We just lost our favorite teacher.-- Naomi A Klein re Howard Zinn, 1/27/2010.

Zinn Ed Project ‏@ZinnEdProject

We just lost our favorite teacher.-- @NaomiAKlein re Howard Zinn, 1/27/2010. Thousands of teachers r carrying on. Read: http://zinnedproject.org/posts/19157
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Howard approached life with hope and humor, kindness and courage—with an unshakable confidence in the possibility of a fundamentally just and equal world. It was that belief in the future that shaped how he approached the past.

Recently, we came across a fine special issue of The International Journal of Social Education, on “The Life and Work of Howard Zinn.” In an excellent article on Zinn and history, James Anthony Whitson reminds us of a quote by Howard that speaks powerfully to why he was not only our favorite teacher, but also our favorite historian:

If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future, without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past, when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than its solid centuries of warfare.

This is the Howard Zinn who was—and remains—such a treasure to students and educators and activists—to everyone in the 99 percent. History must “anticipate a possible future,” Howard insisted. We must probe the past for those “fugitive moments” that show us a better world, that reveal human potential, that contradict and denounce the cynicism that is at the root of a global economic system premised on greed.

(A bit more at the link.)