Trump Attacks Howard Zinn and the Zinn Education Project — Defend Teaching People’s History Today!
I’m excited to announce that I have taken a part time position with the Zinn Education Project to help lead the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle campaign.
What makes this work even more important right now is that President Trump has launched an all out attack on the Zinn Education Project and the legacy of the great radical historian, Howard Zinn.
Trump organized an entire White House Conference on American History for Constitution Day, where a series of white historians attacked efforts to teach about racial and social justice. Then Trump announced his new “1776 Commission,” a “national commission to support patriotic education”–in other words, discouraging critical thinking that can lead students to join social movements against injustice and promote unquestioning support for America.
If you want to support the Zinn Education Project bring a people’s history to classrooms around the country, please donate. Your donation will be matched, up to $10,000, by a generous donation from by a former student of Howard Zinn’s and lawyer for whistleblowers, Dave Colapinto.
Please read more below about what it means to teach people’s history and about Trump’s attacking of the Zinn Education Project below.
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On Thursday, Sept. 17, at the White House Conference on American History, right-wing historians took aim at the Zinn Education Project, Howard Zinn, and the New York Times 1619 Project. President Trump said, “Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.”
Award-winning Illinois high school U.S. history teacher Corey Winchester disagrees with Trump. Instead of leaving his students paralyzed with shame, he said of the Zinn Education Project’s curriculum, “It is empowering to learn from multiple perspectives and invigorates their desire to learn and disrupt the status quo.”
Winchester is right. Teaching people’s history is about empowering and invigorating students to better understand the perspectives of workers, women, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, whose voices are too often erased in the corporate-produced textbooks. CONTINUE READING: Trump Attacks Howard Zinn and the Zinn Education Project — Defend Teaching People’s History Today! – I AM AN EDUCATOR
