Have you ever been told a story that leaves out the bad parts?
Like a book about how the United States was “founded on freedom” but doesn’t talk about the people who were killed or enslaved to make that happen?
The Ant-facist book of the month is Erasing History by Jason Stanley. It’s not an easy read—but it talks about something very important: how people in power can change what we learn, to control what we believe.
The book shows that some leaders want to make schools teach only happy stories about the past. That way, kids grow up believing the country never did anything wrong. This is dangerous. If we don’t know the truth, we can’t make better choices for the future.
When we erase history, we forget the pain of others. We stop asking questions. And we let the people in charge keep lying to us.
Questions to Ask Ourselves When Reading Erasing History:
- Who decides what history is taught in school?
- Why would someone want to hide the truth?
- Who gets hurt when the truth is erased?
- How does learning real history make us stronger?
- Can a country be great and still admit its mistakes?
- How would I feel if someone erased my family’s story?
- What stories are missing from my school books?
- Who benefits when history is rewritten?
- What does it mean to be free if you don’t have access to truth?
- Why do powerful people fear honest education?
25 Ways the Current Regime is Erasing History (in plain language):
- Banning books about slavery, racism, gender and sexuality
- Telling teachers what they can and can’t say
- Calling real history “woke” or “un-American”
- Removing Black and Native voices from textbooks
- Punishing teachers who tell the truth
- Making it illegal to talk about white privilege
- Saying slavery wasn’t so bad
- Pretending the U.S. was always fair, or that we live in a meritocracy
- Erasing stories of immigrants and refugees
- Not teaching about stolen Native land
- Changing school rules to limit free thinking
- Cutting funding to public schools
- Teaching kids that protest is wrong
- Saying LGBTQ+ people didn’t exist in history
- Hiding women’s roles in building the nation
- Calling honest history “divisive”
- Passing laws that silence teachers and students
- Firing librarians who fight censorship
- Claiming racism is “over”
- Glorifying war and hiding civilian deaths
- Not including disabled people in history lessons
- Limiting access to real news
- Teaching children to obey, not to think
- Replacing truth with patriotic lies
- Making people afraid to ask hard questions