Signatures
This is the list of people who have signed the pledge or petition to date.
Gail Andrews | Overland Park, KS
READING IS KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!
Beverly G Ward | Tampa, FL
I am a scientist and a person of faith. Integrity in words and actions is central to my identity.
Trebor Strong | Las Vegas, NV
Nicholas Flores | Austin, TX
Melissa Berberich | Onalaska, WI
Lying about history does not change the fact that it happened. Saying that oppression isn't real does not make it so. I am merely borrowing this world from the children who will inherit it later and I refuse to let them forget the lessons that have already cost so many precious lives. They deserve an opportunity to live better than we have. Altering their history to make it more palatable to the few is an unforgivable injustice and will cost them their freedom, and possibly, their lives.
Karen Montgomery | South Kingstown, RI
No way to make changes for better if cannot see what is wrong.
Julia Quigley , MA
I stand on the shoulders of truth telling women, I am making my shoulders ready.
Gretchen O'Donnell | Boise City, ID
Through my research of patterns of societies falling victim to fascism, whether through fiction/nonfiction texts, I notice that teachers can sometimes become perpetrators of oppression. The teachers who stay are required to remain complacent and teach a biased agenda that indoctrinates their students to view the world in a certain way. That undermines the purpose of becoming a teacher--which is to give students all the necessary tools and resources to make a difference in the world, in the way they see fit. I refuse to teach a biased agenda that doesn't separate church/state, and emits parts of history that limit students' ability to get the full picture...the full TRUTH. After I graduated from this same school district, I had resentment for my teachers because my history classes in college taught me things about the history of our nation that were hard to hear, but necessary. Our country is flawed. Every country is flawed. In the wise words of Rafiki: “The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”As a teacher in Idaho, I am taking a risk by publicly making my name and stance known. The way I see it--if this decision to stay true to history, myself and my career, and my students (a.k.a. the future of our nation) puts my career in jeopardy, then I will accept those consequences with a bittersweet pride. I refuse to play a role in the rise of fascism, unless that role is in fervent opposition.
Alison Rice | Bethesda, MD
My scholars deserve to learn real history.
Laura Kaplan | New York, NY
The current moment demands that we speak truth to power in pursuit of justice for all.
Felix Rodriguez | Reading, PA
I’m signing because I noticed as a credible messenger in the streets doing the work I do our children are being lied to through public education. They don’t understand their identity in Amerikkka. The youth I deal with are Black and Brown. And of course urban public schools facilitate false history and the school to prison pipeline. It keeps our youth down. Our public schools facilitate false system teaches our children to go out and be slaves for the capitalist elite while yt privileged schools teach their youth to be entrepreneurs and corporate elite!
August Perez | Santa Rosa, CA
Laila Taslimi | Santa Monica, CA
Preschool age children are socializing to society as it is, which is the result of what it has been. Unjust. That is what needs to change. We can’t defer our moral obligation as humans on a single planet to do better for one another, thus it is our role to prepare children to assume their responsibility to stand up, speak up, or communicate in any way they can that injustices are wrong. I face the fact that how we have done school has not been enough to upend what’s wrong, and when we start acting on our values in teaching children before they enter elementary school we nurture their potential to be part of the needed changes. The innate capacity of very young children to recognize unfairness and to want justice for all has gone unaddressed by too many too long. We have the prime opportunity as educators of preschoolers to nurture their nature and to nourish their energy to create the fairer world. We learn from past and present exemplary social activists - what/why/how they changed - how possible it was and is, and we are inspired to act.
Sophia Scott
Jessie Anaya | Yorkville, IL
Thomas Brann | Farmington, ME
Madeline Jara | Windsor, CO
I believe that we should teach the truth always even if it makes people uncomfortable the truth can be uncomfortable for many reasons. But just because something makes people uncomfortable does not mean that we should get rid of it all together. If we banned everything that made us feel uncomfortable we would not progress in life. It's also important for us to acknowledge the ugly truth of our history in order to understand why our system is set up the way it was and how the set up system is still in affect today. Lastly, it's important to know our history so we are less likely to repeat it or recognize when history is starting to repeat itself we can fight against it.
Donna Cywinski | Fredericksburg, VA
I have a moral and professional duty to teach accurate and robust US History. Accurate and robust US History requires the study of racial enslavement of Black people by white people. Enslavement and the failure of reconstruction created structures that are essentially interwoven in US History and maintain the system of white supremacy upon which the nation was founded. The current Governor of Virginia ran on the premise that focusing on the history of Black Americans in the US is dangerous to students. This is because he fears the truth about US history. I will not give up my right, under the First Amendment to the HS Constitution to teach the truth about US History. I owe it to my students and to my country.
Ashley Houck | New York, NY
I believe in teaching the truth, empowering students to know the spectrum of our nation’s history and how we can learn to make changes in order to reckon and overcome the harrowing past.
Nicole Moodie | Cutchogue, NY
I am committed to teach the truth to all students.
De La Vaca | Aurora District, CO
I'm an indigenous educator, one of very few men of color teaching in classrooms in Colorado. I'm signing because the truth matters, because education so often lies or covers for the powerful and for nationalism or for status quo. I'm signing because I always teach the truth, regularly interrupting lessons and news to provide context students deserve.
Kate Mendillo | Providence, RI
I refuse to lie to young people about U.S. history and current events. People might experience real or perceived discomfort when confronting our checkered past, but this is the price we pay for causing the real suffering of many people.
Mark Higbee , MI
There is too much pressure to "teach the lies" of the American past, both at K-12 levels and at college-level classes, and in states with both Republican and Democratic governments alike. At the college level, tragically the pressure NOT to "teach the truth" comes from colleagues and administrators who oppose any confrontation with white supremacy, for fear of "controversy". These gutless academics block or delay their braver but less powerful colleagues who know that teaching the truth is our duty. Dishonesty in the classroom is bad at any level! White supremacy must be understood, and therefore it must be studied. Teach the Truth!
Rebeldita the Fearless Dr. Siu
Edie Ventrella | Seattle, WA
I am an aspiring teacher who wants to stand for systemic change. As Jamie Cho— a professor of mine— commented, “ By teaching the truth about history and talking about inequities early on with young children, we can dream, imagine and build the just systems we so desperately need.”
Selected Pledges
Click on pledge below to read many more.
As an educator who is serious about teaching the truth I will not be bullied into silence. I will do my part in the fight for equity and equality by making sure my students are most equipped to fight this ugliness in the real world.
Yes, the truth of American history needs to be taught, but also its impact on the rest of the world, such as its role in WWII. I just finished teaching a college-level course on the Holocaust, and could not believe how little the students knew about the rest of the world’s participation in the war! They seemed to believe that WWII was ended by the US alone!
“When you begin to do things that raise the achievement of the poorest and disenfranchised students, you may not always get applause. You need to be ready for that.” Dr. Asa Hilliard
“Resistance is a powerful motivator precisely because it enables us to fulfill our longing to achieve our goals while letting us boldly recognize and name the obstacles to those achievements.”
Dr. Derrick Bell
Our young people deserve the truth and it is our kuleana (responsibility) to give space and opportunity for the truth and the difficult conversations.
If we don’t teach it all, we teach nothing…
Social justice is a major theme of my Humanities 7 course, and my school uses Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL framework (development of identity, skills, knowledge, Criticality) to frame our entire curriculum. Student agency through research work and essay writing, and action-oriented civic engagement work, define what we “cover” in my course.