discuss the extent to which a single biography can adequately represent a life, and derive a process for assessing the accuracy of different sources.

As detailed in the C3 (NCSS, 2013), this source work is the stuff of social studies, which, in turn, is the work of a well-informed citizenry in a democracy, wherein students – and citizens – analyze and interpret information and “work together to reach conclusions based on incomplete and conflicting information” (Barton & Levstik, 2015). Elementary social studies methods students and the elementary students they teach share the different information and perspectives found in their biographies, as they seek to get a fuller, more accurate picture of their activist and the society in which s/he lived.

In an age of standardized testing of literacy and mathematics and the concomitant shrinking time for social studies (Fitchett, Heafner, & Vanfossen, 2014), having picture books do double-duty may be a necessary methodology. It is worth noting that the use of books to teach social studies skills and concepts in addition to literacy skills can enhance or undermine social studies goals and objectives (Alleman & Brophy,1991, 1993). Employing biographical literature in the service of social studies requires “healthy integration” wherein “reading/language arts are recognized as tools for helping children come to understand the work and how to communicate that understanding” (Hinde, 2015, p. 25).

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of the citizen role models explored in the biography literature circles. In addition to the research that children’s book authors have compiled on Ginsburg (Krull, 2018; Levy, 2017; Winter, 2018), it is useful to examine the stories of Ginsburg’s nine female classmates in the Harvard Law class of ’59 (Lithwick & Olmstead, 2020). These women’s reflections on hazing at Harvard, professional setbacks, balancing career and family, and the feminist legal movement provide insight in corroborating Ginsburg’s biography and the society in which she and they achieved, despite extraordinary institutional obstacles.

Lithwick and Olmsead’s (2020) interviews with Ginsburg’s classmates and relatives complicate the stories conveyed in the picture books. They find the experiences of Ginsburg’s classmates in some of her most famous opinions and dissents:

“And there they were. The class of ’59. The story of Carol Brosnahan and absurd pay discrimination peeks through Ginsburg’s dissent in the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay case in 2007. The stories of Rhoda or Alice’s career-dampening pregnancies or pregnancy losses are simmering under the surface of her 2014 dissent in Hobby Lobby, where she writes about the burdens of inaccessible contraceptive care. The slights and stings of the discrimination each of these women faced in job interviews, promotions, and fair pay form the spine of her dissent in the 2011 class-action discrimination case that was Wal-Mart v. Dukes. And the story of all these women and that infamous dinner party at Dean Griswold’s house is suddenly the subtext of her historic majority opinion in the Virginia Military Institute case that desegregated an august all-male military institution in 1996."

I did not come upon this article about Ginsburg’s nine female classmates until after we had completed our biography literature circles this past fall, but I would certainly share it with students in the future. Its inclusion as another source may help students think about the other women who, while they did not become Supreme Court Justices, were pioneers, nonetheless. Further, the article may induce students reading about activists in the future to widen their lens to include the stories of activists’ contemporaries to gain a fuller picture of the life and times of their subjects.

Findings and Implications

A comparison of the three NCSS Notable picture book biographies of Ginsburg (I dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes her mark by Debbie Levy,2017 ; Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The case of R. B. G. vs Inequality by Jonah Winter, 2018; No truth without Ruth: The life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Kathleen Krull,2018) reveals differences in emphasis but no factual conflicts.

When I reviewed two of the books, I found that The case of R. B. G. vs. Inequality (Winter, 2018) focuses more on Ginsburg’s upbringing prior to her work on the bench, as well as her style of “dignity, civility, intelligence, and a soft-spoken manner,” whereas I dissent (Levy, 2017) explores more of the substance of her work and the notion that “disagreement doesn’t mean being disagreeable,” as her disagreements have been “with creaky old ideas, with unfairness, with inequality.” In that review, I was disappointed that neither book focused enough on the particulars of the cases she argued before the Supreme Court and decided (or dissented) while a Supreme Court Justice:

“It does not seem beyond the comprehension of elementary students to read about the problematic predicament of Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the Air Force who, in the early 1970s, discovered that she did not qualify for certain military benefits (like a spousal housing allowance) given automatically to men. Nor would nine- and ten-year old students have difficulty understanding the inherent unfairness in a prestigious, state-run institution like the Virginia Military Institute’s refusal to admit women (Libresco, 2019, p. 32)."

