It is about building a sense of safety, the sense that everyone can and will be treated fairly. This goal is about building children’s innate, budding capacities for empathy and fairness, as well as their cognitive skills for thinking critically about what is happening around them. Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.Teachers will foster each child’s capacity to critically identify bias and will nurture each child’s empathy for the hurt bias causes.A basic premise in anti-bias education is “ We are all the same. All human beings share similar biological attributes, needs, and rights (e.g., the needs for food, shelter, and love the commonalities of language, families, and feelings) and people live and meet these shared needs and rights in many different ways. Goal 2 calls for creating a balance between exploring people’s differences and similarities. It is how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.Īnother misconception about Goal 2 is that exploring differences among people ignores appreciating the similarities. Children learn prejudice from prejudice-not from learning about human diversity. While well intentioned, this concern arises from a mistaken notion about the sources of bias. They may think it is best to teach only about how people are the same, worrying that talking about differences causes prejudice. Some teachers and parents are not sure they should encourage children to “notice” and learn about differences among people. This goal is the heart of learning how to treat all people caringly and fairly. These are never either/or realities because people are simultaneously the same and different from one another. It includes encouraging children to learn both about how they are different from other children and about how they are similar. It includes helping children feel and behave respectfully, warmly, and confidently with people who are different from themselves. This goal means guiding children to be able to think about and have words for how people are the same and how they are different. Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human diversity.Teachers will promote each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds.(In the forthcoming book, social identity is described in detail in Chapter 2.) A strong sense of both individual and group identities is the foundation for the three other core anti-bias goals. Social identities include (but are not limited to) gender, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and economic class groups. Social identities relate to the significant group categorizations of the society in which we grow up and live and which individuals share with many others. Goal 1 is the starting place for all children, in all settings.Īdding to early childhood education’s long-term commitment to nurturing each child’s individual, personal identity, anti-bias education emphasizes the important idea of nurturing children’s social (or group) identities. Teachers will support children to develop and be comfortable within their home culture and within the school culture. It means children will learn accurate, respectful language to describe who they and others are. This goal means supporting children to feel strong and proud of who they are without needing to feel superior to anyone else.
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