Free Marxist Curriculum for Teachers and Harmful Union Influence

Restoration News obtained the Zinn Education Project’s free teacher kit. Inside: materials that undermine the Constitution with promos for the NEA and Ben & Jerry’s.

Any teacher in America can request a free package from the Zinn Education Project—and what this godless Marxist nonprofit delivers is far more than lesson plans. Inside the box are curriculum materials that attack the Constitution as a tool of the elite, call-to-action flyers from the National Education Association (NEA), and branding from Ben & Jerry’s. The materials are free, but the harmful ideology is costly.

Restoration News obtained a package of lesson plans and books sent to an educator by the Zinn Education Project. The package also included promotional materials from the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the NEA, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Howard Zinn, the organization’s deceased co-founder and namesake, was an avowed Marxist and member of the Communist Party USA. “I've long been inspired by that work of the Communist Party,” said Jesse Hagopian, the Zinn Education Project editor and campaign director.

The communist-style propaganda pushed by the Zinn Education Project and its close partnership with the teachers’ union is beyond troubling.

What’s in the Package

The lesson plans argue that the Constitution is a fundamentally flawed document that needs rewriting. Accompanying flyers, intended for students, read less like curriculum and more like propaganda. It’s the kind of material one would expect from someone who wants to undermine our republic.

These are some of the flyers included in the package of lesson plans:

Zinn Education Project claim: “A Constitution for the One Percent. The Constitution was written in secret by 55 wealthy white men to serve a tiny minority—men like themselves—and clamp down on the rights of everyone else.”

The truth: The U.S. Constitution has made this nation the most prosperous and free nation in the history of the world. The system the founders designed produced the country millions of people later fled from actual monarchies and oligarchies to reach. Some clamp-down. Plus, they added a process to amend the document, which has happened 27 times.

Zinn Education Project claim: “Checks, Balances, and Barriers. The Constitution’s system of ‘checks and balances’ is widely praised as a means to constrain the government’s abuse of power. In reality, this ‘separation of powers’ protects economic elites by constraining the efforts of the majority of people to change an unjust status quo.”

The truth: The same “barriers” that supposedly shield elites actually prevent them from packing courts on demand, rewriting property rules overnight, and locking in their preferred economic program forever. Odd design for a rich-people lockbox.

Zinn Education Project claim: “From Revolution to Repression. The Constitution repealed the Declaration of Independence’s promises of equality and the right to revolution—and enshrined the license to oppress enslaved and Indigenous peoples.”

The truth: Nothing was repealed. The Declaration of Independence is not a statute; it is a natural-rights manifesto justifying secession from Britain and a king. The Constitution is an operating charter for a union that already claimed independence. One does not “repeal” the other.

Another Zinn Education Project lesson distributed to teachers denounces the celebration of Constitution Day. The author, Jesse Hagopian, claims students should be taught “broader visions of justice—like the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program—which demanded education, housing, employment, and an end to police violence—and to decide for themselves what rights a just society should guarantee.” Hagopian’s lesson instructs that the Constitution should be amended to include these additional guaranteed rights, funded by the government:

This redistribution of wealth is socialism—bordering on communism.

The definition of socialism is “an ideology and system of political-economic organization in which major industries and other sectors, such as healthcare and education, are owned or controlled by the government, not individuals.” Communists, like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, believed socialism was simply an intermediate step between free-market capitalism and the ultimate goal of communism. They were right.

In an August 2026 Zinn Education Project webinar for teachers, titled “Teaching for Black Lives,” Hagopian said,

We are living in a time where teaching about systemic racism or the black freedom struggle or LGBTQIA+ identity is under attack. They want us to replace honest history with organized forgetting. They want us to teach that racism is largely a thing of the past. While the administration continues to fund the genocide in Gaza, Trump has revived the white supremacist myth of a white genocide. His administration has created a fast-track refugee program for white Afrikaners from South Africa while scapegoating black immigrants from Haiti and Somalia. These are not isolated attacks; they are part of a broader project to erase black history.

Teachers in cities across the nation participated in the webinar, including in Florida, North Carolina, Nebraska, Arizona, Mississippi, and more.

Yes, the Zinn Education Project and the teachers’ union are upset that the Trump administration is trying to prevent them from indoctrinating your children and grandchildren in extremist dogma.

Restoration News previously reported that Valencia Abbott, a teacher in Rockingham, North Carolina, and the state’s 2025 teacher of the year, has bragged about distributing Zinn books to her students. The chair and vice-chair of the Rockingham School Board have failed to respond to multiple reach-outs for comment.

The nation’s public schools are turning into Marxist indoctrination centers influenced by harmful groups like the Zinn Education Project and the NEA. Parents and community members should demand that their elected school board members, like the Rockingham County board, be held accountable. They must prohibit teachers’ unions and other harmful groups from influencing school materials and curriculum before it’s too late.

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