Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy Henry A. Giroux | Truthout | 2010

 Friends:

Published in 2010, I offer blog reader's Dr. Henry Giroux’s reflection on Paulo Freire that makes clear why the Brazilian educator remains one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed offered not just a literacy method, but a vision of education as a deeply political, moral, and liberatory practice. Especially in fields like education, sociology, and the humanities, I don't think one should graduate without having read this text.

Unlike today’s market-driven models of schooling that reduce learning to test scores, job preparation, and corporate accountability metrics, Freire viewed pedagogy as a project of freedom—an invitation for students to reflect critically, imagine otherwise, and act to transform their world. Giroux laments how contemporary education has largely abandoned this vision, reducing teachers to technicians and classrooms to “dead zones” where critical thought is stifled in favor of test prep and control.

At the heart of Freire’s philosophy is the conviction that education is never neutral. It either domesticates students into existing systems of power or equips them to challenge injustice and reclaim their agency. For Freire, literacy was not merely functional but existential: it was about “reading the world” as much as reading the word, developing self-knowledge, and creating conditions for democratic life. Such an approach is threatening to elites precisely because it cultivates critical citizens rather than compliant workers. Giroux stresses that this remains as urgent today as in Freire’s lifetime, as neoliberal policies and corporate culture continue to erode education’s democratic purpose.

Beyond theory, Giroux also recalls Freire as a person—humble, generous, and full of hope. His politics were inseparable from his humanity: he modeled compassion, joy, and a refusal to surrender to cynicism. For Freire, hope was not naïve optimism but a disciplined practice rooted in history and collective struggle. His legacy challenges educators and citizens alike to see education as a site of possibility, to insist on its role in sustaining democracy, and to nurture the unfinished project of freedom. In Giroux’s words, Freire’s work remains not only relevant but indispensable in the fight against conformity, authoritarianism, and the foreclosure of human potential.

Giroux's article in Truthout originates from Policy Futures in Education, a scholarly journal, where it was published in 2010, as well. I should add that Henry Giroux is also one of the most influential educators in the last and current century, as well. I once heard Giroux lecture while at Stanford and found him every bit as passionate and dynamic in person as he is in his writing.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Giroux, H. A. (2010). Rethinking education as the practice of freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy. Policy futures in education, 8(6), 715-721. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2304/pfie.2010.8.6.715

Giroux, H. A. (2010, January 1). Rethinking education as the practice of freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy, Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/rethinking-education-as-the-practice-of-freedom-paulo-freire-and-the-promise-of-critical-pedagogy/

Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy

Henry A. Giroux | Truthout | 2010

Paulo Freire is one of the most important critical educators of the 20th century.[1] Not only is he considered one of the founders of critical pedagogy, but he also played a crucial role in developing a highly successful literacy campaign in Brazil before the onslaught of the junta in 1964. Once the military took over the government, Freire was imprisoned for a short time for his efforts. He eventually was released and went into exile, primarily in Chile and later in Geneva, Switzerland, for a number of years. Once a semblance of democracy returned to Brazil, he went back to his country in 1980 and played a significant role in shaping its educational policies until his untimely death in 1997. His book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," is considered one of the classic texts of critical pedagogy, and has sold over a million copies, influencing generations of teachers and intellectuals both in the United States and abroad. Since the 1980s, there has been no intellectual on the North American educational scene who has matched either his theoretical rigor or his moral courage. Most schools and colleges of education are now dominated by conservative ideologies, hooked on methods, slavishly wedded to instrumentalized accountability measures and run by administrators who lack either a broader vision or critical understanding of education as a force for strengthening the imagination and expanding democratic public life.

