The frightening effect of ‘Trump Talk’ on America’s schools
A report issued in April titled, “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on Our Nation’s Schools,” said that the primary campaign was so divisive that it was having a “profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.” The report, by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teacher Tolerance project said:
It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.
Since the report was issued, concerns about many things that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said about women, Muslims, Mexicans and other people have only heightened, and teachers increasingly find themselves handling the fallout.
In this post, Mica Pollock, a professor of education at the University of California at San Diego, looks at the effect that she calls “Trump Talk” has on students, teachers and school climate, and discusses how educators should respond.
Pollock is the author of several books on race talk in schools, including the forthcoming “Schooltalk: Rethinking What We Say About — and To — Students Every Day.” An anthropologist and design researcher, she is professor of education studies and director of the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at the University of California at San Diego. As director of the center, Pollock works with colleagues to network the university’s people, resources and opportunities to the diverse K-12 educators, students, and families of the San Diego region, with the particular goal of supporting low-income, underrepresented students toward college and rewarding careers.
By Mica Pollock
Children and youth hear the words adults hear. They hear them on the Internet, over a shoulder and repeated by other kids on the playground or in the classroom. And words matter. They shape what young people think about themselves, each other, adults and their country.
From Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, young people have heard distorting claims about Mexicans as rapists to deport and distrust, of Muslims as violent anti-Americans who should be banned from entry to the United States, of African Americans as people living in hellish inner cities, of women as people to grope without permission, and of The frightening effect of ‘Trump Talk’ on America’s schools - The Washington Post:
