anti bias education essay

Peter DeWitt's

Finding common ground.

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. He can be found at www.petermdewitt.com . Read more from this blog .

Anti-Bias Education and the Importance of Teaching About Systemic Oppression

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As our nation’s children head back to school, it’s a stressful and scary time. Families, students and educators continue to struggle with a pandemic that is surging. After the last school year with unpredictable and intermittent remote learning and continued fear, loss, and grief, teachers are exhausted. In our current reality of a highly contagious COVID-19 variant, lack of mask mandates in some states, and children under 12 unable to get vaccinated, the anticipation of the upcoming school year will almost certainly bring more anguish, pain, and loss.

Critical Race Theory Bans Sweep the Nation

Adding insult to injury, over the past six months states have been furiously passing laws across the country that ban “critical race theory” (CRT) and “divisive concepts.” As of August 12, 26 states have introduced bills or taken steps to restrict or limit the teaching about racism, sexism, bias, and the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history. Twelve states have enacted bans, either through legislation or other avenues. Amid the pandemic, these laws add a consequential layer of intimidation, fear, and disrespect for educators. It’s a hard time to be a teacher right now.

Critical race theory is an academic framework that seeks to understand and examine how the law and policies perpetuate racial disparities in society (e.g., health care, education, legal, criminal justice, housing, voting, etc.). We know that CRT is not widely taught in K-12 schools, nor is CRT a curriculum or teaching methodology. However, the purpose of these laws—beyond politics and inciting energy for upcoming elections—is an attempt to restrict or prevent teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression.

These laws can potentially prevent teachers from reading a children’s book about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, reflecting on Black Lives Matter and what to do about police violence, understanding current day hate symbols like noose incidents and their historical context of racial terror, and much more.

Why We Need to Teach About Systemic Racism and Other Oppression

These restrictions are concerning precisely because they contradict one of the most important goals of education—to teach young people how to think critically and foster a more just and equitable society so that all people can learn, live, and thrive. To do that, students need to understand what bias and injustice are, how they manifest in society—particularly in systemic ways through our institutions—the historical roots of bias and oppression, and how those injustices have been historically and continue to be challenged and disrupted.

A recent survey illustrates that educators agree. In a nationwide survey of educators, 59 percent said they believe that systemic racism exists. A majority (84 percent) of respondents said they teach about racism in their classroom either exclusively in a historical context or as it relates to both history and present-day issues. Only 16 percent said they never discuss racism in their classrooms. When asked if there should be legal limits on classroom conversations about racism, sexism, and other controversial issues, a majority said no.

After last year’s sustained protests for racial justice and our society becoming more cognizant of structural racism, K-12 educators, who are still almost 80 percent white, are increasingly more likely to incorporate concepts that address structural racism and other forms of bias into their instruction. This is likely one of the reasons these state laws are popping up, to try to curb these discussions from taking place.

Helping Children Make Sense of the Disparities They See

By the time children reach preschool at ages 4 and 5, they already show signs of racial bias. As children spend time in our nation’s schools, they face and observe bias every day. This bias is reflected through inequitable funding and access to resources; unfair discipline practices that disproportionately impact Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students and students with disabilities; biased remarks and identity-based bullying in the hallways, buses, classrooms and online; exclusion of people of color reflected in the curriculum, literature, textbooks, and images around their school; not learning the true history of injustice, struggle, and activism in this country; and, especially for students of color, not having role models as teachers, staff, and administrators. This harms students of color, white students, and society.

Not only do young people see and experience bias and injustice in schools, but they also see and experience how it manifests in other places and spaces in society, including in the criminal justice system, health care, workplaces, voting rights, online, housing, media, higher education, and the legal system. Young people are watching, observing, and taking note. When they see negative disproportionate outcomes for people of color or other marginalized groups (e.g., Black boys and girls being more often disciplined in school, men holding elected office more than women), they need help to make sense of these long-standing inequities. According to Dr. Rebecca Bigler, a developmental psychologist who studies prejudice, when children aren’t presented with the context to understand or analyze why our society looks the way it does, “they make up reasons, and a lot of kids make up biased, racist reasons.” Without the language and a way to think critically about how these inequities show up in systems and institutions, young people may think certain groups “deserve” those outcomes or they accept that’s “just the way it is.” This leads to a devaluing of themselves and others and cements the bias in their minds.

What Is Anti-Bias Education?

One of the objectives of anti-bias education is to help students make sense of and explain bias. Anti-bias education is a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning designed to increase understanding of identity and differences and their value to an inclusive and just society, and then actively challenge bias, discrimination, and injustice that we see in schools, communities, and society. The goal of anti-bias education is to help young people, and those who work with them, to challenge bias in ourselves, others, and society.

ADL Education’s approach to anti-bias education uses a thematic sequence that incorporates the following four pillars:

• Explore Identity: To help students explore the various aspects of identity; reflect how identity consciously and unconsciously shapes one’s worldview; and apply this understanding to recognize the relationship between identity, bias and power.
• Interpret Differences: To help students recognize the value of diversity in society; adopt a vocabulary for speaking about differences, prejudice and discrimination; and develop strategies to communicate across differences.
• Challenge Bias : To help students build the capacity to recognize and confront bias within themselves, others, and institutions; examine the relationship between individual biases and systemic oppression, including the impact of intersecting oppressions; and demonstrate awareness of the harm resulting from unchecked bias and oppression.
• Champion Justice: To help students put into practice skills to confront bias within oneself, others and institutions; motivate individuals to act as change agents in their communities; and apply this understanding to bring about a more equitable and just society.

The goal of anti-bias learning is not to become free of bias, because we know that bias is universal, and we all have biases. Our biases are shaped by our experiences in the world around us and all those influences like our families, the media, who we know and don’t know, what we see takes place in our institutions. Indeed, bias is learned. However, through a process of willingly and consistently recognizing bias and actively taking steps to address it, like anti-bias education, we can challenge and overcome bias.

What Can You Do?

For parents, educators, and others who want to push back about these laws and amplify the importance of anti-bias education and teaching about racism and other injustices, here are some suggested actions you can take.

• Support anti-bias, antiracism, and other DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts in schools. Back teachers who, despite these laws, will continue to teach the truth about history and current issues.
• Challenge and speak out about the laws in your or others’ states by sharing your thoughts and opinions with your elected officials. It is also important to advocate for the expansion of anti-bias education and DEI efforts as several states are already doing.
• Learn more about why it is important not to restrict teaching about racism, sexism and controversial issues. Encourage others to join you in this learning process.

The purpose of education is to prepare students to learn about and actively participate in our democracy. Facilitating their learning about our history and present, mistakes and all, will help young people build a better future for all of us. That should be the priority for those working to make schools engaging, truthful and productive places of learning for our nation’s children.

The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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The Four Goals of Anti-bias Education Essay

The four goals of anti-bias education are forming identity, promoting diversity, teaching justice, and fostering activism. Identity formation presupposes that each child sees himself or herself as an individuum who associates himself with a certain family group. Diversity presupposes learning to respect differences between individuals and cultures. Teaching justice means teaching children to understand where wrong is done and to behave respectfully to all people (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2019). Activism is about educating children to be self-confident and not afraid to speak out for themselves. These goals are valuable since they allow us to educate people who will respect others, be responsible for their actions, and be ready to call attention to the wrongs that are done.

The challenges of anti-bias education are making children behave respectfully even to those individuals they may not like, overcoming shyness in class, and teaching them to differentiate between right and wrong. When I was a child, I was very shy and it was a challenge for me to speak out for myself. What helped me to cope was the friendly atmosphere created in class and the respect for differences instilled in us by our teacher.

Sometimes teachers can be biased too and not realize it. Some teachers may give better marks to students they like and worse marks to those they do not. Some teachers believe that introverted students keep silent because they do not know anything. It is important to recognize and mitigate these biases since they often limit educational opportunities for children. To combat biases one should put oneself in the place of other people, look at the world from their position and consider all possible options. The whole society benefits from combating biases as people become more tolerant towards each other.

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2019). Understanding anti-bias education. YC Young Children , 74 (5), 6-13.

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Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves

How we set the tone about anti-bias in our classrooms and learning centers can influence the entire year — and possibly the whole of children’s lives.

Children learn at an early age about differences in race, gender, ability, economic situation, sexual orientation, culture, and more, and how we as humane educators approach those issues — and challenges with them — holds enormous influence.

The book Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves offers a framework for helping young children develop positive social identities and comfort and confidence with diversity, as well as to evolve caring human connections, an understanding of unfairness, and to become empowered to act against prejudice and discrimination.

Anti-Bias Education provides an overview of anti-bias education and the creation of a positive learning environment and then delves into more specific issues, such as culture, race, gender, economic class, family structures, different abilities, and holidays. Each of these chapters offers a brief analysis of the issue, as well as tips and strategies, activity ideas, case studies, and related essays.

While the definition of anti-bias is limited to humans, Anti-Bias Education is rich with insights and ideas for helping us and our students become citizens full of compassion and integrity for others.

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“Who’s got the power?”: A critical examination of the anti-bias curriculum

• Kerry-Ann Escayg   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5003-7192 1  

International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy volume  13 , Article number:  6 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Ample research data indicate that young children recognize racial characteristics and subsequently exhibit both positive and negative racial attitudes toward their own and other racial groups. In the early childhood field, educators commonly adopt an anti-bias/multicultural curriculum to address such issues with young children and—with rare exceptions—such methods are subject to ongoing endorsement in the scholarly literature. This article, however, offers a more comprehensive critique of the anti-bias curriculum, including an analysis of the conceptual frameworks underpinning several of the associated teaching strategies. In addition, the present article illustrates how the anti-bias curriculum, though presented as congruent with the empirical evidence with respect to the education of young children and race, departs considerably from these data. Furthermore, the curricula under scrutiny fail to engage young children in critical discussions and classroom practices centering on: (i) power relations; (ii) racism; (iii) whiteness; and (iv) white privilege. This critique concludes with a preliminary conceptualization of anti-racism in early childhood education.

Young children are commonly perceived as being devoid of racist inclinations or behaviors, such that they are often characterized as “racially innocent.” Yet, a long-standing record of scholarly investigations consistently indicates otherwise. Indeed, one of the earliest studies targeting children and race revealed that the onset of racial self-identification—that is, identifying with a particular aspect of one’s racial ancestry, such as skin color (Aboud 1988 )—develops between the ages of three and four (see, for example, Clark and Clark 1939 ). Since then, the pedagogical literature has begun to widely acknowledge that young children recognize racial criteria and identify with their respective racial group using collective labels and or physical characteristics (e.g., Aboud and Doyle 1995 ; Holmes 1995 ; Park 2011 ). Closely aligned with racial awareness and self-identification, and constituting a significant component of the children and race literature, are the racialized meanings children assign to in- and out-group members (and the processes that inform such perceptions).

