Learning to Give, Philanthropy education resources that teach giving and civic engagement
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Purpose:
This lesson challenges learners to recognize prejudice and examine how they perceive others. Learners discover how prejudices are learned, and they reflect on recognizing their biases.
Duration:
One 20-minute lesson
Objectives:
The learner will:
- define prejudice and stereotyping and give examples.
- identify attributes of school and home cultures.
- Extension: reflect in writing on "respect," prompted by a quote from President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Service Experience:
Learn more about the stages of service-learning.
This character education mini-lesson is not intended to be a service learning lesson or to meet the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. The character education units will be most effective when taught in conjunction with a student-designed service project that provides a real world setting in which students can develop and practice good character and leadership skills. For ideas and suggestions for organizing service events go to www.generationon.org.
Materials:
- Five pictures of people (photos, magazines, or internet images). Choose a variety of pictures, each representing a different ethnic, socio-economic, racial, and/or age group. (See Teacher Preparation in this lesson and sample pictures in Attachment One.)
Teacher Preparation:
Before the lesson, select images of people to show the students. Try to select people from different cultural, religious, ethnic, racial, gender, socio-economic, and age groups. These images may come from personal photos, magazines, or the Internet (http://www.bingrewards.com/images/search?q=People+Walking&FORM=IGRE3). The purpose of the exercise is to get students to make snap judgments about the people in the photos. This will create awareness that we all make judgments. The first judgment we make is on appearance as we try to fit people into preexisting categories in our minds. This is human nature, but it is important to be aware of this tendency so we can open our minds to learning more about people as we get more information. Locking into our first impressions is the start of prejudice. The photos you select may have one or more person per photo.
Instructional Procedure(s):
Anticipatory Set:
Have learners number a piece of paper from one to five. Display one at a time the five pictures selected for the lesson. (See Materials and Teacher Preparation.) Ask learners to write the first thought that comes to their minds as each picture is displayed. Leave the picture on display for no more than twenty seconds.
- Display the following definitions:
prejudice: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason; to pre-judge
stereotype: an oversimplified opinion formed by assuming that someone has given attributes because he/she is a member of a certain group or class - Have the learners move into discussion groups of four or five students. Direct the learners to discuss the given definitions and discuss with one another whether the first thoughts they wrote down about each of the five people in the pictures involved stereotyping or prejudice. Have the learners ask themselves the question. " Did I pre-judge this person on appearance alone?"
- Return to the whole group. Have volunteers share what they discovered about their own prejudices. Discuss, being sure to emphasize that no one is born with prejudice but that we all have "learned" prejudice.
- Tell the students that one of the ways to avoid prejudice is to recognize attributes of one's own culture. If we identify the traits of ourselves that we learn and value, we realize we have a point of view, or unique culture. This may be formed by home, faith, preferences, things we like to spend time on, what we appreciate in others, and what we don't like.
- Have the students name some attributes of the school culture that may be different than other cultures (what we value, emphasize, respect, spend time on). Encourage them to think about the culture in their homes and extended families.
- Ask, "How does recognizing your own culture help you show respect for others' cultures?" (Self-respect leads to respect of others.)
From the Learning to Give Grade 6-8 unit Respecting Diversity: The Road to Tolerance
Cross-Curriculum Extensions:
- Display this quote: "If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better." --President Lyndon Baines Johnson
- Ask the learners to write at least five sentences in their journals reflecting on how the Johnson quote relates to what they have learned about respect--self-respect and respect for others.
Lesson Developed By:
Betsy FlikkemaAssociate Director
Learning to Give
Barbara Dillbeck
Director
Learning to Give
Unit Contents:
Overview:Character Education: Respect (Grade 6) Summary
Lessons:
- 1.
- Defining Respect
- 2.
- Respecting Diversity
- 3.
- Investigating Respect
- 4.
- Carefully Taught
- 5.
- Respect in Action
All rights reserved. Permission is granted to freely use this information for nonprofit (noncommercial), educational purposes only. Copyright must be acknowledged on all copies.
