Zinn, Howard with Donaldo Macedo. (2005). Howard Zinn on
Democratic Education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm
Publishers.
213 pp.
$18.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-59451-055-5
Reviewed by Anne E. Phillips
Rowan University
September 16, 2005
As a professor who assigns Howard Zinn’s
A People’s History of the United States to my
History of American Education classes and who leaps at the chance
to read anything Howard Zinn writes, I was thrilled that I was
asked to review his latest book. I was especially excited
because I imagined having another Zinn book that spoke directly
to my education majors. If you, too, are drawn to this book by
its title, I regret to report that you may be disappointed. In
the last chapter, “Why Students Should Study History: An
Interview,” and the fourth chapter, “How Free is
Higher Education,” Zinn specifically addresses education.
The second chapter, “Schools and the Manufacture of Mass
Deception: A Dialogue,” appears to be an attempt to clarify
the relationship between education and the themes discussed in
the other chapters. For those of us who generally agree with
Zinn, these relationships seem obvious. However, clear linkages
between education and such issues as class, the role of social
movements in making social change, the role of the F.B.I., and
Bush’s war on terror need to be made for the reader who is
new to Zinn’s ideas. The dialogue in the second chapter
may have been an attempt to do so, but Donaldo Macedo’s
remarks in first chapter in which he calls teachers
“cultural commissars” may make it difficult for the
idealist student or beginning teacher to listen to him in the
succeeding chapter. These young people, most of whom are women,
firmly believe in democracy. To lead them to understand
mis-education and become liberating teachers will probably not
occur if they have been derogatorily labeled. Because Macedo
dominates the first two chapters of the book, a reader who begins
at the beginning and wants to spend time with Howard Zinn may not
want to continue. Starting with the last chapter may be the best
way into this book and Zinn’s ideas about democratic
education.
The last chapter, “Why Students Should Study
History: An Interview” is a gem, which might more
appropriately be entitled, “How Teachers Should Teach
History.” In it, Zinn escorts us into his artistry as a
teacher:
It takes hard work and delicate dealings with students to
overcome [the trap of bullying students into accepting one set of
facts or ideas]. The way I’ve tried to deal with that
problem is to make it clear to the students that when we study
history we are dealing with controversial issues with no one,
absolute, godlike answer, and that I, as a teacher, have my
opinion, and they can have their opinions, and that I, as a
teacher, will try to present as much information as I can but
that I may leave out information. … on the big issues, on
the controversies and the issues of right and wrong and justice,
there are no experts, and their opinions are as good as mine. (p.
192)
To avoid the trap of relativity, to take a moral
stance and to make change in the world, Zinn himself takes a
stand on issues and believes it is important for his students to
do so. In addition to facts, he thinks, “[S]tudents need
to be aroused emotionally.” Using literature and films in
history classes can help students to empathize with others. In
chapter 6 he praises art in all its forms, “Art … has
the special power of enhancing the strength of an idea with an
emotion … the people without power … have a great
need of art to mobilize people, to inspire people and to do what
mere words on paper, mere pamphlets and books, cannot do by
themselves.” (pp. 128-9)
There is no doubt that Howard Zinn wants to
encourage student activism. In chapter 4 after he details the
struggle to control and limit freedom in higher education, he
makes clear the underlying issue in this struggle:
[The fundamentalists of politics] fear exactly what some of us
hope for, that if students are given wider political choices in
the classroom than they get in the polling booth or the
workplace, they may become social rebels. They may join
movements for racial or sexual equality or against war, or, even
more dangerous, work for what James Madison feared as he argued
for a conservative Constitution: “an equal division of
property.” Let us hope so. (p. 95)
Since the book consists of twelve distinct chapters, of which
seven were previously published and three were given as lectures
or talks earlier, the reader can feel free to read the chapters
in any order. Of the two new chapters, the first is an
introduction by Donaldo Macedo; the second, a dialogue between
Macedo and Zinn. Macedo claims the book “is an attempt to
analyze the paradox that schools generally face. That is, while
schools are charged with promoting democracy, they often put
structures in place that undermine the substantive democratic
principles they claim to teach. As a result, schools are
necessarily engaged in a pedagogy of lies that are shaped and
supported by the interplay of the media, business interests, and
the academic enterprise and, believe it or not, by organized
labor as well” (p. 1).
In the second chapter, a dialogue, Macedo and Zinn explore the
paradox in schools. As Zinn points out, “[T]he schools
… teach young people that we live in a democracy and that
there is equality and justice for all. … [B]ut they
don’t give students the analytical tools so that they can
look at society today and see what the discrepancy is between the
ideals and the reality”(p. 29). Key analytic tools,
according to Zinn, are an understanding of class divisions and of
how social change is made. He thinks students are generally
taught to be pragmatic and to be a part of the system the way it
is instead of being taught to make social change that will create
greater justice for all. He claims, “The educational
system has always been dominated by people who are not looking
for change, who do not want to acknowledge the U. S. class
system, who are looking for safety.” (p. 42) He
recognizes teachers are subject to people above them but fails to
detail what has happened to those who have sought to make change
within their classrooms, their schools, their school system or
the larger society. Perhaps historians need to document more of
these cases to develop an understanding of the potential dangers
teachers face and the courage needed to teach for social
change. Each of the succeeding chapters is a forum to teach
the analytic tools needed to build a true democracy.
Central to developing a truly democratic education is teaching
the nature of American foreign policy. Zinn contends,
“[T]he most flagrant failure in the American educational
systems … has been the failure to understand …
American foreign policy.” (p. 49) In chapter 8,
“What Bush’s War on Terror is All About,” Zinn
offers a short lesson in American foreign policy. After briefly
summarizing the main factors in the Iraq War, he observes that
the real interests in that war “are what the interests of
the United States have been for a very long time, long before
September 11”:
The long-term interest of American governments, from the end
of the Revolutionary War to the present day, has been the
expansion of national power, first on the continent, then into
the Caribbean and the Pacific, and, since the Second World War,
everywhere on the globe. (p. 158)
In the Iraq War as in the many wars before it, the rich
benefit and the poor are killed. Perhaps the war in Iraq will
teach today’s students about American foreign policy as the
Vietnam War taught an earlier generation. Most important lessons
are learned as they touch our lives personally.
Zinn recounts his personal and intellectual
development of class-consciousness in chapters 3 and 7.
Students, especially those from the working class, may find
themselves identifying with Zinn as they struggle to work
full-time and be full-time students. And educators may feel
buoyed up by the knowledge that their teaching practice of asking
their students to make personal connections with course material
is central to developing an understanding of class, race and
war. This influential historian makes it clear that he developed
class analysis, which is central to his interpretation of
history, as he connected his personal experiences to historical
analysis.
If the reader approaches this book as a series of
lessons that are not usually taught in schools, colleges or
universities and not as a book that directly addresses education
except occasionally, s/he will once again, or for the first time,
enjoy soaking up Howard Zinn’s wisdom. For those new to
Zinn, this book may be useful as a short introduction to
Zinn’s personal history and his thinking.
About the Reviewer
Anne E. Phillips is an assistant professor in the
Secondary Education/Foundations of Education Department at Rowan
University. Her research interests include school desegregation,
the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, social
justice and social change. She has studied the school
desegregation struggle in Philadelphia and has encouraged her
students to study their school districts in New Jersey.
Copyright is retained by the first or sole author,
who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.