Social scientists continue to examine how and when children develop racial attitudes, and how the content of such attitudes varies per majority and racialized group status. Correspondingly, many scholars have employed various methodologies to assess children’s racial attitudes, including dolls (e.g., Clark and Clark 1947 ); the preschool racial attitude measure developed by Williams et al. ( 1975 ); the multi-response racial attitude measure conceptualized by Doyle and Aboud ( 1995 ); and, to a lesser extent, observations of children’s play and social interactions (e.g., Van Ausdale and Feagin 2001 ). Measures that involve photos, dolls, or other visual stimuli depicting persons of different racial backgrounds also include procedures such as asking the child to select a photo that he/she believes best corresponds to a particular trait (e.g., good, bad, or kind).

Findings from investigations employing these various types of methodologies and others have shown that young white children hold positive in-group attitudes (e.g., Aboud 2003 ; Doyle and Aboud 1995 ; Gibson et al. 2015 ; Jordan and Hernandez-Reif 2009 ; Pahlke et al. 2012 ) and, overall, prefer their own racial group (e.g., Kurtz-Costes et al. 2011 ). According to Aboud ( 2008 ), researchers note a marked decrease in white children’s negative out-group racial attitudes after the age of seven. By contrast, research studies conducted with the participation of Black children have yielded mixed results. In particular, evidence suggests that Black children younger than age seven exhibit a pro-white bias, though such preference declines with age (see Aboud 1988 for review). Studies conducted with Hispanic children, though sparse, have found that they tend to prefer the dominant (white group) more than their own or other minority groups, including African Americans (e.g., Dunham et al. 2007 ; Stokes-Guinan 2011 ). In short, both white and Black and minority young children aged three-to-seven demonstrate a positive evaluation of whiteness. While some scholars attribute these findings to social cognitions, others have suggested that post-modern theories, in particular, anti-racism and critical race theory, may provide additional insights on how children draw on cultural messages, representations, and ideas about race to construct their own racial understandings (e.g., Escayg et al. 2017 ). In recent years, however, the implications of such data have informed both the scholarly dialogue and professional practices of early childhood educators.

Both theoretical orientations and empirical data on children and race point to the need for anti-bias strategies in early childhood education. Nonetheless, despite decades of research clearly indicating children’s racial prejudice, it was not until the 1990s that the early childhood field took notice of children’s racialized understandings of themselves and others (Derman-Sparks et al. 2015 ). Indeed, one practical response was the formulation of the anti-bias program (Derman-Sparks et al. 2015 ). While such body of work has received much support, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive critique of the anti-bias curriculum along with a model of early childhood education that is framed around central tenets of critical race and anti-racism theory. Specifically, the critique is framed around three central questions: (1) What are the main tenets and conceptual underpinnings of the anti-bias curriculum, and how do these guide teaching strategies that either strengthen or limit children’s understandings of race and racism? How can we deconstruct whiteness with young children by drawing on both the research data on children and race as well as central tenets of anti-racism and critical race theory, including but not limited to, the saliency of race, whiteness as property, and institutional racism?

Anti-bias education: history and overview

Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force ( 1989 ) have been widely cited as the pioneers of the anti-bias curriculum. For the purposes of this paper, anti-bias education is delineated as “an active/activist approach to challenging prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and the isms” (p. 3). Congruent with this precept, anti-bias education accents a philosophy that foregrounds children’s rights—specifically in the areas of supporting positive identity—affording equal opportunity to actualize their full potential, and providing opportunities for personal empowerment (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010 ; Derman-Sparks et al. 2015 ). More specifically, the goals of anti-bias education include the following tenets:

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 (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010 , p. xiv).

These tenets form the crux of the anti-bias curriculum and guide both teacher-led as well as child-directed learning activities. More specifically, “children’s questions, comments, and behaviors are a vital source of anti-bias curriculum” (p. 8). Conversely, educators create lessons specific to the anti-bias program, while also ensuring the classroom environment reflects anti-bias principles (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010 ). Given that the anti-bias curriculum is designed for the early years classroom, the document contains practical pedagogical advice on how to implement all four goals with children between the ages of two and five, though it is important to note that all learning activities are tailored to the child’s “cognitive, social, and emotional developmental capacities” (p. 8).

For instance, one guideline for teaching goal three is to “assess children’s misconceptions and stereotypes”, which can be done by holding “planned conversations to draw out their ideas”; and using a picture, a question, or a book to spark their insights” (p. 5). The authors also suggested that teachers “plan activities that help children learn how to contrast inaccurate, untrue images or ideas with accurate ones” (p. 5). As I have argued elsewhere (Escayg  2018 ), such are commendable, but viewed from a more critical anti-racist perspective, can be classified as preliminary strategies to guide children in challenging and refuting stereotypical images; the foundational weakness, therefore, lies in the fact that the approach to teaching children about stereotypes largely centers on questioning the “accuracy of the message.” This in of itself is not an issue, as children are encouraged to think critically; but rather, such an approach may in effect, jettison the role of racialized power in constructing and maintaining racialized imageries; in other words, failing to address the power dynamic results in a limited view on racism—and bias. In the ensuing sections, I address how educators can teach children aged four–five, and eight, about stereotypes using a critical race and anti-racist perspective.

Over the years, there have been extensions to such work (for instance, a recent contribution includes anti-bias/multicultural education for white children and families, see Derman-Sparks and Ramsey 2006 ; and a guidebook for administrators, titled Leading Anti - Bias Early Childhood Programs , by Derman-Sparks et al. 2015 ). However, the core precepts of anti-bias education remain the same, and have been routinely incorporated into the scholarly discussions on effective practices aimed at cultivating anti-bias behaviors in young children. Given its increasing popularity—and the dearth of extant critiques—in the early childhood field, it is safe to argue that the anti-bias curriculum retains a measure of pedagogical value worthy of further exploration; next, this assessment will proceed to unpack the potential strengths of the curriculum in greater detail.

One of the main advantages of the anti-bias curriculum is that it acknowledges children’s ability to construct and engage in racialized discourse. Such a prospectus also recognizes the prevalence and reality of racism in American society. Indeed, foundational literature on the anti-bias curriculum makes an explicit case for anti-bias practices by highlighting empirical data that reveal children’s awareness of racial differences and attitudes. In addition, this program fosters the development of positive racial identity of racialized children and connects such processes to outcomes beyond academic achievement, thereby accounting for children’s social and emotional well-being. Of equal significance, the anti-bias curriculum engages not only with methods of teaching and learning, but also serves to emphasize the importance of “broad systemic changes” in contexts such as those of “program policies, structures, procedures, and processes” (Derman-Sparks et al. 2015 , p. 11).

While the strengths of anti-bias education outlined above may signify a social justice approach to early learning, the limitations of this work reveal several oversights that—in the interest of scholarly and pedagogical integrity—must be addressed. Most notably, the gaps in the current discourse highlight a perceptible absence of meaningful critical discussions on the centrality of racism (not bias). Even so, bias pertains to “any attitude, belief, or feeling that results in, and helps to justify, unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her identity” (Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force  1989 , p. 3). By contrast, in this paper, similar to the conceptualizations of other scholars (e.g., Bonilla-Silva 2010 ; Feagin 2006 ), I advance the thesis that racism is not solely the adoption and enactment of racialized beliefs and attitudes, but rather, an integrated and institutionalized system of oppression— one which utilizes socially constructed categories of race, ideologies inhered in such categories, and various social structures, to maintain the privileged status of the dominant group.

With the preceding definition in mind, the fundamental flaw of anti-bias curriculum arises in that limited attention is paid to the mechanisms of white supremacy which also create, disseminate, and reinforce pathological imageries of racialized groups. Simply put, an anti-bias curriculum leaves educators—and perhaps many children as well, though I do acknowledge this as speculation on my part—with a question about the social and cultural forces that shape perceptions of other groups, namely, ‘what are the origins of such influences?’ ‘What purpose do these serve?’

The anti-bias curriculum also lacks pedagogical strategies to obtain the recognition of constitutive elements of power and privilege in the construction of racial difference, including that of whiteness. Anti-bias falls short in providing strategies that encourage children to understand how such structures comply with an unjust social order. A closer examination, however, reveals that such central flaws may derive from the conceptual framework (Escayg 2018 ) in which they are located. Accordingly, this article begins with an examination of conceptual tenets that frame anti-bias education, subsequently illustrating how central elements of the anti-bias framework pay minimal attention to power, privilege, and whiteness. The analysis of anti-racism that follows further problematizes the significance of such, while also explicating the dangers that such absences effect (predominantly the advancement of learning strategies steeped in the liberal rhetoric of tolerance while overlooking more empowering policies that facilitate discussions about racial issues, such as challenging racism). The final analysis concludes with a discussion on the principles of anti-racism in early childhood education.

Conceptual framework of anti-bias education: liberalism–pluralism

The anti-bias curriculum expounds upon key tenets of liberal–pluralism. Indeed, as Robinson and Jones Diaz ( 2006 ) have noted, such a framework shapes much of the approaches inherent in anti-bias and multicultural education. More importantly, the way in which these knowledges intersect necessitates a critical understanding of race, racism, and oppression in U.S. society. A recent definition of liberal–pluralism contextualizes such an account: the term liberalism engages with themes such as equality and individual rights (Castagno 2009 , p. 756), whereas pluralism generally refers to “equality for all cultural traditions” (Leicester 1992 , 2013 , p. 221). In keeping with a more systemic critique, however, Daniel ( 2008 ) argued that pluralism, while recognizing such differences, namely, class, race, and gender, elides the role of structural/institutional practices in maintaining sharp and inequitable distinctions along racial, gender, and class lines.

Consistent with these omissions are curricular approaches that emphasize “intercultural understanding and prejudice reduction” (Leicester 1992 , 2013 , p. 220), at the expense of a systematic analysis of racism, including its historical origins and social permutations to date. Thus, the focus on addressing diversity grows increasingly evident in the anti-bias approach. For instance, throughout the primary and secondary goals of the pedagogical system under scrutiny, scholars identify the persistent topic or “theme” of appreciation of difference. Even linguistically, this curriculum’s secondary pedagogics serve to further the main tenets of pluralism (that of finding “comfort and joy” with diversity). While I acknowledge teaching children to respect and appreciate human diversity as a commendable goal, the anti-bias curriculum instead poses a danger reminiscent of that associated with “tolerance” rhetoric, which fails to disrupt the meanings attached to racialized “others” and whites. To advance a critical consciousness in the early years, I propose that best practices facilitate critiques of the relationship between white power, privilege, and the construction of the meanings associated with whiteness and anti-blackness discourse.

In addition, an account of empirical data shows that white and minority children conceptualize whiteness in positive ways. At what point does the anti-bias curriculum provide opportunities for young children to deconstruct the meaning of whiteness? Or assist minority children in recognizing the role of power differentials in constructing representations of racialized groups? Although the more recent text, What if all the kids are white? Anti - bias multicultural education with young children and families (Derman-Sparks and Ramsey  2006 ), makes an admirable attempt, the scope of the guide falls remarkably short in this regard (for a complete review, see Amos 2011 ). There are however, other conceptual similarities that illustrate the liberal–pluralism underpinnings of anti-bias education.

