Why We're Doing It

Educators pledging to “Teach the Truth” understand that knowledge can help create a more just society. When we know about injustice, we can mobilize and organize against it.

Our pledge for action is rooted in four truths

• To teach the history of racism in the United States is also an opportunity to teach the history of movements to end it. These movements have always been multiracial, multiethnic, and built across lines of gender and class. Understanding this can be an incredible and powerful source of unity for all students.

• Those invested in upholding structures of systemic racism see the growing movement to teach the truth—and are doing all they can to stop it. They know if young people learn the truth about our history and our present, they will be informed and even inspired to work to change systems of oppression moving forward.

• Not acknowledging the country’s actual history, including racism and other oppression, is deception, not education. Teaching young people about the centuries of resistance to that oppression is empowering.