skippy the bush kangaroo: a people's historian

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

a people's historian

passes into the history books. farewell, dr. howard zinn. you were an inspiration to me to question the "status quo" and to really look at history in a total different way.

howard zinn, the boston university historian and political activist who was an early opponent of us involvement in vietnam and whose books, such as "a people's history of the united states," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the american experience, died today in santa monica, calif, where he was traveling. he was 87.

...as he wrote in his autobiography, "you can't be neutral on a moving train" (1994), "from the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. i would try to be fair to other points of view, but i wanted more than 'objectivity'; i wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. this, of course, was a recipe for trouble." - boston.com

Labels: history, passings