American Schools Get Hate Speech Wrong

Teachers have been refining their curricula to improve student outcomes by emphasizing science and math. This is valuable work because it addresses important deficits in U.S. education. But it stops short of what’s really needed.

A growing body of evidence points to the importance of teaching inclusiveness especially to young students as a bulwark against the rising tide of extremism. Failure to address this topic will lead to continued increases in discrimination and violence against minorities.

Hate crimes have been rising steadily in recent years against Asian Americans, Black Americans, Jews, and Muslims. Education can be an antidote – through civics classes, diversity awareness and training in the workplace.

As a researcher and a Muslim survivor of genocide suffered by the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s, I support a deeper education, a sustained effort to make children from preschool onward feel like they are part of society. This should include new approaches to teaching, special readings, and extracurricular activities.

Research shows that failure by schools to create a sense of belonging results in “educational displacement,” a profound disaffection that can propel children toward self-exclusion, attraction to people with extreme ideologies, explorations of radicalization, and ultimately, violence.

These outcomes can stem from real or perceived experiences of victimhood, such as white people in the U.S. who fear replacement by people of color and immigrants. But the result is often the same: an embrace of hatred and cruelty.  

Such feelings of displacement are rampant in U.S. schools. In recent surveys, a majority of students in more than 40 states said that they don’t have mentor-like bonds with their teachers, aren’t learning about issues they care about, don’t feel included by teachers in classroom activities, don’t feel a sense of belonging in their schools, and don’t read stories that reflect their experiences. Fewer than 1 percent believe that their teachers are equipped to address incidents of biased behavior or speech.

The solution is inclusive education. A team at Teachers College at Columbia University funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed a curriculum to build resilience against hatred that includes lessons about self- and community-awareness, mentorship, social connectedness, empathy, and nonviolent problem solving. It utilizes storytelling as a tool to help both marginalized and non-marginalized students. For example, if a teenaged Muslim girl reads a book with a sympathetic Muslim character, she will be less susceptible to extremist recruitment. A white classmate who reads the same book will be less likely to subscribe to a far-right narrative after discovering a shared love of education, sports, music, or pets.

Strong evidence suggests that bias against groups because of their values and beliefs – Muslims in particular – is likelier to result in feelings of educational displacement. No group is more predisposed than any other toward extremism and violence. But bias toward Muslims seems to be more keenly felt, normalized, and potentially more alienating for the recipient.

Fear of Muslims is a potent mobilizer. In Bosnia, Serb forces used it to justify the genocide against Muslims. Thus, understanding people of other faiths, however different they might be perceived to be, is especially important. Or, in the words of Dr. Mohammad Abdulkarim bin Al-Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League, believers of every faith ought to engage in dialogue and “live together in peace and promote the welfare of all those around us.”

There have been encouraging recent developments to that end such as last year’s United We Stand Summit at the White House and interfaith discussions like the one held recently at Teachers College between Dr. Al-Issa, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Rabbi Arthur Schneier, senior Rabbi at the Park East Synagogue in New York, during the inauguration of the school’s new International Interfaith Research Lab.

Educators – particularly at graduate schools of education, which stand at education’s headwaters – must embrace this change. Turning the tide of hatred through education is a long-term project. But it must begin now. Waiting endangers lives.

Amra Sabic-El-Rayess is Executive Director of the International Interfaith Research Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University.