Jesse Hagopian: Teach Truth — Unbanning Books in Public Schools
Did you know that the Seattle Public Library offers any U.S. resident a “Books Unbanned Card,” which allows you to check out banned audiobooks, no matter where you live? This is just one example of how people are resisting new restrictions on information and education across the country. In his new book, Teach Truth, Seattle educator and author Jesse Hagopian discusses these restrictions and offers advice on how to defend antiracist education.
Hagopian outlines how numerous states and school districts in recent years have enacted policies or laws mandating how to teach about systemic racism and oppression—policies that impact nearly half of all students in the U.S. Thousands of books have been banned from schools. Teachers face termination, attacks, and disciplinary action. You can be punished, including jail time, for providing access to a banned book. These new changes have old roots in McCarthyism’s Red Scare and Lavender Scare. They have strongholds in U.S. history.
But there is also strong pushback. Hagopian shows how the fight against them also has a rich legacy, from the resistance to anti-literacy laws for enslaved people to the Black Lives Matter at School movement today. Hagopian calls to defend antiracist education, showing how to reclaim suppressed history by creating beloved classroom communities and healthy social movements.
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