Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Connie Lobur | Peekskill, NY
We must resist this growing trend of censorship and denial of facts and accurate history in favor of tribalism and conspiracy.
Rebecca Leber-Gottberg | Lakewood, WA
It is important that we teach students to think critically and to understand the past that we share. It is important to help create thoughtful, critical thinkers to ask questions and dig into areas that make us all feel uncomfortable (and to do so with scholarly rigor and insight).
Joyce Cable | Milwaukee, WI
The history of our country has been written by white, mostly males and consequentially is incomplete. Women and BIPOC individuals have been left out of our history. All people, including children need to read and learn about our past and see themselves reflected in those people. The full picture, the truth, will help everyone be included in the work of a society and community and be the best we can all be.
Stewart Venable | Lincoln, NE
I value truth!
Grace Bennett | Seattle, WA
Truth is crucial!
Lorna Zukas | San Diego, CA
Fascism is unacceptable.
Rusty Helmerson | Rolling Hills Estates, CA
I believe it’s critical that we counter the right-wing narrative that CRT is indoctrinating our kids.
Mitchell Freedman | Rio Rancho, NM
Kimberley White-Mengis
I owe my students the truth. History is a record of what happened in a time period. It's ok to teach about racism and heinous acts in other countries, but not in our own? Denying the truth is denying them the tools it takes to procure change and be a relevant world citizen. You can't protect children from the truth.
Alice Ragland | Columbus, OH
The truth should not be hidden.
Whitney Crabtree | St Louis, MO
In order to heal our wounds, we must know the truth and recognize the pain our nation has caused its citizens both in the past and the present.
Kelli Roberts | Oklahoma city, OK
Scott Ramsey | Aurora, CO
I grew up on lies
Brenna Power | Petaluma, CA
I am responsible for raising the next generation in this country and I refuse to have my son have to search as hard as I did at his age for a correct People’s history. With the privilege we have comes responsibility, not just to educate ourselves but to ensure the education of all the kids in this country because it’s truly the only way we can get history to stop repeating itself.
Edward Taylor | Saint Louis, MO
Milton Mayer, in his book "They Thought They Were Free" showed the dangers of ignorance and misinformation and prejudice leading to Nazi Germany. In a country of "alternative facts" and when many Americans believe "The Big Lie" and doubt the need for masks and vaccinations -- when there are vituperative attacks on Board members and teachers, libraries and curriculum -- we are the defenders of democracy. A good year to teach Orwell's 1984. A good year to teach truth.
steve Wentz | Wichita, KS
The truth matters
Coff E. Break | Saint Louis, MO
Janine Jeff Baah | Atlanta , GA
I was taught by my Dad to always speak truth to power. I owe it to my ancestors…
Nia Brown | Dorchester Center, MA
I’m a descendant of Native Mohawks and an Afro-Latina
Trent Comer | Tacoma, WA
I support all teachers who teach the truth and nothing but the truth. That is our job and that's what students expect. Without the truth, we cannot change the world in a positive way. Knowledge is salvation.
Natasha Alston | Phoenix, AZ
I teach true history to empower all my students.
Richard Reuther | Kennewick, WA
These attacks on education in general and history teachers specifically must stop. Do you allow your children to lie to you? Do you lie to them? Then why not object when the curriculum lies to your kids? Why object when they are told the truth? As we used to say, "The truth will set you free."
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt | Kingsley, MI
His name is my name too.
Timothy McCarthy | Cambridge, MA
I want to be on record as being on the honest and just side of history.
Eric Evans | Fairfield, PA
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.