Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and an op-ed writer for numerous publications. I’m also a former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher. I’ve spent my adult life studying the ways that human beings imagine education, across space and time. Schools make citizens, but citizens also make schools. And we’re all different, so we disagree—inevitably and often profoundly—about the meaning and purpose of “school” itself. In a diverse nation, what should kids learn? And who should decide that? There are no single “right” answers, of course. I’m eager to hear yours.
Jonathan's book list on student activism
Why did Jonathan love this book?
We’re also indebted to young minority students for pioneering free-speech rights in our schools. Most of us still associate the struggle for student rights with antiwar activists like Mary Beth Tinker, whose armband protest against the Vietnam War led to the epochal Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court decision declaring that teachers and students don’t shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. But before and after Tinker, Black and Chicano students challenged racist curricula, disciplinary policies, and more. Student rights are civil rights, and vice versa. We can’t—and shouldn’t—separate them.
1 author picked Troublemakers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A powerful history of student protests and student rights during the desegregation era
In the late 1960s, protests led by students roiled high schools across the country. As school desegregation finally took place on a wide scale, students of color were particularly vocal in contesting the racial discrimination they saw in school policies and practices. And yet, these young people had no legal right to express dissent at school. It was not until 1969 that the Supreme Court would recognize the First Amendment rights of students in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case.
A series of students' rights lawsuits…