Dundee-Crown hosts talk with renowned historian

Persistence has paid off for Dundee-Crown High School teacher Bruce Taylor.

In 2007, Taylor showed up unannounced at the Boston office of linguist and activist Noam Chomsky.

Taylor engaged the professor, eventually persuading the no-holds-barred speaker to talk to Dundee-Crown students twice a year via teleconference.

After a couple of Chomsky's uncensored chats with his students, Taylor asked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor for the number of another Boston professor: Howard Zinn.

Zinn, a professor emeritus at Boston University, is best known for writing "A People's History of the United States" and his social activism.

Zinn will take some time out of completing a documentary based on "A People's History" to speak via teleconference to Dundee-Crown students, staff and interested members of the community at 3 p.m. Friday in Room M3 of the Carpentersville high school.

"A People's History" is the American story told from the bottom up, through the eyes of the native peoples, slaves and laborers who lived it.

Social studies students at Dundee-Crown have read excerpts from Zinn's magnum opus as well as parts of "A Patriot's History of the United States," a conservative reading of American history written in part as a response to Zinn's earlier work.

Taylor facilitated a talk earlier this school year with Larry Schweikart, co-author of "A Patriot's History."

The social studies teacher hoped the two perspectives would counterbalance each author's ideological bias.

"That's why I wanted to have two there - to see both sides of the story," Taylor said.

Taylor wasn't able to arrange for both authors to debate American history, but he hopes to talk Zinn into speaking to students on a regular basis.