In the News

The Zinn Education Project, the journal Rethinking Schools, and Black Lives Matter at School are organizing “A Day of Action: Educators Pledge to Teach the Truth” on Saturday June 12 to protest state legislation, either already passed or in the works, that prohibits teachers from addressing racism and other forms of oppression in the history of the United States.

Four states have now passed legislation that would limit how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and other controversial issues. It’s Republican lawmakers’ latest effort to rein in the approach to subjects they claim are divisive and inappropriate. The legislation, passed so far in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, bans teachers from introducing certain concepts. Among them: that one race or sex is inherently superior, that any individual is consciously or unconsciously racist or sexist because of their race or sex, and that anyone should feel discomfort or guilt because of their race or sex.

Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher, a staff member of the Zinn Education Project, and an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine. He has edited and co-edited a number of books, including Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice and More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. As part of a growing movement to bring racial justice and people’s history to classrooms, he is on the forefront of the Black Lives Matter at School movement to connect educators with accurate curriculum and support their work with students to “root their concerns and daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms are set up”. Just weeks before the 2021 Black Lives Matter in Schools Week of Action, Lush sat down with Jesse to learn more.

With Black History Month underway, some educators are challenging the way Black history is currently handled in the public education system. Erica Buddington, founder and chief executive officer of curriculum consultant firm Langston League, for example, believes the approach is contrary to how Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History Month,” intended.

"You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down our nation,” former President Donald Trump told the collection of white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and would-be instigators of a second civil war who rallied with him in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. The crowd cheered at the idea that people like them — mostly white, mostly male — were the true heroes of American history. Then they ransacked the Capitol.

Teachers scrambled to create lesson plans to help students make sense of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol right after it happened. It’s a fraught task. Even the news media wasn’t sure what to call this unprecedented attack on U.S. democracy. Was it a coup? A riot? An act of domestic terrorism? Likewise, it’s not clear where lessons should begin. The Conversation U.S. asked six education experts how teachers – and parents – can help young people comprehend, analyze and process what happened.

In 1980, historian Howard Zinn released “A People’s History of the United States,” a reader that became wildly popular in high schools across the country and sparked a revolution in the way that history is taught. Rather than putting students to sleep with factoids and timelines, teachers began to rely more on primary source materials, including documents and texts that narrate history from multiple perspectives.

Last fall, teacher Michael Palermo called Columbus’s crew to the witness stand. Wilfredo Lopez Murcia, a student at Wakefield High School in Virginia, strolled to the front of the classroom, followed by classmate Jhonnatan Moya Miranda. “Hello, mates,” Wilfredo quipped, giving a short salute to his peers. Wilfredo and Jhonnatan were about to defend themselves in The People vs. Columbus, et al. trial, a social studies role play that encourages critical thinking about European colonization of the Americas...