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Teaching Tolerance’s Spring Issue Arrives This Week |
Our cover story, “Possession Obsession,” focuses on teen
dating abuse. With almost one-third of teen relationships involving abuse, it
is imperative... |
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Alabama Immigration Law Tough on Students |
Now that a federal judge has upheld most of
Alabama’s new anti-immigration law, supporters can crow that the state is "No.
1" –at least when it comes... |
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Americans Love Teachers! (Despite All the Critics) |
Given the beating that public school teachers
have taken in recent months, the results of the 43rd annual
PDK/Gallup poll were kind of surprising.... |
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Time for Justice in Anoka-Hennepin |
The Anoka-Hennepin
school district, Minnesota’s largest, has been in the national spotlight since
last year. That’s when several students who were... |
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The Gift of Second Languages |
Today’s
conventional wisdom is that English language learners (ELLs) need to master
English as quickly as possible. Everything else is secondary. If... |
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Stop Using Schools to Enforce Immigration Laws |
U.S. public schools are not branch offices of
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s the message the Obama
administration sent out in a... |
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Remember the Tulsa Race Riot |
May 31 marks the 90th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riot. You can be excused if you've never heard of it. Despite being the bloodiest attack on... |
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Say No to the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill |
Sometime
in the next week or so, the Senate of the state of Tennessee will probably approve
the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It’s a proposed law that states... |
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Let the Freedom Rides Roll Through Your Class |
When
many students think of buses and desegregation, their minds instantly go to
Rosa Parks and the 1954 Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the larger civil... |
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Help Students Remember César Chávez |
Today is the kickoff of Farmworker Awareness Week. It is a time to honor the backbreaking work that goes into harvesting our food.
This week... |
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Atheist Students Come Out of the Closet |
Religious topics have long been a touchy subject in public schools and none of them touchier than atheism.For young people though, the taboo... |
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Remembering the “Lost Cause” |
Recently my family stopped at the Civil War battlefield at
Vicksburg, Miss., to take a walk and soak in some history. Near the monument to
Louisiana’... |
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Earning the Medal of Freedom |
The Presidential Medal of
Freedom is the highest honor that the U.S. government awards to civilians.
Presidents select a handful of people each year... |
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Finding Hope in Anoka-Hennepin |
Last weekend, the Southern Poverty Law Center and two partners struck a legal agreement with the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota. Amid... |
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Sexting and Punishment |
Last June, eight
students at Susquenita High School near Harrisburg, Pa., got a nasty surprise.
The students, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, got... |
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Watch for the Spring 'Teaching Tolerance' Magazine |
The Spring issue
of Teaching Tolerance arrives in
schools this week. Here’s a sneak peak:
This issue
contains a special section on using social media... |
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Being 'Tolerant' About Creationism |
Forty percent of Americans believe that God
created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, according to a Gallup
poll released late last week... |
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Snapshots from Mix It Up at Lunch Day |
Mix It Up at Lunch Day is all about diversity. It
celebrates the diversity of America’s classrooms. And it shows the diverse ways
teachers can tackle... |
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How to Tune Out the Bigotry on Fox News |
Yesterday, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly appeared on the television show The View. There, he got into a heated discussion about building a mosque in... |
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A Chance for Justice at Low-Income Schools |
A legal settlement reached in Los Angeles Tuesday could
reverberate through schools in low-income neighborhoods across the country.
The Board of... |
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The Voice of a New Generation |
There is a growing generation gap when it comes to LGBT issues. A
recent poll showed a roughly 50-50 split in public opinion over the issue of
gay... |
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Actions Speak Volumes During Banned Books Week |
Banning a book can go like this: An outraged parent complains
about a book to the school librarian or principal. After a noisy debate, the
school... |
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Turning Teachers Into Indentured Servants |
Hundreds of guest workers are lured to the United States under
false pretenses. They are ruthlessly exploited by the labor contractors who
bring them... |
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New Orleans Schools Shut the Door on the Disabled |
A new third-grader arrives at your school. He is blind. He is
autistic. He is developmentally delayed.
How does your school deal with the special... |
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Anti-Gay Bias Shouldn’t Derail Sex Education |
See if this educational goal for first-graders offends you:
“Understand human beings can love people of the same gender &
people of another... |
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Bridging the Cultural Gaps in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ |
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s work
is so powerful and popular that it has never been out of... |
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Dealing With Bias in the SAT |
Taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test has become a rite of passage for
millions of American school kids. The path to the middle class lies through... |
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Dropping the N-Word |
The n-word holds a unique position in the English language. On one
hand, it's so taboo that it is not even whispered in polite company. On the
other... |
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Remembering a Tragedy: The Indian Removal Act |
One hundred eighty years ago today, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This law set in motion the long, agonizing chain... |
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Texas vs. Textbooks: The Final Chapter? |
The Texas State
Board of Education has been ridiculed in recent weeks for its efforts to
rewrite the curriculum standards of the state’s K-12... |
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Meet Kevin Keller |
He’s tall, blonde
and handsome. He’s also openly gay. None of that would be exceptional but for
the fact that Kevin Keller is the newest character in... |
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Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling |
Hundreds of high school and college
students gathered around the state capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday. They
were there to convince Gov. Jan... |
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Race and Poverty Matter, Even on Earth Day |
There’s an old joke among real estate agents that the three most
important things to consider in any property are location, location, location.
