Tolerance Now

By Rebecca Nero, Educational Technology Consultant

When I was a junior high school student, I crouched fearfully in a hallway filled with other students. We bent our heads against the cold metal lockers, clasped our hands protectively over our necks. We were practicing for an air raid.

When I was a junior high school student, we heard an announcement that John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed. I experienced the assassination played out verbally and visually on our home black-and-white TV. I was terrified. I was not alone.

How much more terror must be in the hearts and minds of our students, our children, who are now inundated constantly with the images and sounds of violence played over and over on television, radio, the Internet? I know of two students who have stopped attending school. They fear being targets for violence because they are practicing Muslims. Another student has stopped wearing ethnic clothing so that he will not be identified with terrorists and become a target for verbal or physical abuse. Violence presents itself both physically and vocally.

In the October 2001 TechKnowledgy newsletter, we printed an annotated list of Web sites on "Teaching Students About Terrorism." (You can access those support Web sites by visiting http://wneo.org online and clicking the "Coping With Terrorism" button.)

We need to do more than teach coping, however. It's time to change focus. Parents, guardians and educators need to teach and model tolerance in school and at home. How do we examine our own tolerance levels? How do we teach tolerance?

Fortunately, a plenitude of resources exist in print and on the Web. Let me share a few with you.

Tolerance Online

One of the best resources for promoting respect for differences is the accolade-winning Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (print and online materials). Visit the Web site, http://www.tolerance.org, call , or write: Teaching Tolerance, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36104.

Please talk with your students and children about what they see on the news. Explain how the news works. Talk With Your Kids (from the national campaign Talking With Kids About Tough Issues, http://www.talkingwithkids.org/) gives ten detailed tips for discussing and monitoring the news with children of different age groups.

The Education Development Center has produced Beyond Blame, a curriculum for middle and high school students, responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack with information on the attack itself, understanding group blame and moving beyond blame (http://www.talking withkids.org/).

Some children may need specially-directed support. Adults can find advice for supporting Arab American and Muslim children from the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (http://www.adc.org/action/2001/14september2001.htm ).

Children with LD and/or ADHD may have trouble discerning and coping with recent terrorist activities. LD Online explains how to help these children cope. The guidelines are given according to different age groups. LD Online also has links to topic-related sites (http://www.ldonline. org/Id_indepth/parenting/coping.html).

I remember how I felt in junior high. I know how troubled I am now, a supposed adult, immersed in media coverage of terrorist events and projected terrorist scenarios that confuse and frighten me. Our children need our help to cope with what is happening and to learn tolerance of fellow Americans. In our diversity, we all need each other.

Some Teaching Tolerance classroom activities

Acknowledge differences among students and celebrate the uniqueness of everyone.
Establish a "You can't say, you can't play" policy. (Prohibits hurtful rejection.)
Promote inclusion and fairness, but allow discussions of all feelings.
Establish a "peace table" where children learn to "fight fair."
Use sports to bridge gaps.
Promote diversity by letting children tell stories about their families, however different they may be.
Teach mediation skills to kids.
Teach older children to look critically at stereotypes portrayed by the media.