Teaching About Heroes

The Core Knowledge Foundation is pleased to add a marvelous product to its resource list. Conference attendees may already have seen A Study of Heroes (K–12+) if they attended a Core Knowledge conference session or stopped by the booth sponsored by the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States. This committee is named for our nation’s third honorary citizen, the Swedish hero who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. The committee promotes the study of heroes as an educational and inspirational endeavor, one that is very well aligned to the Core Knowledge curriculum and values. In a culture sometimes bombarded with celebrity worship, this program helps children to distinguish between being a celebrity and being a hero. In addition to focusing on world figures, it offers units on researching heroes, identifying heroic traits, intergenerational sharing, and “Finding the Hero within Yourself.” All of the units feature excellent material to incorporate into character building programs, social studies, and language arts.

Thirty-two units offer a comprehensive study of such figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez, the Dali Lama, Harriet Tubman, and many others. Conceptualized by Rachel Oestreicher Bernheim and authored by Dr. Kathleen Dunlevy Morin, A STUDY OF HEROES can be used school-wide in all grades and comes in handy three-ring binders with units presented in plastic sleeves holding a generous supply of study materials (1800+ pages) reproducible within the school building.

Teachers interested in finding out more about this resource can contact the Raoul Wallenberg Committee at www.raoulwallenberg.org or read the lengthy article describing the program in the most recent issue of Social Studies and the Young Learner.

(March/April, Vol. 17, Number 4)