New Mexico in Focus; 319; Teaching Tolerance

14. Major funding for Infocus is provided by the McHughan Charitable Foundation, enriching the cultural life, health, education, environment, and spiritual life of the citizens of New Mexico. The alarming increase in hate crime among youth has prompted many educators into action. See and hear how New Mexico is addressing themes of tolerance, respect, and community building, next on Infocus. Hello and welcome to Infocus, I'm R.C. Choppa.

As you heard in the introduction, our topic of discussion is tolerance. Tonight, we hope to answer a series of questions that are being addressed in public forums around the country. In moral assumptions about identity or behavior, excuse educators from providing safe and welcoming schools for all students. How can teachers and administrators build an equitable learning environment? Should sexual orientation and race relation issues be brought up in class? And how is New Mexico responding to the increase in hate crimes and school violence? Here to answer these and other questions are my guest, Georgia Armijo Brasher, head of the city and APS Child Development Center, Gloria Nieto, executive director of the People of Color AIDS Foundation, Jim Jones, licensed social worker, and president of values through music productions company, and Dr. Paul Hopkins, executive director of the Samaritan Counseling

Center. Thank you everyone for being here. Dr. Hopkins, I'm going to start with you. What is the root of intolerance? Just like that. Just like that. Well, I'm not sure that any human characteristic or human behavior is determined by any one single thing. But if I were to try to identify what I think at least a principal reason for intolerance is, I would argue that intolerance is most often rooted in a deep insecurity. Only a person who is truly secure in his or her own identity, his or her own self, can be fully tolerant of another person who may be very different. That sort of intolerance or predisposing condition for intolerance may be most often learned early in life and family growing up.

And if we build a solid sense of security for folks that they are okay, they're more likely to be tolerant of others who are different from them. Georgia, you work with child development. How can we create a more secure person? How can parents help develop that confidence and pride in a child? But I'd like to take off from what Paul was saying really. I think it's a young child that has experienced throughout their growth and growing periods. The first three years of their life play a really concrete role and serious role in setting the stage for how they respond to themselves and others in the future. And so if families help provide a good healthy environment for their child and provide unhurried time and in this world today we don't have unhurried time particularly. So we rush by our children and instead of taking the time for them to understand how we problem solve and how we think and make decisions and how we react and how we respond

to one another, that safe environment for them to feel comfortable to explore and expand their own learning. But mostly it's that responsive caregiving that a parent can really give and from parent to caregiver to teacher to any significant adult in the life of a young person will make a difference in how they respond back. But it's that early learning from infancy. It's that first child is born ready to learn and ready to love and it's that first look a parent gives that child that he's getting the cues am I acceptable am I worthy and learning that sense of tolerance in this sense. So this drive by society that you're talking about has perpetuated this lack of awareness that parents have of their own children because when the Columbine shootings happen people thought how could these parents not have known what was going on in their own children's

life. What kind of culture are we creating this drive by just did you want to add something to that I can hear you. It's almost that unconscious raising of our children being very conscious of the cues that you see around you from you know an infant really does talk to you they have their own language. Teenagers have their own language that they speak to you and the cues have been consciously aware of what your children are telling you and what you see happening and being able to communicate with them and setting the tone for them to be able to communicate with you and that safety that you're not being judged either for the mistakes or the decisions you made but maybe you can have somebody to help you think those decisions through. Gloria there with this insecurity there are a lot of tensions that exist in schools and I know that you're called upon on occasions to help defuse some volatile situations at

times at schools. Tell me what it is that you do. Well I, yes English is my native language. I would just like to segue on to what has just been said in terms of the tensions that exist in schools that were aware of that we get notified like I'll get phone calls from the counselors at Santa Fe High and say another person who felt safe in that environment just came out to me so I'll come over and I'll meet with them and bring them magazines and t-shirts and you know here's how you can get a hold of me and those kind of things because the stories that they're telling me about what they're living through on a daily basis at the high schools are just horrifying you know I mean we're talking like having lit cigarettes thrown at them we're talking about being you know mad dog through them all we're talking about you know I have one young friend who disappeared from school for three months and nobody noticed he was missing and the reason that he disappeared was because he was getting so tortured for just the perception that he was gay he wasn't he hadn't even made

