Our Approach
Evidence matters.
Claims about history, science, culture and education should be grounded in credible evidence.
The world does not have a main character.
Global education should not organize the history of humanity around a single nation or civilization.
Secular doesn’t mean religion is ignored.
Religion is an important part of history and human culture and should be studied seriously without turning academic study into religious instruction.
Decolonizing is a practice, not a label.
The work requires continual examination of:
- who created the account
- who had power
- whose sources survive
- whose perspective dominates
- whose perspective is absent
- whether Indigenous/local scholarship is represented
- whether colonized peoples are being romanticized
- whether colonial violence is being minimized
- whether newer scholarship changes previous conclusions
Representation requires more than diverse faces.
Representation includes authorship, perspective, scholarship, context and agency.
Children can handle complexity.
Age-appropriate does not have to mean intellectually empty.
Books can be valuable without being unquestionable.
Books may be read critically, contextualized, challenged or removed when appropriate.
Education happens inside real life.
Educational systems should work for real families rather than theoretical ideal households.
We correct our mistakes.
We research carefully. We also make mistakes. When a factual error materially changes something we’ve published, we correct it.