Published on September 1, 2010 in
By Jesse Gainer
This column is dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, who passed away this year at the age of 87. Zinn’s life and work — an unwavering pursuit of justice through focused attention on the marginalized and the oppressed — inspired countless people across the world. Zinn’s work highlighted what traditionally is not present in mainstream history texts, such as the voices and experiences of women, people of color, workers, and social activists. Readers of his work gain knowledge about historical figures and events that were not typically part of most people’s classroom experiences. However, the significance of his work is greater than the factual pieces of the puzzle he helped add to our historical narrative. His work points to a critique of larger systematic and structural inequities that lead to the privileging of a few and the oppression of many. His insistence on shining a light on unofficial history, or as he put it, the “people’s history,” is at the heart of what we call critical literacy.
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Published on August 1, 2010 in
Esmeralda Tello can’t wait to utilize a new set of history books in her social studies classroom at J. Taylor Finley Middle School. The books were presented to the teacher by the Zinn Education Project during a ceremony at the school late last spring.
Copies of historian-author Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” made their way to Finley following Ms. Tello’s successful participation in a contest that required an essay that described how she found the key to engaging her students is to emphasize the stories that are often left out of typical textbooks.
The Zinn Education Project encourages the teaching of a “people’s history,” including the perspectives and experiences of regular working class people, women, people of color and organized social movements, according to the group’s website.
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Published on June 30, 2010 in
Mountain View High School history teacher Chris Lewis was recognized last week for his essay on “how a people’s history is being taught, how teachers were introduced to the work of author Howard Zinn, and how students are responding to learning a more complete version of U.S. history,” along with how he implements the works Zinn in his classroom.
“The Zinn Education Project website has allowed me to find lesson plans and activities that help my students interact with challenging information,” said Lewis. “What impressed me most about the lesson was the engagement required by students. They had to interact at a high level of critical thinking.”
Lewis’ class recently held a Socratic seminar discussion of “The Coming Revolt of the Guard,” in “A People’s History of the United States,” centering around Zinn’s prediction for the future of America where students assessed the impact of small revolutions and evaluated Zinn’s proposal that it will be the disgruntled middle class that will rebel against the current system.
“Students are analyzing the ways in which the American Dream has changed over time and how the definition changes depending on the lens through which it is viewed,” said Lewis. “I want students to see that the so called “dream” was different for the Puritans as they fled religious persecution, different for African Americans during the Civil Rights movement and different for those that live below the poverty line in today’s world.”
After analyzing the dream through themes such as race, gender, class, and religion, according to Lewis, students will develop a prediction for the future. It is his goal that they actively engage in history and that their predictions inspire them to take a more active role in creating the America they hope it can be.
“Chris Lewis is clearly helping students not only learn about history, but how to see themselves as historians and to see the role they play in shaping history,” said Deborah Menkart, Executive Director of Teaching for Change for the Zinn Education Project: “At the Zinn Education Project we are pleased to have the opportunity to share the story of his work.”
“Too often students spend time answering simple questions about terminology or dates,” said Lewis. “It was great to see students experience history and grapple with controversial issues. Many of my students do not realize that they make history every day.”
Sponsored by the Zinn Education Project, Lewis’ essay was one of 90 submissions from across the country, including a winning submission from South El Monte High School social science teacher Sara Quezada. Both won a class set of “A People’s History of the United States” from Teaching Outside the Textbook along with a free copy of “The People Speak” DVD, “Voices of A People’s History,” and “A Young People’s History of the United States.”
Students gathered around Lewis as he opened the box of books he received.
“We hope that many more teachers are inspired by Chris Lewis’ example to help students step into history by using the teaching activities available for free on the Zinn Education Project website,” said Menkart.
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Published on June 29, 2010 in
By Elizabeth Limbach
The wall behind Jeff Matlock’s desk is covered with photographs and paintings of his heroes from American history: Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, and Jane Adams among them. There is a photograph of women marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1913 with a sign that reads, “I wish Ma could vote!” And, as if to encapsulate Matlock’s “nothing is black and white” view on history, he also has two contrasting photographs beside one another: one of a group protesting World War I with signs that say “Don’t send our boys to die in a useless war,” and the other, a shot of U.S. soldiers wading ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day. “There are two sides to every story,” he says simply.
Squeezed in beside these notable figures from history is the one who instilled this all-inclusive attitude in him, and perhaps his favorite hero of them all: late historian, author and activist Howard Zinn.
Matlock was a history buff from an early age. He hardly had to study for tests and could spout off historical dates without fail. But it wasn’t until he picked up a copy of Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” as a teenager that history became more than dates and places for him. “I felt like my world totally opened up into something I’d never thought of before,” he remembers. “I never saw history as being something that could be less than concrete. I thought ‘these are facts, this is the way it is.’ But what Zinn taught me was that nothing is absolute.”
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Published on June 18, 2010 in
Through the Zinn Education Project (www.zinnedproject.org), this teacher has received a free class set of 25 copies of A People's History of the United States. Here she is on the local news talking about why it is important to teach from a people's perspective.
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Published on June 1, 2010 in
Review by Matthew Crichton
Howard Zinn, who recently died, was a historian and author of the groundbreaking
A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper, 2003). Zinn views historical events through the eyes of the ordinary people and focuses on their struggles against oppression, rather than from the perspective of leaders or conquerors. The Zinn Education Project (http://www.zinnedproject.org) is a new effort to influence the secondary school curriculum. The website offers historical documents and lesson ideas organized chronologically and thematically. It also includes lists of resources.
(more…)
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Published on May 1, 2010 in
By Jing Fong
Nidoto Nai Yoni—“Let it not happen again,”—is the inscription at the memorial site where the first group of Japanese Americans were taken from Bainbridge Island to internment camps in the California desert. When you don’t talk about race, how do you make sure racism doesn’t happen?
The Zinn Education Project is committed to helping middle and high school students learn about history, race, and themselves through its thought-provoking resources. Your students will find its lessons and activities engaging as they take an honest look at the past, and are introduced to the people who have worked together, across racial lines, for a more fair and just world.
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Published on April 23, 2010 in
On January 19, historian and activist Howard Zinn gave his final radio interview, which Rethinking Schools has published in its entirety. In the question-and-answer session, Zinn relates that his experiences as the child of immigrants, combined with a great deal of reading, pushed him in an "activist direction." He also developed a consciousness that the country is divided into rich people and a lot of other people, the vast majority of whom struggle to get by. Many are rendered invisible by poverty and immigrant status. Yet even in our founding documents, Zinn said, we pretend these disparities don't exist: "The preamble of the Constitution begins with the words 'We, the people of the United States...,' as if all of the people established the Constitution. But that wasn't true because we were a class-divided country before, during, and after the revolution. The Constitution was not adopted by 'we, the people.' It was adopted by 55 rich white men who met in Philadelphia in 1787." Zinn's advice for prospective history teachers is to not be intimidated by "what they say you must teach... You have to play a kind of guerilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired."
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