News
20,000 Teachers Teaching Outside the Textbook
Melody Schneider, chair of High School Completion Department Edmonds Community College in Everett, Wash., is the registrant #20,000.
We reached the milestone of 20,000 people registered for the Zinn Education Project website, thanks to help with outreach from many of you. Registrant number 20,000 is Melody Schneider, a social studies teacher at Edmonds Community College High School Completion Department in Everett, Wash.
Melody explained why she registered: “We always look for materials and lessons that can speak to the students. My students and I are looking for truth in history, something real that they can connect to. They are sick of memorizing and regurgitating. They want to know what really happened to the people. This quarter I started using A Young People’s History of the United States. I was looking for lessons to go with the book and found the Zinn Education Project. I’m so happy you all exist and do the work you do.”
We have heard many stories like this from teachers all over the world when they register. You can read some of them here and send us your own.
Continue to spread the word and help us reach the next milestone of 25,000.
Rethinking Cinco de Mayo
1901 poster for Cinco de Mayo: "May 5, 1862 and the siege of Puebla."
By Sudie Hofmann for the Zinn Education Project
I recently came across a flier in an old backpack of my daughter’s: Wanted: Committee Chairs for this Spring’s Cinco de Mayo All School Celebration. The flier was replete with cultural props including a sombrero, cactus tree, donkey, taco, maracas, and chili peppers. Seeing this again brought back the moment when, years earlier, my daughter had handed the flier to me, and I’d thought, “Oh, no.” The local K-6 elementary school’s Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) was sponsoring a stereotypical Mexican American event. There were no Chicana/o students, parents, or staff members who I was aware of in the school community and I was concerned about the event’s authenticity. I presumed the PTSA meant well, and was attempting to provide a multicultural experience for students and families, but it seemed they were likely to get it wrong.
After making some inquiries, I was told the school wanted to celebrate Cinco de Mayo because it was Mexico’s Independence Day. However, Cinco de Mayo is actually Battle of Puebla Day, commemorating the defeat of Napoleon III in 1862. Mexico’s Independence Day is Sept. 16. I wrote the school and asked if they might consider canceling the event. I was concerned that the stereotypes associated with Chicana/os, such as fast-food items, piñatas, sombreros, and serapes would be central to the event. Unfortunately, I was correct.
Changing the Climate in School
The Zinn Education Project is excited to announce an article by Bill McKibben and Bill Bigelow on the immense gap between our climate emergency and the attention paid to climate change in the school curriculum.
Just in time for Earth Day 2012, “Changing the Climate in School” is the second article in the Zinn Education Project’s new monthly column called If We Knew Our History.
The more people read, comment on, and share the article, the more likely the Huffington Post and Common Dreams are to give this and future columns prominent placement.
You can help us reach a wider audience in three steps.
READ – COMMENT – SHARE
CREDO Results Are In
Thanks to your support, the Zinn Education Project received $67,186 from the 2011 CREDO/Working Assets donations ballot. The Zinn Education Project was one of 40 groups funded in 2011. The CREDO donation provides 50 percent of the annual funding we need to sustain the website and continue offering free resources to teachers all over the country. We depend on individual donors to provide the balance of the funds. Please consider making a donation today to the Zinn Education Project.
The Daily Show on Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies Ban
On April 2, the The Daily Show aired a segment on the ban on the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in Tucson. The Daily Show correspondent Al Madrigal interviewed Tucson School Board member Michael Hicks and Mexican American Studies teacher Curtis Acosta.
Jon Stewart introduced the show by saying: “Your children’s education… Nothing is more important! You want them to learn enough to do well in the world, but not so much that they can win arguments with you.
“But, what are they really learning in school? Al Madrigal followed this eye-opening story.” Read More…
Cesar Chavez Day: 7th Graders Talk About Tucson
Tiffany Mitchell.
Tiffany Mitchell, 7th grade history teacher at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., describes how her students spoke about the ban on ethnic studies in Tucson on Cesar Chavez Day.
