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Zinn Education Project News
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New Labor Lessons Online
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The Power In Our Hands
A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers
in the United States
The Zinn Education Project has just posted all the lessons from The Power in Our Hands by Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond, published in 1988 by Monthly Review Press. The lessons are available to download for free. This comprehensive labor history curriculum is filled with role plays, simulations, imaginative writing activities, poetry, first-person readings, and more. In the spirit of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, the lessons in The Power in Our Hands encourage students----through their own active participation---- to recognize the struggles of ordinary workers to achieve justice at work and beyond.
Pete Seeger praised this unique curriculum, saying that the The Power in Our Hands "is a way of getting American teenagers not just interested, but excited and passionate about their history----modern American labor history." The Zinn Education Project is able to make this resource available through the generosity of individual donors as well as Monthly Review Press. Here are a sample of the lessons now available.
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Lesson engages students in a lively simulation that helps them experience some of the pressures that lead workers to organize.
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This role play explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.
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In this playful activity, students utilize the principles of "scientific management" to restructure a burger joint----one that has been run a good deal more democratically and imaginatively.
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Writing activity for students to complete the narrative of women workers striking at a glove-making factory, exploring possible outcomes.
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Related Resources
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Book - Non-fiction. By Bill Fletcher, Jr. Unpacks the 21 myths most often cited by anti-labor propagandists.
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Profile. By Gabriel Thompson. Introduction to influential labor organizer who trained many activists of note including Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez.
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