‘The Greatest Athlete in the World’

1. Set Focus
Pose this essential question: What are the benefits to embracing diversity in a society?

2. List Vocabulary
Share some of the challenging vocabulary words in the article (see below). Encourage students to use context to infer meanings as they read.

• amateurism (p. 17)
• residing (p. 17)
• assimilated (p. 18)
• conventional (p. 18)
• massacred (p. 19)
• vindicated (p. 19)

3. Engage
Poll students on whether they have heard of Jim Thorpe. Then have students examine the photo of Thorpe on page 16 and read the title, subtitle, and photo caption. Ask students to share their reactions, including what they hope to learn from the article. Regroup after reading the article to have students share new insights.

4. Read and Discuss
Ask students to read the Upfront article about Jim Thorpe. Review why the article is a secondary source. (It was written by someone who didn’t personally experience or witness the events.) Then pose these critical-thinking questions:

• What are Thorpe’s athletic accomplishments? Do you think he would be voted “greatest athlete” if a poll were conducted today? (Thorpe was a football star in high school. At the 1912 Summer Olympics, he won gold in the pentathlon and in the decathlon, despite having to wear mismatched shoes for many of the events. His decathlon point total wasn’t beaten for another four Olympics. He later played Major League Baseball and became the first pro football star. Opinions about the poll will vary.) 

• The author says there was great irony to the fame Thorpe had after winning at the Olympics in 1912. What does he mean? (The irony is that Thorpe was being celebrated as an American hero by an America that would not grant him or many other Native Americans citizenship. Furthermore, he was being celebrated by an America that had tried to strip him and other Native young people of their culture by sending them to boarding schools where they were punished if they tried to practice their traditions.)

• Why did the I.O.C. take away Thorpe’s medals? Which details help show why there is a movement to fully restore them? (The I.O.C. took them away after learning that Thorpe had been paid to play baseball, which violated the amateurism rules of the time. Details about the deadline having passed for challenging medals and the Olympics now allowing pros help show why the movement exists.)

• John Thorpe says that prejudice played a role in his grandfather being stripped of his medals. Based on the article, do you agree? Why or why not? (Responses will vary. Some students might point to the racism of the time, Thorpe being paid for a sport different from what he won his medals for, or the deadline having passed for challenging medals as evidence that prejudice did play a role.)

5. Use the Primary Sources

Use the Primary Source: Project, distribute, or assign in Google Classroom the PDF The ‘Civilizing’ Process, which features excerpts from a memoir by Luther Standing Bear about his experiences at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Discuss what makes the memoir a primary source. (It provides firsthand evidence concerning the topic.) Have students read the excerpts and answer the questions below (which appear on the PDF without answers).

• How would you describe the tone and purpose of these excerpts from Standing Bear’s memoir? (The tone can be described as straightforward and critical. The purpose is to describe what Standing Bear experienced at Carlisle.)

• Standing Bear puts civilizing in quotation marks. What does this help convey about what the school did? (Putting civilizing in quotation marks helps convey the irony of what the school did—it was anything but civilizing or civilized. Instead, the students were made to wear unsanitary clothing, exposed to new sicknesses, demeaned by having their heads shaven, forced to pick meaningless names, forbidden from speaking their own language, and served unhealthy food.)

• What does Standing Bear mean by “we were soon to know them” when discussing sicknesses? (He means that the students became sick at Carlisle with colds and other illness that they had never experienced when living with their families and following the traditions of their own culture.) 

• What claim does Standing Bear make about the change in diet at Carlisle? How does he support this claim? Is the evidence sufficient? Explain. (Standing Bear claims that the change in diet was the most harmful change the students had to endure. He supports this claim by first providing details about what was served at Carlisle compared with what the students ate at home so that readers can recognize that the school diet was far less nutritious, and then by giving a statistic about how nearly half the students were dead within three years—in large part because of their new unhealthy diet. Students’ evaluations of the evidence will vary, but students may note that one-half is a disturbingly large percentage of the student body to have died, and therefore, the claim is sufficiently supported.)

• Based on the Upfront article and the excerpts from Standing Bear’s memoir, how did Indian boarding schools affect the lives of individuals and Native American culture? (Responses will vary, but students should support their ideas with text evidence.)

6. Writing Prompt
Write a letter to the I.O.C. expressing your opinion on whether Thorpe should be awarded his titles as his own. Support your opinion with evidence from the article as well as your own knowledge.

7. Quiz
Use the quiz to assess comprehension.

8. Classroom Debate
Should all sports teams with Native American names change their names?

9. Group Projects
Have small groups research different topics related to the article (e.g., Indian boarding schools, forced removal of Indians, the Indian Citizenship Act) and create artwork, a slideshow, a video, a graphic novel, or an audio podcast to present their topic to the class.