Largest teachers union teams up with ‘60s radical professor’s namesake org peddling anti-American curriculum
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This feature is part of Fox News Digital’s investigative series, Campus Radicals. Discover the full series here.

A nonprofit organization closely aligned with the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the United States, is offering teachers radical social justice materials designed for students as young as those in pre-Kindergarten. This initiative is spearheaded by the Zinn Education Project (ZEP), an organization named in honor of the late historian Howard Zinn.

According to the ZEP’s website, the project has engaged over 176,000 teachers who have accessed more than 765,000 lesson plans for their classrooms. Each year, ZEP organizes a Teach Truth Day of Action, an event cosponsored by the NEA and other advocacy groups.

In their mission statement, ZEP emphasizes the importance of these educational resources, stating, “This powerful array of groups that have signed on to this campaign is a reflection of how everyone — whether working on voting rights, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s issues, labor rights, and more — recognize that what children learn — or don’t learn — impacts us all.”

Howard Zinn, renowned for his book “A People’s History of the United States,” provides the foundation for ZEP’s educational materials. His work retells American history from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in North America through the 21st century, highlighting themes of racial and sexual oppression. These themes are central to the lessons that ZEP offers to educators.

The book discusses the “genocide” of Native Americans by early settlers, class struggle and the “exploitation” of workers and in particular minority workers, and questions the idea of American unity. It also paints anarchist movements in a positive light.

Zinn was a professor at Spelman College in the early and mid 1960s, but was eventually fired after clashes with the school’s administration over his own radicalism. 

He described himself as, “Something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist,” in a 2003 interview. 

Lessons on ZEP’s site can be filtered by grade. In the section for third to fifth graders, an openly anti-White book called “Borderlands and the Mexican American Story” is recommended for teachers to use in their curriculum.

“The Mexican American story is usually carefully presented as a story of immigrants: migrants crossing borders, drawn to the promise of a better life,” says the book’s description on ZEP’s site. “In reality, Mexicans were on this land long before any borders existed. Their culture and practices shaped the Southwestern part of this country, in spite of relentless attempts by white colonizers and settlers to erase them.”

Another suggested lesson for third and fifth graders is a seven-minute video on climate change, produced by The Intercept and narrated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The video also pushes for universal healthcare.

Ocasio-Cortez blasts oil company executives, promotes her “Green New Deal,” and relays a fearful 2018 message from “the world’s top climate scientist,” who is not named.

“He told us that we had 12 years left to cut our emissions,” she said. “In half were hundreds of millions of people would be more likely to face food and water shortages, poverty and death.”

The video then about-faces towards a utopia where people have toed the left-wing climate change line and saved the planet.

“But as we battled the floods, fires and droughts, we knew how lucky we were to have started acting when we did,” she says in the video. “And we didn’t just change the infrastructure, we changed how we did things. We became a society that was not only modern and wealthy, but dignified and humane too. By committing to universal rights like healthcare and meaningful work for all, we stop being so scared of the future.”

ZEP’s homepage is emblazoned with teacher testimonials.

“The Zinn Education Project is my compass in a sea of corporate textbooks, packaged common core curriculum and standardized testing,” says a quote attributed to Chris Buehler, described as a high school social studies teacher in Portland, Ore. “My entire curriculum is based on lessons that can be found on the Zinn Education Project.”

Another high school teacher describes how he uses the curriculum to teach social justice.

“I’ve used the Zinn Education Project’s materials since my first year teaching,” says a testimonial from Corey Wincester, described as a high school history teacher from Evanston, Ill.

“Nine years later, my students can speak to the power of deconstructing the narratives of Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln’s efforts that have replicated white supremacy and marginalization of people of color in historical discourse.

“For many of them, it is empowering to learn from multiple perspectives and invigorates their desire to learn and disrupt the status quo.

ZEP and the NEA did not respond to a request for comment.

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