Apart from the preceding list, a third pedagogical goal attempts to instantiate a means of advocacy via the rhetoric of “unfairness.” Such ambiguous terminology purports to account for the systemic underpinnings of racial oppression. By way of contrast, how can educators articulate equitable goals without situating these in a discussion of the historical processes—and contemporary ideological and material practices— that sustain privilege and power for the white dominant group? As Dei ( 2008 ) cautioned, in avoiding “the discussion of white identities and white privilege, we reproduce the dominance of whiteness” (p. 20). This poignant warning highlights one of the main limitations of the anti-bias curriculum.

This is not to say, however, that the anti-bias curriculum is bereft of pedagogical or scholarly merit. By challenging such simplistic, reductionist approaches as they center on prejudice and individual attitudes, the dialectical relationship between unequal power relations and the myriad social, economic, political, and cultural advantages afforded to the dominant group, foregrounds more in–depth analyses. In other words, anti-bias education does not link the individual with the systemic/institutional, a glaring and even harmful omission (the accumulation of data consistently reveals how white children tap into their privilege to construct their own identities and represent the “other” through dominant narratives of race). Given that the meanings superimposed on racialized bodies derive from a long-standing legacy of white privilege, and that white children clearly benefit from the “wages of whiteness,” (Du Bois, 1935 ), the following line of interrogation befits the present critique: why are pedagogical strategies for addressing power and privilege absent in the anti-bias education curriculum? Alternatively, can we attribute such woeful critical neglect to an enduring commitment to developmentally appropriate practice?

Conceptual framework: developmentally appropriate practice

One of the most influential concepts in the early childhood field is developmentally appropriate practice, which argues for teaching practices consistent with children’s age-related competencies. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children position statement ( 2009 ), such a model refers to “practice that promotes young children’s optimal learning and development” (p. 16), and is grounded in “what we know from theory and literature about how children develop and learn” (p. 10). In short, the terms acknowledge that multiple systems, such as cultural and social influences, stand to affect children’s development. However, as a primary consideration or tenet reveals—along with the 12 revelatory principles of DAP—this framework puts a significant emphasis on developmental perspectives, which, in turn, further supports superficial conversations on race (based on individual attitudes, prejudice, discrimination, etc.).

Further exegesis reveals that the anti-bias curriculum is heavily influenced by developmentally appropriate practice. Thus, any interpretations of the theoretical and practical deficiencies found in the anti-bias curriculum stand to yield—as the extant scholarly literature shows—negligible opposition. In fact, it may be perceived that abstract concepts such as power and white privilege present conceptual challenges to the understanding of young children. Interestingly, the perception of such discussions as beyond the comprehension of the preoperational minds of 4- and 5-year-olds furthers a critical exclusion of the contexts in which racial inequities operate (and their historical origins).

Such determinants may partially explain how the anti-bias curriculum yields strategies for addressing stereotypes with young children, while also failing to provide resources on how to teach them to recognize that such representations not only point to historical and economical origins, but also stem from white power and privilege. Moreover, an explicit example of evasiveness in terms of naming issues such as racism derives from the language itself (read “bias”). The preceding terminology implies subjective, individual attitudes, devoid of connection to larger societal structures; equally telling is that many apposite learning approaches are consistent with such a perspective. Of equal concern is the notion that children exhibit “pre-prejudice” and not “racism.” In addition, both terms effect developmental interpretations of children’s racial attitudes, for the predominant theories claim that until the age of seven or eight, young children do not express “true racial attitudes” (MacNaughton and Davis 2009 ).

In my opinion, such view is a theoretical myopia. For, it minimizes children’s potential to internalize racialized discourse and to behave in a manner consistent with racist beliefs, thereby unduly emphasizing age-related cognition as a central determinant in children’s understandings and expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, given that racism is endemic to American and Canadian society, and many other forms of oppression—for example, class and gender oppressions—are lived and experienced through race, educators may be held to account for the marginalizing of anti-racism discourses in early childhood education. More pointedly, in the context of early childhood education, when developmentally appropriate positions are used to classify children as “prejudiced” but not “racist”, some of these interpretations function as obscuring opportunities for transformative teaching practice even further (Vandenbroeck 2007 ).

Yet, it is important to point out that while developmentally appropriate practice may function in such a manner with regards to teaching children about racism, the overall concept, that is, of recognizing how cognition—along with other social, cultural, and contextual factors shape children’s development—is an important one to consider. Therefore, with a view towards elucidating both the strengths and limitations of developmentally appropriate practice, and in particular, analyzing this body of work from a critical race perspective, the scholarly and practical import is to problematize how developmental discourses have served as a dominant lens from which to create anti-bias teaching strategies—and how such an exclusionary focus may give rise to teaching practices that superficially address issues of race and racism with young children.

Indeed, to create research-derived teaching practices requires a multilayered, interdisciplinary lens: one which ascribes much salience to the empirical literature that shows how young white children recognize and utilize their understandings of the social privilege attached to their racial group, highlights the limitations of developmental interpretations of children and race in so far as racial discourse is concerned, incorporates post-modern perspectives (such as critical race and anti-racism), and ultimately, centers the child as an active, social agent. Drawing on all of these, in the last section (an anti-racism approach), I propose specific strategies for deconstructing whiteness with young children. To contextualize and differentiate these suggestions, however, I begin with a brief review of the anti-bias curriculum guidelines.

“Learning about racial differences”: toward an analysis of power and privilege

As applicable studies demonstrate, white privilege and power impinge upon the construction of racialized imageries and knowledges used to legitimate a racist social order. In a similar vein, anti-racism discourse affirms that power operates on both individual and institutional levels, and extends such analyses by linking the process of racialization as well as political, economic, and social white power to historical antecedents such as slavery and colonization (Adjei 2008 ). Anti-racism also recognizes that power relations shape social interactions between and among both dominant and racialized groups. Specifically, while anti-racism acknowledges the agency of the oppressed, or the ability to enact individual power, it also addresses the limitations of such practice, and attributes the latter to the hegemonic power of the dominant group (Dei 1996 ). To wit, the term “white privilege” generally refers to unearned advantages, but it is also important to note that white supremacy and white privilege are intimately linked; indeed, the former gives rise to the latter (Leonardo 2009 ).

Chiefly, the interplay between power and privilege—in particular, how such dominance relates to the social construction of difference—merits consideration chiefly, because this interchange will further illustrate a key limitation of the anti-bias curriculum. The anti-bias curriculum frames difference in remarkably similar terms to those of the grounding conceptual framework of liberal–pluralism. In fact, an additional tenet advocates for the “learning about racial difference” and the teaching of strategies aimed at demonstrating to children “the positivity of difference.” To be sure, while an auspicious goal, anti-bias falls short in explicating how and why positive meanings are imputed to the racial physical characteristics of the dominant group. To further clarify, this analysis presents a list of rhetorically aligned goals:

To encourage children to ask about their own and others’ physical characteristics.

To provide children with accurate, developmentally appropriate information.

To enable children to feel pride, but not superiority, about their racial identity.

To enable children to develop ease with and respect for physical differences.

To help children become aware of our shared physical characteristics—what makes us all human beings. (Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force 1989 , p. 31).

Tracing an overarching theme throughout the five goals—namely, the acceptance of physical characteristics that differ in accordance with racial group membership—lays bare a clear ode to the liberal rhetoric of sameness (as evinced in goal number five). The visible emphasis on learning about these differences, particularly in concrete terms, characterizes the entire philosophy. For instance, the textbook’s authors offered the following strategies:

In an all-White class, help children see differences in skin shades, including freckles, and emphasize that skin color differences are desirable. In classes of children of color, emphasize the beauty of all the different skin tones and hair textures to counter the influence of racism, which makes physical characteristics closer to “white” more desirable. In a diverse interracial/interethnic class, emphasize the theme, “Beautiful children come in all colors,” and that the classroom is a wonderful mixture of differences. (p. 36)

The foregoing excerpts shed light on several concerns. First, as a whole, similar guiding educational principles rely heavily on positive affirmation which, taken alone, is not problematic; however, when accounting for the realities of racism—and the evaluations children impute to racialized bodies—this issue calls for strategies that recognize how race and racism shape racialized and white children’s lives (grossly overlooked in the anti-bias curriculum). Simply stated, informing children of diversity in racial features without the concomitant aim of countering the negative images of racialized bodies precludes any hope for an equal emphasis on the processes, both historical and social, which allow for certain racial characteristics to be valued more than others. Clearly, dialogue and associated pedagogical practices must serve to contextualize “racial difference” by examining how meanings encompassed by difference are created through unequal power relations and white privilege.

As the scholarship indicates (see for example, Dei 2000 ; Harris 1993 ), white privilege and power enable the dominant group to construct meanings of whiteness and Blackness. Dei ( 1996 ) presciently indicated that “it is simply not enough for an educator to teach, and for students to learn, about other cultures and not engage in a project that unravels the power relations embedded in the construction of knowledge” (p. 37). Therefore, neglecting such central relationship factors in any discussion on difference stands to reinforce the same power differentials attendant upon the process of “othering,” an outcome that seems to depart, both practically and theoretically, from the explicitly stated goals of anti-bias education.

A focal point of analysis in the anti-bias curriculum, and one that reveals its fundamental flaws, most notably exposes the way in which whiteness and white identities—in relation to dominance and privilege—are absent from the proposed teaching strategies and suggestions. In fact, the supreme power of whiteness continues to refine the narratives of such models. However, to situate the discussion, this article provides a brief characterization of whiteness, and from there, it proceeds to illustrate how the learning activities found in the anti-bias curriculum and likeminded monographs, such as What if all the kids are White? , offer an inadequate exposition of the whiteness issue by failing to interrogate whiteness as privilege/property (and how this issue plays out in various social spheres, thereby creating an integrated system of racial privilege for the dominant group). Furthermore, I will illustrate how such procedures align with normative assumptions of race and racism and—even more insidiously—limits the implementation of critical anti-racism education with young children.