This past week we have studied the law against ethnic studies in Tucson, Ariz. At a community event held on March 29, “Honoring Farmworkers: A celebration of Cesar Chavez,” several of my 7th grade students gave eloquent and passionate speeches. They connected Chavez’s fight for equal rights to the current civil rights issue of the access to ethnic studies courses in Arizona schools. Here are some excerpts from their presentations: Read More…
Zinn Education Project Honors Sean Arce
Washington, D.C. (April 2, 2012) – The Zinn Education Project announced the recipient of the 2012 Myles Horton Education Award for Teaching People’s History. The award is named for Myles Horton, one of the most influential educators in the 20th century. Myles Horton was co-founder of Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, famous for its pivotal role in desegregation efforts, and a tireless advocate for education and civil rights. In 1961, segregationists attempted to close Highlander on trumped-up charges, to which Horton replied: “A school is an idea, and you can’t padlock an idea.”
This award honors those who promote democracy through education by ensuring that students have the knowledge and skills to be informed and active participants in their communities, country, and the world.
The 2012 Myles Horton Award for Teaching People’s History honoree is Sean Arce, co-founder and director of the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, Ariz. The Zinn Education Project is delighted to honor Sean Arce for his instrumental role in nurturing one of the most significant and successful public school initiatives on the teaching of history in the United States. (The Mexican American Studies program was featured on The Daily Show on April 2.)
“Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program gets it absolutely right: Ground the curriculum in students’ lives, teach about what matters in the world, respect students as intellectuals, and help students imagine themselves as promoters of justice,” explains Zinn Education Project co-director Bill Bigelow. “I’m thrilled that the Zinn Education Project is able to honor the work of Sean Arce by recognizing him with the first Myles Horton Award for Teaching People’s History. Mr. Arce has begun work that we hope will be emulated by school districts throughout the United States.”
The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools
The Zinn Education Project is excited to announce that we have an article by Bill Bigelow on the Huffington Post and Common Dreams about how Irish-American history and the potato famine are mis-represented in schools.
This is the first article in the Zinn Education Project’s new monthly column called If We Knew Our History on the importance of teaching a people’s history.
The more people read, comment on, and share the article, the more likely Huffington Post is to give us prominent placement for future posts.
You can help us reach a wider audience in three steps.
READ - COMMENT - SHARE
Tweeting Precious Knowledge
At the end of February, 120 9th-grade students and their teachers at E.L. Haynes Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C. watched the documentary film Precious Knowledge and reacted to it in small advisory groups.
Throughout the screening, students were able to tweet their reactions, questions, and connections. Read More…
Lucy Parsons: More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters
On March 7, 1942, 89-year-old Lucy Gonzales Parsons died in a house fire in Chicago. On this anniversary of her death and in honor of Women’s History Month, we share this essay about her life by William Loren Katz, author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. As Katz explains, Parsons was such a renowned labor organizer and orator that one Chicago official called her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.”
While missing from most history textbooks today, Parsons played a major role in many of the historic events of the late 19th and early 20th century including the Haymarket affair, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the anti-lynching crusade, the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti, the Knights of Labor, and more. She called for the use of nonviolence and sit-ins decades before Gandhi, King, the sit-in movement, and the occupy movement.
Find the Zinn Education Project at Upcoming Conferences
The Zinn Education Project will play a role in the conferences listed below. We will distribute handouts; staff a booth where you can meet a representative from one of our coordinating organizations (Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change); and/or have representatives offering a workshop on teaching a people’s history. These conferences can provide a great opportunity to meet other progressive educators. Stop by to say hello.
The Lorax: Dr. Seuss Revisited and Revised
With the release of the Universal Pictures film, The Lorax, based on Dr. Seuss’s classic “environmental” book of the same name, we share an article by Bill Bigelow about the lessons children learn (and don’t learn) from the book and film about the causes of environmental ruin and how to organize for change. The article first appeared in Rethinking Schools magazine in the early 1990s. Rethinking Schools published a blog on Mar. 1, 2012 extending this critique to the Universal Pictures release of the film by the same name. Read here.
What is a good society, and how can we bring it about? Tackling these not-so simple questions was the goal of “Literature and Social Change,” a class I taught for several years at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon.
