Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Shannon FRIZZELL | Seattle, WA
MaryAnn Shoup | APPLE VALLEY, CA
Steven Frets
Krystal Smith | Seattle, WA
Education is key and our jobs as teachers are to decolonize and liberate the mind!
Benjamin King | Hyattsville, MD
education can be a tool for oppression or liberation. Even as a white, cis-het male, I know none are free until all are free. I choose liberation.
Ayesha Sumbal | Chicago, IL
our students deserve to know our full history!
Allison Rigby | Petaluma, CA
Our students deserve better, and are also better critical thinkers than we give them credit for. If knowledge is power, why not teach a more historically comprehensive version of the truth that includes first-hand accounts from historically oppressed peoples?
Chuck Wichgers | Muskego, WI
Bigotry
Stephanie Snyder | Milwaukee, WI
Students cannot grow up and make informed decisions for themselves and society, if they have been enshrined in lies and myths. Especially when those lies and myths are designed to keep others from benefitting from the living in this country. Students deserve to know the truth.
Jon Berg | Washington, DC
Elaine White | Manchester Township, NJ
As the saying goes, "The truth will set you free." Democracy depends on telling our whole story as a nation. Knowing the whole story of our country will only make us stronger and open the minds of our youth so that this country can progress forward towards equality and equal justice for ALL Americans and an understanding and appreciation of those who come from a different background than ourselves.
Patricia Kemp | Milwaukee, WI
Equity is denied when we ignore our history for the sake of protecting some while allowing children of color to continue to live within the oppression that has yet to cease.
Caryl Davis | Milwaukee, WI
It’s time that adults come to terms with the world that we’ve created for children and youth. It’s time to right wrongs, to face our biases, and to speak truth to power. We can’t claim to love young scholars while continuing to lie to them about our complicity in designing exclusionary systems that benefit some and disenfranchise others. The time is now!
Theresa Lehner | Milwaukee, WI
Carla Cariño | Denver, CO
Truth is empowerment.
Todd Bowser | Winston Salem, NC
We were already blinding and devaluing our students and citizens with whitewashed history and social subjects. Capitalism already creates a massive imbalance in the availability of facts and truth. When oppressors get to write their own histories to the exclusion of all others, this act is further oppression in itself. That this would be reinforced through policy is racist violence.
John Forte | Trenton, NJ
Lyndsey Stailey | Kansas City, MO
Ken Simon | Raleigh, NC
Nancy Hoeffel | Milwaukee, WI
Learning about the past and learning from the past is how we make a better future. And why would I ever lie to my students?!
Aaron Young | Milwaukee, WI
the truth matters.
Jeanette Scotti Millar | Boulder, CO
I believe in truth telling. It's important for students to learn how to be critical thinkers about past and current events and how to work collectively towards finding solutions for societal problems.
Brett Bartel | Milwaukee, WI
Dawn Henderson | Durham, NC
The truth is what will set us free
Jennifer Glueckert | Milwaukee, WI
children deserve to know the truth.
Selected Pledges
Click on pledge below to read many more.
As an educator who is serious about teaching the truth I will not be bullied into silence. I will do my part in the fight for equity and equality by making sure my students are most equipped to fight this ugliness in the real world.
Yes, the truth of American history needs to be taught, but also its impact on the rest of the world, such as its role in WWII. I just finished teaching a college-level course on the Holocaust, and could not believe how little the students knew about the rest of the world’s participation in the war! They seemed to believe that WWII was ended by the US alone!
“When you begin to do things that raise the achievement of the poorest and disenfranchised students, you may not always get applause. You need to be ready for that.” Dr. Asa Hilliard
“Resistance is a powerful motivator precisely because it enables us to fulfill our longing to achieve our goals while letting us boldly recognize and name the obstacles to those achievements.”
Dr. Derrick Bell
Our young people deserve the truth and it is our kuleana (responsibility) to give space and opportunity for the truth and the difficult conversations.
If we don’t teach it all, we teach nothing…
Social justice is a major theme of my Humanities 7 course, and my school uses Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL framework (development of identity, skills, knowledge, Criticality) to frame our entire curriculum. Student agency through research work and essay writing, and action-oriented civic engagement work, define what we “cover” in my course.