I adopted A Young People’s History of the United States as my primary textbook this year and my students love it! It fits especially well with my theme of resistance for the year. Already in the first few weeks of school they have learned how to be critical of the unified “us” and “we” narratives of the people that make up the United States found in more traditional textbooks, and they now reflexively ask for the larger story of anything they read.
Instead of marching through U.S. history from the “beginning” in 1492 to the current era, I have shaped my course by units, and the chapters in the A People’s History book allow me to jump around as needed to give them the information they need to understand each topic, but also how each topic or group of people ties into the others.
Using the book, and the materials at the Zinn Education Project website, the students are taking a hard look at what they’ve been taught, learning from voices they otherwise might not get to hear, and grasping a deeper level of the multiple “we’s” that make up US.