One of our texts was The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. On first reading, The Lorax appears to be a straightforward tale about the horrors of pollution and the necessity to become aware of nature’s interconnectedness. Although the book chronicles an environmental holocaust, the story ends on a hopeful note, with a redemptive speech from the formerly evil Once-ler. The earth and its creatures are given another chance to live a sane and ecological life. With luck, we may live happily ever after. Read More…
American History Lessons
We recommend this excellent article from The Nation about Black History Month and U.S. history in general, written by Melissa V. Harris-Perry in 2011.
Harris-Perry is professor of political science at Tulane University, journalist, author, and host of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry.”
Melissa Harris-Perry on February 28, 2011
We are in the final hours of February 2011. These are the last moments of this year’s Black History Month. February is always my busiest month for travel and public lectures as I join dozens of other professors whose research takes on sudden relevance for four short weeks. Typically, I spend some time in February responding to queries about the origins of the month-long observance. Invariably, I am also asked to defend its continuing relevance. Read More…
Teaching About Tucson
The Teacher Activists Groups network is sponsoring a No History Is Illegal campaign in support of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) program. The program was declared illegal by the state attorney general Tom Horne. Classes were terminated and books were banned by Feb. 1. As part of the No History Is Illegal campaign, teachers across the United States are encouraged to teach lessons and use books from the banned Mexican American Studies program.
Teachers are also invited to sign this pledge:
“In solidarity with the students and teachers from the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, AZ, I pledge my support to teach and raise awareness about their struggle and uphold the importance of keeping the perspectives and stories of historically marginalized people alive in our classrooms and communities.” Read More…
Rethinking Columbus Banned in Tucson
By Bill Bigelow
Imagine our surprise.
Rethinking Schools learned today that for the first time in its more-than-20-year history, our book Rethinking Columbus was banned by a school district: Tucson, Arizona. According to journalist Jeff Biggers, officials with the Tucson Unified School District ordered that teachers pull the book from their classrooms, evidently as an outcome of the school board’s 4-1 vote this week to abolish the Mexican American Studies program.
As I mentioned to Biggers when we spoke, the last time a book of mine was outlawed was during the state of emergency in apartheid South Africa in 1986, when the regime there banned the curriculum I’d written, Strangers in Their Own Country, likely because it included excerpts from a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Confronting massive opposition at home and abroad, the white minority government feared for its life in 1986. It’s worth asking what the school authorities in Arizona fear today. Read More…
No History is Illegal: Teach-in
The Network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG), a national coalition of grassroots teacher organizing groups, has launched No History is Illegal: A Campaign to Save our Stories. The campaign will offer a month of solidarity teach-ins in support of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) program.
Arizona politicians recently ruled against the highly successful Mexican American Studies program and removed books from classrooms. (Background info.) Read More…
‘Repeat After Me: The United States Is Not an Imperialist Country—Oh, and Don’t Get Emotional About War’
By Bill Bigelow
You may have seen that an administrative law judge in Arizona, Lewis Kowal, just upheld the decree by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program violates state law. Judge Kowal found that the Tucson program was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” According to CNN, one lesson that the judge objected to taught that the historic treatment of Mexican Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation.”
Try this “history detective” experiment. Ask the next person you encounter to tell you what they know about the U.S. war with Mexico. More than likely, this will be a short conversation, because that war (1846-48) merits barely a footnote in U.S. history textbooks. The most recent textbook I was assigned when I taught high school history in Portland, Ore. was American Odyssey. In 250 pages devoted to pre-20th century U.S. history, the book includes exactly two paragraphs on this war. (The district’s new adoption, History Alive! Pursuing American Ideals, doubles the coverage to a whopping four paragraphs.)
Bread and Roses Strike: One of the Great Silences in the School Curriculum
Lawrence, Mass. strikers parading in NYC, 1911. Photo: Library of Congress.
One of the great silences in the mainstream school curriculum is the role that social movements have played in making this a more fair, more peaceful, more democratic world. Students learn little about the collective efforts and strategies involved in the movements to abolish slavery, to demand women’s rights, to end unjust wars, to fight for civil rights—or for workers to bargain collectively for a living wage and workplace dignity.