Deconstructing whiteness with young children

Prior to the advent of what is referred to in the scholarly literature as “Critical Whiteness Studies,” African American scholars, thinkers and writers conceptualized the various meanings of whiteness (see Roediger 1998 , for review). Building upon the significance of such writings, contemporary scholars describe whiteness as obtaining privilege (Dei 2000 ; Frankenberg 1993 ; Lipsitz 2006 ); property (Harris 1993 ); identity (Charbeneau 2015 ), and as a practice of power (Levine-Rasky 2013 ). Evidently, literary consensus indicates that whiteness obtains a system of power, albeit one not readily acknowledged by those who partake of the advantages it bestows (Applebaum 2010 ). These benefits vary in accordance with a range of positionalities (Lipsitz 2006 ), as Dei ( 2000 ) plainly stated: “Whiteness is not the universal experience of all whites” (p. 29). In keeping with such assertions, we consider how gender, class, ability, and other markers of difference may procure varied forms of white privilege. The effects of positionalities, however, while producing alternate experiences, do not negate the fact that whiteness provides a range of benefits for the dominant group (Dei 2000 ). Undeniably, the anti-bias curriculum fails to address this salient reality. Here, educators may further develop the critique by illustrating how the anti-bias curriculum reproduces the invisibility of whiteness. Such discussions inform the analysis of teaching suggestions found in What if all the kids are White?, and are further contextualized within the academic literature on whiteness and education.

At first glance, the authors offer a compelling apologia for whiteness, privilege, and institutional racism. Indeed, the text contains chapters entitled, “A short history of white racism in the United States,” and “A short history of white resistance to racism in the United States”. The inclusion of these chapters may lead readers to anticipate, in addition to a set of pedagogical tools, a contextualization of the teaching approaches/strategies in question. On the contrary, readers are left with a dearth of theory–practice connections. While the volume deploys a few sound anti-bias concepts, it fails to proffer appropriate teaching strategies that would allow for young children to name and challenge whiteness. For the purposes of this analysis, it is important to provide a comprehensive overview of the suggestions offered in the chapter entitled, “Fostering Children’s Identities.”

Three objectives undergird the suggestions provided by Derman-Sparks and Ramsey ( 2006 ). One, in particular, works toward supplanting children’s internalization of white superiority via discussions and activities that focus on developing the self, an identity “based on personal abilities and interests, family history, and culture, rather than on white superiority” (p. 51). The authors go on to characterize a secondary objective as pertaining to a child’s ability to “Know, respect, and value the range of the diversity of physical and social attributes among white people” (p. 52). A third point of reference echoes a similar spirit to that of its predecessors: “Build the capacity for caring, cooperative, and equitable interactions with others” (p. 52). Notably, the preceding objectives revolve around a central practice of emphasizing “sameness” and difference, along with opportunities for white children to acquire an “awareness of themselves as contributing and caring members of their family and their class” (p. 65). The standards for teaching and learning align with such aims, along with the conceptual underpinnings, in the promotion of a silencing of whiteness which, when juxtaposed with the authors’ recognition that white children do indeed internalize white superiority, raises several questions concerning the validity of the anti-bias education framework as a useful pedagogical tool for challenging racism and the dominant narratives that inform much of the early childhood field.

Here, contradictions between the goals of the curriculum and the implementation techniques of its teaching strategies arise, most notably when white children are provided with learning activities that fail to name white as a racial category. In a troubling invocation of white privilege, and a further normalization of whiteness, white children continue to see themselves as “individuals” and others as “raced”; therewith, we begin to gesture toward the crux of the critical issue at hand. However, the authors opt to justify their collective position by claiming that social–emotional skills such as empathy “are germane to white children in a way not usually mentioned, because they potentially help them to “unlearn” the unconscious assumptions of racial superiority and economic entitlement that have been woven into their earliest social perceptions” (p. 48). In other words, the assumption is such that if children are taught to “care,” then prejudice and bias will yield to compassion and concern for others. By contrast, evidence shows that when some whites are confronted with the harm that racism causes to racialized persons, they may openly dismiss or deny such experiences. With a mind to unpacking pertinent generalizations, can we interpret such data as pointing to a lack of compassion or empathy in white individuals? In response, the present analysis takes a more critical anti-racist stance. The ability to distance oneself from the reality of racism and to ignore the rewards it bestows on whites at the expense of racialized persons is an advantage rooted in the structure of white supremacy, a system that insulates white power through various contexts such as education (often by precluding the naming of “white” as an identity and failing to address how the construction of such an identity converges with systems of power). Thus, I would argue that the anti-bias education framework can be characterized as more of a panglossian lens than an approach consistent with critical pedagogy and anti-racist praxis.

As a close reading demonstrates, the authors categorically ignore the vocational call to deconstruct whiteness through discussions, dialogue, and classroom practice. They offer several suggestions for each learning objective, but the following are the most relevant to the present analysis:

Ensure that all of your children’s families and daily lives are equally visible throughout the environment and classroom activities. (p. 56)

Ensure that children from different income levels experience equal visibility and respect from staff and other children. (p. 59)

Engage children in investigating the physical similarities and differences among children in your classroom or center. (p. 61)

Encourage children to learn about how they have similarities and differences in preferences and interests. (p. 61)

Encourage children to expand their friendships to include the range of diversity within your group. (p. 63).

Emphasize the ways in which each person expresses caring for others and contributes to the group. (p. 63).

Common to these suggestions is an emphasis on teaching children about an individual identity far removed from any racial affiliation; for instance, class and family structure (as opposed to race); in addition, such approaches acknowledge key areas of children’s social-emotional competence, as expressed by the suggestions focused on acknowledging intergroup similarities, differences, and social skills (such as empathy).

Nonetheless, an implicit assumption persists—namely, that by removing race from the discussion and highlighting children’s personal characteristics, along with providing opportunities to discuss intergroup class differences—white children will then somehow organically develop an anti-racist white identity. Perhaps, even more problematic and thus, necessary to address, is that such omissions, in effect, re-inscribe whiteness as a position of power by leaving white racial identity unmarked, unchallenged, and unexamined. Yet, to destabilize whiteness at its locus of invisibility, it first must be exposed. As Dyer ( 1997 ) so aptly noted, “White people need to learn to see themselves as white, to see their particularity” (p. 10). Such awareness is critical to dislodging whiteness from the twin archetypes of universality and normality, guises that legitimize racial dominance by ascribing difference and racialized meanings to non-white groups.

Frankly, I argue that it hinges on naïve optimism at best, and at worst, an oversight perhaps due to the authors’ developmental perspective of children and race— if we are to assume that educators and parents can lead white children to divest their understandings of white privilege and power by avoiding substantive discussions on race and racism. More pointedly, can a colorblind approach challenge, and subsequently transform, white’s children internalization of the prevailing ideological narrative—that is, whiteness as “good” and “innocent”—in support of a racist social structure? Similar thought-provoking questions inform the discussion largely, because the research findings and the socio-political exegeses of such data cast a more realistic and contradictory gaze on the practices/theoretical assumptions undergirding the anti-bias curriculum. Indeed, as evinced by the pertinent scholarship, white and non-white children exhibit an awareness of the currency associated with white identity (see, for example, Skattebol 2005 ; Van Ausdale and Feagin 2001 ).

Considerable research literature reveals white and minority children’s positive evaluation of and identification with whiteness in American, Canadian, and international contexts. In a study examining how discourses of whiteness affect children’s constructions of race, Davis et al. ( 2009 ) found that one participant attached a specific value to white skin. When asked by the researcher to select a doll that resembled her friend, the child chose a white doll. The researcher followed up by asking the child, “And what about Franca looks like your friend?” (p. 52); to which the child responded, “Ahh... Because, ’cause I think she’s the prettiest” (p. 52). The child further elaborates her understanding of the associations between whiteness and beauty as follows: “Ahh, because she has white socks and I like white and she has blue jeans and I like blue and she has a green top and I like green. And she has, and she has white skin and I like white skin. And I like her hair” (p. 52). Germane interpretations of the data point to the influence of whiteness in shaping children’s values regarding racial characteristics such as skin color. As the authors cogently noted, “For Spot white skin is something likeable. She locates herself within a discourse of whiteness as desirable” (p. 52).

Clearly, the topic of children’s constructions of whiteness persists as a common thread throughout the research literature. In a study on the relationship between European and American mothers’ colorblind racial socialization parenting, and their preschool-aged children’s racial attitudes, findings revealed a pro-white bias, with a corresponding negative bias toward African Americans (Pahlke et al. 2012 ). These data derive from a racial attitude measure which charted positive traits (nice, pretty, honest, generous, and happy) and five negative traits (cruel, bad, dumb, awful, and selfish). Employing a similar methodology, but with a sample of light-skinned and dark-skinned African American children aged seven-to-nine, data from Williams and Davidson ( 2009 ) interracial task activity showed that participants assigned more positive traits to photos representing European–Americans. Likewise, results from the intraracial task in which children were asked to assign positive and negative traits to stimuli depicting African Americans of light and darker skin tones revealed a similar bias for lighter skin tones. Indeed, these findings dovetail with previous studies that show the stark contrast in white and minority children’s in- and out-group evaluations. Simply stated, children recognize the sociocultural currency of whiteness, and white children, as the research suggests, are not only aware of their privileged position, but ascribe a measure of saliency to it as well. Considering the empirical data, it is, therefore, essential to critically examine how the anti-bias curriculum—via pointed teaching and learning activities—addresses such beliefs regarding whiteness in young children.

As previously stated, children raised in Euro-Canadian and Euro-American familial contexts recognize that whiteness obtains cultural and social significance. Working with this central notion, an effective deconstruction of white children’s understandings of their identity and how the latter affords a position of privilege, calls for a concerted anti-racism approach. Similarly, for some racialized children, an anti-racism education in the early years may also assist in dismantling the myth of white superiority by not only providing counter-images but also counter-narratives; such critical discussions will allow children to understand how white power and privilege work to racialize “others,” while simultaneously upholding whiteness as the standard of human worth.

Anti-racism education in the early years: an introduction

In developing a definition of anti-racism early childhood education, I draw on and extend Dei’s ( 1996 , 2011 ) and Kailin’s ( 2002 ) anti-racism/racist theories, while considering some of Husband’s ( 2012 ) elements of early childhood anti-racist pedagogy, and offering some of my own theoretical components. Although these contributions influence how I conceptualize an anti-racist approach to early childhood education specifically, I also build on such work by addressing not only the domains of teaching and learning, but also parental relationships, institutional practices (such as the lack of a national anti-racist early childhood policy, see Escayg  2018 ), play-based learning (Escayg et al.  2017 ), as well as the knowledge base of early childhood education (Escayg 2019a ). For space purposes, however, this section explores practical ways to teach children (4–5-year-olds and 8-year-olds) about white privilege, racial ideologies (racial ideas/messages), as well as provide counter-narratives so as to equip students with the tools to identify and to reject the discourse of white superiority.

While challenging children’s perceptions of race is a central goal, anti-racism early learning activities should also enable children to recognize how racial ideologies contribute to systemic inequities between dominant and non-dominant groups. Indeed, anti-racism foregrounds an intersectional analysis of oppression and the institutional nature of racism, in the interest of moving beyond the focus on “individual prejudice and biases” most commonly found in the canon of anti-bias curricula. Taking the institutional analysis a bit further by locating such within the discipline of early childhood education, anti-racism examines and critiques the influence of Eurocentric knowledges on the governing epistemologies of early childhood education (Escayg 2019a ). Concomitantly, early childhood education with an anti-racism underpinning “focuses on institutional and individual mechanisms that reify whiteness, limit critical discussions on race and racism, and silence diverse knowledges and experiences” (Escayg, 2019a , p. 11). An anti-racism approach in early childhood education—particularly with an emphasis on the four–five age group (as much scholarship on children and race indicates that this age group represents the onset of racialized thinking)—moves from emphasizing the individual attitudes and prejudices to opening new analytical pathways that will highlight the systemic nature of racism, link these to discussions of power and privilege and racial ideologies, and ultimately, demonstrate the interconnected relations among of all these components.