As the market-driven logic of neoliberal capitalism continues to devalue all aspects of the public good, one consequence has been that the educational concern with excellence has been removed from matters of equity, while the notion of schooling as a public good has largely been reduced to a private good. Both public and higher education are largely defined through the corporate demand that they provide the skills, knowledge and credentials that will provide the workforce necessary for the United States to compete and maintain its role as the major global economic and military power. Consequently, there is little interest in both public and higher education, and most importantly in many schools of education, for understanding pedagogy as a deeply civic, political and moral practice - that is, pedagogy as a practice for freedom. As schooling is increasingly subordinated to a corporate order, any vestige of critical education is replaced by training and the promise of economic security. Similarly, pedagogy is now subordinated to the narrow regime of teaching to the test coupled with an often harsh system of disciplinary control, both of which mutually reinforce each other. In addition, teachers are increasingly reduced to the status of technicians and deskilled as they are removed from having any control over their classrooms or school governance structures. Teaching to the test and the corporatization of education becomes a way of "taming" students and invoking modes of corporate governance in which public school teachers become deskilled and an increasing number of higher education faculty are reduced to part-time positions, constituting the new subaltern class of academic labor.

But there is more at stake here than a crisis of authority and the repression of critical thought. Too many classrooms at all levels of schooling now resemble a "dead zone," where any vestige of critical thinking, self-reflection and imagination quickly migrate to sites outside of the school only to be mediated and corrupted by a corporate-driven media culture. The major issue now driving public schooling is how to teach for the test, while disciplining those students who because of their class and race undermine a school district's ranking in the ethically sterile and bloodless world of high stakes testing and empirical score cards.[2] Higher education mimics this logic by reducing its public vision to the interests of capital and redefining itself largely as a credentializing factory for students and a Petri dish for downsizing academic labor. Under such circumstances, rarely do educators ask questions about how schools can prepare students to be informed citizens, nurture a civic imagination or teach them to be self-reflective about public issues and the world in which they live. As Stanley Aronowitz puts it:

"Few of even the so-called educators ask the question: What matters beyond the reading, writing, and numeracy that are presumably taught in the elementary and secondary grades? The old question of what a kid needs to become an informed 'citizen' capable of participating in making the large and small public decisions that affect the larger world as well as everyday life receives honorable mention but not serious consideration. These unasked questions are symptoms of a new regime of educational expectations that privileges job readiness above any other educational values."[3]

Teaching controversial issues when democracy is under attack," by J. L. Pace, E. Soto-Shed & E. Yeager Washington

To grasp just how profoundly democracy is under attack, look no further than states taking measures to limit the franchise, the right to vote, as captured, for example, in this December 4, 2021 column in the New York Times titled, "Voting Battles of 2022 Take Shape as G.O.P. Crafts New Election Bills." Lady Liberty has taken a bruising. The fight in Ukraine reminds us of how this is not just happening in the U.S., but globally. 

In any case, the Brown Center provides some helpful thinking and resources for teachers who are on the front lines of this attack in their classrooms. I hope you'll find these helpful.

-Angela Valenzuela

BROWN CENTER CHALKBOARD

Teaching controversial issues when democracy is under attack

Judith L. Pace, Eric Soto-Shed, and Elizabeth Yeager Washington

Monday, January 31, 2022

A new poll released by the Harvard Kennedy School reports that 52% of young Americans believe our democracy is “in trouble” or “failing.” Conflicts over many issues, such as election outcomes, climate change, and police violence against people of color seem intractable.

Political divisions have erupted in education as well. Public discourse in school board meetings on critical race theory, transgender students’ rights, mask and vaccine mandates, and pandemic-related restrictions has become vitriolic. Attacks on critical race theory have driven bans on teaching about systemic racism, sexism, and other politically charged topics.

In this climate, discussion of controversial issues in classrooms seems more fraught than ever, and teachers are understandably fearful to engage. But exploring political questions from multiple perspectives is a cornerstone of democratic education. It cultivates civic reasoning and discourse, which embody the skills, understandings, and habits required of democratic citizens. Furthermore, research shows that discussion of issues in an open classroom climate generates increased political knowledge, interest, and engagement.

Classrooms are typically the only space where young people learn to exchange perspectives with peers from diverse backgrounds, identify credible sources, and weigh evidence to inform their thinking. As one of the authors (Pace) writes in her new book intended for use in teacher preparation and professional development, we know a lot about how to successfully explore controversial issues in classroom settings. In fact, a well-developed set of practices has been advocated by and for educators around the world.

We are former K-12 teachers who are now teacher educators, and we understand that teachers, especially now, are keen to avoid risks that may accompany frank discussions of volatile issues in the classroom. These risks could include loss of classroom control, recriminations from administrators, and attacks from parents and community members, among others. However, controversy often enters the classroom whether or not we plan for it. How are teachers to effectively address controversy during these intensely polarized times?