One of the most significant struggles for workers’ rights began exactly one hundred years ago, on January 12th in Lawrence, Mass., when thousands of textile workers began a walkout that would come to be known as the Bread and Roses Strike, as well as the Singing Strike.
Full House for Zinn Education Project Hosted Talk by James Loewen at NCSS Conference
“Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States made me want to be a history teacher and James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me gave me the drive to want to teach beyond the classic textbook-driven curriculum. Loewen’s work has profoundly affected my teaching practice by cementing the commitment to instructing students to question and inquire as they ‘do’ history. I will share what I learned today about the Zinn Education Project and Loewen’s new book.” —Maureen Andreadis, Social Studies Department Chair at the School for Creative and Performing Arts,
Cincinnati, Ohio
“James Loewen has changed the way I approach teaching history. For this reason I had to see him speak at NCSS.” —William Newell, high school history teacher and social studies methods professor,
Tampa, Florida
Historian and author James Loewen spoke to a standing room only audience in a session hosted by the Zinn Education Project at the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) conference in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 3, 2011. More than 140 educators filled a room with an official capacity of 80 to hear about his latest book The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause.” Read More…
Video Highlights from the Howard Zinn Room Dedication
We are pleased to share video highlights from the special event on Sept. 21 to celebrate International Peace Day, dedicate the Howard Zinn Room at Busboys and Poets, and raise funds for the Zinn Education Project.
More than 300 people were inspired by the words of Jeff Zinn, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Cornel West, Dave Zirin, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Barbara Ehrenreich, and many more. Read More…
Zinn Education Project Lessons Take on New Meaning for Occupy Students
Seattle’s Garfield High School teacher Jesse Hagopian was arrested during an “Occupy the Capitol” protest last week about school funding. In response, 500 students at Garfield walked out and have been organizing ever since. Hagopian was interviewed on Nov. 30 on Countdown with Keith Olbermann about the protests. This was his second time on the national news. He was in Haiti when the 2010 earthquake caused massive destruction. Hagopian threw himself into the relief efforts. Read More…
Zinn Education Project at the 2011 National Council for the Social Studies Conference
William Harris was one of over a hundred teachers who registered for the Zinn Education Project website at our NCSS booth.
The Zinn Education Project booth had a constant stream of visitors at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) 2011 Conference in early December in Washington, D.C.
The booth became a gathering place for people to share stories about teaching people’s history, memories of Howard Zinn, and concerns about the obstacles to teaching outside the textbook. Read More…
People’s History Across the Country, and Around the World
The Zinn Education Project is pleased to have more than 15,000 registered users from every U.S. state and territory; 921 of whom are from countries, territories, and regions around the world. From Kansas to Kuwait, from North Dakota to South Africa, teachers around the globe are bringing a people’s history to the classroom.
Help us reach 20,000 in 2011 by continuing to spread the word by sharing the link to the Zinn Education Project website with colleagues, “liking” us on Facebook, and taking bookmarks and booklets to conferences.
Click to view larger image.
Click to view larger image.
Occupy the Curriculum
New Jersey Teacher Activist Group stages Teach-In at Occupy Wall Street in October, 2011.
By Bill Bigelow
The other day on the Zinn Education Project’s Facebook page, we asked “What period in history—or theme in history—are you teaching this month?”
The responses were fascinating.
Chris Conkling is teaching about “Forced removal of Native Americans/Andrew Jackson.”
Ariela Rothstein is teaching about the “Haitian revolution and the effects of colonialism on the Caribbean.”
Samantha Manchac is teaching about “the early women’s movement” from Chapter 6, “The Intimately Oppressed,” in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
Melanie Lichtenstein is teaching about Afghanistan, before and after 2001. Read More…
Democracy Now! Invites Your Students to Visit the Studio
Democracy Now! hosts educational class visits to their green studio in New York.
The award-winning news program Democracy Now! has launched a Teaching Democracy Now! initiative which includes hosting high school and college class visits to its green studio in New York. Read More…