a decision yet in his life and the perception was there and he went to the security guards and said you know I need some protections and they said we don't like fags here. Now that happened a few years ago there have been enormous changes and I really have to law the faculty and staff at Santa Fe High because they have taken it on in terms of recognizing that there's more communication that needs to happen and so in the last month there's been a couple of trainings specifically with administration and specifically with the security guards to talk about these are what people's realities are you know this is what use realities are so in a long answer to your question we try to deal on a one-to-one basis and then also provide social settings for gay youth to get together so they don't feel so isolated and we give them phone cards you know so that they can talk to each other if they especially in the north you know people are kind of in different little areas so that way it doesn't impact their parents economically and it just gives them some more freedom

plus we create some social venues for them to be able to get together and socialize without you know among their peers without having to feel like they have to be bigger people than they are you know impressed the adults and things like that so it like eases the tension and then they have people that they can go to and talk to when they come out to their parents so that they don't just get rejected one of the big questions that that people haven't in this goes along with sex education as well this is something that a lot of people and a lot of groups don't want in the school what about sexual orientation issues does they'll do those belong in the classroom should they be discussed in the classroom you know I think it's my belief that there's a process to get from point A to point D and in that process there should be an enormous amount of dialogue and buy in from different people you know from the students from the parents from the administration so as anybody who doesn't like you know rules implemented without any knowledge of what the realities are I think that it would it's a very healing process for some sort of process to be set

up for that dialogue and I think that every school and school district should have its own process based on what its values are I would really like to see that happen in a number of schools especially when there's safety issues involved that that we're dealing with a lot of you know bashings and you know just the emotional abuse you gain lesbian students are more prone to suicide than any other group in the country the state and Massachusetts established a whole statewide commission to deal with those issues particularly substance abuse particular to suicide and all the other issues that that you know teenage time is really fun and you know a lot of us can look back on it but there are very a lot of people here particularly in New Mexico that have horrible scars from what happened to them in the schools and at least now the youth in the schools have an opportunity to talk about it and say this is what's going on for me Georgia's is school a good place for these kinds of discussions for sex education for sexual orientation for race relations

I think we need to be a society that's not afraid to talk about things and have some sort of comfort level with these because their reality and I you know when you talk about schools you always we always think about how intelligent we want to have children that are ready to learn and it's academics that we really focus on but there's been a whole lot of work on emotional intelligence and I think that in order to be a whole person you need to have been able to create the empathy with another person and so EQ as well as IQ have to walk together and I think that the schools play a role you were mentioning it has to be a safe and supportive environment you have to be able to have discussions intelligently about these things how do our young people learn without having a discussion with an adult that can help them think things through raise other questions think with them out loud and parents if they're uncomfortable with that happening in

schools really need to accept the responsibility to do that in their home and are we doing that and I'm not sure that even as parents in the home that we're more afraid to talk about in at the level that is needed for our children I think our children are very sophisticated they're exposed to so much nowadays that I wasn't when I was growing up so I think we have an obligation to be really trying to address this at all levels from home to school and in the world Jim you produced a video called what what is it called you're always welcome you're always welcome and I obviously you feel that these kinds of things should be discussed in the schools what prompted you to to produce this video and through use of music as well well just the idea to do a project to try to teach some of those skills to kids starting with kindergarten kids I guess I started thinking pretty seriously about it five years ago about doing that just because

there was such a flap that's been around for quite a few years now about the effect of the media on particularly on kids and I tell somebody the other day you know back in the 60s we thought music was gonna change the world for the better and then the 80s and 90s we think it's gonna ruin the world and probably the either one is an overstatement but I think it's a pretty powerful way to influence people and so I started thinking about well you know actually my daughter was my role model she would sit and watch videos over and over and over again new every word to every song and remembered that now if I told her to take her shoes to her bedroom she would forget along the way but the song lyrics she would remember and I thought you know music is a really powerful way to reach kids and so you know I thought that was something that you know sort of a positive step that I could try to take to use the media in a productive way so that's kind of how I got the idea to do it well I want to show a short clip of the production and I have to admit I have been singing the song yesterday and I will warn you you will be singing this song too

