What Sam Wineburg Gets Wrong About Teaching Howard Zinn's A People's History

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

Sam Wineburg, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University, recently published a new book,  Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) , addressing the need to cultivate historical thinking in students. To publicize the book, Slate ran an excerpt  critiquing Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States  and the teachers who teach it.

Given the dangers Wineburg detects in how teachers use A People's History in their classrooms, it is perplexing that his article offers not a single example of a real teacher, classroom, or lesson. 

Well, I am a real teacher who teaches real students in a real classroom using real lessons that rely on excerpts from A People's History. It is from this reservoir of experiential knowledge that I take issue with much of what Wineburg has written in his take-down of A People's History and those who teach it.

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In the face of attacks like these, teachers turn to the Zinn Education Project to respond and to redouble our efforts to provide people's history lessons for middle and high school classrooms. We do not receive corporate support. Instead, we depend on individuals like you. Let people's history teachers know they have your support with a donation today. 

 
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