In short, anti-racism early years practice assists young children with understanding the range of experiences that white privilege produces for whites. As well, anti-racism early childhood education provides children with the knowledge and skills to critique white supremacy. From an educational standpoint, anti-racism pedagogy demands that we guide young children to recognize racism as a systemic and salient reality; it compels us to be truth seekers, tracing the origins of racial ideologies and exposing how such narratives (working in tandem with white power) are germane to racial inequities that continue to persist across a wide range of institutional contexts. Anti-racism recognizes that racism inflicts injuries to the intellect and the spirit; so, it actively supports the decolonization of children’s minds. For, as Amos ( 2011 ) duly noted, “The attempt to educate White children about privilege and power from an early age has thus far been neglected” (p. 554). In order to do so, however, it is first important to translate these terms, such as white privilege and power, into teaching activities that while critical, are also within the reach of children’s comprehension/ability levels.

Anti-racism: teaching and learning about white privilege and power

This is not to suggest that deconstructing whiteness should be approached from solely a developmental point of view, but rather, to consider how to retain central components by way of utilizing concrete yet substantive strategies. For instance, one central character of whiteness is white privilege. As scholars have noted, white privilege is both economic and psychological (e.g., Jackson 2011 ; Lipsitz 2006 ). For young children, learning activities that draw attention to the economic aspects of white privilege as well as a positive representation of whiteness (Escayg  2018 ) can offer tangible examples of the concept, thereby providing a richer understanding of race and class interconnections. One strategy, as I have stated elsewhere (Escayg 2019a ), and which is congruent with Husband’s ( 2012 ) activity of assessing children’s prior knowledge about race, is for teachers to have discussions with children that tease out the connections between and among racial identity, privilege, and power.

For instance, one way to elicit if whether or not children recognize how white identity affords certain privileges, is to ask a question in a whole group discussion, such as, What does it mean to be white? For older children, such as 8-year-olds, questions such as, What is life like for a child who is white? What is life like for a child who is Black? can also provide additional information about children’s racial awareness (Escayg 2019b ). Based on the responses, the teacher can also explain to the children the concept of privilege by creating a unit that focuses on not only the representation of whites and other racial groups in positions of power and authority, but also questioning the reasons for the power imbalances that allow for the underrepresentation (and misrepresentation) of racialized groups. The goal for this unit would be for children to recognize how white privilege and power work in tandem to construct racial ideologies (Escayg  2018 ), and how such representations, in turn, secure socio-economic opportunities for the dominant group (Escayg 2019a ). Using a visual chart that depicts different racial groups along with visual representations of specific occupations, the teacher can ask the following preliminary questions:

Who can be a ________?

Why_________?

Who can never be a __________?

Drawing on the students’ responses, the educator will then have to explicitly draw the connections among racial ideologies, and power and privilege. In order to do so, I suggest the educator use the analogy between a truth and a lie. The “lie” in this instance, would be the specific racial ideologies (i.e., white superiority). Then, the teacher would explain to students that this “lie” was created to ensure that one group of people maintained their power in society. To explain the term “power” to children, the teacher should use the term “control.” The teacher can make this concept even more concrete by demonstrating to children how one group “controls” all the different areas of society (again, props representing different institutions would be useful). Similar to the anti-bias approach, the teacher can then ask students to consider if this system is fair to everyone. To challenge the stereotype further, the educator should use examples of individuals, for instance, Black or other minority professionals, who do not fit with the child’s/children’s stereotypical perceptions of the specific racial group. In doing so, the myth of white superiority is also undermined as counter examples show that positive attributes are not exclusive to the dominant group only.

However, the pedagogical practice of deconstructing whiteness, as it relates to the elements of power and privilege—including how and why such elements are normalized (and their benefits for the dominant group)—should not be confined to the participation of white children only. As the canon of anti-racist literature attests, African American thinkers and writers have also variously defined the meaning of whiteness. In sum, by extending such narratives to include the perceptions and lived realities of young African American and minority children, educators stand to strengthen the empirical literature, and to yield empowering opportunities for children of color to discover and critique the structural influences that give rise to and support negative representations of non-white persons (as well as the role of power and privilege in structuring divergent lived realities for racialized groups, ranging from the economical to the social).

Efforts to address diversity and afford young children with the opportunity to thrive in early childhood contexts have been well documented in the scholarly literature. These works, however, with few exceptions, offer teaching strategies aimed at educating young children about difference in ways that impute little analyses of race and institutional/systemic racism. Prominent in such regard is the widely cited anti-bias early childhood curriculum. Since developmentally appropriate practice and tenets of liberalism undergird the anti-bias approach, this may partially explain the content of its suggestions and learning activities.

Given the global hegemony inscribed unto white identity, and the ongoing racism confronting people of color, it would indeed serve as a form of gross negligence to the social development and well-being of children should current (and future) early childhood educators dismiss the significance of anti-racism education, and fail to engage in sustained self-reflection of their own understandings concerning race and racism. Contrary to the banter of the so-called colorblind ideologues, “race is real,” to the extent that it imparts a range of privileges for the dominant group while constructing a separate and remarkably different reality for racialized persons. It is, therefore, both prudent and just to ensure that while we advocate for developmentally appropriate practice, we also assume our responsibility for guiding children in the adoption of ways of thinking, acting, and seeing their social worlds, such that, hopefully, we may preserve the collective pursuit of a more equitable, anti-racist society.

Availability of data and materials

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• Anti-racism
• Young children
• Racial awareness
• Racial attitudes

Anti-Bias Education in the Early Childhood Classroom

Learn practical tips for creating an inclusive and equal learning environment by incorporating anti-bias education in your early childhood classroom.

• brightwheel

Implementing anti-bias education in early childhood settings is not only about correcting misconceptions or preventing prejudice; it's about laying the foundation for a more inclusive, understanding, and empathetic society.

For childcare providers, incorporating anti-bias principles means deliberately creating an environment where every child feels valued and understood, regardless of their background. This includes choosing educational materials that showcase cultural diversity, promoting activities that nurture empathy, and encouraging open conversations that challenge stereotypes.

In this article, we'll explore anti-bias teaching strategies, activities, and resources you can use in your preschool classroom.

What is anti-bias education?

Anti-bias education emphasizes using an inclusive curriculum reflective of diverse experiences and perspectives to develop a safe learning community and, hopefully, community at large. It also allows biases to be acknowledged, explored, and respectfully challenged. 

The biases you acknowledge can vary but can include the following:

• Gender identity
• Sexual orientation
• Learning style
• Socioeconomic status

Why is anti-bias education important?

While we might like to think that we don’t allow our biases to impact us in the classroom, they can play a significant role in how we instruct children. According to a recent study of almost 70,000 teachers, 77% demonstrated implicit bias, and 30% showed explicit bias. Jordan Starck, the study's author, stated, “Teachers are probably more well-intentioned than the general population, but they still have the same bias levels.”

This study shows that the majority of adults carry biases. These beliefs are often passed on to children who grow up to carry the same beliefs. Anti-bias education is designed to end this cycle. 

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) , there are four primary goals of anti-bias education: identity, diversity, justice, and activism. 

Here’s a brief overview of these goals to further explain why anti-bias education is crucial.

We want our children to develop a strong sense of who they are and feel pride in their background and family structure. Positively acknowledging and describing their personal and group identities sets the foundation for a solid anti-bias education.

After gaining confidence in their own identity, children will learn that one identity isn’t better than another. Then they can develop the understanding that people have similarities and differences and there’s beauty in our diversity. We ultimately want them to know how to treat everyone with respect, no matter how different they might seem.

With an understanding of identity and diversity, children will learn to identify and acknowledge that bias can hurt themselves and others. They’ll develop the age-appropriate vocabulary to explain prejudice and its impact on others. This goal requires critical thinking, a powerful skill to practice as they learn what is and isn’t “fair.”

The final goal is for children to stand up for themselves and others when bias occurs. They may respectfully stand up to peers (and maybe even adults) who say unkind words and exclude others or treat others unjustly. The goal is for them to learn appropriate and respectful ways to call out biases and stand up against them. 

Anti-bias teaching strategies

With the goal of anti-bias education in mind, here are a few strategies you can use to accomplish the goal.

Diversify your curriculum

You can teach the same curriculum in various ways, and it’s ideal to do so in a manner that incorporates diverse perspectives and experiences . These should reflect your children, your community, and the world. 

An easy way to do this is to choose books highlighting diverse experiences . You can easily show people of different backgrounds having ordinary life experiences. Keep in mind that books showing diversity don’t have to be centered around the characters experiencing unjust acts. 

Address biases you see

You can model how to acknowledge and address bias while teaching. Maybe you’re reading a book where everyone is the same in some way. Perhaps they’re the same race, or their hair is all the same. Use this as an opportunity to highlight the bias. You can do the same with games, flashcards, and videos. 

Share stories of people who fought against biases

You can share the stories of people throughout history up to the present day who have fought against biases. While sharing information about these individuals, you can also discuss how groups worked together to fight against biases. For example, sharing the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. shows how a great man did even greater things with the thousands of people who marched with him to fight for the ideals he firmly believed in. 

Discuss children’s biases

There will be plenty of opportunities to have age-appropriate conversations about the biases occurring in your classroom. Have a discussion if you hear children making inappropriate statements. It can be a one-on-one discussion with a child, a small group discussion with those involved, or a class discussion for everyone. You can decide based on the context and what’s most appropriate. Allow the children to follow your example and speak respectfully and thoughtfully during the discussions. This allows them to use their critical thinking skills to examine their own biases and question the assumptions they carry.

Anti-bias curriculum activities

The activities you introduce to your preschoolers will help them develop a more inclusive and equitable worldview. In turn, they will show more understanding and empathy toward others. 

Here are some anti-bias curriculum activities you can incorporate in your early childhood classroom. 

