Articles

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..." I heard these words for the first time in a song when I was a kid. I was pouring a glass of orange juice in the kitchen when I heard it. Bugs Bunny had ended. I was waiting for Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids to begin. There was the familiar refrain of Schoolhouse Rock in between those cartoons. "As your body grows bigger, your mind grows flowered, it's great to learn 'cause knowledge is power!" And there it was—the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution (or at least a paraphrase of it) in song. I learned it and never forgot it.

In the Dreamtime, all the animal tribes in the outback decided to go on a walkabout. Red Kangaroo, always the most social, had arranged the entire thing. "It will be a wonderful time for all of us to get to know each

On the arid flatlands near the small town of Delta, Utah, 140 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, the scorching summer winds whip dust through the dry brush, and winter cold freezes the ground under a blanket of snow. In this forbidding landscape lie remnants of an American tragedy -- an internment camp that housed over 8,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire and armed guards during World War II. Named for a barren nearby mountain, the camp became known as Topaz.

It is Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. An African American woman boards a city bus downtown. She sits down in the first available seat. When white passengers begin boarding, the bus driver orders her to get up and surrender

This interview with teacher Lisa Weinbaum accompanies her Teaching Tolerance article "'At Risk' of Greatness."

One recent November, a discussion about plants as a food source led Cowley's first-grade class to talk about hunger. The class decided to bake pies and cookies to deliver to a local church's Thanksgiving dinner for

This piece accompanies the Teaching Tolerance article "Opening Doors on the Border."

Body image ideals, like race and gender, are social constructs that have grown out of a combination of history, politics, class, and moral values. One need look back only a few generations, or across cultures, to see

"I just don’t know what to do about Jordan," confessed Mary, whom I’d just met. I don’t know if she was confiding in me because I teach English or because that’s just what one does at a nail salon. “Last year, he spent hours filling his journals and talking about being a writer when he grew up. Now he hardly writes at all. He says he’s not any good at it.”

This true story is about the internment of a Japanese American family during World War II.