As the political fallout from the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot unfolds, it’s critical that educators help students contextualize white supremacist movements of the past and present.
A few years ago, I wrote a classroom resource about ecology for elementary and middle school kids. It covered all the territory you’d expect—biomes, habitats, food chains, etc. But the publisher insisted on a conspicuous omission. No mention could be made of one of the major biologists who pioneered ecology. That biologist was Charles Darwin.
Religious topics have long been a touchy subject in public schools and none of them touchier than atheism. For young people though, the taboo surrounding unbelief appears to be disappearing. Recent surveys have found that younger Americans are the least likely to be religious. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 29 percent of 18-29 year olds are religiously unaffiliated, compared with 15 percent of the population as a whole. And a 2006 Pew Research poll found that 1 in 5 young people said they have no religious affiliation, nearly double the proportion of the late 1980s.
We asked our 25 Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board members what advice they would offer to fellow educators about Black History Month. Each of these experienced educators offers a wealth of expertise, especially when it comes to bringing multicultural topics into the classroom.