Home > Educator Resources > Lessons & Units > Lessons

What Do We Do With a Variation?: The French Head Scarf Dilemma

You have to be logged into the educator network in order to view this resource.

Log in if you already have access.

If you don't have a log in, learn how to join our educator network to gain access to classroom strategies, resources and lessons that inspire young people to take responsibility for their world, and to connect with Facing History staff for support and professional development opportunities.

This lesson uses "What Do We Do with a Variation?" the opening reading in Race and Membership in the United States: The Eugenics Movement resource book to lay the framework for thinking about coping with difference. It is predicated on the notion that a range of religious, social, cultural and racial differences are elements that create the uniqueness of our identity. Then it moves to France to chart the course of governmental restrictions in the name of "secularism" and asks if such restrictions are productive or harmful to the "general good". Thus, this lesson fuses pieces of discussion around identity creation with the more confined question of governmental restrictions to identity expression with the option of expanding to local parallels such as incident in Florida in which the state drivers license facility refused to issue a license to a Muslim woman wearing garments that constricted view of her face.