For the last three years, educators all over the country led rallies, information tables, and events for what the Zinn Education Project calls #TeachTruth Day, an event designed to push back against what organizers call the “anti-CRT movement.”
Although the work is done every single day inside and outside school walls, the day is solely dedicated to defending the rights to teach truth. In collaboration with the Zinn Education Project, educators and communities joined in a call to talk about the 4th annual Teach Truth Day on Saturday, June 8th.
With over 169 events in 40 states hailing from Puerto Rico all the way to Iowa, organizations like the National Education Association, GLSEN, and many more are fueling up their students, communities, and leaders to raise awareness and let their voices be heard on issues they care about.
In a wide-ranging discussion, they discussed why they are acting against a wave of state laws and education policies restricting what can or can’t be taught in classrooms. In states like Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, lawmakers and school board members have passed bans on teaching or discussing topics including the evils of slavery and Jim Crow, why the rights of LGBTQ+ students and teachers matter, and why protests against Israel’s war in Palestine should be allowed.
Student’s Right to Learn About Race
Courtland Cox, civil rights activist and leader, was involved in the 1964 March on Washington, and recalls a time where learning how to read or write was dangerous for African-American people, similar to the state of teaching about race and queer topics in today’s era.
“I’ve been involved in the movement for over 60 years,” Cox says, “I’ve seen what the policy of destroying education for people have done, particularly in the south. When I was in Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest Georgia, you know, most black students did not get past the fourth grade.”
Greg Wickenkamp, an Iowa educator and co-host of Iowa City’s event, said he is participating this year because he experienced first-hand being pushed out of K-12 teaching because he was accused of “indoctrinating” students.
“I was teaching critical thinking, and they accused me of indoctrinating students. Administrators didn’t stand up to them. This was 2021 and Iowa had just passed its history censorship law,” Wickenkamp says. “ It criminalizes teaching about systemic racism and oppression. Now, like every classroom, mine had a bias, and my classroom’s bias was in favor of an inclusive democracy.”
Iowa’s law created so much fear, confusion, and discomfort,” Wickencamp says, that the superintendent wasn’t sure if Wickencamp could still teach students that chattel slavery was wrong. Education needs teachers who inspire critical thinking and public servants who won’t stand for anything less to support students during this era.
Book Bans Affect Authors, Too
Megan Madison, educator and children’s author, comes from a line of early childhood educators. She believes accurately teaching history to people of all ages their true history critically enables “more powerful and strategic choices” about their lives and those of people they care about.
“We are a beautifully resilient species, and we are not okay right now,” Madison says. “At the same time, we’re seeing a blossoming of a long existing white Christian nationalist movement, delivering the expected backlash to the world’s largest Black liberation movement in human history, the movement for Black lives.”
Author Nikki Grimes says book bans are directly impacting those in the school system, but also the authors who pour their passion and creativity into creating these novels.
“Thanks to fear-inducing pro-censorship legislation, author book sales are slipping,” Grimes says. “But the biggest losers here are children.”
LGBTQ+ Students Need A Voice
Micheal Rady, GLSEN Senior Education Programs Manager, says queer students should be exposed to historic LGBTQ figures like Bayard Rustin and Congresswomen Sharice Davids, who botsh made history by fighting for civil rights while embracing their true identities.i
“This is GLSEN’s’s second year, co-sponsoring the Teach Truth Day of Action,” Rady says. “Again, we’re seeing record numbers of (state-level) bills being introduced — 500 so far in 2024 — targeting LGBTQ plus people, bills censoring LGBTQ plus stories and history from classrooms like the one passed by the Louisiana legislature just last week, bills banning Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives.”
Julie Womack, head of organizing for Red, Wine, and Blue, says they support Teach Truth Day of Action because parents first hand don’t know or can’t believe what’s happening in their schools, and this is a way to get them to understand the severity of it.
“I talk daily to parents who cannot believe that a book ban is being proposed in their school district, or that there’s an anti LGBTQ plus policy that would exclude their child and probably lead to even bullying, and that this is happening at their school board,” Womack says. “Mainstream parents in these communities are standing up and saying no.”
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