• Celebrate identity with art: Allow the children to showcase their identity through art. Provide them with crayons, markers, and construction paper that reflects their skin, hair, and eye colors. If adding different art mediums, you can also involve materials that more accurately represent their hair type and other features. 
• Share what makes you unique: Everyone is different, and the more we acknowledge those differences, the better. You can have a “show and tell—unique edition.” During this activity, allow your children to bring something from home that represents their uniqueness and share it with the class. 
• Acknowledge holidays celebrating diversity: Teachers can use holidays and other celebrations to introduce children to a range of cultural traditions and observances from around the world. This approach turns each holiday into a learning experience that broadens children's perspectives and fosters a sense of global citizenship.  Here are some examples:
• February: Black History Month , a great time to honor the contributions Black people have made to our country and around the world
• April 2: World Autism Day, a day used to spread extra awareness about autism 
• May: Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month , a month to honor and celebrate the contributions and culture of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States
• June: Pride Month , a month dedicated to the celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride
• August 30: Al-Hiriji, which marks the start of the New Year for Muslims

As you create your lesson plans, remember you don’t have to start from scratch. Brightwheel's learning feature makes lesson planning a breeze. Easily customize your curriculum to suit any anti-bias goal you have for your classroom.

Anti-bias early education resources

You don’t have to figure out how to create a more inclusive anti-bias classroom on your own. Many anti-bias early education resources are available to help you teach about diversity, equity, and inclusion in a developmentally appropriate manner. 

Here are a few options to consider:

• Curriculum guides: Companies develop curriculum guides across all grade levels explicitly teaching anti-bias and incorporating it into other lessons. You can turn to these curriculum guides as you develop plans for your classroom. 
• Professional development: You and your staff can turn to workshops, webinars, courses, and other training materials to learn how to understand and address bias and discrimination with your preschoolers in a way they’ll understand. 
• Books: There are numerous books on anti-bias and multicultural education that can provide you with a deeper understanding of the topic.
• Bias assessment tools: To better teach your children how to address their biases, you want to ensure you’re managing yours. As the leader of anti-bias education, you can understand and acknowledge any thoughts and beliefs you have that are discriminatory. Utilize various assessment tools to help you understand your underlying biases.
• Professional organizations: Many organizations advocate for anti-bias education, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Research the resources they have available to learn more on this topic.

Use anti-bias education to positively influence your preschoolers 

We live in a world full of diversity. From our culture to our appearance, to our family dynamics to physical and mental ability levels, we see commonalities and differences everywhere we look. If we can teach our children early on that differences make us unique, it will put us in a position to drastically reduce bullying, bias, and discrimination. It’s never too soon to teach your children to value, respect, and include everyone in their classrooms and communities.

Brightwheel is  the complete solution for early education providers , enabling you to streamline your center’s operations and build a stand-out reputation. Brightwheel connects the most critical aspects of running your center—including sign in and out, parent communications, tuition billing, and licensing and compliance—in one easy-to-use tool, along with providing best-in-class customer support and coaching. Brightwheel is trusted by thousands of early education centers and millions of parents. Learn more at  mybrightwheel.com .

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Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education in Action: The Early Years

Judi morosohk.

• April 30, 2021
• Anti-Bias Education , Educators , Leaders

A Film by Debbie LeeKeenan, John Nimmo, Filiz Efe McKinney to create a more just and equitable society.

As I interact with directors and educators across our schools, I’m heartened to hear how people are continuing to use a lens of inclusion, equity, and anti-bias in their daily thinking and practice. To support us on our collective and individual journeys, a new resource has become available. It’s a film entitled, Reflecting on Anti-bias Education in Action: The Early Years , and it can be accessed free, online. It’s filled with the voices of diverse early childhood educators committed to equity in their daily practice. Through the voices of these educators, this film beautifully shares vignettes of anti-bias strategies in the daily life of ECE classrooms. It also models educators engaged in thoughtful reflection on their practice, demonstrating the power and value of teacher reflection. This film is a fabulous resource for educators who are on an anti-bias journey and it’s free to view, with a downloadable guidebook available to support ongoing Professional Development and reflection. Louise Derman-Sparks is the senior advisor on this project and the film is grounded in her four interrelated goals of Anti-Bias Education espoused in her books   Anti-Bias Education for Our Children and Ourselves (with Julie Olsen-Edwards and Catherin Goins ) and  Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change  (with Debbie LeeKeenan and John Nimmo).

  Goal 1 – Identity:  Demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities. Goal 2 – Diversity: Express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections. Goal 3 – Justice: Recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts. Goal 4 – Action: Demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discrimination.

As the film states, “Anti-Bias Education is the foundation of our vision for children for the future, no matter who we are, no matter where we live, no matter where we work.” They end the film by asking how your voice will shape this vision. I echo that wondering for the educators in our community and hope you are all asking yourselves the same question. What a wonderful new resource this film is in keeping alive our active inquiry into the ways in which we can all expand our understanding and practice of how to be Anti-Bias Educators. Hopefully, the results of our labors will bring about a generation of children who will help to create a more just and equitable society for everyone.

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Implementing Anti-Bias Education

Anti-bias education aims to create a space where everyone feels included and accepted. Educators who follow this philosophy constantly examine their words and actions in order to make sure they are not being harmful towards those who are marginalized. In this article, the term “Other” will be used to refer to anyone who is not a privileged, heterosexual white male, and as such, can be oppressed and marginalized in society. This term is from the article “Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education” by Kevin K. Kumashiro (2000) and enables references to various types of people who suffer mistreatment without listing them all. Taking this term into consideration, it is important to encourage young minds to be inclusive towards everyone, no matter their background, culture, economic class, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or values, in order to create a more inclusive society. Strategies to do so include using inclusive material, integrating the Other into the class content, and promoting inclusive interactions between students and teachers and others.

Being aware of how literature represents stereotypes or disadvantages the Other is difficult to accomplish, as we all have subconscious biases. Many literary works subconsciously include harmful biases towards the Other and such, it is difficult to implement literature that perfectly represents the Other in a non-biased way (Killoran, Panaroni, Rivers, Razack, Vetter & Tymon M.Ed, 2012, p.153; Kumashiro, 2000). However, it can also be beneficial to consider that “the ability to keep the imagination alive and to provide opportunities for children to recognize and reject biased behavior is a rewarding experience for children and educators alike” (Killoran et al., 2012, p.153). This strategy allows educators to have a much wider variety of literature, and to use literature with their students to critically analyse how the Other is being represented. In turn, the students become more critically aware of the world around them and of the words and actions that may be detrimental towards the Other.

It is sometimes hard to recognize the biases that lead to how we categorize the Other. People have been categorized so often that it is difficult to recognize that a group is being categorized in the first place. This is why it is important for teachers to try to become aware of these generalizations by critically observing the content and material they use. Maurulis (2000, p.28) also suggests that educators teach their students to accept the Other by telling “a story that is independent of the culture its characters represent.” One way of doing this, according to Maurulis, is to present versions of common stories, such as fairy tales, which have the Other as the main character. An example of such a book could be Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion by Alex T. Smith. This book tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood from an African perspective. It includes dark-skinned characters and a lion instead of a wolf. It gives a lot of power to Little Red Riding Hood as she solves the problem using her own wits. This allows students to become more comfortable with the Other and they can more easily relate to them.

What Does an Anti-bias Classroom Look Like?

• Materials used in a classroom that embraces anti-bias education are chosen to promote inclusivity of all. Posters and artwork aim to demonstrate acceptance and respect for everyone; for example, posters include children who have different appearances and skin tones. The walls are “covered with the children’s artwork, to show that they are valued and that their classroom is a place where the world of their families can be fully represented” (Corson, 2000, p.386).

• Books incorporate various types of Others in order for everyone to feel included and accepted. Literature used in the classroom does not support stereotypes and is not harmful towards the Other. Maurulis (2000, p.27) explains how she “analyze[s] each resource, and [asks herself] what it is saying to [her] students and what values, beliefs, ways of thinking and perspectives it presents.”

• Course content is aimed to include everyone and the many different stories and perspectives of the Other. Teachers include various perspectives in all school subjects, to “attempt to establish a learning atmosphere where multiple truths and perspectives are encouraged and represented” (Maurulis, 2000, p.28).

• Students are encouraged to share their own perspectives and stories surrounding the particular school subject. By allowing all students to share their perspectives and their stories, it is possible to discourage generalizing the Other and categorizing/stereotyping people. Students thus begin to realize that everyone has their own particular story, which is not defined by their cultural background, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or income, among other categories.

• Students are encouraged to be critical of school content that is presented to them. Students examine who has produced the material, if the material tends to leave out certain stories and perspectives, and if the material generalizes people into certain categories. For example, by “Encouraging students to question their reactions to stereotypical behavior [teachers help] dismantle the sexist ideologies that are ever-present in society” (Killoran et al., 2012, p.152).

• Visitors who are diverse and who support the notion of inclusivity are invited into the classroom. Maurulis (2000, p.30) believes in the importance of bringing “many people into [the] classroom as guest speakers, presenters, and helpers, who are different in numerous ways from [the] students.”

• Educators integrate the message of being respectful, kind, and inclusive towards everyone, no matter the circumstances. Teachers promote the message that people accept everyone as unique individuals. By treating all students as unique, educators help them to accept who they are while allowing them to feel like they are an important part of the classroom community and of the community outside of the classroom (Maurulis, 2000, p.29).

• Teachers create opportunities for students to work with different types of people. Given the choice, students tend to select friends to be their work partners. Educators counteract this practice by trying to group students in various ways, so they work with people with different opinions and experiences from themselves. By placing students with various types of people, we show “children how to relate to each other and get along with people who are different from themselves” (Maurulis, 2000, p.27).

In Conclusion

By using inclusive material, integrating the Other into the class content, and promoting inclusive interactions with everyone, educators are able to create an anti-bias classroom. By integrating the Other into the classroom content, teachers train students to become more critical of the perspectives of different people. Educators aim to foster an environment where students learn to relate to diverse types of people so that they can become more inclusive towards everyone. Anti-bias education can greatly help to improve society, as it will assist students to become citizens who are more respectful and inclusive towards others, which will aid the world in becoming a happier place for all.

Corson, P. (2012). Laying the Foundation for Literacy: An Anti-Bias Approach. Childhood Education. Retrieved from https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/doi/abs/10.1080/00094056.2000.10521187

Killoran I., Panaroni M., Rivers S., Razack Y., Vetter D. & Tymon D. M.Ed (2012). Rethink, Revise, React. Using an Anti-bias Curriculum to Move beyond the Usual. Childhood Education , 80:3, 149- 156. doi:10.1080/00094056.2004.10522794

Kumashiro, K. K. (2000). Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education. Review of Educational Research , 70(1), 25–53. doi:10.3102/00346543070001025

Marulis, L. (2000). Anti-bias teaching to address cultural diversity. Multicultural Education , 7(3), 27. Retrieved from https://proxy.library.mcgill.ca/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy3.library. mcgill.ca/scholarly-journals/anti-bias-teaching-address-cultural-diversity/docview/216501647/ se-2?accountid=12339

Yu, H. M. (2020). Understanding Race and Racism Among Immigrant Children: Insights into Antibias Education for All Students. Early Childhood Education Journal, 48(5), 537–548. doi:10.1007/ s10643-020-01021-z

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennah Goguillot Jennah Goguillot from Nanaimo, BC, is currently a third-year education student at McGill University.

