Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/holidays-and-anti-bias-education/5023174/
“If we use an anti-bias approach, are we allowed to do holidays?”
“If I celebrate one holiday, do I have to celebrate them all?”
“How do we include holidays without offending anyone?”
These questions, heard frequently from early childhood educators, spurred Julie to research and write Celebrate! An Anti-Bias Guide to Enjoying Holidays in Early Childhood Programs (1998). Eighteen years later, while some anti-bias educators have made real progress integrating holidays into their curriculum, many early childhood practitioners still search for answers to these questions.
If We Use an Anti-bias Approach, are We Allowed to Celebrate Holidays?
Yes! Both the original and revised books about anti-bias education are clear about this point. For example, “Learning about holidays in school can broaden children’s awareness of their own and other’s cultural experiences, if they are thoughtfully used as part of a more inclusive curriculum about cultural diversity (Derman-Sparks et al., ABC Task Force, 1989, p. 86). Furthermore, “The topic of this [holidays] chapter is not deciding ‘Do I or don’t I include holidays in my curriculum?’ It is how to ground whatever holiday activities you do in the principles of anti-bias education” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010,
pp. 135-136).
However, both editions of the ABE books do argue for critical thinking about using holidays effectively and fairly. ...