Navigating November 4th

Posted by Kaitlin Smith on November 4, 2020

As we await the outcome of last night’s presidential election, teachers are faced with unique challenges. Many questions surface: How do we process the diverse range of reactions that these events may provoke in our students? And how can we do it without venturing into partisan territory that may alienate, divide, and exclude? How can we process our own emotional reactions to these events while still showing up for students? The answers to these questions will continue to show themselves over the coming weeks but below are a number of resources that educators can use to navigate these demands starting today.

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Topics: voting, civil discourse

Making Sense of the Debate: 6 Resources

Posted by Mary-Liz Murray on October 1, 2020

The history of debate and civil discourse between candidates running for political office in the United States has long been held up as a pillar of our elections process and our democracy. Typically used as a means to debate policy publicly, defend positions, and appeal to voters, debates bring candidates into the same space and ask them to adhere to a set of agreed upon rhetorical rules of engagement. As we approached the first 2020 presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, many hoped for a sound policy discussion that would leave them with a strong sense of each candidates’ beliefs and positions. What we saw instead was a distressing abandonment of our accepted norms and expectations of civil discourse in favor of a confusing, hostile, and demoralizing exchange on the global stage.

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Topics: voting, civil discourse

The Importance of the Educated Voter

Posted by Roger Brooks on November 5, 2018

The act of voting is the most important contribution every single eligible voter can make to insure the health of our democracy. Yet year after year, a discouraging number of eligible voters choose not to pull the levers of power. In advance of the midterm elections, Facing History CEO Roger Brooks stops to consider the impact of non-voters, and worse, uninformed voters in an OpEd published on CNN.com:

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Topics: Democracy, voting

Voting for the First Time During a Turbulent Election: One Student's Story

Posted by Stacey Perlman on January 12, 2017

The 2016 presidential campaign will go down as one of the most divisive in US history. Read what it was like for high school senior, Lilly Hackworth, to vote for the first time during such a contentious race and how she used Facing History and Ourselves to help her navigate such a turbulent political climate.

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Topics: Democracy, voting

Facing Ourselves is Not Easy

Posted by Liz Vogel on December 8, 2016

A month since the US presidential election has passed and I'm still reflecting on events from the first days following the results. It has over-delivered on what I feared most: an open platform for bigotry, hate, and violence:
 
White students in schools chanted "Build the wall,'" "White power," and "Heil Hitler."  White students formed a "wall" to block Latino students from entering school.  Rainbow flags burned.  Confederate flags raised.  Muslim girls and women attacked on the subway, on the street, in stores, and in school.
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Topics: Democracy, voting, Racism

Standing Up to Hate

Posted by Laura Tavares on December 1, 2016

 

In the days following the presidential election on November 8, incidents of slurs, threats, and harassment—racist, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, homophobic, and sexist in nature—have spiked across the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, received more than 700 such reports as of November 18.  

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Topics: Choosing to Participate, voting, difficult conversations

Why Reconstruction Matters After this Election

Posted by Jeremy Nesoff on November 17, 2016

Before the US presidential election, Eric Liu wrote in a recent article in the Atlantic, “Whatever the outcome on Election Day, more than 40 percent of American voters will feel despondent, disgusted, and betrayed.” As we face this reality together, we have a chance to learn from the pivotal dilemmas and choices of our nation’s past as we pick up the pieces from the exhausting 2016 election cycle. We can look to the aftermath of the Civil War—another period of deep division within the US—to better understand how we got to this current divisive moment filled with vitriolic rhetoric.

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Topics: Democracy, Voting Rights, Reconstruction, voting

At Facing History and Ourselves, we value conversation—in classrooms, in our professional development for educators, and online. When you comment on Facing Today, you're engaging with our worldwide community of learners, so please take care that your contributions are constructive, civil, and advance the conversation.

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Welcome to Facing Today, a Facing History blog. Facing History and Ourselves combats racism and antisemitism by using history to teach tolerance in classrooms around the globe.

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