This is the second year Dr. Steven Hahn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and NYU professor who specializes in the international history of slavery, emancipation and race, has been lecturing at Dream Charter High School. The result of a partnership I formed with him in my role as director of curriculum and instruction, he has taught two courses to our East Harlem high schoolers. The first, which began in January 2021, focused on America’s Reconstruction period; the second, which culminated this past January, on the Great Migration from the Southern states to the North. These courses exposed our students to the college-level thinking they’ll be engaging in after high school.

But according to some in our nation, these classes shouldn’t have happened at all.

Critically conscious curriculums — including lessons that focus on the role of race in American history — have been a hot topic of contention, with everyone from parents to pundits arguing in favor of censoring the ways history and literature are taught in order to protect children. But for many students, barring discussions of race and other sensitive topics from the classroom doesn’t “protect” them — it turns a blind eye to the injustices they already experience.

I teach in a network of charter schools where 93% of the students are Black or Hispanic and nearly 9 out of 10 live below the poverty line. There’s no way to shield these students from truths about race, class and inequality. But what is possible is to use history to help them understand how we got here and, most importantly, where we can go next.

Read the full article about discussions of race in the classroom by Brandon Taylor at The 74.