Hear from scholar Ervin Staub and view a short film portraying an upstanding stranger.
Recently, I drove from Facing History’s office in the East Bay to Silicon Valley to attend a youth civic hackathon. As I passed by the giant “like” sign at Facebook’s sprawling campus on One Hacker Way in Menlo Park, I found myself thinking about hacking, technology, social media status updates, and also about empathy.
In the 21st century, it is almost as likely that a student will play a video game as watch television or read a book.
Indeed, the Pew Research Center estimates that 97% of teenagers (as well as 60% of adults, according to the Entertainment Software Association) regularly play video games. These numbers indicate that modern video games have huge potential for helping young people better understand their world, and can increase their empathy for those around them.
We've all had great teachers – teachers who have opened our eyes, changed the way we see the world, how we see each other, and how we see ourselves. What makes a great teacher?
For decades, students, parents, volunteers, and community members have been inspired by their Facing History and Ourselves encounters – whether in the classroom, at public and private events in-person or online, or through any of the teachers or alumni who talk about their transformative experien
The killing of Cecil the Lion on July 1st attracted both heavy news coverage and a flurry of responses on social media. An interesting thread emerged from these responses: questions about how people can become so outraged over the death of a lion on the other side of the world, when there are larger scale, or more local, stories of individuals and groups of people suffering unspeakable violence and injustice. The underlying theme that unites many of these confrontations is “Which story about tragedy or injustice is more worthy of our attention?”
On International Women’s Day, bring the unique voices of women who survived or stood up against some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century into your classroom. Facing History is partnering with USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education to help educators access more than 1,500 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides using the Institute’s online learning tool, IWitness.
Yesterday we said goodbye to a great teacher.
In 2015 Facing History and Ourselves celebrated ten incredible years of Community Conversations, marking the decade with its first ever event in Boston.
George Washington would have been 284 years old today. Facing History’s recent book, Washington’s Rebuke to Bigotry, on his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, looks at the United States’ first president’s views on religious freedom, and is a powerful resource for exploring these essential civic lessons within U.S. history.
Charlie Kolodziej shares why he openly embraces his identity as a gay teenager.
On Yom HaShoah, we celebrate moments of bravery and resistance with three partisans' stories to shed light on this important part of Holocaust history.