This is a conversation for students and I have posted it here before. Parents, students, teachers… this is a trend that cannot and should not be ignored. We have fought too long and hard to make the truth an acceptable topic in our history, civics and social studies classes. This is no time to accept these backward steps from those who would rather things not progress. Anyone who says otherwise is in denial that the truth is what heals and offers hope. Denying what’s gone before only serves to allowdisease to become embedded. Any medical practicioner can tell you that. I urge all educators and parents to wake up to this trend!While everyone is busy pointing fingers about whose to blame for failing schools, this is what’s happening!WAKE UP!http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/12/texas-education-board-app_n_497440.html***UPDATE*** Think Progress flags some of the more eye-opening revisions the Texas Board of Education approved for its social studies curriculum and textbooks:

- The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”- The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

The Texas Freedom Network live-blogged the debate over the changes. Read more here.—April Castro, ASSOCIATED PRESSAUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.Story continues below sm versus liberalism,” said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. “We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it’s appropriate.”Following three days of impassioned and acrimonious debate, the board gave preliminary approval to the new standards with a 10-5 party line vote. A final vote is expected in May, after a public comment period that could produce additional amendments and arguments.Decisions by the board – made up of lawyers, a dentist and a weekly newspaper publisher among others – can affect textbook content nationwide because Texas is one of publishers’ biggest clients.Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board’s most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of “whitewashing” curriculum standards.By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding “American exceptionalism” and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.”Some board members themselves acknowledged this morning that the process for revising curriculum standards in Texas is seriously broken, with politics and personal agendas dominating just about every decision,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom.Republican Terri Leo, a member of the powerful Christian conservative voting bloc, called the standards “world class” and “exceptional.”Board members argued about the classification of historic periods (still B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.); whether students should be required to explain the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics (they will); and whether former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir should be required learning (she will).In addition to learning the Bill of Rights, the board specified a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class.Conservatives beat back multiple attempts to include hip-hop as an example of a significant cultural movement.Numerous attempts to add the names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were denied, inducing one amendment that would specify that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Another amendment deleted a requirement that sociology students “explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.”Democrats did score a victory by deleting a portion of an amendment by Republican Don McLeroy suggesting that the civil rights movement led to “unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes.”Fort Worth Republican Pat Hardy, a longtime teacher, voted for the new standards, but said she wished the board could work with a more cooperative spirit.”What we’ve done is we’ve taken a document that by nature is too long to begin with and then we’ve lengthened it some more,” Hardy said, shortly after the vote. “Those long lists of names that we’ve put in there … it’s just too long.”I just think we failed to keep that in mind, it’s hard for teachers to get through it all.”

http://americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/GrannyD_Haddock.phpDoris “Granny D” Haddock died peacefully today in her Dublin, New Hampshire family home at 7:18 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, 2010. She was 100 years old. Born in 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire, she attended Emerson College and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. She was an activist for her community and for her country, remaining active until the return of chronic respiratory problems four days ago.She walked across the United States at the age of 90 in the year 2000, in a successful effort to promote the passage of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act.  In 2004, Granny D decided to challengeincumbent Senator Judd Gregg for his US Senate seat. She hoped to demonstrate that ordinary people can run for office and win with the support of small donations from individuals. Despite a shortened, grassroots campaign without the benefit of any advertising dollars, Granny D garnered an impressive 34% of the vote. During the past year five years, Granny D has traveled the country speaking about campaign finance reform and working on behalf of legislation for publicly-funded elections in New Hampshire.In the 1960s, she and her husband, James Haddock, Sr., were instrumental in halting planned nuclear tests that would have destroyed a native fishing village and region in Alaska.She raised two children, including the late Elizabeth Lawrenz of Washington D.C., and a son, Jim Haddock, who survives her and, with his wife, Libby, was at her side during many of her great adventures, including the final one today.  She is also survived by eight grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.          A public memorial service will be held this summer. 

 I find that students are captivated by Rachel Corrie’s story and the case that follows.Truth teller Amy Goodman writes about it here.Encourage discussion about Rachel’s actions and courage. It’s rare these days. Her book “Let Me Stand Alone” documents poems and writings from her earliest years and students will likely resonate with much of what she writes. The entry for which the book is titled is haunting given the way she died.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-goodman/rachel-corries-posthumous_b_492537.html 

This attachment shares photos of women worthy of our student’s attention. They are making a difference in many ways.Share with students as a reminder of the important contributions of women.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/international-womens-day_n_489338.html?slidenumber=NiS8LHOaTIM%3D&&slideshow A great quote:” Teach a woman to fish and EVERYONE EATS! ”  Ask students to consider what this really means.In particular, the story of  a Yemeni girl, Nujood Ali, ten years old, forced to marry a man over twenty years her senior. She found a lawyer, managed to divorce the man and becamen an international symbol in the Middle East and byond. Her book, “I Am Nujood, Age Ten and Divorced,” tells her story. What do students feel about this story and what does this story have to do with us here in the United States?

