In the News

“I think the College Board needs to be abolished,” said Jesse Hagopian, a campaign organizer at the Zinn Education Project focused on Black history. “It’s an institution that was founded in eugenics and white supremacy, and we have far better models of education to look to. We should be moving towards educational approaches based in ethnic studies, Black studies, or people’s history. There are so many different models for empowering students with education that are far more impactful than the College Board.”

The book Teaching for Black Lives was first published in 2018 during the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. The book has 50 chapters written by scholars, teachers, and community educators... The Zinn Education Project, Rethinking Schools, and Teaching for Change support the campaign.

. . . This article highlights resources that social studies educators can bring into their classrooms to teach climate change and connect it to the effect it has on communities, governance, population movements, and much more. . . . Another resource for teaching climate change is the Zinn Education Project, which features teaching activities, testimonials, and experiences in “From the New Deal to the Green New Deal: Stories of Crisis and Possibility.”

Though nineteen states have passed laws or imposed rules to restrict how public school teachers discuss race, racism, or other subjects deemed  “divisive” in their classrooms, many educators are pushing back on these boundaries and are using every tool at their disposal to help students understand U.S. history and social justice movements.

In fact, more than 13,000 teachers in forty-seven states are currently teaching The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,  young readers edition, an adaptation of Jeanne Theoharis’s award-winning 2013 deconstruction of the “national fable” that reduces Parks to a tired, middle-aged woman who simply took a seat on a bus and inadvertently started a movement.

In the Chinatown-International District (CID), where the Teach the Truth rally was held June 12, 2022, students, educators, and activists gathered for a walking tour of a neighborhood with frequent stops at sites of historical significance. June’s CID rally followed a March historical tour of the Central District, both involving a guide with a mic followed by a speaker wheeled through the streets. Organizers put together an information-packed 2-mile route, taking just over two hours to walk, that weaved through the CID, Pioneer Square, and down to the Marion Street Bridge before turning back towards the CID.

A new report has found that U.S. students aren’t adequately taught about the Reconstruction Era, the period from 1865 to 1877 in which white supremacists undermined efforts to reintegrate former Black slaves into the post-Civil War United States. As a result, many students remain ignorant about the period and its connection to the present-day fight for racial justice. The report, released by the Zinn Education Project, found that numerous U.S. school teachers quickly summarize, skip, or minimize lessons from the era over fears that it might upset parents angry over “indoctrination” or “critical race theory.”

Schools need to be a whole lot more honest with America’s students. If we don’t teach students about the past, we aren’t equipping them with the tools to succeed in the future. And any history of America is woefully incomplete without a thoughtful examination of post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Opponents of “critical race theory” will hear the voices of educators, parents, students, and community organizers who refuse to lie about the true history of the United States. This is the kind of grassroots action that is inspiring hundreds of people in the teach truth movement who are currently making plans to gather at historic sites in their communities from June 11-12 — sites, like the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C., and Stone Mountain Park in Georgia that reveal something about the struggle against structural racism and oppression, and symbolize the history that teachers would be required to lie about or omit if these bills become law.