Students Deserve Facts and Safety, Not Fables and Fear

Photo: Georgia #TeachTruth Day of Action. By Dean Hesse.

Claiming to protect young people, right-wing legislators are blocking efforts to address racism, gun violence, and the existential threat of climate change.

They stoke a politics of fear and hatred, while banning critical understanding and analysis of questions students bring to the classroom about current events.

As noted in a Rethinking Schools editorial,

Students deserve facts, not fables. These laws are an attempt to hide this nation’s racist past to more freely pursue a racist future.

The media bolsters the right by providing constant coverage of the anti-CRT and anti-trans narrative.

Where are the headlines about teachers, parents, and students who demand an honest, inclusive education?

Where are the headlines about the threat to our future if students can't ask tough questions and analyze all they read — if students can’t envision a better future and learn the skills to shape that future? It is time to sound an alarm.

We invite everyone to lead or join a #TeachTruth Day of Action event to shine a light on the stories that need to be told.

Is your state listed? If not, sign up to host an event. Make sure our voices are represented in every state. If there is an event in your city, plan to participate.

Learn More and Add Your City to the Map

History Is a Human Right

By Jesse Hagopian

History is a human right. The struggle for social justice is many things. However, especially in this era, it must include the recognition of the right to learn honest history — particularly about social movements that have challenged injustice.

Without truthful accounts of history and the truthful transmission of that history to the next generations, young people are robbed of the first condition of a democratic society — access to the knowledge needed to shape the future.

Word in Black Op-ed

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People’s History of Memorial Day

For this Memorial Day Weekend, we feature an article by David Blight about the early origins of the holiday, led by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, after the Civil War; an article by Howard Zinn urging us to never embark on mass slaughter again; and the new documentary and companion oral history collection, Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried.

Memorial Day Articles and Film

Free Book

Share Your Teaching Story

Thanks to a generous donation by the author and publisher, we can send teachers a free copy of the new young adult novel by Kelly McWilliams, Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay in appreciation for a story about teaching any of the lessons at the Zinn Education Project website.

Share Your Story

Spotlight

Prentiss Charney Fellow

The Zinn Education Project hosts the Prentiss Charney Fellowship to support a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize. Today we celebrate fellow Sally Stanhope, an Atlanta high school social studies teacher.

Sally Stanhope. Photo by Dean Hesse.

Sally grew up in Georgia and has taught there for 18 years — striving to make sure her students learn a more accurate history than she did as student.

She teaches AP Psychology, history, government, and geography and is an active member of a Teaching for Black Lives study group. (Apply today to form your own group in 2023-2024.)

Sally organizes with a variety of groups, including the Stone Mountain Action Coalition (SMAC) to free Stone Mountain Park from its Lost Cause legacy. There will be a Teach Truth Day of Action on June 10 at Stone Mountain.

This summer, Sally’s Prentiss Charney fellowship work focuses on a youth participatory action research project called In the Shadow of Stone Mountain: Historicizing Shermantown. Students will investigate how citizens of Shermantown, an African American community in the shadow of the world’s largest Confederate monument, mobilized a variety of tactics to thrive despite threats to their community’s safety and wellbeing.

We are lucky to teach, learn, and organize alongside Sally and all the Prentiss Charney Fellows. Consider a donation to continue and expand the fellowship in honor of education activist and union leader Michael Charney and leading Ohio education lawmaker, C. J. Prentiss.

We Need Your Help

Teachers are under attack for teaching truthfully about U.S. history. Please donate so that we can continue to offer free people’s history lessons and resources, and defend teachers’ right to use them.

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