Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Emily Vail | Topsham, ME
I believe teaching our students the truth about our past and present will help them build a better future for this country—and the world.
Amanda Buzard | Mt Pleasant, MI
I work with future teachers and believe it is a moral and ethical imperative that I teach them the truth in our classes and model this behavior so they carry it into their own future classrooms and make lasting change for a better tomorrow.
Loretta Solomon | Philadelphia, PA
I tried to create curriculum that would appeal to my students because it told the truth about US history and reflected characters who looked like them.
Dornzella Milligan | Nyack, NY
Rich Cairn | Northampton, MA
The teaching of civics and history must focus on the skills of inquiry and critical thinking. One of many terrible results of these censorship laws will be that all students in states that pass them will lack the skills they need to succeed as workers, family members, and citizens.
Elisa Bozzuto-Rinaldi | Waterbury, CT
edna ortiz | Brattleboro Town of, VT
It doesn't make sense to hide the past and not learn from it. We all need to unite and make things right for our children's sake...it's the least we can do.
Laura Mears | Asheville, NC
Kristina Najera
Those in power have kept the truth about history hidden for too long.
Debra Repak | Northampton Twp, PA
I love my Country, and am committed to help create well informed, educated young citizens who understand both the good and bad about our history, how our government works and what happens when it doesn't work fairly for all. I am committed to teaching my students to use primary sources and reliable research to become informed. I am committed to teaching students how to think critically about what they use, understand context, see multiple perspectives and make informed judgements. I am committed to helping create citizens who will guard the freedoms of this country and speak out when they are threatened. I will do my part to create a fairer Country for all its citizens.
Jackie Bazan | West Orange Twp, NJ
this country cannot hide from the realities of the past and must teach the truth to our students moving forward. Racism and sexism that continues to threaten our youth and their future to live equally must end.
Dashua Holliday | Akron, OH
I believe that when we know the truth, we can change past issues that continue to oppress, and we can make the future a better place for everyone.
Andrea Worthington-Garcia | Greenbelt, MD
Children are smart and brave. They deserve to know the complete history, not the whitewashed version. I teach my students to be critical thinkers, share the truth about this nation and its founding, and let them make up there own mind. These kids are going to change the world!
Bruce Brey | Cambria, WI
We must honestly teach the contributions and struggles of all of our people if we are to have an informed population which is necessary for a functioning democracy.
Emily Knight | Akron, OH
I am a teacher who believes in the power of words. I am a teacher because I believe that education, knowledge, and the ability to read and think for oneself is a critical tool of democracy and freedom. In all of history, the ones who knew history and were at the top of the pyramid in knowledge and education MADE history. Just like anti-literacy laws during slavery, peasants in feudal Europe, and many of our uneducated today, if you don't know the truth and you can't read and think for yourself, you're easy to lie to, scare, and manipulate. I pledge that will not be my students or my own children. I promise not to teach them WHAT to think, that's not the point. But I also promise to do the best I can to expose them to stories, perspectives, and history that presents a different narrative than the master narrative that is the canon of American Education. I believe my students matter. Their lives and their struggles and their history and our shared history matter. They deserve to know it and reflect on it and think critically about what it means for our nation today and their lives today. Above all, though, if you are lied to, the truth is hidden from you, and you exist in a place of half, semi-truths as your basis for reality, then you are disempowered. And disempowered people are hopeless people. And hopeless people with nothing to lose are dangerous people. If we want a country that strives for everything we say we believe in, the highest American Ideals, then we desperately need to pledge and commit to teaching hard history, multiple perspectives, and critical thinking and evaluation skills. Like Langston Hughes said in his famous poem, "Let America be America again, America that has never been yet...I say it plain,America never was America to me,And yet I swear this oath—America will be!Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,We, the people, must redeemThe land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.The mountains and the endless plain—All, all the stretch of these great green states—And make America again!"
Tracy Wicker | Saint Louis, MO
we are hiding the truth. Our children deserve better.
Danielle Polemeni | Columbus, OH
Chris Parisi | Fairfield, CT
During the Cold War and throughtout the 150-year reign of Confederate-apologist revisionist historians, our textbooks were santized. The truth about slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and white male supremacy were purposefully buried under a romantic Lost Cause Mythology. It has taken a 30-year teaching career of research, reading and uncovering the documentary evidence to see the truth behind the lies. Those lies poisoned generations of young learners to be blind to the realities of systemic racism, colonialism and militarism. And, I was part of the problem, as I was indoctrinating those children in those lies, until I found the truth. LCM (lost Cause Mythology) has been the greatest threat to national progress, because it has prevented any reconciliation of past crimes, any clear re-evaluation of our institutions, and all reassessement of our direction as a culture. I am eternally grateful to Howard Zinn, James Loewen, Eric Foner, David Blight, John Hope Franklin, Charles Dew, Edward Baptist, Carol Anderson, Mary Ann Franks, Frederick Douglass, Chief Joseph, Clint Smith, Ron Chernow, Louise Erdrich, George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, Sally Hemmings, Sassacus and all the people of color and courageous activitists who left their documents behind, giving their lives in the defense of truth and justice. My young students are being empowered with that truth and, they are our only hope that the future will redeem the past.
Kim Miller | Colorado Springs, CO
Silence and not teaching truth is immoral. We can't move forward in a better way until we acknowledge the truth of our past.
Peggy Wagner | Canton, OH
I believe in truth!
Lisa Norton | Longmont, CO
Danielle Jones | Oklahoma City, OK
I know my history. When you know, you’ll do everything in your power to ensure the truth always comes out. My ancestors endured so much for me to be sitting here today. I am their wildest dream. Who am I to sit around while they remove the voices of the Global Majority and People of Color. Education is our Protest.
Audra dePrisco | Philadelphia, PA
Children deserve to know the full history of the country they will one day need to govern.
Elissa Waldman | Gaithersburg, MD
Racism and its ongoing effects may not be my fault, but it is my responsibility to make things right
Donna Kimelman | Beaufort, SC
To teach the history you need to include as many perspectives as you have access to
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.