Guiding Questions towards Social Justice Curriculum Benchmarks

 

Child Development

1. At which developmental stages are children ready to learn about, process and confront specific anti-bias concepts or social justice learning?
2. How old should children be when teachers begin introducing anti-bias issues for children to consider, rather than relying solely on emergent issues from the children’s conversation and play?
3. At what age should we expect children to be able to say, “This is social justice learning.  It’s what we do at my school”?
4. When should children be asked/expected to challenge the assertions of their teachers and classmates as a way of demonstrating development of critical thinking? When should they be expected to research opposing viewpoints? To champion a perspective different from their own?
5. Is their a continuum of awareness that would lead to the most effective anti-bias instruction? For example, are children first able to understand bias exercised against themselves, then against others whom they know and finally against those of whom they may only have heard?  Or is empathy a characteristic that allows for more abstract thought than might be possible in other “disciplines?”
6. Is there a hierarchy of “–isms” that children are capable of understanding and confronting as they grow? For example would sexism come before racism or after?  Do some –isms provide more broadly understood frameworks for learning?
7. What are the reassuring things that children learn from anti-bias education?  What are the positive feelings and understanding of power that children can take from learning about the “-isms?”  Should educators and parents be concerned about children feeling sad or cynical as they progress through an education infused with social justice learning?

 

Pedagogy and Curriculum

8. Should children first be instructed about issues occurring in the present or those that have occurred and may appear to have been remedied in the past?
9. Should anti-bias practitioners in a given school adopt unified methods and projects to ensure that students have common experiences in each grade, which they can discuss and build upon as they grow?
10. What are the differences between social justice education, anti-bias education, and peace activism, if any?
11. How do the teacher and the parent master the tension between wanting to shelter children and the need to teach children to confront “inconvenient truths?”
12. Is activism a necessary component of anti-bias education?
13. What obligations are there to address issues of resources, ecology and environmentalism when teaching anti-bias curriculum in a Pre-5 program?
14. Should social justice curriculum be integrated into every discipline?
15. Does a child’s background or gender influence whether she should learn first about race, class, religion, gender issues or sexuality?
16. How does one nourish optimism in children when discussing and confronting bias and injustice?  How does one build appreciation of country and citizenship rather than cynicism and derision?
17. What materials or tools do teachers wish they could have, and what knowledge or training do you wish you could acquire to help you teach anti-bias?

 

Community and Adult Development

18. What is the politically conservative equivalent of social justice education?  How ought that to be acknowledged in a progressive school?
19. How can a school that teaches anti-bias be anti-bias itself? For example, how can a secular progressive school in which children identify, one after the other, conservative actions as biased, sustain an open-ness to conservatism, to the idea that there are political conservatives who want the best things for the world, too; that there are religious conservatives who are bound by belief systems that state things in stark contrast to progressive secular values; that in a truly diverse school community some of the families in the school hold these values themselves?
20. What scares teachers and parents about teaching anti-bias and social justice issues?