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 Back to Anti-Bias

Anti-bias | Preventing discrimination in schools
Part 1: The Anti-Bias approach

Lemons



To get started. The Lemon Exercise
This is a good exercise to learn about stereotypes and biases, which you can do with old and young persons in all different context.
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The Lemon Exercise

Step 1

Show a basket of Lemons

Ask everyone:

 - What do you see? 

 - How would you describe lemons? 

let them List it down

Step 3

Compare the 2 lists

 

Have a look at the two lists made. Ask:
 

 - Are there similarities? Are these the same words? Or did you describe your individual lemon in other words than all of the lemons? 

 - And can you find your lemon among the other lemons when it is put back in the basket? 

Step 2

Pick one lemon from the basket

Give the Lemon to an individual or a small group. Ask:

 - Get to know your lemon. 

 - Which characteristics can you see? 

let them list it down

Step 4

Reflect on the moral

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Ask:

 

 - What can we learn "from the lemons“? 

 

 - Do we tend to have already an opinion about something/someone without having "a closer look“? 

 

 - Does it remind you of everyday life or school situations? 

This exercise show us, that often we have a rough picture about a certain group. But this is often incomplete or even wrong.

 

Only if we get to know another human in detail, we get to know him fully.

 

This counts for children, parents and teachers alike.

Hide and Seek

 

What are biases?

Bias works when we meet people. We judge them unconsciously, we put them in drawers. In seconds, we decide here whether the person is competent, pretty and a person we want to talk to.

 

And we make these decisions based on our experiences, on our up-bringing and images in media.

What are Biases

Some types of unconscious biases

Biases are based on inequalities in societies and lead to imbalance in schools

Anti-Bias education

Anti-Bias education is an approach from the USA developed in the 1980s by Louise Derman-Sparks and Carol Brunson-Philips in order to overcome the „South Afriacan apartheid system in the minds“

Anti-bias education helps us…

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