Zinn did not merely record history, he made it: as a professor at Spelman College in the 1950s and early 1960s, where he was ultimately fired for his outspoken support of students in the Civil Rights Movement, and specifically the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); as a critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam, and author of the first book calling for an immediate U.S. withdrawal; and as author of arguably the most influential U.S. history textbook in print, A People's History of the United States. "That book will knock you on your ass," as Matt Damon's character says in the film Good Will Hunting.

It's always worth dipping into the vast archive of Zinn scholarship, but at the beginning of a school year, and as the presidential campaign heats up, now is an especially good time to remember some of Howard Zinn's wisdom.

Shortly after Barack Obama's election, the Zinn Education Project sponsored a talk by Zinn to several hundred teachers at the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference in Houston. Zinn reminded teachers that the point of learning about social studies was not simply to memorize facts, it was to imbue students with a desire to change the world. "A modest little aim," Zinn acknowledged, with a twinkle in his eye.

In this talk, available as an online video as well as a transcription, Zinn insisted that teachers must help students challenge "fundamental premises which keep us inside a certain box." Because without this critical rethinking of premises about history and the role of the United States in the world, "things will never change." And this will remain "a world of war and hunger and disease and inequality and racism and sexism."

A key premise that needs to be questioned, according to Zinn, is the notion of "national interests," a term so common in the political and academic discourse as to be almost invisible.