This research-based tool that Pace developed represents an approach to teaching controversial issues known as “contained risk-taking.” It encourages teaching controversy through inquiry and discussion while proactively addressing risks. This framework for reflective practice consists of eight elements:

1) Cultivate a supportive environment

Teachers first get to know their students and create a classroom culture of trust and respect. They spend time learning about their students’ identities and ideas, building group cohesion, and promoting collaborative learning. Their classes collectively establish and practice norms such as active listening, respectful dissent, sensitivity toward others, and evaluation of knowledge sources. These classroom practices are always helpful but are especially critical when charged topics are to be addressed.

2) Select authentic issues

Teachers select issues relevant to their subject matter and make judgments about which are open versus settled. Scholars explain that open issues generate critical examination of multiple perspectives underpinned by legitimate sources of knowledge. Teachers frame questions that generate inquiry and discussion on these perspectives. They start the school year with issues that are less contentious and gradually build to politically and emotionally charged issues. Empirically settled issues—for example, the reality of climate change—need to be studied but not framed as debatable questions.

3) Prepare thoroughly

Mindful lesson planning is essential. Opening up discussions on controversial issues without preparation on the part of teachers (and students) can lead to the reinforcement of uninformed opinions and potential harm. Teachers broaden and deepen their content knowledge on the issues they address to develop a robust purpose, rationale, and goals for lessons. They create developmentally appropriate curriculum based on knowing their students and school communities well.

4) Choose resources and pedagogies

Teachers select rich resources to stimulate thinking and provide entry points to discussion. They choose pedagogical approaches, such as structured discussion activities, that allow many voices to be heard and that align with the discussion issues and students’ identities. If the issue is highly charged and students from specific communities are directly implicated, then we recommend pedagogies aimed at surfacing, understanding, and analyzing different perspectives. If the issue is not highly charged and student identities are not implicated, then we recommend pedagogies such as role play or deliberation – as long as it doesn’t set up a “false equivalence” that normalizes what are plainly ill-informed or offensive viewpoints.

5) Think through teacher stance and roles

Teachers reflect on their own positions, the roles they adopt during discussion, and whether, when, and how to disclose their views. The ultimate purpose is for students to critically examine and discuss different perspectives, develop well-informed views, and understand that additional knowledge may prompt them to change their minds. Teachers take up roles to advance that purpose; for example, if students are stuck in groupthink, they may play devil’s advocate to introduce a competing perspective. Alternatively, if a student is expressing an important minority perspective, they may take up the role of ally. Scholars have deliberated on the question of teachers disclosing their own views. In the current political climate, disclosure is not advisable unless there is a clear and compelling purpose and potential consequences are considered.

6) Guide discussion

Teachers use questioning, discussion formats, and protocols to guide discussions. They facilitate exchanges among students rather than defaulting to teacher-student recitation-style interactions. Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) is a highly effective approach to deliberation. But as we note earlier, if issues are highly charged, implicate student identities, or set up false equivalences, we advise carefully facilitated, exploratory conversations instead of deliberations.

7) Communicate proactively

Teachers transparently communicate their curricular rationales to parents and administrators in advance. They make clear that the goal is not for students to take a particular stance on an issue, but rather to understand multiple perspectives and form their own views. They let students know the controversial issues they will be studying. If stakeholders understand teachers’ thinking behind their curriculum and practice, and lines of communication are open, they are far less likely to feel threatened and criticize them.

8) Addressing emotions

Teachers balance affective and intellectual engagement. They provide a space to process emotions, use de-escalation techniques when needed, and get students to think metacognitively about emotionally entrenched perspectives and social divisions. Teachers anticipate and acknowledge feelings of discomfort that may be part of the learning process, and they are careful not to demonize or alienate students.