Of course, no single book can cover everything (an important understanding for students); happily, the most recently published biography, No truth without Ruth, focuses on the specifics of the cases. This summary of the Lilly Ledbetter case both lays out the inherent unfairness of the case, as well as the ultimate remedy, derived from Ginsburg’s dissent:

“One decision that angered her came in 2007. An Alabama woman had sued her employer on finding out after twenty years on the job that she was being paid much less than men holding the same job. The Court ruled against her, saying too much time had passed for her to take legal action. Ruth dissented so strongly that Congress later overruled the Court. In 2009, the first piece of legislation that President Barack Obama signed was the Fair Pay Act in honor of the woman who had sued, so that this wouldn’t happen again. Ruth’s dissent had become the law (Krull, 2018)."

In its Endnotes, this recent biography provides an annotated list of ten cases where Ginsburg “fought for fairness.”

In the most recent iteration of the biography literature circles, group members in my elementary methods class noted the different focuses of the three biographies and found that discussing all three made them aware of more than their single book had, including: “women’s rights, job discrimination, anti-Semitism, gender in the workplace, the ACLU, the civic purpose of dissent, representation on the Supreme Court, how these issues [manifested] during RBG’s childhood, how RBG fought for or against these issues, [and] how much or little the United States has undergone” (student work, Fall 2020). Even when the data in the books are not in conflict, the benefits of reading multiple sources with varying emphases become clear to students.

Practical Guidance for Teachers

Providing students with questions to consider prior to and during their literature circles can help focus the discussion: What societal need did the individual discover, and how did this discovery shape her/his motivation to be a change agent? What characteristics (personal, family, societal) shaped the individual’s ability to be a change agent? What obstacles did the individual face in her/his struggle for change? How did this individual contribute to the society in which s/he lived? To help students visualize both the differing and corroborating information their biographies and other sources bring to their understanding of the subject, write each of the questions above on separate pieces of chart paper. Each group member, then, records her/his responses to the questions based on the reading of her/his own book. If each student uses a different colored marker, it will be clear that different sources yield different information on the same historical figure. After this activity, have students discuss how their book’s account compares to those of their classmates and how they decide which is/are the most reliable account(s).

In addition, the group can assess the individual’s contribution to society by designing a fitting monument to her/him. Groups can discuss the extent to which reading the life story of their individual affected the way they want to live their lives. If a textbook is used in the class, students can check to see if these activists get their due in the text. If not, information about the person can be inserted in the textbook on a series of Post-it notes (Libresco, Balantic, & Kipling, 2011, p. 92-3).

An addition to this interdisciplinary biography activity is a second round of literature circles that reorder the groups so that students who have read biographies about different individuals are placed together. In their new configurations, students look for similarities and differences in the lives of the different activists shared within the group. Thus, might the challenges and achievements of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony, and Cesar Chavez be compared. Students may marvel at the fact that all students in the circle can contribute to thoughtful discussion when each of them has read a different book about a different activist (Fusco & Libresco, 2009).

Finally, the picture books, Seven Blind Mice (Young, 2002), which retells the fable of blind men who individually investigate the different parts of an elephant and argue about what each has found, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Sciescka, 1996), which recounts the fairy tale from the wolf’s point of view, can reinforce the understanding that students have acquired from their biography-literature circles that different sources tell different stories and it is our job as citizens to assess their accuracy. Or, as one fourth grader explained it to me, “You have to go all the way around the elephant to get the full story.”

Q & A with Andrea Libresco