Teaching Youth Valuable Lessons About Democracy and the Responsibilities of Citizenship
In a recent survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance, The Trump Effect: The Impact of hte Presidential Campaign on Our Nation's Schools, Teaching Tolerance found that the presidential campaign is producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom.
Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.
Educators are perplexed and conflicted about what to do. They report being stymied by the need to remain nonpartisan but disturbed by the anxiety in their classrooms and the lessons that children may be absorbing from this campaign.
In effort to address this, Teaching Tolerance (a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center) has created a set of online resources to help teachers navigate this difficult terrain.
