Important Event at the State Capital, Hartford
February 24-March 14, 2012
Committee hearings on proposed legislation; will include testimony about the legislation. Stay tuned for more info by signing up for our updates, below.
Read the report on the hearing here.
Vision Statement
“The history of the American labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land….America is a living testimonial to what free men and women organized into free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life….we ought to be proud of it.”
~Hubert H. Humphrey, Vice President 1965-69
Following the lead of the Wisconsin labor history association that organized the passing of the historic Wisconsin legislation in 2009, mandating the teaching of labor history in the public schools (first in the nation), the Greater New Haven Labor History Association (GNHLHA) is introducing the same legislation in Connecticut.
The purpose of the legislation is to get labor's untold story told. According to a poll by the independent Hart research, 54 percent of adults said they know just a little or don’t know much about unions. They said their chief sources of knowledge were personal experience (37 percent), people in unions (26 percent) and the media (25 percent). Significantly, learning in school was not even mentioned.
The implications of these numbers are clear. To a very large degree, Americans are uninformed or misinformed about the labor movement and the role that workers have played, and do play, in our nation’s economic, political and cultural life.
Academic standards and curriculum resources such as textbooks have historically ignored or been deficient in their treatment of workers and the labor movement. Significantly, many teachers want to cover this history in their classrooms, but there are few written curriculum standards by local and state educational institutions to encourage the teaching of this material. Therefore, the GNHLHA proposes legislation that sets standards to teach labor history in the public schools in Connecticut.
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