Why Do We Need Anti-Bias Education?
Effective early childhood educators are committed to the principle that all children deserve to develop to their fullest potential. At the same time, the world is not yet a place where all children are equally responded to and have equal opportunity to become all they can be. Listen to the voices heard in early childhood programs:
A 10-month-old infant cries instead of eating when placed at a table with other classmates in his child care program. When the teacher talks with the infant’s mother about it, she learns that the family still feeds the infant because in their culture, children do not begin eating by themselves until they are a little older. The teacher says rather indignantly, “Well, we do not have the staff to do that. You have to teach your child to feed himself.”
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A preschool teacher announces that the children will make cards for Father’s Day. “I don’t want to!” defiantly states a 4-year-old from a family with a single mom. The teacher shrugs and says, “We’re making cards today. So, you make a card too.”
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A 4-year-old child newly arrived from Armenia starts his first day at a neighborhood preschool with an English-only policy. When he returns home, he tells his mother, “My teacher couldn’t hear anything I said!” The next day his mom asks the preschool director about this, and she suggests, “Perhaps your son wasn’t paying attention.”
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“This is supposed to be a happy painting. Why are you using all that black paint?” observes a teacher to a young child at an easel.
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“You’re a baby, you can’t play with us,” a group of preschoolers tell a classmate who uses a wheelchair and who wants to join their play. “It’s fun being the baby,” the teacher says cheerfully, hoping to encourage the children play together.
Damage is done when children do not see their families reflected and respected in their early childhood programs and when they experience confusing expectations and messages about how to act that contradict those they get at home. Children are injured when they receive messages about themselves that say they are not fully capable, intelligent, or worthwhile.
Teachers become anti-bias educators when they recognize that it hurts children’s development when adults do not actively support children’s family identities or
when adults remain silent when children tease or reject others because of who they are. Children need to feel good about themselves without developing a false sense of superiority based on who they are. Messages and actions that both directly and indirectly reinforce harmful ideas and stereotypes about people undermine children’s sense of worth, especially when they come from someone as significant to them as a teacher. Lupe Cortes, a Head Start teacher, recalls,
I still remember that many adults put me down when I was a child, like saying, “Oh, she is just a little Mexican girl.” These comments really affected how I felt about myself, and I vowed I wouldn’t do the same to someone else. As a teacher, I wanted to break that cycle.
When teachers and families integrate the four ABE goals into teaching and childrearing and engage children in positive, informative conversations about human diversity, children develop the conviction that who they are is valued and important. When adults help children notice and address unfairness, even very young children are able to be strong and clear in standing up for themselves and others. Listen to the voices of children who have experienced ABE in their schools:
Several 3-year-olds (Asian, White, and Latinx) are at the art table playing with small mirrors while they paint on paper ovals. As they look at their eyes, Jesse starts crooning to himself, “Oh, pretty eyes, pretty eyes. Lots of different eyes, pretty eyes, pretty eyes. Brown and blue, pointy, round. Pretty eyes, pretty eyes.”
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Some children are imitating the Native American characters they saw in a Peter
Pan movie, running around the yard making whooping noises and pretending they have tomahawks. One of the children, Skyler, puts up her hand to stop them and says firmly, “That’s not what Indians sound like. They have words. Real words. And you’ll hurt teacher Claudia’s feelings—’cause she’s Cherokee.”
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In a pre-K class where the teacher engages children in examining stereotypes and omissions in their classroom books, 5-year-old Walker writes in awkward printing, “This book is irregular. It doesn’t have any women in it.”