A report from a whistleblower to author James Lindsay appears to show “recommended books” in the area of social studies for public schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is focused almost entirely on “race, queerness, or derived from Howard Zinn.”
Lindsay, who writes at New Discourses, reported the scoop:
A whistleblower has provided me with the complete list of [social studies] books for Albuquerque Public Schools in New Mexico. Almost everything is about race, queerness, or derived from Howard Zinn (Critical Historian, revisionist). This isn’t education. It’s Critical Theory programming:
From the list, recommended books in U.S. History include:
A People’s History of the United States
A Young People’s History of the United States
Feminism
Gender identity
Immigration Nation
Race Relations
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
Breitbart News reached out to Scott Elder, superintendent of Albuquerque Public Schools, and asked him to confirm or deny the list and for comment on its purpose if confirmed.
The Zinn Education Project recently called upon all teachers to pledge to instruct students in the concepts associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT) – even if it is banned.
“Pledge to teach the truth,” says the Project, inspired by Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980.
The Zinn Education Project currently boasts nearly 423,000 lesson plan downloads from its site by teachers.
The project repeated to teachers the false narrative the left is using to paint state laws that have banned the teaching of CRT concepts such as white supremacy, systemic racism, white oppression of blacks, etc., that these laws will prohibit discussions of race, slavery, and episodes of American history related to these areas.
“Lawmakers in at least 21 states are attempting to pass legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history,” the Zinn Education Project falsely states.
The Zinn project rips any legislation that bans teaching that Americans are inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and targets a Missouri bill:
Specifically, the Missouri bill bans teaching that: identifies people or groups of people, entities, or institutions in the United States as inherently, immutably, or systemically sexist, racist, anti-LGBT, bigoted, biased, privileged, or oppressed.
But how can one teach honestly about the nature of our society without examining how today’s racial inequality is a systemic legacy of this country’s history?
The project elaborates further in urging teachers to pledge to defy any laws that ban teaching that America is a systemically racist nation:
From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression. To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them. This history helps students understand the roots of inequality today and gives them the tools to shape a just future. It is not just a history of oppression, but also a history of how people have organized and created coalitions across race, class, and gender.
The Zinn project refers to the following organizations as “leading social justice education groups” – even the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – and objects to state laws that ban their curricula:
1619 Project initiative of the New York Times, the Learning for Justice Curriculum of the Southern Poverty Law Center, We Stories, programs of Educational Equity Consultants, BLM at School, Teaching for Change, Zinn Education Project.
“The proposed [Missouri] legislation fails to name a single lesson that is inaccurate or that misleads students about U.S. history,” the Zinn project claimed, urging teachers to ignore state laws that ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory.
The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, announced at its Representative Assembly last week it plans to join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project “to call for a rally this year on October 14 – George Floyd’s birthday – as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”