A very strange party (if one can call it that) went into the wee hours of the morning after Election Day 2016. Many adults have been behaving very badly. And, soon, the children will be up, getting ready for another day of school in the middle of the week. Oh no! What do we tell the children? And embarrassment should be the least of our emotional worries.
As this blog covers issues pertaining to the welfare of children, the extraordinarily hurtful dialogue (if one can call it that) and public commentary has been a notable concern for the actual harm it has been doing on children. This concern was discussed in a Southern Poverty Law Center report, “The Trump Effect,” and addressed in a May 30 post here and revisited in an editorial by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.
To be clear, this is not a comment on politics or an ideology. Those topics are off topic here and, anyway, have been discussed elsewhere. The purveying of fear and hate by public and private figures, and its effect on children are not Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal.
Teaching Tolerance, via the Southern Poverty Law Center, has always offered civics curricula for teaching the election and the importance of voting. This year, for the reason just mentioned, is not at all like the other ones. How do teachers tell students about something that will have a profound effect on them, yet something in which they had no say? In other words, what do teachers do on “The Day After”?
First, “keep politics out and values in.” That starts with the teacher. How do current events make me feel? How am I coping with them? Keeping a journal and talking with others are good ways to process feelings. After that, it is time to think about how to make “core values and democratic ideals” a part of the classroom culture. Suggestions from Teaching Tolerance include:
- Defend equal voice. Every student gets to speak and deserves to be heard.
- Teach democracy. This is a classroom of, by and for the students.
- Make my classroom cafe. We will establish norms that create a safe environment for all students.
- Ensure fairness. I will speak up when I hear or see bias, exclusion, prejudice and injustice.
The organization urges teachers to “Publicly commit to these values in your classroom and encourage students and colleagues to commit to them, too.” Offered are contracts for civility in the classroom and civility in the school. In addition, further resources are available for teaching the facts about current events, civics, and history. Above all, “let the students speak.”
It should be noted that the parent organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported an unprecedented surge in hate incidents over the first two days of the election, with anti-Black and anti-immigrant in the lead, followed by anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ.
Rethinking Schools, part of the Zinn Education Project, also offers resources that can be used in constructing lesson plans. It should be noted that this organization also fosters an activist teachers view; that type of involvement is up to the individual teacher.
PBS talked to teachers and other education professionals around the country to ascertain their reactions and, more important, how the election has affected their students.
Finally, Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, presented in her Child Watch column her views on “bringing America together for our children’s sake.”
A future column will be devoted to children and young people with disabilities.
Some other thoughts:
A father, Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, pens a letter of fear and hope to his daughter.
Says Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, what Abraham and Sarah can best teach us is that parenthood is a means of imparting goodness and justice, one of our greatest blessings.
We need to strengthen communities, say The Huffington Post and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
Children around the understand the power of love, singing the Beatles’ famous classic, as well as the one day in December 2009, when children were joined with adults in 156 countries.