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Review of "Healing the Hate" As many human relations
practitioners know, there is only a select number of successful curriculum dealing with bias crime prevention in our schools. One of the most comprehensive examples of instruction- and
activity-based programs is the Education Development Center's (EDC) Healing the Hate: A National Bias Crime Prevention Curriculum for Middle Schools. Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice's
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), Healing the Hate
is published by the EDC's National Hate Crime Prevention Project out of Newton, Massachusetts, and written by EDC's Project Director Karen McLaughlin and Curriculum Director Kelly Brilliant. With an Advisory Board consisting of such bias-prevention veterans as Northeastern University's Jack McDevitt and Boston Police Department Deputy Superintendent Bill Johnston, the program was pilot tested in diverse settings ranging from an inner city school in New York City to a more rural environment in Dade County, Florida. In each school the curriculum was well-received by both educators and students.
This flexible and adaptable curriculum is based on hate crime profile research literature as well as research findings in both violence prevention and prejudice reduction. Integrating many well-established yet
not universally used concepts as cooperative learning, media literacy and critical thinking skills, students are not simply instructed about bias and hate violence, but learn in heterogeneous groups that hate is not
always as blatant as a KKK rally, and that bias is indeed subtly pervasive throughout many unchallenged facets of our daily lives. Understanding institutional prejudice, usually a subject rarely discussed, is
fundamental to many lessons in the curriculum. The 215-page book is designed to constructively stimulate students as well as guide the teacher through the challenging effort of questioning and preventing bias
in the classroom. The 10-Unit course, design to be achieved in several weeks or over the coarse of a school year, deals with issues such as "Hate Crime Perpetrators: Why They Do It," "How It Happens:
The Development of Prejudice and Intolerance," "Seeing the Big Picture: Institutionalized Racism," and " What Can We Do? Coalition-Building to Promote Social Change." Outside of videos that can be
rented at a local video store, the book supplies everything a class needs to carry out the course with an impact. For example, in Unit 4, "Examining the Media's Role in the Development of Prejudice," not only is
the teacher provided with the necessary handouts, but is given suggested teaching points and hopeful student objectives. But the program is not merely traditionally carried out by the teacher to a class of silent
students; rather, the teacher acts as a facilitator, with the children providing as much written and verbal input in lessons such as "The Power of the Young," and others involving role plays and dramatic presentations
designed and acted out by the students. The course ends with a separate Unit on sharing insights, feelings and lessons learned, as well as the results of the main project: creating a grassroots
organizations, complete with realistic activities and programs, to reduce hate violence and prejudice in their community. For any educator, student, parent or individual concerned with reducing bias in the middle
school (or any level), Healing the Hate is marvelous tool! For more information, contact the Education Development Center at (800) 225-4276. |