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE OF TEACHING CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES

An example of the reflective practice framework comes from Pace’s cross-national research. In Northern Ireland (NI), a student-teacher she interviewed, Margaret, described her approach to the political controversy over who should quality for government compensation as a victim of violence during the Troubles—a period of violent conflict that rocked the country for decades during the 20th century. Margaret chose this question because it was debated by the two main political parties in the NI government: the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with roots in the Protestant community and loyalty to Britain; and Sinn Fein, the left-wing party that emerged from the Catholic community and wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. She decided to conduct a deliberation (SAC) after learning it was preferable to debate because it made students take up competing perspectives instead of trying to win a competitive argument.

Margaret prepared by researching the controversy within the Northern Irish Assembly and curating a packet of sources, including proposed legislation and excerpts from a question-and-answer session in which politicians argued over how to define a victim. She gave students a class period to examine the sources and prepare arguments for the deliberation, which took place the following session. For homework, she assigned students to find additional sources that expanded or supported their arguments.

Although the issue was not as emotionally charged for young people, she understood it was difficult for students at her Catholic school to argue on behalf of the DUP. Margaret listened as students expressed their feelings, and she assured the pupils that, while they didn’t have to believe these arguments, it was important to understand them as a source of ongoing division in Northern Ireland. This is just one example of how the contained risk-taking framework can be applied to many different types of issues and topics. It can also be used for situations in which teachers face unexpected controversy in their classrooms.

Schools play a crucial role in strengthening democracy through education, and school leadership also has a role in helping to support teachers when addressing these challenging questions. The framework for teaching controversial issues and related resources offer a sorely needed pathway for educators striving to fulfill their democratic mission while coping with the risks of teaching in our politically polarized reality.

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To learn more about the contained risk-taking framework and the research that underpins it, read Pace’s new book, “Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues,” or visit: https://teachingcontroversies.com/.

Brown Center Chalkboard

The Brown Center Chalkboard launched in January 2013 as a weekly series of new analyses of policy, research, and practice relevant to U.S. education.

In July 2015, the Chalkboard was re-launched as a Brookings blog in order to offer more frequent, timely, and diverse content. Contributors to both the original paper series and current blog are committed to bringing evidence to bear on the debates around education policy in America.

Read papers in the original Brown Center Chalkboard series »

Why Conservatives Want to Cancel the 1619 Project: Why Anti-CRT Bills Matter to Higher Education

The fight over Texas' HB 3979 bill that I've addressed in this blog over the past few weeks is currently a K-12 issue. That said, higher education should care deeply about this as it will soon migrate to higher education. This is already happening in Idaho [read: Idaho moves to ban critical race theory instruction in all public schools, including universities], as well as in the case of award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones' who was denied tenure by the University of North Carolina Board of Regents. 

According to Adam Serwer at The Atlantic, this took place because of her viewpoints, most notably, her work on the "1619 Project." This is clearly a blow to Academic Freedom that exists to create a space in universities to be independent thinkers, scholars, and critics, a feature of liberal democracies that like a free press, help society to be informed and self-correcting.

The UNC Board of Regents disregarded this, as well as her meritoriousness.  Merit always counts in such decisions, however, Hannah-Jones' Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur genius grant weren't sufficient because key people in power do not want to address our country's deep racial divides—even if doing so promotes domestic tranquility and a virtuous society. 

They subscribe instead to the unsupportable myth that history plays no role in today's unequal outcomes, thusly necessitating a suppression of critical readings of history which is what the fight over HB 3979 is about, as Serwer thankfully also mentions below. The irony here is an inescapable contradiction that if inequality were solely an artifact of one's individual effort and ability, then why fear the truth of history?

Just as we know that the 50s gave rise to the 60s [see: "It Was The Stultifying 1950s That Provoked The 1960s Rebellions], Serwer's conclusion that moves like these are what set the stage "for the next awakening" is historically on point. And for that, we should be hopeful, grasping in a fresh way, I trust, the power of history, historical memory, and critically consciousness teachers and professors.

-Angela Valenzuela

Why Conservatives Want to Cancel the 1619 Project

Objections to the appointment of Nikole Hannah-Jones to an academic chair are the latest instance of conservatives using the state to suppress ideas they consider dangerous.

MAY 21, 2021

Adam Serwer, staff writer at the atlantic

RAQUEL ZALDIVAR / CHICAGO TRIBUNE / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning Black journalist. She is also one of the developers of the 1619 Project, a journalistic examination of slavery’s role in shaping the American present. Last year, that work won her a Pulitzer Prize. Now it appears to have cost her a tenured chair at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism.

