The four core goals of anti-bias education
By Rod Dreher
Rawlings School of Divinity
CLED 720: Biblical & Theological Foundations of Education
Genevieve Hamer
July 3, 2022
The four core goals of anti-bias education
Four core goals provide a framework for the practice of anti-bias education with children.
Grounded in what we know about how children construct identity and attitudes, the goals help
you create a safe, supportive learning community for every child. They support children’s
development of a confident sense of identity without needing to feel superior to others; an
ease with human diversity; a sense of fairness and justice; the skills of empowerment; and the
ability to stand up for themselves or for others.
Goal 1: Identity
Teachers will nurture each child’s construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual
personal and social identities.
Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social
identities.
This goal means supporting children to feel strong and proud of who they are without
needing to feel superior to anyone else. It means children will learn accurate, respectful
language to describe who they and others are. Teachers will support children to develop and be
comfortable within their home culture and within the school culture. Goal 1 is the starting place
for all children, in all settings.
Adding to early childhood education’s long-term commitment to nurturing each child’s
individual, personal identity, anti-bias education emphasizes the important idea of nurturing
children’s social (or group) identities. Social identities relate to the significant group
categorizations of the society in which we grow up and live and which individuals share with
many others. Social identities include (but are not limited to) gender, racial, ethnic, cultural,
religious, and economic class groups. (In the forthcoming book, social identity is described in
detail in Chapter 2.) A strong sense of both individual and group identities is the foundation for
the three other core anti-bias goals.
Goal 2: Diversity
Teachers will promote each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people
from diverse backgrounds.
Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for
human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human
diversity.
This goal means guiding children to be able to think about and have words for how people
are the same and how they are different. It includes helping children feel and behave
respectfully, warmly, and confidently with people who are different from themselves. It
includes encouraging children to learn both about how they are different from other children
and about how they are similar. These are never either/or realities because people are
simultaneously the same and different from one another. This goal is the heart of learning how
to treat all people caringly and fairly.
Some teachers and parents are not sure they should encourage children to “notice” and
learn about differences among people. They may think it is best to teach only about how people
are the same, worrying that talking about differences causes prejudice. While well intentioned,
this concern arises from a mistaken notion about the sources of bias. Differences do not create
bias. Children learn prejudice from prejudice—not from learning about human diversity. It is
how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.
Another misconception about Goal 2 is that exploring differences among people ignores
appreciating the similarities. Goal 2 calls for creating a balance between exploring people’s
differences and similarities. All human beings share similar biological attributes, needs, and
rights (e.g., the needs for food, shelter, and love; the commonalities of language, families, and
feelings) and people live and meet these shared needs and rights in many different ways. A
basic premise in anti-bias education is “We are all the same. We are all different. Isn’t that
wonderful!”
Goal 3: Justice
Teachers will foster each child’s capacity to critically identify bias and will nurture
each child’s empathy for the hurt bias causes.
Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe
unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
This goal is about building children’s innate, budding capacities for empathy and fairness,
as well as their cognitive skills for thinking critically about what is happening around them. It is
about building a sense of safety, the sense that everyone can and will be treated fairly.
Learning experiences include opportunities for children to understand and practice skills
for identifying unfair and untrue images (stereotypes), comments (teasing, name-calling), and
behaviors (isolation, discrimination) directed at themselves or
at others. This includes issues of gender, race, ethnicity, language, disability, economic class,
age, body shape, and more. These are early lessons in critical thinking for children, figuring out
what they see and hear and testing it against the notions of kindness and fairness.
These lessons build on young children’s implicit interest in what is “fair” and “not fair.”
As children come to identify unfair experiences and as they learn that unfair can be made
fair, children gain an increased sense of their own power in the world. Children cannot
construct a strong self-concept, or develop respect for others, if they do not know how to
identify and resist hurtful, stereotypical, and inaccurate messages or actions directed toward
themselves or others. Developing the ability to think critically strengthens children’s sense of
self, as well as their capacity to form caring relationships with others.
Goal 4: Activism
Teachers will cultivate each child’s ability and confidence to stand up for oneself and
for others in the face of bias.
Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others
or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
Goal 4 is about giving children tools for learning how to stand up to hurtful and unfair
biased behavior based on any aspect of social identity. Biased behavior may be directed at
oneself or another. It may come from another child or adult or from children’s books,
television, and films. This goal strengthens children’s development in perspective taking,
positive interactions with others, and conflict-resolution education.
Actions of teasing, rejection, and exclusion because of some aspect of a child’s social
identities are a form of aggressive behavior. They are just as serious as physical aggression. The
old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is false.
Children’s developing sense of self is hurt by name-calling, teasing, and exclusion based on
identity. And children who engage in such hurtful behaviors are learning it is acceptable to hurt
others, the earliest form of bullying. An anti-bias approach calls on teachers to intervene gently
but firmly, support the child who is the target of the biased behavior, and help both children
learn other ways of interacting.
Children’s growth on Goal 4 strengthens their growth on the other three goals. If a child is
the target of prejudice or discrimination, she needs tools to resist and to know that she has
worth (Goal 1). When a child speaks up for another child, it reinforces his understanding of
other people’s unique feelings (Goal 2). When children are helped to act, it broadens their
understanding of “unfairness” and “fairness” (Goal 3).
Guidelines for your curriculum
Just about every subject area in the typical early childhood program has possibilities for
anti-bias education themes and activities. For instance, early childhood education themes of
self-discovery, family, and community are deeper, and more meaningful, when they include
explorations of ability, culture, economic class, gender identity, and racialized identity. So, too,
issues of fairness (Goal 3) and acting for fairness (Goal 4) arise as children explore various
curriculum topics.
Differences do not create bias. Children learn prejudice from prejudice—not from learning
about human diversity. It is how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.
The ideas for specific anti-bias education content and activities come from three major
sources. One is from children’s questions, interests, or interactions with each other that
classroom teachers see as important to respond to and develop. Teacher-initiated activities are
a second source of anti-bias activities, based on what classroom teachers and families think is
important for children to learn. A third source is significant events that occur in the children’s
communities and the larger world that classroom teachers think need to be explored with
children.