As planting season is upon us soon, the issue of farming, work in the migrant community and social justice issues related to that life continue to haunt us as a country. Many students will study the great novel, Of Mice and Men as part of their literary education. There are several truth tellers who have a relationship to the issue of migrant workers, homelessness and poverty as well as living examples of how best and most justly to work with the farm worker.Woodie Guthrie sang and protested the rights of workers everywhere…Cesar Chavez’s fight for worker’s rights….Robert Kennedy’s fight against poverty and visit to the Appalachians….Dorothea Lange’s documentation of the poverty of her time as related to the workers’ lives…Winona LaDukeworks very hard to create a community that can grow food and thrive among the native peoples…Sister Lucy Poulin  works with homelessness and how to best combat its relentless presence in her community….Florence Reedwho is helping ensure that Central American farming is respectful of its people and the environment there….Emma Tenayuca who fought bravely for the rights of pecan workers…Diane Wilson who went to prison to fight for the shrimp boat work her family had done for generations…

 This issue Yes Magazine is titled “America: The Remix. Can Our Diversity Be Our Strength?” It examines various ways in which roles/relationships have evolved under the umbrella issue of racism. Featured truth tellers Grace Lee Boggs and Robert Jensen talk about how they see the election of Barack Obama having an impact on our future despite the fact that it cannot be seen as the “end ” of an era of racism in the United States.This issue is a MUST for teachers who are examining the issues we face in our country today involving racism not only related to African Americans but the much bigger picture of who we are to be as a people.The issue references a great interactive site : understandingrace.org. 

Ann Wright felt it more important to speak to the truth! Have students read the article and ask them what they’d be willing to take a risk for - what ’s worth moving forward on despite personal risk?http://www.vancouversun.com/news/activist%20allowed%20into%20Canada%20despite%20warning/2629329/story.html

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

When young Black men are the victims of violent injuries in their urban neighborhoods, what happens next? This question haunted Dr. John Rich, who was educated at Dartmouth, Duke, and Harvard, was a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, and was the founder of the city’s Young Men’s Health Clinic. In both settings he was in constant contact with young men who had been victims of violence, and of course he was deeply concerned about the physical scars he kept treating. But as a Black doctor dealing with the aftermath of violence in young Black men day after day, Dr. Rich felt a special connection with his patients and wanted to know about more than just the medical effects of the gunshot and knife wounds he was seeing. He wanted to understand their emotional and psychological impact.Dr. Rich and his colleagues kept asking themselves why they were seeing so many victims of violence and what they could do to try to break the cycle, and he believed listening to survivors’ stories might help him find an answer. He began interviewing young men in the hospital as they were recovering from their injuries, often following up after they returned home and sometimes staying in touch for months or years. He shares some of these stories and what he learned from them in his powerful new book Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men.In his preface he explains that even though violent murders often grab headlines, with violence, deaths are only “the tip of the iceberg.” He notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that for every homicide there are about 100 nonfatal violent incidents. He says studies have found that as deadly as guns are, “for every person who gets shot and dies, another four get shot and survive.” Dr. Rich believes we don’t pay enough attention to surviving victims and have “underestimated the impact that violence has on these young men and their communities.”When Dr. Rich started collecting his patients’ stories, he realized that although little research had been done on trauma among young Black victims of violence, their stories were echoing research on responses to trauma in other groups like rape survivors and soldiers returning from combat. These responses include hypervigilance and the constant feeling of being in danger; being unable to feel at all and exposing themselves to more danger in an attempt to feel something; returning to danger to prove to themselves they had mastered their fears; or using alcohol or drugs to try to ease pain. It became painfully easy to connect the dots and see how these common responses to trauma play out in the lives of many survivors of inner-city violence, and why, in many cases, they lead to more violence. When many survivors are concentrated in a single area, it’s also clear how these cycles of trauma and violence repeat themselves and infect that entire community.Dr. Rich also came to understand more about why violence made sense to some of the patients he was treating. One epiphany occurred after 17-year-old Jimmy explained that his friends were anxious to have some sort of “rep” “[j]ust to be known. People don’t like to be nobodies these days…” Dr. Rich realized, “I had gotten used to talking about senseless violence. How could violence be anything but senseless?…But Jimmy’s argument, when I laid it out front of me, told me that violence made sense to him. Violence worked in his world to accomplish something that all of us wanted—to be somebody—but that Jimmy could not find any other way to do.”Dr. Rich believes we all need to better understand why young men like these are getting caught up in the cycle of violence—not to excuse their behavior, but to help change it. He is now the Director of the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and Professor and Chair of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia. The Center’s goal is to change the dialogue about violence “away from terms of blame and dehumanization and toward a language of injury and healing.” The Center hopes to help health, mental health, juvenile justice, and education systems understand the relationship between trauma and violence and how healing is critical to serving these young people. One key program reaches out to injured youths in a Philadelphia emergency department, pairing them with professionals who can help with their trauma and a community outreach worker who helps with basic needs like enrolling in school or getting a job. This idea is starting to be replicated in other cities. In 2006 Dr. Rich was awarded aMacArthur Foundation ”Genius Grant” Fellowship for his work. Scholar-practitioners like him are helping find the answers we urgently need to better understand the cycle of violence and save our children from being its next victims.

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Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind^® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go towww.childrensdefense.org.

Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits feature many women who are both well known to us and also, not as familiar. The stories are all significant and important. At a local community college, a group is featuring truth teller’s portraits in poster form and having students create a “Living Timeline” representing the chronological , sequential role of these women in the context of the times they live(d) in then and now.This is an excellent way to help students put the life’s work of a woman in relationship to all else going on around her. There is great power in that for some students as they are better able to make sense of a life when they understand it.Here are the portraits being used in this timeline. Feel free to create your own using a theme or other manner of putting the portrait in a context. In the weeks to come we’ll post themed groups of portraits from the women in the series for you to consider with your students.They are shown here as follows: Emma Tenayuca      Lily Yeh     Marian Wright Edelman      Winona LaDuke  Betty BurkesFannie Lou Hamer   Teri Blanton  Eva Paterson  Frances Perkins    Shirley Chisholm   Zora Neale Hurston    Sojourner Truth