Dive Brief:
- The Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance platform began distributing a new documentary, "Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot," this week.
- The 40-minute doc, which targets students in grades 6-12, is narrated by Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and delves into the details surrounding the infamous Selma to Montgomery marches, as well as the related battle over voting rights.
- The film is free to educators and comes with a viewer's guide, timeline of events surrounding the marches, and a map of Alabama that highlights prominent locations in the fight for voting rights.
Dive Insight:
While many schools across the nation have taken students to see the Oscar-nominated film "Selma," the Teaching Tolerance documentary is another, more cost-effective way to bring the important civil rights history into the classroom.
While the actual documentary is, of course, a wonderful tool, the guiding questions that accompany it are just as important. According to the guide, the end goal of watching the film and having classroom discussions is that students can describe the legal obstacles black people faced when trying to vote, the significance of voting, the organized efforts employed to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the actions highlighted in non-violent protests, and how young people can make a difference in the world. It's hard not to agree with the importance of those lessons in a classroom.