"The focus of tolerance education is to deal with the concept of equality and fairness. We need to establish confidence with children that there is more goodness than horror in this world"
About this Quote
Tolerance education, Morris Dees argues, must be anchored in equality and fairness, not just in a vague call for kindness. These are concrete civic values that can be taught, practiced, and measured in classrooms and communities. They ask students to examine rules, distribution of opportunities, and the treatment of people unlike themselves, and to develop habits of empathy and justice rather than mere politeness.
Dees brings the authority of lived struggle to the point. As cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, he fought the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups in court, while also helping launch Teaching Tolerance, a program designed to equip educators to address bias. Confronting organized hatred could lead easily to despair, yet he insists on cultivating in children a grounded confidence that goodness outweighs horror. Without that confidence, lessons about injustice can curdle into fear, apathy, or a brittle us-versus-them mentality.
Children are already exposed to violence and outrage, amplified by headlines and algorithms. The human mind leans toward negativity bias, remembering dangers more vividly than everyday cooperation. Education can counterbalance that tilt by pairing an honest account of prejudice and harm with stories of solidarity, repair, and progress: neighbors who protect one another, institutions that hold abusers accountable, movements that expand rights. Such narratives do not sugarcoat; they demonstrate that fairness can be pursued and achieved through effort.
Focusing on equality and fairness turns tolerance into civic practice: listening across difference, recognizing dignity, sharing power, resolving conflict, and standing up for those targeted. Confidence in the predominance of goodness does not deny horror; it supplies the moral energy to confront it. Dees’s courtroom victories and classroom initiatives converge on the same insight: when young people learn to trust that justice is possible and to see themselves as agents of it, tolerance becomes more than endurance. It becomes the daily work of building a society where fairness is expected and goodness has room to grow.
Dees brings the authority of lived struggle to the point. As cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, he fought the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups in court, while also helping launch Teaching Tolerance, a program designed to equip educators to address bias. Confronting organized hatred could lead easily to despair, yet he insists on cultivating in children a grounded confidence that goodness outweighs horror. Without that confidence, lessons about injustice can curdle into fear, apathy, or a brittle us-versus-them mentality.
Children are already exposed to violence and outrage, amplified by headlines and algorithms. The human mind leans toward negativity bias, remembering dangers more vividly than everyday cooperation. Education can counterbalance that tilt by pairing an honest account of prejudice and harm with stories of solidarity, repair, and progress: neighbors who protect one another, institutions that hold abusers accountable, movements that expand rights. Such narratives do not sugarcoat; they demonstrate that fairness can be pursued and achieved through effort.
Focusing on equality and fairness turns tolerance into civic practice: listening across difference, recognizing dignity, sharing power, resolving conflict, and standing up for those targeted. Confidence in the predominance of goodness does not deny horror; it supplies the moral energy to confront it. Dees’s courtroom victories and classroom initiatives converge on the same insight: when young people learn to trust that justice is possible and to see themselves as agents of it, tolerance becomes more than endurance. It becomes the daily work of building a society where fairness is expected and goodness has room to grow.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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