This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2022 issue.

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I unintentionally created a biased AI algorithm 25 years ago – tech companies are still making the same mistake

Professor of Computer Science, Dickinson College

Disclosure statement

I worked for Microsoft from 2003-2007.

Dickinson College provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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In 1998, I unintentionally created a racially biased artificial intelligence algorithm. There are lessons in that story that resonate even more strongly today.

The dangers of bias and errors in AI algorithms are now well known. Why, then, has there been a flurry of blunders by tech companies in recent months, especially in the world of AI chatbots and image generators? Initial versions of ChatGPT produced racist output . The DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion image generators both showed racial bias in the pictures they created.

My own epiphany as a white male computer scientist occurred while teaching a computer science class in 2021. The class had just viewed a video poem by Joy Buolamwini, AI researcher and artist and the self-described poet of code . Her 2019 video poem “ AI, Ain’t I a Woman? ” is a devastating three-minute exposé of racial and gender biases in automatic face recognition systems – systems developed by tech companies like Google and Microsoft.

The systems often fail on women of color, incorrectly labeling them as male. Some of the failures are particularly egregious: The hair of Black civil rights leader Ida B. Wells is labeled as a “coonskin cap”; another Black woman is labeled as possessing a “walrus mustache.”

Echoing through the years

I had a horrible déjà vu moment in that computer science class: I suddenly remembered that I, too, had once created a racially biased algorithm. In 1998, I was a doctoral student. My project involved tracking the movements of a person’s head based on input from a video camera. My doctoral adviser had already developed mathematical techniques for accurately following the head in certain situations, but the system needed to be much faster and more robust. Earlier in the 1990s, researchers in other labs had shown that skin-colored areas of an image could be extracted in real time. So we decided to focus on skin color as an additional cue for the tracker.

I used a digital camera – still a rarity at that time – to take a few shots of my own hand and face, and I also snapped the hands and faces of two or three other people who happened to be in the building. It was easy to manually extract some of the skin-colored pixels from these images and construct a statistical model for the skin colors. After some tweaking and debugging, we had a surprisingly robust real-time head-tracking system .

Not long afterward, my adviser asked me to demonstrate the system to some visiting company executives. When they walked into the room, I was instantly flooded with anxiety: the executives were Japanese. In my casual experiment to see if a simple statistical model would work with our prototype, I had collected data from myself and a handful of others who happened to be in the building. But 100% of these subjects had “white” skin; the Japanese executives did not.

Miraculously, the system worked reasonably well on the executives anyway. But I was shocked by the realization that I had created a racially biased system that could have easily failed for other nonwhite people.

Privilege and priorities

How and why do well-educated, well-intentioned scientists produce biased AI systems? Sociological theories of privilege provide one useful lens.

Ten years before I created the head-tracking system, the scholar Peggy McIntosh proposed the idea of an “ invisible knapsack ” carried around by white people. Inside the knapsack is a treasure trove of privileges such as “I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race,” and “I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.”

In the age of AI, that knapsack needs some new items, such as “AI systems won’t give poor results because of my race.” The invisible knapsack of a white scientist would also need: “I can develop an AI system based on my own appearance, and know it will work well for most of my users.”

One suggested remedy for white privilege is to be actively anti-racist . For the 1998 head-tracking system, it might seem obvious that the anti-racist remedy is to treat all skin colors equally. Certainly, we can and should ensure that the system’s training data represents the range of all skin colors as equally as possible.

Unfortunately, this does not guarantee that all skin colors observed by the system will be treated equally. The system must classify every possible color as skin or nonskin. Therefore, there exist colors right on the boundary between skin and nonskin – a region computer scientists call the decision boundary. A person whose skin color crosses over this decision boundary will be classified incorrectly.

Scientists also face a nasty subconscious dilemma when incorporating diversity into machine learning models: Diverse, inclusive models perform worse than narrow models.

A simple analogy can explain this. Imagine you are given a choice between two tasks. Task A is to identify one particular type of tree – say, elm trees. Task B is to identify five types of trees: elm, ash, locust, beech and walnut. It’s obvious that if you are given a fixed amount of time to practice, you will perform better on Task A than Task B.

In the same way, an algorithm that tracks only white skin will be more accurate than an algorithm that tracks the full range of human skin colors. Even if they are aware of the need for diversity and fairness, scientists can be subconsciously affected by this competing need for accuracy.

Hidden in the numbers

My creation of a biased algorithm was thoughtless and potentially offensive. Even more concerning, this incident demonstrates how bias can remain concealed deep within an AI system. To see why, consider a particular set of 12 numbers in a matrix of three rows and four columns. Do they seem racist? The head-tracking algorithm I developed in 1998 is controlled by a matrix like this, which describes the skin color model. But it’s impossible to tell from these numbers alone that this is in fact a racist matrix. They are just numbers, determined automatically by a computer program.

The problem of bias hiding in plain sight is much more severe in modern machine-learning systems. Deep neural networks – currently the most popular and powerful type of AI model – often have millions of numbers in which bias could be encoded. The biased face recognition systems critiqued in “AI, Ain’t I a Woman?” are all deep neural networks.

The good news is that a great deal of progress on AI fairness has already been made, both in academia and in industry. Microsoft, for example, has a research group known as FATE , devoted to Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI. A leading machine-learning conference, NeurIPS, has detailed ethics guidelines , including an eight-point list of negative social impacts that must be considered by researchers who submit papers.

Who’s in the room is who’s at the table

On the other hand, even in 2023, fairness can still be the victim of competitive pressures in academia and industry. The flawed Bard and Bing chatbots from Google and Microsoft are recent evidence of this grim reality. The commercial necessity of building market share led to the premature release of these systems.

The systems suffer from exactly the same problems as my 1998 head tracker. Their training data is biased. They are designed by an unrepresentative group. They face the mathematical impossibility of treating all categories equally. They must somehow trade accuracy for fairness. And their biases are hiding behind millions of inscrutable numerical parameters.

So, how far has the AI field really come since it was possible, over 25 years ago, for a doctoral student to design and publish the results of a racially biased algorithm with no apparent oversight or consequences? It’s clear that biased AI systems can still be created unintentionally and easily. It’s also clear that the bias in these systems can be harmful, hard to detect and even harder to eliminate.

These days it’s a cliché to say industry and academia need diverse groups of people “in the room” designing these algorithms. It would be helpful if the field could reach that point. But in reality, with North American computer science doctoral programs graduating only about 23% female, and 3% Black and Latino students , there will continue to be many rooms and many algorithms in which underrepresented groups are not represented at all.

That’s why the fundamental lessons of my 1998 head tracker are even more important today: It’s easy to make a mistake, it’s easy for bias to enter undetected, and everyone in the room is responsible for preventing it.

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Teens say state Holocaust education mandates are only as good as the schools that adopt them

This article was produced as part of  JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship , a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

( JTA ) — Framed postcards from my great grandmother, Leah, line the walls of my grandmother’s sitting room. Leah received the letters after immigrating to America in the 1920s. She voyaged alone as a teenager, leaving her family of eight and her village of Preili, Latvia behind. One day, the postcards stopped coming. The Nazi Einsatzgruppen killed the entire Jewish population of her village, an estimated 1,500 people. 

Even as a young child, I knew of the inherited trauma shared among Jewish people. My Jewish elementary school, Levey Day School, located a block from my house in Portland, Maine, was a bubble of pluralism. A Holocaust memorial sits on one corner of the campus, and I knew its significance.

When I entered public middle school, I was, for the first time, surrounded by people lacking the generational memory of the Holocaust. The slights I encountered there, which continued into high school, reflected the absence of Jewish representation: I was required, on multiple High Holidays, to attend school for exams; once, a friend accosted me for “only ever talking about being Jewish.” Education focused on the Holocaust was largely absent. 

I wasn’t the only one who noticed this shortfall in the curriculum. Five years ago, Maine’s legislature passed a law that required teaching of the Holocaust, along with Maine studies and African American history, in public schools. Maine is now among the 40 states in the U.S. that have legislation regarding Holocaust education in public schools, according to Echoes and Reflections , a partnership that supports Holocaust education.  

Do such laws really work? I spoke to a few students who live in one of these 40 states with Holocaust education mandates. In schools that seriously prioritize abiding by such mandates and including diverse perspectives in their curriculum, students feel their peers are less likely to speak insensitively about the Holocaust and Jewish people.

However, where schools largely ignore the states’ Holocaust education suggestions, students observed peers speaking and acting more often from ignorance or bias.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the formation of a Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Oct. 6, 2021. (Governor Newsom’s office)

For as long as he can remember, Jonathan Primus, 13, has attended the Beth Israel Congregation, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where a group of anti-Israel protestors demonstrate on the sidewalk every Shabbat . They carry signs denying the Holocaust, condemning Zionism and supporting antisemitic conspiracy theories.  

Primus understood from a very young age that antisemitism is pervasive. He has Holocaust survivors in his own family, learned about Jews’ history of facing persecution from his parents, and discovered his Jewish identity at his elementary Jewish day school.

Once Primus entered middle school, however, the Holocaust education he and his non-Jewish peers received was largely limited to memorizing names and dates. Primus says that if people knew more about this historical event which “had a really terrible impact on humanity and society, they’d probably be less likely to engage with the kind of” antisemitic rhetoric that his synagogue confronts each week.

Reports of persistent and growing anti-semitism in the U.S. and beyond have led Primus to believe that Holocaust education should be included in schools’ curriculum along with coverage of current events. He says that educators need to show that “these things are still happening in the world,” that the messages from back then are still spreading.

Avi Greene, 17, lives in Richmond, Virginia, where a 2009 law required that the all schools be provided with a teacher’s manual on Holocaust education . Greene said that despite this, his high school had minimal Holocaust instruction built into the curriculum. In his English class they discussed the literary aspects of Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” but ignored the history and current relevance of its themes. 

Greene wishes the Holocaust and antisemitism were addressed with as much care as other social issues. His school hosts a guest speaker monthly to discuss topics relevant to students like racial inequity and the importance of representation in government. Greene said the program has had a real impact, but that it is critical for all injustices to be understood. He’d like his school to shed light on Holocaust denial and misinformation as well. Having guest speakers in particular, he says, is an ideal way of “helping another people to feel heard.

By contrast, Hannah Mahboubi, 18, credits the meaningful coverage of the Holocaust at Beverly Hills High School for the lack of antisemitism she has observed. California, where Jews make up 3 percent of the population, mandated Holocaust education in 1985 . This year, Mahboubi’s school, which has a large Jewish population, brought in Jewish survivors and activists as guest speakers in response to the rise in antisemitism since the the war in Israel started. Mahboubi says it’s important to provide people with information about the Holocaust but that it needs to come from “reliable sources and reliable people” in order to convey the emotion that accompanies the facts. 

