Howard Zinn wants teachers to bring in whatever materials they want to your child’s class room. He wants them to use their own judgement to teach whatever they think is appropriate. He wants them to subvert the rules regarding the approved curriculum at the school you are paying for. Of course, if Zinn’s advice is followed, there is nothing keeping a teacher from bringing materials related to Holocaust denial, or 9/11 conspiracies or creationism into the class room, as well. Unless Zinn is recommending only HIS enlightened view of history should be secretly brought into the classroom.

There are some very important people in our country who have aligned themselves with Zinn. With his philosophy. With his view of history. With his view of the United States. And, with his strategy for getting his message into the public schools outside of the legal construct of School Boards and State Departments of Education.

They made a film of his book.  They walked the red carpet and they posed with the man they admired.  He was the inspiration for their film and they spoke of him glowingly, almost like he was a hero.  They began their film with him striding out alone onto a stage in a theatre full of admirers.  It was his way of taking a curtain call (a standing ovation, by the way) before the show even began. (more…)

You can see the possibility that small acts multiplied by the millions can merge into great movements of social change. — So speaketh Howard Zinn in summing up the theme of last night’s two hour History Channel telecast of “The People Speak.” But like all Leftists, Zinn’s using a t-shirt ready face, focus group-tested platitudes, and cherry-picked bits of American history to further a monstrous ideology that will ensure all but a few Matt Damon-esque elites lose their liberties to Big Government overseers.

If you think about it, taken at face value, that Zinn quote personifies the Tea Party movement, doesn’t it? But what do you think Zinn and his fellow celebucrats think of those everyday people? That question can be answered in two words: Sarah and Palin:

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A large portion of “The People Speak” celebrates “everyday” women who came from nowhere to fight the establishment and have their voices heard … and yet here’s Matt Damon trashing the self-made reformer from Alaska who took on her own party.

It’s important to keep in mind that in Zinn’s poseur-infested world, some who believe democracy is not a spectator sport are more equal than others. (more…)

In a publicity event for the new History Channel film “The People Speak” held at UCLA last week, actor/producer Josh Brolin was charming, self-effacing, funny, and down-right likeable.  And, that was the whole reason he was there.  We live in a culture obsessed with celebrity and in full adoration of movie stars in particular.  In short, we are a nation of Star-F%*#ers.  And people like Howard Zinn know it.

Part of the discussion at Friday’s Q & A event centered on the appearance of hypocrisy by the filmmakers for using big-name stars in their film, considering the overall thesis of Zinn’s world view is that REAL history is made by the individual struggling against the elite in power.  Producers Chris Moore and Brolin agreed with the criticism but lamented that the only way to get the History Channel to air this movie would be if stars were connected to it.  Understandable.  But, the inclusion of big name, likable Hollywood stars like Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman, Marisa Tomei and Brolin serve a greater purpose than just aiding the pitch meeting at the network. (more…)

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The film’s producer Chris Moore:

And I’m sure every person there in Afghanistan is thinking about their family back here, thinking about the holidays, and I guarantee you all of them are thinking, “Why am I here? What am I doing here?”

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“The People Speak” College Tour concluded with a standing-room-only crowd in UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall last Friday afternoon.

After the video presentation, host professor Ellen DuBois facilitated an audience question-and-answer session with her guests, actor Josh Brolin and producer Chris Moore, while Howard Zinn’s partner Anthony Arnove (whom Brolin credits for his own participation) paced the back of the theater.

Asked about his project’s intended use in K-12 public school settings, Mr. Moore answered:

We have a whole educational program. There’s a curriculum, there’s a whole educational thing. There’ll be a website that has tools, that’s searchable… There is definitely a plan.

That plan includes “The Zinn Education Project” which:

…promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.

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Children are uniquely malleable beings, readily convinced of magically colorful tales – Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the first that come to mind. This innocence is beautiful, but it is a quality that can easily fall victim to radically foreign ideas if taught consistently and pervasively at an early age. One need only look at the birth of fascism or socialism to see a recipe for how radical ideas become ubiquitous among a nation’s youth.

Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.

Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it. (more…)