Curricular Resources

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is dedicated to educating new generations about the ideology, history, and deadly legacy of communism. VOC is filling a void in education by writing curricula, training teachers, and speaking on middle school, high school, and college campuses.

VOC has a full classroom curricular resource available to teachers. In December 2024, we published the fourth edition of our flagship middle and high school curriculum, Communism: Its History, Its Ideology, and Its Legacy, written by Dr. Paul Kengor, Dr. Lee Edwards, and Claire McCaffery Griffin. We will feature the curriculum at teacher workshops in Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, DC in 2025.

Ten Great Speeches Against Communism, ideal for high school rhetoric and history, features ten speeches by great orators such as Churchill, Reagan, King, and Solzhenitsyn. Each speech is preceded by a contextual essay and followed by discussion questions and an essay prompt. This volume spans all decades of the Cold War and shows students how leaders viewed communism both philosophically and politically.

Communism and Its Crimes is a workbook aimed at 7th-9th graders that spotlights six major communists: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro. Lessons include primary source reading, links to the VOC Witness Videos with journal prompts, and ideas for further study. The workbook also weaves in four book studies, with comprehension questions and essay prompts, which illustrate the changing perspectives of those living under communism.

Learning Liberty Through Freedom Movements is a workbook that teaches 4th-6th grade students about communism through people that have resisted it. Featuring events like the Baltic Way, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and the protests in Tiananmen Square, students learn about what communism is and the tools it uses to deny people’s rights. The book includes comprehension questions, lesson activities, ideas for enrichment, and a timeline.

VOC’s advanced online curriculum, Communism: A History of Repression, Violence, and Victims, is intended for advanced high school and college students and consists of nine chapters to date. We will hard-copy publish this material in the future and continue to add new chapters.

In 2022, VOC began partnering with State Departments of Education to formally build the VOC curriculum into public school classrooms. Currently, Florida and Arizona have adopted a requirement to educate about the history and horrors of communism, and several other states are in the process.

On December 6, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 5349, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act. The law specifically points educators to resources provided by VOC. Authored by Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), this bipartisan bill makes curricular materials available through VOC to help educate high school students about the dangers of communism and totalitarianism, and how those systems are contrary to the founding principles of freedom and democracy in the United States.

Teacher Trainings

We host teacher trainings nationwide to train teachers on the most effective ways utilize our curricular resources and Witness Project products in their classrooms. Our teacher trainings incorporate lectures by scholarly experts and testimonials by witnesses of communism, offering educators the opportunity to learn from someone who has suffered under communism firsthand.

VOC hosts in-person seminars in cities around the country, while also making this teacher training available online. With the workshop resources available digitally, teachers worldwide are able to take our seminar at their own pace—earning 24 hours of continuing education credits and fulfilling professional development requirements while familiarizing themselves with the real threat that communism poses.

“The VOC Conference was truly a life-changing experience. The in-depth lectures and witness speakers made me realize just how little I knew about communism and its impact across the world. I have been recommending this conference whenever and wherever I can!” —Emily McLean