Why Take Action?

Children’s future depends on what they learn today.

However, legislatures, the president, and corporate power are pushing laws and policies to criminalize teaching honestly about U.S. history and to restrict students’ ability to ask questions and engage in critical thinking.

The laws’ chilling effects reach classrooms nationwide, on top of textbooks and high-stakes testing that have also long distorted curricula.

To protect young people’s right to learn — and by default protect the future of democracy and justice — we need to expose the right’s agenda and be visible in our defense of teaching people’s history.

Erasing History author Jason Stanley said, “fascist education works by strategically erasing accounts of history and current events that include a diversity of perspectives. . . This narrowing is inconsistent with multiracial democracy, antithetical to egalitarianism, and carries the possibility of conjuring mass violence.”

That is why we must defend the right to teach truthfully and why educators are hosting close to 200 events to challenge the media silence and encourage everyone to defend the freedom to learn.

Kansas City high school teacher and event co-organizer Michael Rebne said, “Our students demand to learn the truth even if a small group of powerful, mostly wealthy, white adults is threatened by that.”

Teachers can’t do it alone. They need our public support. Make some noise.

Let students and teachers know we are by their side.

How to Participate

There are options for EVERYONE to defend the freedom to learn. Let the media, the White House, and state legislators know that the well-funded rightwing hate campaign is outnumbered by the people in support of truth telling. Make resistance visible and the norm.

Go to a historic site and take a photo with a sign that you make or download. Share it with #TeachTruth.

Request a FREE Teach, Vote, Resist, Organize poster. Use it at rallies. Display it in your window.

Download and host one of our mini-lessons that serve as an affirmation that we defy censorship by teaching “banned history” in a public space. For example, we offer a series of quotes on the struggle for Black education.

Record a statement and/or share graphics on social media about why YOU defend the freedom to learn.

Wear a conversation-starting Teach Banned History button.

Make a #TeachTruth photo booth frame for you and friends.

Share and teach the teach truth syllabus.

Teach about banned books and anti-history education laws. Read about a 4th-grade class’s banned books study and share your teaching stories.

Get involved with the school board. Attend meetings, vote, run for office.

Donate so that we can continue to organize events like these and defend the right of students to learn people’s history.

What to Say?

Our Teach Truth Media Guide is for everyone seeking to communicate with the media or others about the dangers of anti-history education legislation and book bans, the importance of teaching truthfully, and the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

Although this guide was designed for the Teach Truth Day of Action, it can be used all year.

We include responses to frequently asked questions on systemic racism, LGBTQ identity, parents’ rights, Critical Race Theory, DEI, Palestine, Project 2025, and more.

Media Guide

Book Giveaway

For the 5th annual Teach Truth Day of Action, Seven Stories Press, Haymarket Books, and One Signal Publishers donated books on the theme of education censorship.

To receive a book, share a story about the impact of anti-history education laws, executive orders, the chilling effect in your school or school district, and whether or how educators and communities are resisting this repression.

Request a Book