With... |
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Time to Bury the “Lost Cause” |
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has declared April Confederate History Month. His original seven-paragraph proclamation was full of paeans to grey-... |
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The Great Fulton Fake-Out |
Remember Constance
McMillen? She’s the lesbian teen in Fulton, Miss., who fought to take her date
to the prom and wear a tuxedo. Her case drew... |
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The High Price of Bullying |
A year ago today, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover took his own life. The Springfield, Mass., boy was about a week shy of his 12th birthday. His... |
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CIVILITY n. practice essential for democracy (obsolete) |
Last weekend was a busy time for less-than-tolerant people in
Washington, D.C.
First, there’s this from McClatchy Newspapers:
“Demonstrators... |
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All Dressed Up – No Place to Go? |
By now, most people have heard about Constance McMillen. Last week, her school in Fulton, Miss., cancelled its prom because Constance wanted to bring... |
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Remember the (all-white) Alamo! |
The Texas State Board of Education approved standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses Friday. That is national news because of... |
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Texas Takes Another Crack at Textbooks |
The Texas State
Board of Education has made nationwide headlines in recent weeks by rewriting
the curriculum standards for its k-12 textbooks. Texas... |
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When Schools Dump Diversity |
Teaching Tolerance has reported many times and in many ways that the United States is plunging headlong toward racial and cultural re-segregation.... |
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Remembering Bloody Sunday |
On March 7, 1965, millions of Americans sat watching their television sets in horror. Grainy black-and-white news images from Selma, Ala., showed... |
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Mortgaging The Future |
School kids today struggle with a lot outside the classroom. Their
distractions range from drugs and cyberbullying to over-busy schedules and ads... |
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Giving Darwin His Due |
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,... |
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The Savage Side of Schoolmates |
Most of us have a story about being bullied back in school. Thankfully, most of us did not go through the childhood that William Rivers Pitt endured... |
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Getting Past ‘Retarded’ |
Medical and social service groups have generally retired the
phrase mental retardation. Today,
they use terms like mental disability,
cognitive... |
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Charter Schools: Resegregating America? |
Are charter schools helping to resegregate public schools? A
just-released study states flatly that they are. The Washington Post reports
that:
“... |
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The School of Hard Knocks |
Poverty is corrosive to school kids. Many of them suffer in silence while their families either spiral into homelessness or frantically struggle to... |
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The Spirit of Greensboro |
Black History Month gets underway this year by honoring a memorable milestone. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins. The early... |
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Remembering Howard Zinn |
As a young newspaper reporter in Texas, I covered my fair share of speeches. The thrill of hearing an important person give carefully prepared... |
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A Banner Day for Missing the Point |
If you lined up all the small-minded people on the planet, the
first thousand or so would probably be school board members. For proof of that,
look... |
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No Name-Calling Week |
The 2001 novel The Misfits by James Howe focuses on four friends trying to survive seventh grade. After running a gauntlet of teenage taunts and... |
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Texas Tears Up Textbooks |
Texas is in the throes of rewriting the curriculum standards for
its K-12 textbooks. And that is something to be very, very worried about.
It’s no... |
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MLK: More Than Just A Dream |
Every year around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the news media
start quoting his “I Have A Dream” speech. There’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s a... |
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The Top 5 Diversity Stories Of 2009 |
As teachers and students return to school this week, it’s worth
taking one last look back at 2009. We asked ourselves, “What five news stories
most... |
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Picture This: Using Racist Books As Art |
What
do you do with 4,100 books full of racist nonsense? One solution is to turn
them into something that can hang on a museum wall.
That’s
how... |
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Something Yule Want To Do At The Holidays |
I once had an elementary school teacher who tried a multicultural
approach to the holiday season. She told my class about Hanukkah, which she... |
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Ending Child Abuse At School |
As a kid, I remember listening wide-eyed to my grandmother tell me
about the “Dummy Room.” The Dummy Room was one of her first assignments as a
young... |
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A School On The Edge |
There’s bullying, and then there’s what’s going on at South Philadelphia High School.This week, about 50 Asian students at South Philly have opted to... |
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Single-Gender Education: Why the Rush? |
A couple of years ago, my wife casually mentioned that our son’s school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, would be introducing some single-sex classes. I... |
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Lesbian Teen Wins Prom Equality |
Many gays and lesbians feel understandably frustrated right now. The U.S. military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has yet to be repealed. And over... |
