Bill Bigelow

Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. He is the author or co-editor of many Rethinking Schools publications, including A People’s History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, Rethinking Our Classrooms — Volumes 1 and 2, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, and A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, and has taught high school social studies since 1978.

All Content By This Author
Jetnil Kiiner Student Mural (Art by Jocelyn Ng and Aravapo Leo) | Zinn Education Project
Categories: Articles

Climate Change, Gender, and Nuclear Bombs

Resource Types: Articles
Article. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools, Spring 2018.
Gender is one of the crucial variables determining how the climate crisis affects us.
Rini Templeton Climate (Art) | Zinn Education Project
Categories: Environment & Food

Stories from the Climate Crisis: A Mixer

Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 18
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools.
A role play introduces students to 23 individuals around the world — each of whom is affected differently by climate change.
Whose History Matters | Zinn Education Project
Categories: News

Whose History Matters?

In 30 years of teaching, almost all my high school history students could name the fellow some say "discovered" America: Christopher Columbus. But none could name the people he supposedly discovered: the Taínos.
Fireworks over New York | Zinn Education Project

Rethinking the 4th of July

Resource Types: Articles
By Bill Bigelow
Apart from the noise pollution, air pollution, and flying debris pollution, there is something profoundly inappropriate about blowing off fireworks at a time when the United States is waging war with real fireworks around the world. To cite just one example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London found recently that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone have killed more than 200 people, including at least 60 children.
Pentagon Papers collage | Zinn Education Project

What Spielberg’s The Post — and Our Textbooks — Leave Out

By Bill Bigelow
It’s impossible to walk away from the film without understanding that at the heart of the struggle over the Pentagon Papers was the exposure of government lying about the war in Vietnam. The film offers papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post a warm pat on the back for publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposing these lies. But Spielberg’s film ignores the fact that there was abundant evidence of deceit long before these newspapers decided to publish the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971.

Christopher Columbus: No Monuments for Murderers

Resource Types: Articles
By Bill Bigelow
A New York Times article said the symbolism of Christopher Columbus is "murky.” But there is nothing murky about Columbus’ legacy of slavery and terrorism in the Americas. The record is clear and overwhelming. The fact that the New York Times could report this with such confidence — adding that “most Americans learn rather innocently, in 1492 [Columbus] sailed the ocean blue until he discovered the New World” — means that educators and activists still have much work to do.