The topics and strategies in this section provide tools to help educators build students’ understanding of justice and develop skills to take action and participate in a diverse democracy.
Mandating Holocaust education in U.S. public schools and simultaneously banning or censoring other “hard histories” is ineffective, disingenuous and further demonstrates the importance of teaching honest history.
The recent rash of viral stories featuring white people who call the cops on law-abiding black people is an iteration of implicit bias that happens in schools every day. It’s time for educators to self-reflect.
“Marine Corporal Jeremy Dobbins returned to Dayton, Ohio, from duty in Afghanistan with an 80% disability rating and issues with anger. Trained in service to others, veterans often resist the idea that they themselves need help and they have difficulty with sharing their war experiences with family and friends. An oral history project at Wright State University is giving Jeremy and other young veterans a chance to help older veterans recover their stories of war, and to come to terms with their own.”
Carrol Layfield manages a quilting group of older women from Ritchie County, West Virginia, who used to work in the area’s garment industry. Using techniques handed down over generations, the women piece together quilts from remnants of fabric from shuttered factories. Kayla Turk is a young mother of two children who returned home to Ritchie County to live with her parents when her husband was laid off. At a communal baby shower, Kayla receives a quilt from the older women, and discovers a network of support.