When Teaching Students About Slavery Fails

A recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggests students are not learning the history of slavery in the United States very well and as a result, they're less able to reckon with contemporary issues of race and inequality. Very few high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. And the report says teachers don't have the material or the training to tackle such a complicated — and sensitive — topic.

The New York Daily News reported recently on a case at a middle school in the Bronx where a white teacher asked black students to lie face down on the floor. She then stepped on at least one of them in a lesson about the Middle Passage.

WNYC All Things Considered host Jami Floyd speaks with parent activist Natasha Capers with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice about anti-bias training and culturally responsive teaching methods. 

"We stress for students to be forever learners," Capers said. "We want our teachers to be forever learners too."