The title quote is from Raffi Cavoukian’s Covenant for Honouring Children. I first learned about him through his children’s songs, then I followed him on Twitter and saw that he did a lot more work centered on championing children’s rights and climate change. The quote is also used in the book from the National Association for the Education of Young Children titled “Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves” by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards.
The recent coronavirus pandemic and worldwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and systemic racism have really made me examine my privilege and explore anti-racism resources. I started reading “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo and need to keep on learning how to be anti-racist and anti-bias.
Here are the four core goals of anti-bias education, according to Derman-Sparks and Edwards:
- Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
- Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep caring human connections.
- Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
- Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
During one of our Philosophy classes, we did an exercise where we examined our individual identities and affiliations with groups to see which one we felt most influenced by, and how might that affect us as teachers. I realized that being a mother has become my most dominant identity, and that my brief return to the paid workforce gave me a new identity and community affiliation, which then disappeared when our school shut down. We are all a product of our family, experiences and environment, so for me to list down who I am according to the roles I play and places I have lived gives me a clearer picture of why I act or think a particular way, and why other people won’t share my views.
I highly recommend both the books I mentioned above and would love to discuss it further.