Education Archives

Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History

Teaching Guide. By James W. Loewen. 2010. 264 pages.
A wealth of ideas on how to rethink the teaching of U.S. history.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Book — Non-fiction. By Paulo Freire. 1968; republished in 2000, 2018. 192 pages.
Classic text on critical pedagogy.

Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Joel Westheimer. Foreword by Howard Zinn. 2007. 219 pages.
Educators address the politics of patriotism in schools.

History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

Book — Non-fiction. By Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward. 2004. 404 pages.
How U.S. history is portrayed in textbooks from around the world.

Mitch Daniels and academic freedom cartoon | Zinn Education Project

Indiana’s Anti-Howard Zinn Witch-hunt

By Bill Bigelow

Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, one of the country’s most widely read history books, died on January 27, 2010. Shortly after, then-Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels got on his computer and fired off an email to the state’s top education officials: “This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.”

The Long Haul: An Autobiography

Book — Non-fiction. By Myles Horton with Herbert R. Kohl and Judith Kohl. 1997. 167 pages.
History of the role the Highlander Folk School played in the labor and Civil Rights Movements.

The Koch Brothers Sneak into School: How Right-wing Billionaires Seek to Shape the Social Studies Curriculum

How Right-wing Billionaires Seek to Shape the Social Studies Curriculum

By Bill Bigelow

This month in Boston, thousands of teachers will gather for the annual National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference. Two non-teachers will be there, too: Charles and David Koch, the notorious right-wing billionaires.

Well, the Kochs won’t be there in person, but they will be represented by a Koch-funded and controlled organization: the Arlington, Virginia-based Bill of Rights Institute.

Our House Divided: What U.S. Schools Don’t Teach About U.S.-Style Apartheid

By Richard Rothstein

In the current issue of the School Administrator, I write that we do a much worse job of facing up to our racial history in the United States, leading us to make less progress than necessary in remedying racial inequality.

American History Lessons

The original idea for the Zinn Education Project’s “If We Knew Our History” column grew out of our reading “American History Lessons,” by Melissa Harris-Perry in The Nation magazine. Harris-Perry’s article, reproduced here, is a meditation about the role of Black History Month.

She argues that we suffer from a “national deficit of historical knowledge” and that this deficit has contemporary political consequences. If we knew our history, she suggests, people would be less likely to follow the bigots who patch together historical symbols and soundbites to justify their right wing nostrums. And if we knew our history, we’d be more likely to appreciate and defend the accomplishments of social movements.

Coal Kills by Paul Anderson | Zinn Education Project

The Poison We Never Talk About in School

By Bill Bigelow

The most dangerous substance in the world is barely mentioned in the school curriculum. Coal.

According to the International Energy Agency, burning coal creates more greenhouse gases than any other source — including oil. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and arguably the world’s foremost climatologist, has called coal “the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on the planet.”

And, as 350.org founder Bill McKibben pointed out recently in a remarkable article in Rolling Stone magazine, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” from a mathematical standpoint, it is demonstrably impossible to prevent the climate from spinning out of control with unimaginably horrible consequences, if we burn the fossil fuels that energy corporations are in the process of exploiting and selling.

Aug. 10, 1835: Destruction of Noyes Academy

Nearly 500 white men destroyed the integrated Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire.

Nov. 5, 1867: Alabama State Constitution

Delegates gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to draft a new state constitution during Reconstruction.

Do All Indians Live in Tipis?

Book — Non-fiction. By National Museum of the American Indian. 2007. 256 pages.
Introduction to Native American history and contemporary culture.

Sept. 1, 1956: Clinton Desegregation Crisis

The White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan launched full-scale rioting in Clinton, Tennessee in response to school desegregation.

Sept. 2, 1966: Grenada, Miss. School Desegregation Battle

The Grenada, Mississippi school board shuttered school instead of opening its doors to registered Black students.

Carter Children | Zinn Education Project

Aug. 12, 1965: Carter Family Insists on Rights Under Brown v. Board

Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter enrolled their children in schools in Sunflower County, Mississippi that had been illegally denied to African Americans. In retaliation, they were evicted from the land they sharecropped and their home was riddled with bullets.

Sept. 9, 1915: The Association for the Study of African American Life and History

ASALH was established by Carter G. Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland.

Little Rock Schools | Zinn Education Project

Sept. 12, 1958: Little Rock Public Schools Closed

Governor Orval Faubus closed all Little Rock, Arkansas public schools for one year rather than allow integration.

Chicago School Boycott | Zinn Education Project

Oct. 22, 1963: Chicago School Boycott

The Chicago Public School Boycott, also known as Freedom Day, was a mass boycott and demonstration against the segregationist policies.

Charles Hamilton Houston, portrait by Robert Shetterly of Americans Who Tell the Truth.

Oct. 29, 1969: Supreme Court Rules Schools Must Desegregate

The Supreme Court ruled that schools in the U.S. had to desegregate “immediately,” instead of the previous ruling of “with all deliberate speed.”

This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality

Book — Non-fiction. By Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy. 2019. 320 pages.
Told from the perspective of Jo Ann Allen, this book tells the story of twelve Black students who integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee in 1956.

portrait of Detroit educator Fannie Richards

May 12, 1869: Detroit Educator Fannie Richards Helps to Desegregate Michigan Schools

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of school desegregation in the case of Joseph Workman v. the Detroit Board of Education, almost 90 years before the United States’ landmark Brown v. Board of Education.

Dec. 1, 1865: Shaw University Established

Shaw University was established as a co-ed campus with support from private donors and the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. It is the second oldest HBCU in the South.

Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators

Book — Non-fiction. By Noreen Naseem Rodriguez & Katy Swalwell. 2021. 256 pages.
This book is full of social justice teaching methods and materials for elementary educators.

Teaching Activity by Noreen Naseem Rodriguez & Katy Swalwell

LGBTQ+ History in High School Classes in the United States Since 1990

Book — Non-fiction. By Stacie Brensilver Berman. 2021. 296 pages.
Based on interviews with high school teachers about integrating LGBTQ+ history in their classes, this book offers the first detailed portrait of educators and activists championing a more inclusive and accurate vision of U.S. history.

Teaching Activity by Stacie Brensilver Berman

How Right-wing Billionaires Seek to Shape the Social Studies Curriculum

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