Media mention: Alumna Jones quoted in Education Week
From January 2018 until now, there have been at least 30 separate incidents of “curriculum violence” taking place in schools, according to a College of Education alumna.
Stephanie P. Jones (Ph.D. ’15), an assistant professor at Grinnell College in Iowa, tracks such incidents through her Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools project and was included among experts who were quoted in a recent Education Week article about simulations, such as mock slave auctions, that make their way into classrooms. Jones said she sees spikes in February and March, coinciding with teachers likely looking for lessons for Black History Month. Even then, she noted, not every incident makes the news.
In a lesson such as a slavery situation, Jones said, “the objective is not for the students to understand bias and discrimination. They want students to understand bias and discrimination,” she told the publication. “I’m not sure if that is a teachable goal.”