If high school history courses are meant to introduce students to the paradoxes and debates of American history, then they should study the 1619 Project, the authors argue in this article. College history students regularly debate the extent to which slavery was formative to the development of American systems of law, business, medicine, religion…

A key working assumption of English teachers at the Essex Street Academy, a public high school on Manhattan's Lower East Side (and a partner school of New York University) is that literature can be taught most effectively when it is placed into historical context. Historical knowledge can help students who struggle with classic literature and find…

In this article, the author reflects on Frederick Douglass's different interpretations of the Constitution. One explanation of the shift in Douglass's thinking on the Constitution had to do with his growing intellectual independence. Douglass had the intellectual space to reflect on the fact that there was more than one way to think about…