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teaching history



  • 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."


  • 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. 



  • 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. 



  • 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.



  • 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. 



  • 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. 



  • 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. 


  • 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. 



  • 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.