Facing History and Ourselves is a nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote a more humane and informed citizenry. As the name Facing History and Ourselves implies, the organization helps teachers and their students make the essential connections between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives, and offers a framework and a vocabulary for analyzing the meaning and responsibility of citizenship and the tools to recognize bigotry and indifference in their own worlds. By studying the choices that led to critical episodes in history, students learn how issues of identity and membership, ethics and judgment have meaning today and in the future. Facing History and Ourselves delivers classroom strategies, resources and lessons that inspire young people to take responsibility for and in their world. Internationally recognized for our quality and effectiveness, Facing History harnesses the power of the Internet and partners with school systems, universities and ministries of education worldwide. Facing History and Ourselves’ resource books provide a meticulously researched yet flexible structure for examining complex events and ideas. Educators can select appropriate readings and draw on additional resources available online or from our comprehensive lending library. Facing History offers many of their resources free of charge to educators. However, in order to gain access to all of our resources, as well as ongoing support from Facing History staff, you have to be part of our Educator Network. By participating in a face-to-face or online seminar you are a life-long member of our Educator Network. Some benefits include:
- Free borrowing from our extensive Lending Library.
- Full access to all of our Educator Resources, including lessons, teaching strategies, online modules, discussion forums and more.
- Ongoing personalized curricular support from a Facing History Program Associate.
Choices in Little Rock is a teaching unit that focuses on efforts to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. The unit explores civic choices — the decisions people make as citizens in a democracy.
This curriculum is about more than the Holocaust. It's about the reading and the writing and the arithmetic of genocide, but it's also about such R's as rethinking, reflecting, and reasoning. It's about prejudice, discrimination and scapegoating; but it's also about human dignity, morality, law, and citizenship. It's about avoiding and forgetting, but it's also about civic courage and justice. In an age of "back to basics" this curriculum declares that there is one thing more basic, more sacred, than any of the three R's; namely, the sanctity of human life.
This unit includes eight lessons covering the Armenian Genocide, ranging thematically from issues of identity and belonging to denial and free speech. The lessons follow Facing History and Ourselves' scope and sequence.