The news outlet NC Policy Watch reported on Monday that the university’s dean, chancellor, and faculty had backed Hannah-Jones’s appointment to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship, after a “rigorous tenure process at UNC.” But in an extraordinary move, the board of trustees declined to act on that recommendation. Hannah-Jones was instead offered a five-year, nontenured appointment following public and private pressure from conservatives. Notably, other Knight Chairs at the journalism school have been tenured on its professional track, which acknowledges “significant professional experience” rather than traditional academic scholarship. Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer and MacArthur genius grant surely qualify.  

One anonymous trustee told NC Policy Watch that “the political environment made granting Hannah-Jones tenure difficult, if not impossible.” A statement from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education noted that “if it is accurate that this refusal was the result of viewpoint discrimination against Hannah-Jones, particularly based on political opposition to her appointment, this decision has disturbing implications for academic freedom.”

Adam Serwer: The fight over the 1619 project is not about the facts

If you’ve taken recent debates about free speech and censorship at face value, you might find Hannah-Jones’s denial of tenure deeply confusing. For the past five years, conservatives have been howling about the alleged censoriousness of the American left, in particular on college campuses. But the denial of tenure to Hannah-Jones shows that the real conflict is over how American society understands its present inequalities.

The prevailing conservative view is that America’s racial and economic inequalities are driven by differences in effort and ability. The work of Hannah-Jones and others suggests instead that present-day inequalities have been shaped by deliberate political and policy choices. What appears to be an argument about reexamining history is also an argument about ideology—a defense of the legitimacy of the existing social order against an account of its historical origins that suggests different policy choices could produce a more equitable society.

The 1619 Project is a particularly powerful part—but not the cause—of a Black Lives Matter–inspired reevaluation of American history that began in the waning years of the Obama administration. Many Americans were struggling to understand how a nation that had elected a Black president could retain deep racial disparities not only in the rate of poverty, access to education, and health care, but also in matters of criminal justice and political power. The election of Donald Trump, a president who understood American citizenship in religious and ethnonationalist terms, accelerated that process of reevaluation.

Like all the works this period of reevaluation has produced, the 1619 Project has its flaws—although fewer than its most fanatical critics would admit. But the details of its factual narrative were not what conservatives found most objectionable. Rather, they took issue with the ideological implications of its central conceit: that America’s true founding moment was the arrival of African slaves on America’s shores.

Hannah-Jones’s conservative detractors cast this claim as an argument that America is a fundamentally and irredeemably racist country—indeed, as NC Policy Watch notes, a columnist at the right-wing James G. Martin Center complained that the 1619 Project “seeks to reframe American history as fundamentally racist.” A different columnist at the same organization fumed that “young people—the white ones, at least—are even taught to hate themselves for the unforgivable sins of their ancestors.” The idea that ugly aspects of American history should not be taught, for fear that students—white students in particular—might draw unfavorable conclusions about America, is simply an argument against teaching history at all.

In truth, the animating premise of the 1619 Project is more threatening to the right—the idea that America can indeed be redeemed, by rectifying racial imbalances created by government policy.

Clint Smith: Telling the truth about slavery is not ‘indoctrination’

The fight to define the American past is not new. In the middle of the 20th century, a massive conservative backlash erupted in California against a textbook co-written by the celebrated Black American historian John Hope Franklin. In it, Franklin offered a very different rendition of Black history from the one found in generations of American textbooks that hewed to doctrines of white supremacy and portrayed people of color in ways that were overtly racist or, at best, paternalistic. Franklin’s reevaluation of American history was, like Hannah-Jones’s, related to a national movement for Black rights.

The civil-rights movement of the mid-20th century was concurrent with the academy’s reevaluation of the Reconstruction era, whose attempts at building a genuine multiracial democracy in the South had until then been portrayed by most white scholars as a tragic mistake. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the historian C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow as the “historical bible” of the movement, by which he simply meant it showed that segregation had been the product of political choices rather than an inevitability. New choices could be made.