the rest of the day so let's see a short clip of that please hey Taylor what are you doing you try to steal my backpack no way I'm just looking at it don't you call me a thief or a punch you into next week yeah you and what army come on if you think you're so tough hey hey hey slow down here what's going on Taylor tried to steal my backpack if he touches it he can't I'm gonna punch it I was in trying to steal it and if he thinks it's gonna punch me he's crazy nobody needs to be punching anybody you're gonna have to find another way to deal with this mr. Howard I have an idea it's something I learned in school about

how to solve situations like this do you guys want to hear about it okay sit down that makes me man he wants to fight but that's not right did you kept us at the school top of something really cool when your man here's what to do you talk about it talk about it talk talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it talk to talk it out this girl named John she took my toy she ruined my game I called her

she screamed and yelled I said she smelled our mom said now simmer down no need to go round and round sit yourself here on the ground do So, let's talk about it. You wrote this song, right?

Yes, I did. And so, does talking about it help Dr. Hopkins Paul? Absolutely. If you're able to. Now, I want the second verse, which is, listen about it. Actually, the last part of the clip is where they go back and they actually hear those two boys talk about it and listen and take turns listening and trying to understand the other person's point of view, because just talking, obviously, isn't going to solve things. But listening and trying to understand and empathize with the other person is, I think, a big part of it. What do you hope to do with these videos? Sell a bunch of them. We're hoping that we see these videos as tools for educators, for parents. Obviously, we didn't invent the idea of helping kids learn these skills. There are a lot of people that are out there really working in that already. We wanted to provide them with a tool that we think is going to be effective, that they can use over and over again, and just one more thing for people to use and trying to help kids learn these really important skills.

I think it did a great concept for a couple of reasons. Just the notion of alternative dispute resolution, talking about it rather than fighting it out, is very important, and secondly, tying it to music and an entertainment venue is, I think, a wonderful approach. I was thinking about, actually, Marlowe Thomas is free to be you and me, three years ago, and my son used to walk around the house singing that song about, and I can still sing some of the songs from that, some kinds of work, and some kind of, well, anyway. It seems like a very, very simple solution to talk about it and listen, but why can't we do that? Why are we not doing that? Dr. Hopkins. Well, again, it assumes that I operate with a basic assumption that my point of view is a good one, but yours might be a good one, too, even if it's a different. If I can believe that I might learn something from you, or hearing your point of view might

broaden my perspective, then that's going to make me more likely to want to talk about it. But if I experience you as a threat somehow, if I fear that I'm really going to lose not only my backpack, but my way of life, or my religion, or my identity somehow, then it's going to be harder for me to talk about it, and if I'm insecure in those things, it's going to be harder for me to talk about it, or listen about it. Well, and I think that the other component that's built in there is that sometimes when we try to have these dialogues, that people don't realize that we, in different ethnic groups, communicate differently, that when I'm with my Native American friends, that they communicate much differently, you know, so I come across as a very passionate, you know, Latina, you know, that, you know, if I feel strongly about something, I will talk about it in those terms where my Native friends have taught me that silence is a form of communication, and many times in the settings that is not accounted for.

And I think that, you know, some of the issues that you were just talking about, if we'd listen to other people, then that might also mean that I'm not right, and that would could mean a loss of power, you know. And so I see that a lot of times, you know, and that's why we have created like these food chains at schools, you know, that that's why those things get created in schools, and are in our jobs in all those different places, so that there's a hierarchy, so that what we do is create power for ourselves by making somebody else feel less than we do. And I think that there's like all these different things that are going in the mix, that if we stopped long enough to like find out who we are to begin with, and then address to other people from that same place and gave them the same kind of respect, then that would mean that we're not one up. So how do we create that environment where everyone's voice is valued in the classroom? Well, I think, you know, this sort of jumps off from the question of whether or not issues of sexual identity or race relations should be addressed in schools.

