Arkansas Howard Zinn Witch-hunt Fizzles

Last week nearly 700 Arkansas teachers and school librarians received copies of books by Howard Zinnthanks to a right wing state representative.

Well, not exactly. But heres the story.

Recently, Republican Kim Hendren introduced legislation that would prohibit teachers in all public schools or state-supported charter schools from including any books in their curriculum byor even concerningthe historian Howard Zinn, author of the classic A Peoples History of the United States , who died in 2010.

In response, the Zinn Education Projecta collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change , which I co-directoffered to send free copies of a Howard Zinn book and A Peoples History for the Classroom lessons to any Arkansas middle or high school teacher or school librarian requesting them.

In just a few days, we were flooded with requests . Many of them came accompanied by poignant notes about why people were eager to get the materials. One middle school librarian in Western Grove, Arkansas, near the Missouri border (population 373), wrote, The proposed bill to ban Mr. Zinns book has fired up the Arkansas librarian world. To combat ignorance, I must have knowledge. I respectfully request a copy so I can educate my tiny corner of the world.

A high school teacher in El Dorado, Arkansas, in the far south, near Louisiana, wrote defiantly, Books and ideas are increasingly under attack in Arkansas. We need to defend our rights and freedoms and be willing to look at history from multiple viewpoints. As Orwell wrote, freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4. Sometimes, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act. The truth will be taught in my classroom.

Donations to support the Zinn Education Project book giveaway poured in from across the country. And visits from Arkansas educators to the Zinn Education Project website increased a whopping 923 percent over the previous year.

I called Rep. Hendrens office seeking comment about his proposed Zinn ban, and he quickly called me back. Ill talk with you because in your message you seemed respectful, but Ive been called the F-word, people have wished me dead. Apparently, there is some organization out there of Zinn supporters stirring things up. I assured him that my aim in calling was simply to hear why he sought to single out Howard Zinns work for banning.

I think my constituents had seen some stuff on the internet or media. And Rick Santorum had mentioned it. Id never heard of Howard Zinn. Id never heard of the man. He also mentioned former Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels work to cut Zinn from the curriculum. I dont want indoctrination. Lets just present the bill and see where it goes. At the end of the call, my impression was that Rep. Hendren was running away from his own piece of legislation.

Mitch Daniels effort to ban Zinn from Indiana schools and colleges had been a more serious effort. Unlike Rep. Hendren, Gov. Daniels had clear opinions about Howard Zinn. Shortly after Zinn died, on January 27, 2010, Daniels wrote his education advisor: The obits and commentaries mentioned [Zinns] book A Peoples History of the United States is the textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country. It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history? This email and others were uncovered thanks to sleuthing from the Associated Press.

The Trump right wing is all for local control until that control means a womans right to control her own body, or until a community decides not to cooperate with immigration bullies. Similarly, conservatives tout educational balance and fairness, until it means engaging students in asking critical questions about the behavior of U.S. elites or introducing them to voices of dissent and social movements throughout history. Which, no doubt, is why Republicans like Mitch Daniels or Kim Hendren get so exercised about the influence of Howard Zinn in schools today.

There is not one single piece of Zinns history-telling that the book-banners cite. No, I think its Zinns unapologetic partisanship that gets under their skin. Zinn sums up his approach in a famous passage from the first chapter of A Peoples History of the United States. He says that all historians take sides in what they select and emphasize about the past:

I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scotts army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by Black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by Southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by Blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America.

Zinn acknowledges that this effort to see history as others experienced it will always be limitedno matter how much we strain. At the heart of Howard Zinns scholarship is not this or that conclusion about particular moments in history, its his invitation to empathy. And thats what makes Zinns presence in schools so threatening: classrooms full of students straining to ask critical questions from the standpoint of all those not well-served by todays arrangements of power and privilege.

I think Howard Zinn would have loved what transpired in the past few weeks in Arkansas: Amidst a flurry of White House executive orders to ban Muslims and build pipelines, a conservative legislator tries to jump on the bandwagon, with an attempt to ensure that his states children learn only a Fox News version of Americas past. But in response, teachers and librarians throughout the state reject his attempt to stifle critique and questioning; supporters around the country rally in solidarity, and peoples history materials pour into the states classrooms and libraries.

Howard Zinns writing is full of instancesbig and smallof ordinary people gathering to oppose exploitation and schemes of the elites. Hendrens bill just died in the education committeeoffering the world one more instance that simply because people in positions of power want something to happen, does not make it so.

Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. He is the author of A Peoples History for the Classroom and co-editor of A Peoples Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis .

The Zinn Education Project is a collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change. Learn more about the Zinn Education Project and how you can help bring peoples history to the classroom.

2017 The Zinn Education Project