Since the death of Michael Brown in August, teachers, parents, and community organizers have been searching for ways to best educate young people about difficult issues of race, profiling, and police violence. From this challenge, emerged #FergusonSyllabus, a Twitter hashtag used to collect books and articles that dictate creative and accessible lessons on race. Georgetown University Professor Marcia Chatelain created the hashtag as a way to facilitate conversation among educators on ways to teach on the events in Ferguson and larger issues of discrimination and brutality. The hashtag gained traction and soon elicited direct action through the creation of #FergusonFreedomLibrary, a social media call encouraging teachers, students, and activists to donate applicable books to prisons, schools, or community organizations. Of the hashtag, Professor Chatelain writes "A hashtag cannot address structural mistrust, public negligence, poverty and unemployment. But the incredible educators who have shared their resources and ideas with #FergusonSyllabus do have the power to move us closer to reconciliation, a greater commitment of justice and conversations that are long overdue."
What do you think of #FergusonSyllabus and the use of Twitter to engage teachers and students? Does it work? In the new Stowe House experience, we seek to facilitate conversations on difficult subjects by using primary source documents, inquiry-based dialogue, and multimedia presentations. What do you think are the best tactics to invite conversation and questioning on difficult subjects?
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