This is happening. What you just described is going on in every school, these hierarchies are being set up, and you know, the school has to address that. You know, if they don't, then it sort of gets mishandled because it's being done by kids that don't have the skills, and so they end up doing harm to each other, and I think the schools have to address that. And you don't wait to mid school or high school to begin that conversation or doing that. You start very early. And as you can see from the video in school, children are engaging with each other all the time, having disputes in all kinds of situations that arise on a daily basis, and it's the adults or those people around them that help model for them alternatives to solving situations and building that empathy that you're mentioning. But it is a very serious issue because sometimes, you know, we say this needs to start with the parents, but sometimes the intolerance begins with the parents, and they teach this intolerance.

Right. So what can you do? I mean, if it's the school's responsibility, it's a tough question. How do we address this? How do we address this? The school's responsibility to present an alternative, I mean, it's not the school can't make a child see things the way the school wants them to see it, but, you know, the kids need an alternative. If they need, if they happen to come from a family in which parents are pretty intolerant, at some point along the way as you grow up, you realize that there are other ways of thinking about things than the way your parents think about them. And so I think that's part of what school does, is give you alternative ways of thinking about things to choose. How do you have to think about parents, too, they weren't some of them as successful as others in school. So they don't have a lot of positive feelings about themselves. So what they're passing on is sometimes their own insecurity about how they have experienced life. And so part of that is developing parenting, helping people understand how to parent, because parenting isn't easy.

It should be done consciously. And oftentimes we bring up our children unconsciously. We love them to death, all of us, but it's an unconscious activity a lot of times, instead of being really aware of the messages that we're sending our children. Right, I think they actively try to teach their kids to be intolerant. They just unconsciously pass that along if that happens to them. Well, but see, you know what, I would just disagree about that, because I've seen so many TV shows where you see people passing on KKK material to their children. You know, I mean, there are definitely components in the society, and while they're extreme, we can hold that up as some, well, we're not like that. But that doesn't mean that those of us who were born in Hispanic families didn't learn racism at an early age, and learn what that meant to not be allowed into certain restaurants or, you know, different places. And I think that one of the components that, you know, like most people, I run into this all the time, that people don't want anybody to get angry. You know, and I think that that's a very valid emotion for people to find a very conscious way of expressing their anger without hurting themselves or hurting someone else.

Then it's not, doesn't get diffused that, you know, the schools or the government or, you know, what, you know, the person driving in front of you on Central. You know, it's like, because it's really easy to diffuse it. And then we take responsibility for ourselves, and for what happens around us, instead of like just saying, well, the schools should do it, or, you know, the churches should do it, that we look at it as the complex situation that it is. But it, I'll go ahead. Well, I was simply going to add that you mentioned the churches. I think it's not only an educational task, an psychological task, and a family task. It's a spiritual task. The notion that you are okay, and I'm okay, and we're both okay, even though we're different, I think may fundamentally be a spiritual understanding. Regrettably, too much of the time, spiritual understandings get focused into narrow fundamentalistic religious beliefs that breed intolerance.

I visited the Mormon temple this week. And I was interested to see, just because I wanted to learn more about that. And I was interested to see, parked across the street, a van with a banner on it, proclaiming that if they didn't repent, they'd go to hell. That's a pretty strong perspective, and my view, quite intolerant, because it's denying that person's right to approach God or apprehend God in his or her way. Well, I have about less than a minute left, and one person could probably answer this. But there are those who believe, like you say, the fundamentalist who feel that none of this belongs in the classroom. There should not be any teachings of social orientation or anything like that. Should we, Gloria talked about step-by-step process where you start with a public dialogue. Should we eventually have this in the classroom? It's the fourth hour, relationship. We can't drop, read, and write, and enrithmatic, but we'd better be sensitive to relationship.

Okay, well, I'll have to leave it at that. Thank you, everyone, for being here today. That's our report for this week. Next week, join us for a legislative wrap-up with House and Senate leaders. Until then, from all of us at Canemey, I'm R.C. Choppa, goodnight. Major funding for Infocus is provided by the McEwan Charitable Foundation, enriching the cultural life, health, education, environment, and spiritual life of the citizens of New Mexico. Thank you.

Thank you.