Geography Teaching, Racial Literacy and Truthfulness

In this paper we address the question of truthfulness in education. How can a concern for truthfulness be preserved (or restored) in an age of post-truth discourse which enables the politics of denial? While acknowledging that such issues raise matters far beyond the scope of geography educators alone to ‘fix’ in any meaningful way, we argue that teachers can and must respond to the fundamental challenge these matters provide for what even counts as educational today. The paper analyses the challenge conceptually before reporting on a collaborative research initiative developed with teachers in a mid-western state of the U.S. This project focused on racial literacy as an element of truth telling in geography and social studies teaching. It explored with serving teachers the practical enactment of “future 3” (F3) curriculum scenarios. The work, which took place over the period of eighteen months, is presented as a case study of teachers’ knowledge work which engages directly with the proposition that developing racial literacy is an essential component of F3 curriculum making.