As Thanksgiving approaches and we begin to think about the people and events for which we are thankful, we must also take the time to remember those who have not been so fortunate, in the present and the past.  During the holiday season it is especially easy to forget about those who have been hurt or disregarded in our history.  Holiday images that are perpetuated during the season, such as pilgrims and Native Americans eating together in peace, can often contribute to this “forgetfulness”.  While images like the above can be comforting and positive to many of us, it can also be misleading, allowing us to disregard the injustices that Native Americans experienced at the hand of Europeans both before and after the pilgrims arrived.  The image portrays the arrival of European peoples as a peaceful and friendly enterprise that was not characterized by fear, prejudice or violence against the Native Americans who were already there.  The portrayal, then, skews our historical “memory”, and hence our ability to understand the complexities of historical events.  Students, especially, can be misled since they are often not taught much else beyond the first Thanksgiving story.  “Remembering” the volatility of this situation, then, is a step towards a more just and tolerant society. 
 
Unfortunately, many other positive aspects of our nation have been wrapped up with negative policies that enforced and perpetuated intolerance.  The history of our nation is full of such examples of subjugation and force, from the Trail of Tears, to slavery in the South, to the creation and use of Japanese internment camps during World War II.  While we cannot move backwards in time to right these problems, we can teach our students how to recognize such intolerance in the world’s history and in present conflicts, so to avoid such behavior in the future.  Learning to recognize racism, how it functions in society and how it can be an insidious and almost hidden force in culture, is crucial to students’ abilities to dispel such behaviors and attitudes from their surroundings.  Students should learn that racism in all forms, subtle and overt, whether it leads to horrible tragedies, economic and social poverty, or hurt feelings in the school yard, are wrong and unacceptable. 
 
Service-learning projects that stress these lessons can help instill a greater understanding and empathy within youth concerning difference in ethnicity, religion or other characteristics.  Students can study a multiplicity of historical instances to examine this problem, such as those examples named above, or more current instances, such as the politics and international tensions surrounding the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, or any of the tensions in the Middle East.  Students should be reminded that these situations are complex and cannot be reduced to a simple “good guy vs. bad guy” equation. 

In order to drive this understanding home, students should think about the following questions: What nations were overtly and covertly involved in each conflict?  How did each nation address issues such as human rights abuses?  What things could each nation have done differently to alleviate or eliminate the intolerant situation?  What did the United States do well?  What could we have done better?  PBS addresses many of these issues, including our nation’s current war against terrorism.  Read their “Tolerance in Times of Trial” lesson plan for ideas about how to approach such issues in your classroom at this site, http://www.pbs.org/americaresponds/tolerance.html.  Other lesson plans dealing with the current conflict can be found at http://www.pbs.org/americaresponds/educators.html. 
 
On a more local level, students can discuss how racism is covertly and overtly perpetuated through media and through everyday interactions such as jokes, taunts and common phrases and sayings.  Often students and adults use phrases in their everyday lexicon that exhibit intolerant behavior, such as "That was so gay" and "That's so ghetto".  Websites and web projects such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s tolerance.org can help teachers and students learn to identify these acts.  The site works continuously to erase racism in our everyday lives by serving as a watchdog for racist behavior in the media and pop culture and by providing teachers, parents and kids with resources on how to fight intolerance in general.  It also provides project ideas that can easily be turned into service-learning projects, such as the One World Mural http://www.tolerance.org/teach/explore/pto/plan.jsp?ar=214.  Go to the “for teachers” section to check out other lesson plans and ideas. 
 
Raising awareness about intolerance in our students on both a global and local level should be a priority in our classroom as we teach our students more traditional academic subjects.  This does not deny the importance of learning about how the pilgrims and the Native Americans cooperated in those first years at Plymouth Rock, since the moment can teach positive character lessons in sharing, cooperation and empathy.  Recognizing and discussing the injustices that occurred during the discovery and colonization of the Americas, however, is equally necessary and significant.  It will help students not only learn how to recognize injustice, but will also help them become critical thinkers who are prepared for the complexities and uncertainties of the world in which they live. 

In this context, then, we should not forget to give thanks this holiday to those that have helped us in our lives.  We should also take this time to reexamine ourselves, our society and our community, and make a personal promise to help in the eradication of racism and intolerance in all of its forms.