The goal is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. The empowering potential of studying U.S. history is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. Students learn that history is made not by a few heroic individuals, but instead by people’s choices and actions and therefore students’ own choices and actions also matter.
We believe that through taking a more engaging and more honest look at the past, we can help equip students with the analytical tools to make sense of — and improve — the world today.
THE ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT BACKGROUND
In late 2007, a former Boston University journalism student watched You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the film about the life of historian, professor, and activist Howard Zinn. He recalled attending Professor Zinn’s remarkable lectures at Boston University in the 1970s, and marveled at how Zinn’s “people’s history” was so much more alive and accurate than the traditional history he had received in high school.
After a successful career in technology, he wanted to bring Zinn’s work to a new generation of students. So he contacted Howard Zinn who put him in touch with two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change. Each group has over 20 years of experience in providing social justice resources and professional development for pre-K-12 classroom teachers and teacher educators.
“I’d prefer to remain anonymous,” he told us. “This is not about me; it’s about getting Howard Zinn’s work into the hands of as many teachers as possible.”
So with the generous support of this anonymous donor, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change partnered to produce and offer a unique educational packet, which includes the DVD Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, A People’s History of the United States, and a teaching guide developed especially for this project. The organizations are distributing the packets nationally to middle and high school teachers, while supplies last.
Some 30 years after his exposure to Howard Zinn’s “people’s history,” the former Boston University student who initiated this project demonstrates that classroom experience can have a lifelong impact.
BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At the age of 18 he became a shipyard worker and three years later joined the Air Force. He flew bomber missions during World War II, after which he returned to Brooklyn, got married, and occupied a basement apartment. His experiences in the shipyard and in the Air Force helped shape an opposition to war and a passion for history. He went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in history. He taught at Spelman College, where he served as an advisor to the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked with young Civil Rights Movement activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. He was fired from Spelman for his support of the students. (He returned in 2005 to give the commencement address.)
Zinn led anti-war protests, went to Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan and testified in Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers trial. His politically engaged life brought him into many arenas: imprisonment for civil disobedience, fights for open debate in universities, and activist work from the Vietnam era to the present.
Zinn is the author of dozens of books including the classic, A People’s History of the United States and Declarations of Independence. His essays have appeared in over 20 books and his plays include Emma, Unsafe Distances, and Marx in Soho.
Zinn’s life is also the subject of an award-winning documentary narrated by actor Matt Damon, Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Featuring rare archival materials and interviews with Zinn and colleagues such as Noam Chomsky, You Can’t Be Neutral captures the essence of this extraordinary man who has been a catalyst for progressive change for more than 60 years.
Zinn has lectured extensively across the United States as well as in Asia, Africa and Europe. He was a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna (Fulbright Distinguished Professor).
Zinn has won numerous awards including the Albert J. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, the Lannan Literary Award, and the Haven's Center Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship. His best-known work, A People's History of the United States, earned the New England Book Award for nonfiction and was nominated for an American Book Award.
The stories of the people and events that inspire Zinn’s faith in the possibility of historic change are woven through his books and public speaking as he discusses the need for a critical understanding of our history and the daily events that shape all of our lives.
For more information about Professor Howard Zinn including contemporary essays, an annotated bibliography of his publications, and his upcoming speaking schedule, visit HowardZinn.org.
Photo by Roslyn Zinn. Biography modified and reprinted with permission from www.SpeakOutNow.org.
SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS BACKGROUND
Rethinking Schools
Launched in 1986, Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit publisher working for equity and justice in public schools and the broader society. Major projects include:- Rethinking Schools, an award-winning quarterly magazine, is unique among education publications. Edited by practicing and former K-12 teachers with almost 200 years of combined classroom experience, it features a wide range of articles portraying some of this country’s finest social justice teaching. Other articles analyze the policies that help or hinder public education.
- Rethinking Schools books provide practical examples of how to integrate social justice education into social studies, history, language arts and mathematics. They are used widely by new as well as veteran teachers and in teacher education programs. Every Rethinking Schools book grows out of diverse schools and classrooms throughout the country.
- Rethinking Schools Online,www.rethinkingschools.org, offers a wealth of resources on teaching for equity and justice, and making sense out of national education policy.
Teaching for Change
Since 1989, Teaching for Change has provided teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into centers of justice where students learn to read, write and change the world. Awarded Organization of the Year by the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) in 2004, Teaching for Change pursues its mission through:
- professional development for pre-K – 12 teachers based on the publication Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching; and for early childhood educators in our Early Childhood Equity Initiative leadership development program.
- a highly-effective parent-empowerment program called Tellin’ Stories which builds grassroots multiracial parent power in schools.
- publications with a print and on-line catalog of carefully selected progressive teaching resources for pre-K-12; bookstores at Busboys and Poets restaurant and performance space, located in the DC area; and our own publications including:
- Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development
- Caribbean Connections series, and
- Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching.
Photos on slide show on home page are from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and photographer Ilka Hartmann.
