Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education is the 2026 recipient of the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English, which honors an outstanding work of scholarship or research in language, literature, rhetoric, or pedagogy and learning.
The 2026 selection committee noted:
Out of the many books nominated for the award, we have chosen Teach Truth because of its extraordinary timeliness, its broad applicability to a range of teachers of language, literacy, and English throughout the profession, and its extremely well-written and engaging accessibility. Teach Truth takes up the pressing problem of ongoing, persistent, and systemic racism throughout educational structures in the United States by focusing not just on recent governmental and social attempts to suppress knowledge about racial inequity but also by providing a rich historical context for the many ways in which current struggles are hardly new. Continue reading.
Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian’s Teach Truth is a manifesto to defend education from the billionaires and bigots. Hagopian movingly chronicles today’s relentless — and sometimes violent — attacks on teaching with a conscience.
This is a story of elites desperate to use schools to legitimate race and class privilege — and ultimately to discredit and defund public education. Hagopian gives us language to describe the pushback to anti-racist education and what it means to be a truth-teacher during difficult times.
At the heart of Teach Truth are the stories of courageous students and educators determined to make schools sites of curiosity, equality, and justice. The book is sharp, story-rich, and carefully researched. Hagopian’s Teach Truth is a warning — but also a song of hope and a call to action. [Description by Rethinking Schools.]
ISBN: 9798888902516 | Haymarket Books
Try the Teach Truth Study Guide and learn more at the website for the book.
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