Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Madison Lennox | Chicago, IL
Charles Ellenbogen | Cleveland, OH
I will not be silenced.
Alan Litsey | Vestavia Hills, AL
Critical thinking skills, truth and, and understanding human rights are essential. Knowledge leads to positive action and change. Alan Litsey
Susan Kwosek | Bowman, SC
I eduate. I do not indoctrinate. It is unethical for any educator to lie or withold information from students based on the personal beliefs of a political constituency that are not supported by the preponderance of scientific and historical evidence.
Patricia Creek | Saint Louis, MO
Truth must always be told! As a teacher, once you know the truth, it is your responsibility to correct any misconceptions.
Kenneth Borre | Chicago, IL
Megan OLeary | Portland , OR
Teaching the truth is my right.
Aaron Champagne | Fort Dodge, IA
the truth matters
Paul Richtet | Bayport, MN
The truth is important.
Terrance (T.R.) Amsler | San Francisco, CA
Lynda Nedden-Durst | Cornucopia, WI
All students need to learn truth to be able to make their own decisions.
Robbin Isaacson DeWeese | Portland, OR
Students have a right and a need to be taught truth, however uncomfortable. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana)
Ingrid Running | New York, NY
All students deserve to see themselves reflected in curriculum. They deserve to learn history & social studies in context and in ways that are relevant to their lives. They deserve to learn about people who are similar to and people who are different from themselves. All humans deserve dignity and all students deserve to have educators who respect and affirm their identities, who promote critical thinking skills and compassion, who support their personal agency and their ability to engage in collective action for change.
LeAnne Forsberg | Portland, OR
Teaching our true history, as opposed to a white-washed one, will help raise a conscientious and critically-thinking generation that knows, sees and works to dismantle systemic racism!
Melissa Sundqvist | Versoix, CH
I believe it is my role to help students learn to be critical thinkers.
Cindy Cartwright | Charlottesville, VA
To not teach the complete truth is a lie and leads to ignorance. As we've seen, ignorance leads to hate. Education leads to understanding.The United States will only move forward as a country if we accept our full history. Without this knowledge, and acceptance, our democracy will continue to crumble.
Rick Mehler | Larchmont, NY
Jennifer Sanders | Waltham, MA
Marcy Newman | Los Angeles, CA
Mykhiel Deych , OR
Youth deserve to know the truth about America: it’s legacy of White Supremacy, social control and on-going systemic racism. Teaching the truth is the teacher’s equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath.
Leonor Torres | CHICAGO, IL
When history is taught with all of the facts, we learn from our wrongs and have children who understand and can connect with each other on different levels.
Stacey Joy | Los Angeles, CA
In order for students to form their own opinions and stand in their own truth, they need to learn ALL of history, not just the history that makes one group of people comfortable.
Stephanie Leaf | Syracuse, NY
The only way to make change is to stop the whitewashing. We need to teach the truth to learn from our mistakes.
Bridget Seery | Verona, PA
Sarah Millhoff | San Diego, CA
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.