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Teaching Tolerance
Closing the Book on Hate
By Kelly D. Burgess
This is not as much of an issue for families already living in neighborhoods with a diverse population. Parents living in areas made up primarily of one racial or ethnic group have to work harder.
Charlotte Nelson, principal of Melissa Jones Elementary School in Guilford, Conn., found that out the hard way a few years ago. She ran into a former student, a biracial child, at a meeting in a local church. He was in high school at the time, but talked about how, at age 6, other children would say hurtful things to him on the playground, not out of meanness, but out of ignorance. Nelson was deeply disturbed, because she hadn't thought about her enlightened, predominately white suburb as being exclusionary. Since then, Nelson has been actively working to promote diversity training in her community.
In the spring of 2000, the Guilford School District started a program called "Names Can Hurt Us" where high school students are trained to speak to younger children about their experiences with prejudice. It is a pilot program of the Anti-Defamation League's A Classroom of Difference series. A Classroom of Difference is in its 15th year, and more than 350,000 teachers in the United States have gone through its workshops – which means that 13 to 16 million students have been positively impacted.
Nelson was impressed with the results of the new program. "Parents spend practically every moment trying to guide their children in all areas of life," says Nelson. "So when something like this comes from a parent, often it's just one more thing. When it comes from other kids they pay attention."