Why teach “a people’s history”?
Why should we teach “a people’s history” instead of the traditional narrative? Here are responses from some of the authors featured on the website and teachers who received a Zinn Education Project packet in 2008.
Howard Zinn
In Howard Zinn’s talk at the National Conference for the Social Studies (NCSS) in 2008 he outlined the key premises that are critical for students to rethink by studying a people’s history if we want the world to be a better place. This is an excellent film to be shown in parts or in full for staff discussion.
View this movie in high-resolution.
Teachers
Since the launch of the Zinn Education Project in 2008, we have received lots of comments from teachers about the value of “a people’s history” and how they are incorporating it in their classroom. Here are a few of those comments:
“I love all the materials I received in the packet and have so far seen an amazing effect with my students … Thank you for letting me and my classes participate in this program!”
— Angela Hubbs, Junior High School Teacher, San Diego, CA
“Zinn’s work offers an alternative perspective that students need in order to think more critically about key issues in history.”
— William Thomas, Auburn, NH
“These resources are an asset for ESOL teachers. We are always looking for ways to offer students a critical perspective. The unsung heroes unit is outstanding! I have tailored it to meet the needs of my 2nd graders when we study American biographies.”
— Meaghan Martin, Elementary School Teacher, Manassas, VA
“Knowing that resources like the Zinn Education Project exist make me feel so hopeful about the network of people who are engaged in this kind of dialogue with their students. I am a young, white female living in Baltimore and teaching at an all black middle school. These resources are so valuable to me personally and to the relationships being built between the students and the faculty. Thank you to everyone involved in keeping this collaboration evolving!”
— Lara Emerling, Middle School Teacher, Baltimore, MD
“I’m definitely going to use the Zinn Project Teacher Guide with preservice teachers as an example of excellent pedagogy and as an approach to teaching difficult historical material.”
— Brian Gibbs, High School Teacher, Pasadena, CA
“Thank you so very much for sharing Zinn’s materials with us. We badly need to get a message of advocacy and action into our communities and into our hearts. Your support makes this easier, in a fight that feels overwhelming …”
— Nancy Jean Smith, California State University Stanislaus, Stockton, CA
…[I]t was my sense that throughout the year last school year, and so far this school year, [that] the kids responded well to the Zinn book … [because] they appreciate Zinn’s perspective. I think most of the kids realize that there has been something seriously flawed with the way in which US History has been presented to them, and Zinn’s book, for many of them, verifies this feeling. Even the kids who don’t agree with Zinn’s take on US History appreciate the fact that he has a definite approach to history and the kids say that a strong perspective makes the text more engaging than traditional history texts. Also, the students enjoy his narrative style where one topic or series of events is dealt with in a clean, short chapter, as opposed to a traditional textbook’s reliance on sections that seem to drone on with facts layered on more facts. We will see how this year continues.”
— Nick Caltagirone, High School Teacher, West Chicago, IL
“The materials are great and I am thankful that I have been given the opportunity to try them out. They certainly encourage and push my creativity.”
— Mariella Arredondo, Bloomington, IN
Ronald Takaki
Author of A Different Mirror: A Multicultural History of America
“Let me tell you what I have been striving to do as a teacher and scholar. I noted the power and pervasiveness of the master narrative of American history, which defines American as white. We have an opportunity at the beginning of this 21st century to challenge this narrative and to re-vision our nation’s history. How can diverse Americans become ‘one people’? I believe that one path is for us to pursue [a] study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as ‘we the people,’ working and living in a nation, founded and ‘dedicated’ (to use Lincoln’s language) to the ‘proposition’ that ‘all men are created equal.’ So, our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let’s put aside fears of the ‘disuniting of America’ and warnings of the ‘clash of civilizations.’ As Langston Hughes sang, ‘Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.’”
Ray Raphael
(Excerpted from the teaching activity, Re-examining the Revolution)
“In textbooks students learn that a handful of celebrated personalities make things happen, the rest only tag along; a few write the scripts, the rest just deliver their lines. This turns history on its head. In reality, so-called leaders emerge from the people-they gain influence by expressing views that others espouse.
“In the telling of history, however, the genesis of leadership is easily forgotten. Textbook authors and popular history writers fail to portray the great mass[es] of humanity as active players, agents on their own behalf. Supposedly, only leaders function as agents of history. They provide the motive force; without them, nothing would happen. The famous Founders, we are told, made the American Revolution. They dreamt up the ideas, spoke and wrote incessantly, and finally convinced others to follow their lead. But in trickle-down history, as in trickle-down economics, the concerns of the people at the bottom are supposed to be addressed by mysterious processes that cannot be delineated. What happens at the top is all that really counts. This distorts the very nature of the historical process, which must, by definition, include masses of people.
“The way we learn about the birth of our nation is a case in point. If we teach our students that a few special people forged American freedom, we misrepresent, and even contradict, the spirit of the American Revolution. Our country owes its existence to the political activities of groups of dedicated patriots who acted in concert. Throughout the rebellious colonies, citizens organized themselves into an array of local committees, congresses, and militia units that unseated British authority and assumed the reins of government. These revolutionary efforts could serve as models for the collective, political participation of ordinary citizens. Stories that focus on these models would confirm the original meaning of American patriotism: Government must be based on the will of the people. They would also show some of the dangers inherent in majoritarian democracy: the suppression of dissent and the use of jingoism to mobilize support and secure power. They would reflect what really happened, and they would reveal rather than conceal the dynamics of political struggle.”