The tone of the textbook Franklin co-authored, Land of the Free, remained “resolutely patriotic,” as Joseph Moreau wrote in his account of the conflict in his book Schoolbook Nation. But this was not sufficient for the textbook’s opponents, who, Moreau wrote, believed that “history teaching existed to cultivate patriotism” and that the “debunking of historical myths or premature attempts to furnish young people with painful truths could not be countenanced.” Anxiety over the civil-rights movement, and this reevaluation of American history, fueled a white backlash against the textbook, and rewarded conservative politicians willing to exploit that sentiment. Franklin’s history was closer to the truth than the version his opponents wanted to promote—but the accuracy of the history was beside the point.

Again, it is not the case that every proposal to remedy racial inequality or fight discrimination is a good one. As my colleague Conor Friedersdorf has argued, some suggestions to remedy inequality in education are misguided or counterproductive. Good intentions do not a good idea make. But to accept that a problem exists is to accept the obligation to find a solution. And conservatives who don’t want to address America’s deep racial disparities are attempting to suppress any reading of history that suggests contemporary inequalities are the product of deliberate choices.

To that end, conservative opponents of what they derisively refer to as “wokeism” are engaged in a campaign to stigmatize such arguments, and where they can, use the state to purge them from the educational system. State legislatures are outlawing the teaching of “critical race theory” which in this context as my colleague Adam Harris reports, is ultimately a shorthand for “anything resembling an examination of America’s history with race.” The Trump administration threatened to investigate institutions of higher education that discussed systemic racism, and conservative state governments are interfering with state institutions of higher education.

In Texas, legislators are seeking to ban the teaching of the 1619 Project, and suppress the role of slavery in the state’s independence. The 1836 constitution of the Republic of Texas not only protected slavery, but also barred slave owners from emancipating the enslaved and denied “Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians” the ability to become citizens. The state government is seeking to prevent exhibits at the Alamo from “explaining that major figures in the Texas Revolution were slave owners.” As with the Trump White House’s “1776 Commission,” whose report reads like a Twitter thread from a cocaine-addled right-wing Wikipedia obsessive, the objective here is not a more accurate history but one that justifies the present economic and racial hierarchy, and offers conservatives, as Moreau put it in his book, a “comforting alternative to the burdens of the past.”

In the specific case of Hannah-Jones and UNC, the objective is to intimidate those who might share her views by showing that such views could cost them a job. As the conservative writer and aspiring politician J. D. Vance put it in a speech to the Claremont Institute, “If you’re fighting the values and virtues that make this country great, then the conservative movement should be about nothing if not reducing your power and if necessary destroying you.” The traditional argument between American liberals and conservatives is over what problems the state can or should remedy; the position of the Trumpist GOP is that the state is an instrument for destroying your enemies—by which its members simply mean Americans who disagree with them.

This won’t work with Hannah-Jones; in fact, I suspect it will make others more sympathetic to her arguments. But UNC’s decision also reflects an unhealthy conservative preoccupation with her as an individual—like many of us, Hannah-Jones has a combative social-media presence that has drawn critiques more personal than substantive. Although the essays from a variety of scholars and journalists published in the 1619 Project provoked a number of interesting discussions over issues such as slavery’s relationship to capitalism or health disparities, in the political debate these have been shunted aside in favor of a campaign to punish Hannah-Jones personally, and thereby discredit the 1619 Project as a whole, rather than contest its individual assertions or arguments.

Such attempts to stigmatize positions one disagrees with are a natural part of how societies form a consensus of acceptable opinion, and are distinct from using the power of the state to silence one’s opponents. But in this case, the same people who insist that harsh criticism of their ideas or behavior is a form of censorship are also highly engaged in using the state to suppress speech, on the grounds that the ideas they oppose are too dangerous to be allowed the usual protections.

The historical record shows that efforts to use the power of the state to settle an argument usually fail, although they can be successful for a time. The irony is that these awakenings about the truths of American history are the result of people attempting to warp the facts into a narrative that reassures them of their essential virtue, and subsequent generations discovering that what they were taught was but a bedtime story. These attempts to use the state to suppress ugly realities about the past are merely setting the stage for the next awakening.

ADAM SERWER is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics.