How State Standards Misteach the Meaning of One of the United States’ Most Important Eras

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca | January 13, 2022 | Rethinking Schools

Reconstruction was the era in which 4 million newly emancipated people seized their freedom (to borrow from the evocative title of Dr. Kidada Williams’ fantastic podcast, Seizing Freedom). In thousands of acts of creation, both individual and collective, humble and grand, formerly enslaved people and their allies sought to build the world anew. In the words of Frederick Douglass, the era offered “nothing less than a radical revolution.” 

Reconstruction has much to teach us about why our society looks the way it does today — and how it might be positively transformed. However, in the first-ever comprehensive review of state standards on Reconstruction, the Zinn Education Project found that most states do a dreadful job defining the era or outlining for educators its crucial themes. 

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