Berkeley County Schools provides teachers with lesson plans for students from the organization Learning for Justice

Incidents


Berkeley County Schools has several documents online labeled “Equity and Inclusion Lesson Plans.” Topics to teach students include “gender and sexual identity,” “justice,” “activism,” and “tolerance.” Each document also directs teachers to visit websites for the organizations Zinn Education Project, Anti-Defamation League, and Teaching Tolerance, which is now Learning for Justice, to find lessons “on topics of diversity, social justice, and multiculturalism.”

In one document labeled “Interact Respectfully with Diverse Cultures,” the school links to a lesson plan from Learning for Justice that has teachers “brainstorm and review aspects of identity with students, including social identifiers/identity group descriptors outlined by the Framework for Anti-bias Education.” The document lists the topics of this lesson plan as “Identity, Anti-Bias, Diversity, Family Structure, Culture, Gender, Justice, Social Identifiers.” Another lesson on the document is labeled “Who Am I? Race Awareness Game.” The lessons in this document are identified for students in kindergarten through the second grade.

The Learning for Justice plan has students focus on their identity.

Another document is titled “Assume Responsible Leadership” and has numerous links to Learning for Justice for plans that include the topics of “gender and sexual identity,” “race and ethnicity,” “anti-bias,” and “activism.” The lessons appear to push students to become political activists.

Two more documents are titled “Exhibit Respectful Behavior” and “Maintain Positive Relationships.” Both documents carry the same themes and similar lesson plans as the previous “Equity and Inclusion” documents.

The organization Learning for Justice is known for pushing its “Social Justice Standards” to be adopted in schools throughout the country. The document for these standards includes goals to achieve for students. One goal is that “students will develop language and historical and cultural knowledge that affirm and accurately describe their membership in multiple identity groups.” Another goal appears to outright state that the purpose of the “Social Justice Standards” is to turn students into political activists: “Students will make principled decisions about when and how to take a stand against bias and injustice in their everyday lives and will do so despite negative peer or group pressure.”

Learning for Justice promotes “social justice education.”