Diversity and Civil Rights – Part 1

Martin Luther King Day is such an important day in our country, and in our class, it kicks off our informal unit about Civil Rights.  Yesterday, we read the first half of a wonderful book called As Good As Anybody.  This book tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr., starting from his life as a young boy.  It gave us a wonderful opportunity to talk about the concepts of discrimination, segregation, separate-but-equal (and the inherent flaw in that idea) and more.  I’m always glad to see how confused kids are by this – The idea of treating someone unkindly because of their skin color was totally alien to the kids, and they couldn’t fathom how someone would do this to another person.  To better illustrate this, we discuss the idea of gender-based discrimination: Are boys better at math than girls?  A lot of people think so, so what happens when a male and female are applying for a job at an architectural firm? We discussed how some people might make an unfair decision, and we extended this to form a concept about racial discrimination.  Helping kids to build a frame of reference better enables them to understand these ideas.  This will launch us into our continuing study of diversity and civil rights.  On Friday, we’ll read the second half of this book.  Stay tuned for the second half of this message, coming at the end of this week!

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss