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In a recent discussion about a history reading, I asked students if they understood the need to think critically about what we read, even if the reading is labeled “historical.”

Students and educators in Jefferson County, Colorado, are pushing back against their school board’s proposal to whitewash U.S. history.

The trouble with Women’s History Month—with all these special months—is that they encourage people to think that problems have been solved.

It was Black History Month. I was working with children and youth in an after-school program in the Clarksdale housing projects in Louisville, Ky. Spike Lee's film Malcolm X had just been released. I sat around a table with a group of teenagers discussing Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X and James Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America.

Through a grant from Teaching American History, I was part of a group of teachers who spent months reading, listening and watching films and videos about the civil rights movement before we took a trip to the South. But still it was history—far away, untouchable and remote. That was until the first day in Sumner, Miss.

A preview of a new online curriculum.

The rich history and diversity of rural communities have largely been erased. Appreciating both charts a promising path forward.