teaching history

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• 7/3/2022
  

  What Americans Might Learn About Political Collapse from the Classical Greeks and Romans

  by Daniel Noah Moses

  The right traces political turmoil in the US to the supposed abandonment of the classical canon. But reading those works might not teach the lessons they want about hierarchy, authority, and political collapse. 

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  6/30/2022
  

  One Absurdity of Texas's Divisive Concepts Law? Call to Rename Slave Trade as "Involuntary Relocation"

  A working group proposed the change for second grade social studies to the Texas State Board of Education under the shadow of legal jeopardy educators and school systems face under a new law that makes it unclear how the subject of slavery can be taught.

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• SOURCE: Evanston Round Table
  6/10/2022
  

  Northwestern Prof and Evanston HS Teachers Engage Illinois Black History

  "High school teachers are experts in their field; specifically they are experts in creating grade-level, adaptable content," says Prof. Kate Masur of her collaboration with Evanston HS teachers Michael Pond, Yosra Yehia and Kamasi Hill.

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• SOURCE: Scalawag
  6/14/2022
  

  Teaching Black History in Virginia Just Got Tougher

  Glenn Youngkin's attack on "divisive" history lessons clearly put the wishes of conservative whites at the center of the debate about curriculum. Now, a planned change to increase Black history in Virginia schools is on hold and Black students and families ask why their concerns are unheard. 

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  6/7/2022
  

  The Best Classroom is the Struggle: Teaching Imperialism

  by Joshua Sooter

  Even students who are able to overcome the cognitive dissonance provoked by learning about American imperialism struggle to imagine how knowledge can support work for a more just and democratic world order. 

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• 6/12/2022
  

  Florida's Divisive Concepts Bill Mistakes What Historians Do, with Dire Implications

  by Jessica L. Adler

  The legislation would make it difficult – and even legally risky – for professors to perform the kinds of source-driven teaching that underlies the pedagogical goals of the discipline. 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  6/6/2022
  

  Reading History for "Lessons" Misses the Point

  by Daniel Immerwahr

  "We read past authors as a sanity check. They reassure us that we’re not alone in what we see."

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  6/8/2022
  

  Dirtbag Historicism

  by Leland Renato Grigioli

  While historians have long been embattled to demonstrate that their discipline contributes to some external standard of usefulness, the profession now must also content with the political abuse of history through narratives of identity-based nostalgia. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  6/8/2022
  

  Anti-CRT Legislation at Fever Pitch in States

  Suzanne Nossel of PEN America argues that legislation that dictates what can be taught is at "the top of the pyramid" in terms of the broad array of threats to free speech on campuses. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  6/8/2022
  

  Michael Hines Recovers the Legacy of Black Educator Madeline Morgan

  The pioneering educator recognized that Black students needed a curriculum that transmitted knowledge but also countered the prevailing ideology of racial hierarchy. A new biography shows how progress in education is never fully secure. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  6/4/2022
  

  Authors of Color Disproportionately Targeted by Book Bans

  Angry parents yelling at school board meetings present a picture of these authors' work that they find unrecognizable. Read what several targeted authors say about their books. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  5/31/2022
  

  How History Came to Matter

  by Steve Mintz

  Academic historians' worthy insistence on cultivating expertise and methodological rigor can't come at the expense of working to alter public understanding of the past now that the stakes of that understanding are so high. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  5/26/2022
  

  The Dunce Party

  by Rachel Bryan

  Tennessee's "Divisive Concepts" bill would make it virtually impossible to teach the history and culture of the state and the wider South. 

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  5/24/2022
  

  How the US Government Used Comics to Inform Americans About the Holocaust

  An irony of the "Maus" controversy is that the government used the medium of comics to inform the public about the discovery of the Nazi death camps. 

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• SOURCE: Academe Blog
  5/19/2022
  

  What We Must Learn from the Boise State Hoax

  by John K. Wilson

  Boise State suspended multiple sections of a core course affecting nearly 1,300 students based on a lie told by a state legislator about the alleged mistreatment of a conservative student by fellow students and a professor; expect more of these attacks on higher education funding.

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• SOURCE: American Historical Association
  5/18/2022
  

  Historians on Teaching with Integrity in the Face of "Gag Laws"

    Leonard Moore, Katharina Matro, Julia Brookins, Kathleen Hilliard, James Grossman, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and James Sweet describe how their ability to examine the past honestly and students' freedom to learn support democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/19/2021
  

  When a Right-Wing Attack on Textbooks Was Stopped

  by Jonathan Zimmerman

  A McCarthy-era attack on a leading civics textbook fell short because of both organized resistance and the unpopularity of the ideas behind the ban. Supporters of academic freedom today can potentially draw on both of those elements, too. 

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• SOURCE: UT Daily Beacon
  4/27/2022
  

  University of Tennessee Must Take Stand to Call Out State CRT Bill as Exercise in White Supremacy

  by David Barber

  "Our students, and our society, desperately need to hear and learn the real history of this country – a history of this country that has no better telling than that history as seen through the eyes and experience of Black people."

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• SOURCE: ChalkBeat
  5/3/2022
  

  Where Americans Agree and Disagree on Teaching Race in School

  Polls show that 2/3 of Americans think schools need to change how much attention they give to race in the curriculum, but they are split, along party and racial lines, between those who want more and those who want less, making this likely to remain a political wedge issue.

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• SOURCE: PEN America
  4/28/2022
  

  With Educational Gag Orders, The Vagueness is the Point

  The failure of states to offer precise guidance for which lessons are acceptable and which aren't suggests that "divisive concepts" laws and other legislation are intended to chill teachers' ability to discuss politically sensitive subjects.