Poisonous new lessons from the NEA-backed, far-left Zinn Education Project imply that the U.S. Constitution denies rights “especially to Black, Brown, poor, queer, and immigrant communities,” and tell students that knowing their rights isn’t enough. “Students should also be encouraged to ask hard questions,” one lesson claims, such as: “Why doesn’t our Constitution guarantee housing, healthcare, education, or a living wage — rights enshrined in other countries’ constitutions?”

But other countries’ constitutions do not necessarily guarantee these “rights,” at least not in practice. A 2020 report by the World Policy Center, for example, found that “people in many countries, low- and high-income alike, face barriers in accessing two key drivers of equal opportunity—education and healthcare—or experience daily living conditions that put a healthy life out of reach.” While 83% of constitutions “protect the right to education,” just 46% extend it to secondary schooling. And while 74% “explicitly protect some aspect of the right to health for all citizens, just 36% explicitly protect the right to public health, which can make a critical difference in preventing illnesses and injuries.” [Emphasis added.]

The report concludes that although the past 50 years have seen a strengthening of constitutional guarantees of equality and protections of education and health around the world, “many countries could further strengthen their constitutional texts, while nearly all could improve the implementation of existing constitutional values and protections.”

Is it any surprise that a project bearing the name of Howard Zinn and championed by the NEA would be more about leftwing propaganda than factual education? Despite Mary Grabar’s exposé of Howard Zinn’s grossly inaccurate A People’s History of the United States, among similar observations from other critics, his book has been and remains widely used in classrooms throughout the land.

The February 2020 email edition of Education Reporter included a review of Grabar’s definitive work, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America. Grabar clearly demonstrates Zinn’s “pervasive influence,” which she called “a national tragedy, especially considering just how distorted, manipulative, and plain dishonest” it is.

Nonetheless, while Zinn passed away in 2010, faithful foot soldiers carry on his legacy of distorting history and turning young Americans against their country.

Zinn Project curricula

The Washington Examiner recently provided examples of the radical materials produced by the Zinn Education Project. which, according to its website, is a “collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.” It’s also aided and abetted by the largest teachers’ union, the NEA, which the Examiner says includes inviting “pro-violence activists to shape public school curricula” while claiming the Zinn Education Project “promotes and supports teaching history accurately.”

The NEA’s website brags that a Zinn Project “Black Lives Matter at School” campaign “supports at least 100 Teaching for Black Lives study groups each school year” across the U.S., and positions them as free professional learning opportunities. These study groups use the Rethinking Schools’ book Teaching for Black Lives, wherein “educators explore how to teach about racism, resistance, and joy in free, teacher-led professional learning communities.”

The Examiner notes that Zinn provides teaching resources “authored by Hamas sympathizers, praise for violent left-wing activists, and activities where students roleplay as ‘queer liberation’ activists fighting against the ‘Religious Right.’” And these are just a sampling of the fare being fed to schoolchildren. The article points out that “[m]aterials published by Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project are replete with praise of violent organizations, riots, and other illegal activity oriented toward left-wing political goals.”

Topics such as “Teaching the Fight for Queer Liberation,” tasks students “with roleplaying as individuals involved in various historical stages of the gay rights movement, often casting them in opposition to the ‘Religious Right.’” The lesson plan “speaks highly of the Stonewall Riots, a series of violent confrontations between police officers and members of the LGBT community in 1969.” Another example cited by the Examiner is “Crimes targeting critical energy infrastructure,” which is “also praised in Zinn Education Project materials as a valid form of protest.”

Support for Hamas and hostility toward Israel also emerge in Zinn Education Project lessons. A lesson cited by the Examiner titled “Whose ‘Terrorism?” encourages students “to equate various actions taken by the Israeli and American governments to the 9/11 terrorist attacks....” After a section of the book accuses Israel of being “an apartheid state,” the lesson’s author “touts that his materials helped one student ‘understand the frustrations that led to Oct. 7,’” in reference to the Hamas attack against Israel.

The Examiner says hundreds of lesson books published by the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools have been sent to NEA members this year alone. “Additionally, Rethinking Schools was granted a table at the NEA’s 2025 Conference for Social and Racial Justice, where they distributed their books and shared excerpts, specifically from Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices.”

It’s important to note that many of these lessons and materials are aimed at younger children.

Parents’ rights group fires back

A group called the American Parents Coalition (APC) sent a warning through its notification system, The Lookout, that the NEA and AFT are undermining education and parental rights with radical political agendas. Instead of promoting “excellence in public school education” and “high quality education,” APC says the unions instead “divert resources from classrooms, override parents, and prioritize left-wing ideologies over kids’ learning, well-being, and academic success.”

The unions have funneled more than $43 million to left-wing aligned groups and causes since 2022. APC cites as an example one AFT PAC that “raised more than $13 million for the 2024 election cycle with more than 98% of contributions going to Democratic candidates, including $1.5 million to federal congressional candidates.”

The group correctly notes that the unions “are doubling down on radical activism while ignoring teacher shortages and misusing dues that could fund classroom essentials like training and supplies.” APC also points out the troubling and continued decline of public-school student scores in core subjects like reading and math.

On November 11, Fox News’ reporter Andrew Mark Miller wrote that the APC’s warning urges parents to be “vigilant” and to understand that the teachers’ unions are “pushing boycotts in support of DEI, legal and activist campaigns against the Trump administration, denouncing a Supreme Court ruling that ‘enabled parents to opt their children out of age inappropriate and one-sided LGBTQ+ content,’ and climate activism.”

Miller said the APC’s warning “also focuses on the NEA 2025 Handbook,” which reportedly exposes the union’s “radical beliefs” and “attacks homeschooling.” In addition, the handbook touts “the use of preferred names and pronouns as being of the ‘utmost importance’ while blaming ‘white supremacy culture’ as the ‘primary root cause of institutional racism.’”

The APC’s website provides information on how parents can file public records requests in their school districts, present concerns to their school boards, and push back in writing against the teachers’ unions’ radical agendas.

Parents groups send letters

On October 28, Fox News reported that more than 20 parents’ rights groups led by Defending Education, sent letters to legislators and education leaders in all 50 states urging them “to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of their education laws and policies to ensure compliance with federal civil rights and constitutional protections.”

The letters target each state’s officials, indicating the groups’ grave concerns about “the current condition of public education — a proposition that falls ultimately to the individual states, their legislators, and leaders like you.” The letters contain state-specific information, and each was signed by both national parents’ organizations and those operating locally in each state.

The letters call on officials to rid their public education systems of DEI, poor hiring practices, and discrimination based on race, sex, and gender. While they do not drill down to specific curricula such as provided by the NEA-backed Zinn Education Project, they do refer to violations of “federal statutory and constitutional law, including Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause.” The letters ask that each state “audit (and rescind, if appropriate) laws that run contrary” to these statutes, and likewise “examine state policies for vetting and hiring school employees so that dangerous individuals cannot gain access to minor children....”

Observers wonder if state officials will pay any heed to their constituent groups’ concerns and demands, or if they will continue to operate business as usual.

Defending Education’s vice president and legal fellow, Sarah Pershall Perry, told Fox News: “Our assessment of state education laws coast-to-coast reveals a troubling reality: many state laws are at odds with federal anti-discrimination provisions and are going to invite federal scrutiny.... It’s time for states to clean house — because at bottom, education is, and always has been, a state proposition.”

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