Teaching About the Wars

This teaching guide is available for free as a PDF download from Rethinking Schools.

Teaching About the Wars breaks the curricular silence on the U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Even though the United States has been at war continuously since just after 9/11, sometimes it seems that our schools have forgotten.

Although the articles in Teaching About the Wars grow out of the “war on terrorism” following the September 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan, and then the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the teaching strategies, the history, and many of the resources highlighted in the volume are still relevant today.

For example, lesson suggestions encourage students to read and evaluate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A Revolution of Values,” in which he denounces the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.”

A lesson, “Whose Terrorism?” asks students to define “terrorism,” and then to apply their definitions to world events. Their conclusions about their own government are often startling.

“The U.S. and Iraq: Choices and Predictions” looks at U.S. policy toward Iraq going back to the 1980s — a history that also sheds light on today’s relations with Iran.

Teaching About the Wars is divided into five chapters: Introduction: Breaking the Silence on War; The Road to War; The Human Face of War; Military Recruitment; Anti-War Resistance.

Contributing authors include Bill Bigelow, Ann Pelo, Margot Pepper, Bob Peterson, Özlem Sensoy, and Howard Zinn.

ISBN: 9781937730475 | Rethinking Schools

This teaching guide is available for free as a PDF download from Rethinking Schools.

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