How do teenagers judge other people? What measure do they use to categorize individuals whom they don't know? Can they distinguish between biological and societal categories or between ascribed and achieved groupings? Do they know how prejudice affects instigators as well as recipients?

Almost all teachers and community leaders want to assist students in developing non-prejudical attitudes, but how does one begin? Our unit is based upon concepts developed by Gordon Allport and others during the period after World War Two when many of the most renowned social scientists concentrated on the problem of out-group hostility. To this we have added insights from the best scholarship since that era. For instance, we refer to The Sexual Brain by Simon LeVay (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993) in one of our exercises.

Negative prejudice is a factor in many aspects of human life. The emotions and thinking patterns that lead to racial and ethnic prejudice are similar to those that lead to impersonal hatreds of whole social classes, age groups or members of the other gender. In our materials prejudice is treated objectively--almost clinically. This approach enables students from diverse racial backgrounds to discuss the effects on givers and getters without destuctive group polarization.

We do not believe that any one unit can fundamentally change emotions or the justifying rationalizations. Our children and grandchildren need many things. Above all, they need to be surrounded by knowledgeable and concerned adults. From history they need repeated reminders of what happens when prejudices go unchecked--as they learn in holocaust studies. They need scientific training in the complex ways that biologically inherited tendencies interact with enviromental conditions, especially in the beginning stages of life. They need to learn from science that humans--statistically and as a species--have certain inherited tendencies as do other animals, but these can be modified in major ways through learning. They need an understanding of ethnocentrism found in good multicultural programs that incorporate anthropological, psychological and sociological insights. They need training in truth-telling, cooperation and personal responsibility that have been central to our enduring secular and religious world-views.

No course of study can perform miracles, but we believe this unit is an important element in a comprehensive program that will successfully deal with group antipathies. The materials were developed for mainstream classes at Riverside-Brookfield High School. Year after year they have been used successfully by National Merit scholars sitting along side students struggling for their diplomas.

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