Teaching Tolerance

When you enter the Museum of Tolerance In Los Angeles California you will watch a video on the vast variety of prejudices all designed to show you that everyone has a few.   And then you will go into the main part of the museum through one of two doors.   One door is marked prejudiced the other door is marked unprejudiced.  The door marked unprejudiced is locked in case anyone misses the point.   Occasionally a few people will demand to enter through the locked unprejudiced door.   

Each one of us has biases whether we admit it or not.  Our brain is designed with blind spots making it difficult to question our own thinking.  It’s hard to see when we are wrong even when the wrong thinking is made clear like the locked unprejudiced door at the Tolerance Museum.  

Prejudice is a paradox because it’s the greatest thing that divides us and also the greatest thing that connects us because it’s something we all share. National Public Radio did a segment recently in which they examined their coverage of both presidential candidates.   They had received an enormous amount of mail from viewers from both parties criticizing the amount and type of coverage given to the opposition.   So they examined the number of hours given to both parties and type of coverage.  The results were surprising; both candidates had received almost the same amount of airtime. Despite what some viewers thought their coverage seemed to be balanced.  

Teaching tolerance to children might be any teacher’s greatest challenge because before this universal inclusion can begin the teacher must first acknowledge and accept his or her own biases. Teachers must look at their own thinking to begin to expose these blind spots.   One good way to start is next time you are tempted to use a stereotype to explain someone remember to someone else you are a stereotype too. 

This same introspective thinking can be practiced with students.   Create informal games in which students can label and then unlabel the stereotypes they believe about each other.   Allow them to recognize how limited stereotypes are.  Learning tolerance is essentially knowing the importance of appreciating the differences of others and how to treat every individual with the same level of compassion, kindness and respect. 

The Internet is a great resource for teachers wanting to incorporate tolerance lessons into the curriculum

• Education World at www.educationworld.com - has a lesson planning articles on teaching tolerance with five lesson plans
• Scholastic Magazine on Diversity scholastic.com/professional/teachdive/ offers lesson plans and professional resources to help teachers develop a diversity curriculum
• Teaching Tolerance Magazine www.tolerance.org/teach/indes.jsp distributes information to support the efforts of K-12 teachers and other educators to promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity.