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UU Faith Works Summer/Fall 2003 Administration
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Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education
Louise Derman-Sparks
Anti-Bias Educator
Equity AllianceGoal One: Nurture each child's construction of a knowledgeable, confident self-identity and group identity.
This means creating the educational conditions in which all children are able to like who they are without needing to feel superior to anyone else. It also means enabling children to develop bi-culturally and helping children and families resolve the problems faced when a person has to operate in more than one culture.
Goal Two: Promote each child's comfortable, empathic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds.
This means guiding children's development of the cognitive awareness, emotional disposition, and behavioral skills needed to respectfully and effectively learn about differences; comfortably negotiate and adapt to differences; and cognitively understand and emotionally accept the common humanity that all people share.
Goal Three: Foster each child's critical thinking about bias.
This means having the cognitive skills to identify “unfair” and “untrue” images (stereotypes), comments (teasing, name-calling), and behaviors (discrimination) directed at one's own or other's identity (be it gender, race, ethnicity, disability, class, age, weight, etc.) and having the emotional empathy to know that bias hurts.
Goal Four: Cultivate each child's ability to stand up for herself or himself and for others in the face of bias.
This “activism” objective includes helping every child learn and practice a variety of ways to act: (a) when another child acts in a biased manner towards him/her, (b) when a child acts in a biased manner towards another child, and (c) when an adult acts in a biased manner. Goal Four builds on Goal Three: Critical thinking and empathy are necessary components of acting for oneself or others in the face of bias.
These four goals are for children across all age groups. They are also for adults who raise and teach children. The content and specific objectives for each child/adult and group of children/adults must be chosen within a developmentally appropriate and a contextually appropriate framework.
Resources:
That's Not Fair! A Teacher's Guide to Activism with Young Children
by Ann Pelo and Fran Davidson (St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press, 2000)
Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approachby Louise Derman-Sparks and L. C. Brunson (NY: Teachers College Press, 1997)
www.RootsforChange.net Early Childhood Equity Alliance organization and resources
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