Toward a critical social consciousness in children: Multicultural peace education in a first grade classroom

M ULTICULTURAL EXPERIENCES in the classroom provide a rich tapestry of learning for children of all ages. Through multicultural peace education, children can gain a critical social consciousness with local to global understandings. When their awareness of the world around them is paired with their efforts to find connections among people globally, they can generate multicultural understandings toward peace. Children's learnings in multicultural peace education can be embedded in meaningful, real life experiences. In one classroom's service learning project, described in this article, first graders gained a new appreciation of education as a privilege when they communicated with Nicaraguan children who had until recently been unable to attend school because they needed to spend their days hauling water.