Tell Lawmakers to End the Whitewashing of History in Schools
As more Americans wake up to the realities of Indian boarding schools, colonization, and centuries of genocide, it has become clear that our classrooms fail to give children an accurate and full picture of our history. America’s ongoing whitewashing of its true past has created new levels of division. Let’s do better by the next seven generations. Tell lawmakers to teach children what really happened.
Petition Text:
Dear Lawmaker,
Please use the power of your position to advocate for the incorporation of curriculum that teaches real history in public schools. We cannot continue to teach our children the history we wish America had. We must teach our children what really happened, from the beginning. Without embracing America's national origins with honesty and integrity, we can never heal the current divide.
BIPOC Communities have said for years: “There are two Americas.” Disparity, poverty, and violence disproportionately affect these communities, and people pay the price of deeply ingrained systemic racism. Over the past few years, with the discoveries of mass graves at Indian boarding schools and more public incidents of police violence against People of Color, North America has been forced to confront the direct effects of racism and colonization. As we move forward, trying to untangle systems of oppression, America's divisions are further revealed.
We must give our children better tools, so they can live in a better society. Despite our discomfort in unlearning what we've been taught, we must undergo that process. An honest accounting of our national sins — considering deeply and teaching how we got here as a country — will allow us to begin confronting and addressing racism as a means of progression toward a more perfect union.
American history classrooms have not always equipped us with accurate or equal knowledge. We are waking up to the gaping holes in our education and the resulting deficiencies in the understanding of our adult citizenry. To confront and prevent the fictionalization of history in American classrooms is not only the bravest thing we can do right now, but it is the only pathway to a united future.
We must reach for a better tomorrow for our children. Including additional perspectives in public school education can help dismantle racist systems and their effects. We must be willing to learn and teach the lessons of the past in order to create a more just, more inclusive future. We do not want to witness what the teaching of unchecked, whitewashed history will do to the deepening divide in America. We want a world in which our children and grandchildren all learn about racism and colonization, freeing them to live together with more good will and understanding in the decades to come.