The Holocaust memorial at the Levey Day School in Portland, Maine. (Courtesy)

Even in an area with a considerably smaller Jewish population than Beverly Hills, Jillian Lieberman, a freshman at Holland Hall High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, learned about the Holocaust from a young age through Hebrew school and her family. Her eighth-grade curriculum included an in-depth unit on the Holocaust. Following the unit, she said, people made fewer jokes and addressed the subject more respectfully. 

Oklahoma’s law went into effect last school year. The Jewish population of Oklahoma makes up just 0.1% of the state’s residents, ranking 48th in the country. 

In my state, the bill mandates the inclusion of Holocaust education in Maine’s learning standards. The Department of Education conducted a review of these standards in the summer of 2023, revising them to reflect the new bill. Once this part of the law was carried out, all responsibility for incorporating new curriculum fell independently to schools.

Maine’s Commissioner of Education, Pender Makin, said that unlike Massachusetts or Vermont, Maine’s constitution guarantees various municipalities the right to manage curriculum on a local level. Laws like the Holocaust eduction mandate, she explained, actually “don’t have any legislative authority at the Department of Education level.”

Instead, enforcement is up to local school boards and, often, to individual teachers. Because several curriculum-related laws were passed in recent years, Makin said, teachers and school boards may have had to make sacrifices, overlooking some standards in favor of others. As a result, Holocaust education can be easily neglected.

Eli Tuchinsky’s experience suggests why Maine’s schools could benefit from a Holocaust mandate with real teeth. At his middle school in Portland, Maine, Tuchinsky witnessed two of his peers making a Heil Hitler salute. They assured him that they didn’t mean it “in that way.” Eli blames the lack of education, in part, for this kind of incident.

Matthew Bernstein, a social studies teacher at Portland’s Casco Bay High School, said that the lack of context, the “true absence of knowing,” leads students to make comments or scribble a swastika on their papers. “I think that’s where education becomes so powerful,” he said. “Without context, you see this symbol and don’t know what it really means or connects to.” 

The work of educators who have prioritized teaching the Holocaust shows that the most impactful lessons come from those with direct connections to the history. Anna Wrobel, a historian, poet and educator in Falmouth, Maine comes from a family of refugees similar to my own. Wrobel took lessons in combating antisemitism from her immigrant parents, Jewish history and the Holocaust into the classroom with her. Still, years later, she gets messages from former students. They say that learning about the Holocaust with her was one of “the most important steps in their educational careers.” It taught them “what it meant to be a human being,” she said.  

As the stories of survivors retreat further into the past, preservation of the lessons they convey becomes the responsibility of a new, young generation. When schools prioritize giving students direct and tactile connection to the tragedies of the Holocaust, they preserve the dignity of victims. As one student noted in her testimony in support of Maine’s Holocaust education bill, “It is our job to continue to better the world, and to do this we must be educated about the horrors the world has created, is creating, and will continue to create if we don’t stop it.”

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Anti-Bias Education and Holidays: Making Thoughtful Decisions

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Acknowledging or celebrating holidays in early childhood programs can bring pleasure to many families, staff, and children and can be useful in building connections between school and families. However, holidays also pose a range of challenges to ensuring that all children, families, and staff feel respected and to children learning about diversity of families. Whether or not to include any holidays in your curriculum, and what activities to use if you do, requires thoughtful decision making.

In this blog, by the authors of the current as well as the upcoming second edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edward lay out some principles about how programs and teachers can think about holidays in their classrooms. Catherine Goins, who worked with Louise and Julie on the second edition, and Julie Bisson’s book Celebrate! An Anti-Bias Guide to Including Holidays in Early Childhood Programs, have contributed to the authors’ thinking.--Editors

Specific holidays and religious observances are not universal

All cultures commemorate beliefs, historical events, and people significant to the culture through special celebrations and holidays from daily work. These differ from each other. In almost all early childhood settings, the beliefs and traditions of some families may differ from those of others. Even within groups that honor the same holiday, how individual families celebrate will reflect both similarities and differences. Yet, conflicting celebrations may also have common ground. Knowing the purpose and worldview underlying a holiday will help you make decisions about what role, if any, you want that holiday to play in your program. 

Secularized or commercialized versions of holidays are not culturally or religiously neutral 

Both the NAEYC Code of Ethics and the anti-bias education approach make respecting family diversity a cornerstone of quality early childhood programs. Honoring the cultural diversity among the families you serve means recognizing that all have the right to their traditions and that the ECE program does not favor one category of families over another.

Arguing that it is okay for a program to celebrate a dominant culture religious holiday, on the rationale that the props and activities connected to the holiday are “not specifically religious, but just fun” and therefore okay for everyone (e.g., Christmas trees, Santa Claus, cards, and gift giving, or Easter bunnies and egg hunts), does not respect cultural and religious diversity. Instead, it lifts up one group’s holidays above others. Regardless of how commercially advertised or widespread these secular approaches may be, they are grounded in specific religious and cultural assumptions. Even some Christian families see these as pagan appropriations that trivialize one of their two most important holy days of the year. For the many families of other faiths, the activities are inseparable from the underlying meaning of the religious rituals themselves (after all, a Christmas tree is still a Christmas tree, and the Easter bunny is the Easter bunny). Other kinds of designated holidays often included in early childhood program activities may be based on beliefs or practices that negate some families. For example, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, in the traditional narrative, recognize only one type of family. Yet, most early childhood education programs now serve a wide range of families, many of which have configurations that differ from the one mother and one father family structure. And all dominant culture holidays reflect a particular perspective about historic events and particular groups of people who are admired and those who are erased.

So what is a teacher to do? Are there ways to acknowledge holidays, to have celebrations, to honor families that are respectful in a highly diverse world? The answer is yes. Here are some key ideas.

Emphasize children learning about each other’s family holidays, rather than celebrating them

Celebrating a holiday engages children in holiday activities as full-fledged participants, on the assumption that their families believe in the holiday’s purpose and meaning. Learning about a holiday means teaching children about what the holiday means to different people and about the many different ways those families who honor the holiday celebrate it. Teaching about a holiday requires that teachers make very clear that the class can enjoy learning about each other’s holidays while holding to their own family’s beliefs and traditions. Celebrating a particular holiday is appropriate in faith-based programs or in programs in which the holiday is truly lived by every family in the program. Even then, it’s important to clarify that within any belief system, different families celebrate in different ways.

Respect all families' holiday traditions and their specific ways of celebrating—or not celebrating

It is hurtful to children and families to impose celebrating of the holidays of one group on all the children and staff, or to make the holiday traditions of some groups visible while others are invisible. Respecting the cultural diversity among the families you serve means recognizing that all have the right to their traditions. This does not mean that you must teach about every holiday your families practice. It does mean that you make choices that do not disrespect or leave out any family.

Pay attention to the language you use in holiday activities

This is an important element in children learning about, rather than celebrating, a holiday grounded in a specific faith or celebrating a historic event. This is especially necessary in publicly funded programs where religious teaching is not allowed by law. Your language choices also support or undercut the concept of religious diversity and each family’s freedom of choice. The challenge is to choose words that focus on the history of the special day and that also make clear the diversity of beliefs. These are topics that require clarifying conversations.

Consider creating unique class or school celebrations

In addition to, or instead of, celebrating the holidays observed by children’s families, some teachers create their own celebrations for various parts of the school year. This approach makes it possible for every child to participate in shared special days with the rest of the class. They also can build school–family connections and community within a program. Celebrations can be respectful—for example, “Honoring Our Families” get-togethers; “Thanking the People Who Make Our School Work” (cook, janitor, bus driver, etc.) days; or occasions for “Recognizing Family and Neighborhood Heroes.”

Celebrations can also be whimsical and playful—for example, “Bring Books Alive Day” (making and wearing costumes from books, eating foods from favorite books, acting out favorite stories); “Pajama Day” (wearing pjs and slippers to school, telling bedtime stories, sharing family bedtime rituals); or “Backwards Day” (wearing clothes backwards, doing things in reverse order of an ordinary day). They can also be used to mark the passing of the year with an annual end-of-year picnic or potluck dinner. Some schools also have graduation ceremonies or “You’re Off to Kindergarten” parties for children transitioning out of the programs.

Help children understand when a staff member or child cannot participate 

Teaching respect for diversity includes helping children understand that families have different ways of acting, and these may not be the same as the behaviors in their own family. This is certainly true regarding holiday practices. Consider the following holiday examples:

A mother brings a special lunch to school for her child’s birthday. She does not realize it is Ramadan, when observant adult Muslims fast between dawn and dusk. She is upset when Edward, a student teacher, doesn’t eat anything. She complains to the head teacher that both her and her daughter’s feelings were hurt. The head teacher explains Edward’s right to practice fasting. She also tells Edward that the child was puzzled by his not eating the special lunch. Edward makes sure to talk with the child that the next day. He explains why he hadn’t eaten and assures the child that he is happy for her birthday.

Here is an incident where a student teacher allows her personal feelings to undercut a basic practice of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

The kindergarten has spent a few days learning about Passover. During a discussion of the Seder ceremony, the teacher explains the meaning and tradition behind matzo. Esther, one of the Jewish children, states that she cannot eat leavened bread during the whole week of Passover. The next day a birthday celebration for another child includes cupcakes from the birthday child’s family.

A student teacher, enjoying her cupcake, gives Esther a piece because she feels sorry about “depriving” Esther. Luckily, the teacher notices the conflicted expression on Esther’s face and intervenes: “Esther, do you know that cake is made with leavened flour and that you can’t eat it during Passover?” Esther nods her head. “Let’s freeze your piece and you can eat it after the holiday.” Esther relaxes, gives her cake to the teacher, and goes off to play. Unfortunately, the teacher had not thought to check ahead of time with Esther’s family when the birthday celebration was scheduled during the Passover holiday. If she had, she might have planned with them—for example, asking if the the birthday child’s family might check with Esther’s family about bringing a non-leaven cookie or pastry for Esther.

Understanding the different ways people do and don’t celebrate; learning accurate, respectful vocabulary about holidays; broadening children’s worldview of what a holiday is—these are all wonderful, powerful learning outcomes for children about holidays. Activities that foster these objectives prepare children to live in a diverse society with respect while cherishing their own beliefs. Taking the time to thoughtfully discuss how to make respectful learning about holidays a part of your curriculum is worth the results when all children and families feel that they are cared about and belong in your program.

This blog is a part of Equity in Action, a blog series exploring the many ways early childhood educators and administrators, higher education faculty members, policymakers, advocates, and other ECE allies can bring the new Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement to life in practice and policy.

Louise Derman-Sparks, MA, has worked with children and adults in early childhood education for more than 50 years and is a faculty emerita of Pacific Oaks College. She is coauthor of several books, including Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change , Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves , and Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach .

Julie Olsen Edwards,  coauthor of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves , was on the faculty of Cabrillo College’s early childhood education department for 45 years. A lifetime activist for children and families, she continues to write, teach, and consult on issues of equity, diversity, and anti-bias.

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