teaching history

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• SOURCE: Nashville Tennessean
  3/24/2023
  

  Teaching History Without Harsh Truths? Tennessee's Law Demands the Impossible

  by David Barber

  "When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or our own Gov. Bill Lee and Tennessee’s legislature enact laws to prevent teaching Black history, they are defending white supremacy."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/20/2023
  

  Excerpts from a Civics Textbook I Assume Would be Welcome in Florida

  by Alexandra Petri

  "American history is full of many heroes, whose accomplishments we will have no problem telling you about in the state of Florida! They fought for justice, which was brave of them, if a little redundant, because there was no specific injustice to fight against."

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• 3/19/2023
  

  Censoring History Education Goes Hand in Hand with Democratic Backsliding

  by Julia Boechat Machado and Ruben Zeeman

  Regimes in the Philippines, India and Brazil have recently tried to censor the teaching of history in service of their poltical goals and claims to power. The pushback by scholars in these countries should inspire historians in Florida and elsewhere to resist the political censorship of research and teaching. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/16/2023
  

  How Textbook Publishers are Censoring the Story of Rosa Parks to Sell Books in Florida

  The conservative Florida Citizens Alliance, a group allied with the DeSantis administration, has called for rejection of 28 of the 38 texts its members reviewed. One publisher's editing of the story of the Montgomery Boycott illustrates their power. 

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• SOURCE: Windsor Weekly
  3/10/2023
  

  Virginia School Board Declares there is "No Systemic Racism"

  The sponsoring board member suggested that his election victory means that "parents get a voice in how and what their children are exposed to.” A local history teacher disagreed.   

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• 3/14/2023
  

  Statement by People for Black History at University of Tennessee-Martin

  The leaders of a student movement to resist Tennessee's restrictions on course content charges that their university's faculty senate has failed to give their petition a hearing. 

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• SOURCE: WHYY
  3/3/2023
  

  Historian and Social Psychologist Discuss How to Confront Difficult Aspects of History

  Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Dolly Chugh have an interdisciplinary discussion of why difficult and conflictual elements of history must be taught, and how to enable students and teachers to do it productively. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  3/4/2023
  

  Kimberlé Crenshaw Speaks Out: Education Restrictions Tied to Resegregation

  Professor Crenshaw warned that the College Board's decision to alter its African American studies course resembles the pattern of business collaborating with and profiting under white supremacy that prevailed in Jim Crow America. 

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• SOURCE: WUFT
  2/24/2023
  

  UF Faculty and Students Host "Can't Ban Us" Black History Teach-In

  “The state of Florida has banned aspects of African American studies within grades K-12 and are now trying to further ban higher education students from learning critical ways to understand how race and racism works,” [historian Paul] Ortiz said.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/17/2023
  

  Who's Afraid of Black History?

  by Henry Louis Gates

  The protestations of Ron DeSantis aside, American schools today carry the legacy of a massive neoconfederate indoctrination campaign that distorted the meaning of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, justified racist terrorism, and erased ongoing debates—including among Black Americans—about the meaning of freedom and democracy. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/22/2023
  

  Ron DeSantis is Making History a Political Issue; What does His Book Say?

  by David Waldstreicher

  Nobody paid much attention to the Florida governor's 2011 book "Dreams from Our Founding Fathers." Maybe we should now—it spells out a justification for a deeply conservative view of the constitution that dismisses the significance of racism in the founding and in the doctrine of originalism.

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  2/22/2023
  

  Drawing the Line between Assigning and Endorsing

  by Steve Mintz

  Controversies about recent books about the history and legacy of colonialism raise questions about what it means to assign – or refuse to – a book for students to read, discuss, and potentially critique, and how provocation works in the liberal model of inquiry. 

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• SOURCE: Matter of Fact
  2/19/2023
  

  Adam Laats Connects Current Course and Book Controversies to Past School Wars

  The education historian joins Soledad O'Brien to discuss past controversies over how the past is taught. 

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• SOURCE: The Root
  2/15/2023
  

  New Jersey Announces Increased Adoption of AP African American Studies

  Governor Phil Murphy announced that the course will appear in 26 high schools (instead of the current 1), but the move is largely symbolic because of changes made to the course and the tiny percentage of the state's schools adopting the course. 

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• SOURCE: African American Policy Forum
  2/12/2023
  

  African American Policy Forum Announces #TruthBeTold Campaign

  The AAPF is launching an interactive project to monitor efforts to ban books, censor classes, and punish teachers, and to offer reader the opportunity to share their valued experiences with antiracist education. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/14/2023
  

  HBCUs and the 1950s Red Scare

  by Candace Cunningham

  South Carolina officials were able to use the purse strings to coerce public HBCU administrators to expel student activists. When private HBCUs became centers of sit-in organizing, state legislators turned to accusations of Communism. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/9/2023
  

  Documents Show Extensive Contact Between Florida Officials and College Board over Past Year

  The revelation, first made by the right-wing Daily Caller but confirmed by the Florida Department of Education, calls into question the College Board's claims that it was not influenced by pressure from Florida officials. Scholars question the College Board's commitment to academic integrity. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/3/2023
  

  Will Midwest Governors Challenge Florida's Conservative Education Agenda?

  Governors J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer are hardly beacons of "wokeness" – but they may be key advocates of a political message to parents and teachers that their party will protect the freedom to learn. 

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• 2/6/2023
  

  Historians Mobilize to Fight Back Against Right-Wing Attacks

  by Margaret Power

  Historians for Peace and Democracy condemns recent legislation restricting the content of history classes and libraries and censoring the freedom to teach and learn about racism and LGBTQ history. The group urges college faculty to join with their local K-12 educators and librarians. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/25/2023
  

  Florida's AP Fight Latest Battle in a Very Old Education War

  by Bethany Bell

  The state's rejection of the proposed curriculum as "indoctrination" stands on the foundation laid by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to establish the Lost Cause myth as the center of history education in the South for generations.