Celebrating Juneteenth and Pride
To commemorate Juneteenth and Pride Month, we uplift liberation and Black joy and culture, and share new resources for the ongoing justice and equity movement.
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Teaching Hard History Podcast Series
Learning for Justice is relaunching the Teaching Hard History podcast series with host Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ph.D., to resist current efforts to erase and alter our nation’s history. As we celebrate Juneteenth, let’s commit to learning and teaching the hard history that is foundational to the United States.
Teaching Hard History begins with the long and brutal legacy of slavery and reaches through the victories of and violent responses to the Civil Rights Movement and Black Americans’ experiences during the Jim Crow era to the issues we face today. This is American history that we all need to know and that should be taught in schools and in communities.
Join us each week as we highlight an episode from the series and include a new resource page with essential ideas and teaching recommendations from the conversation and updated resources.
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“If we don’t remember the past, we will continue it. We will continue to do the things that created inequality and injustice in the first place. So what we must do is we must disrupt the continuum of hard history.”
— Hasan Kwame Jeffries
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Featured Episode from Season 1: American Slavery
What really caused the Civil War? In this episode, Salem State University professor Bethany Jay examines the complex role that slavery played in causing the Civil War and outlines ways to teach this history and clarify our understanding of the Confederacy. Listen to the episode and find resources here.
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New Education Justice Series
Public schools play a crucial role in our democracy, providing the literacy, critical thinking skills and common-good values essential for participation in the democratic process. Understanding current issues in education justice — including the possibilities of and threats to public schools — can help us envision affirmative models that benefit all and counter efforts to undermine public education. Learn more with this new series, and join us in demanding education justice and inclusive public schools that foster excellence and equity.
We begin the series with these new articles by T. Jameson Brewer, Ph.D., on public schools as a common good, which explore the possibilities and threats to public education in the United States.
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Why Public Schools Matter
The current administration’s assault on education illustrates public schools’ crucial role in our democracy. Understanding why public schools matter as a common good for our communities and nation is vital to countering efforts to undermine the public education system.
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Understanding How Schools Are Labeled
The labels assigned to schools — particularly public schools by politicians seeking to defund them — should be approached with caution. This article looks into the process of labeling schools and the reliability of those labels, especially when a school is labeled as “failing.”
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School Vouchers and the Efforts to Undermine Public Education
School vouchers are currently a popular topic among politicians and interest groups pushing to defund public schools and shift taxpayer funds to private for-profit or religious institutions. This article explains how voucher programs are part of a broader effort to dismantle public education — with far-reaching negative impacts for our nation and future.
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LGBTQ+ people have always existed, but LGBTQ+ history, which is an integral part of the history of the United States, has often been ignored or erased. From Learning for Justice and hosts Leila Rupp and John D’Emilio, Queer America reveals stories of LGBTQ+ life we should have learned in school. This 13-episodes podcast series can help us learn about and teach LGBTQ+ history. Celebrate Pride Month and share this series.
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