Essex Westford School District provides teachers with resource from Zinn Education Project, which advocates for schools to “abolish Columbus Day” and supports reparations

The Essex Westford School District has a page online titled “Resources for Teachers/Professional Staff.” One resource offered to teachers is from the political organization “Zinn Education Project.” The Zinn Education Project is an organization known for attempting to overhaul America’s education system to incorporate identity politics such as racial equity and gender ideology into the curricula taught to students.

Resources offered by the organization include “Rethinking Ethnic Studies” and “Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill.” The organization states for the reparations resource: “In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people.” The organization also has an initiative to “abolish Columbus Day.” The Zinn Education Project states: “When the school curriculum celebrates Columbus, children are taught that it’s OK for white people to rule over peoples of color and that militarily powerful nations can bully weaker nations.”

The school district provides the following description of the Zinn Education Project resource: “The Zinn Education Project site includes downloadable lesson plans and articles organized by theme, time period and reading level for middle and high school instructors. The materials are based on the history that is explored in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States.”