Teaching Tolerance According to Sara

Teaching Tolerance

According to Sara Bullard, author of Teaching Tolerance, prejudice begins in early childhood. Her book, subtitled "Raising Open-Minded, Empathetic Children," illustrates the prevalence of prejudice in the United States and shows how intolerance can be inherited through environmental factors. A significant portion of the book is also about how to combat, eliminate, and prevent intolerance. Children inherit their beliefs from parents, peers, teachers, and other external influences. Intolerance can therefore be partly inherited through the generations. "Our habits of thinking, our emotional reactions, and our feelings about ourselves have been an integral part of our personalities for many years," (74). Overcoming intolerance involves a systematic program of self-inquiry, journal writing, and reaching out to other people. Bullard's book can help teachers, parents, and heads of public policy programs to develop conscientious and meaningful means to create a better world.

Intolerance is dangerous; it threatens to create violence within a society and within our classrooms. Therefore, nipping the intolerance problem in the bud should optimally originate with parents and early childhood educators. Bullard shows that "The path of tolerance is not always fun, but it is at times comforting and liberating," (3). Most children will be victims of intolerance at some point in their lives (Bullard 3). Stereotyping and biases are part of the human experience, as the brain naturally likes to use categories and judgments. However, when categorizations lead to problems like bigotry, all persons suffer. Bullard notes that many children in the United States are bothered personally by problems related to prejudice. For example, children are bullied, teased, taunted, or plain ignored in schools that foster prejudice. Sometimes, prejudice causes outright violence and hate crime. It is imperative to get parents and teachers to at least start thinking of intolerance as a major problem.

Intolerance also stems from ignorance, according to Bullard. By educating parents about the roots and origins of their own biases, it because easier for them to change. Furthermore, it becomes easier to raise children that do not inherit and pass on intolerances of their own. When parents can acknowledge and understand where they received their own biases from and how they continue to believe in them, they can start the healing process and eliminate unneeded prejudices from their children's minds. Parents can, for instance, recall their parent's words and messages as well as the messages sent by peers, culture, the government or the media.

Bullard offers some practical and sound advice for parents wishing to bring up tolerant children. For instance, she advocates keeping a personal diary to take notes about one's prejudices, how they developed, who they affected and how, as well as questions about acceptance and respect. Bullard's book is optimistic and balanced as well; while she believes that attempts to eliminate prejudices can work, she also acknowledges that the effort will involve significant struggle. Therefore, Bullard links parenting and disciplinary styles to the cultivation of tolerance. The author points out that "children who are punished harshly or inconsistently, or who are frequently threatened with punishment, are prevented from developing the internal controls they need to discipline themselves," (156). Children who are raised in supportive environments will generally tend to support their peers and those who they meet through their entire lives.

Toward the end of Teaching Tolerance, the author includes a variety of exercises and activities parents can do with their children. For example, Bullard advises parents to cultivate self-awareness through drawings, collages, and dance. She offers other educational arts and crafts projects like designing a family tree. Educators can apply these lessons to their school curricula. Teachers don't need to be or act as psychologists to encourage self-awareness in their classrooms. Moreover, teachers can use Bullard's book as a guideline on how to create classrooms that promote tolerance.

Bullard's book is firmly rooted in research and not in speculation. Therefore, Teaching Tolerance is a valuable resource for early childhood educators. The only two drawbacks of the book are that its principles cannot apply to older children who have already solidified their prejudicial beliefs, and that Bullard underestimates the more serious dimensions of expressing intolerance in schools such as violence. Bullard does not indicate how teachers should deal with violence related to intolerance once it has already started.