Teaching Anti-Fascism: A Critical Multicultural Pedagogy for Civic Engagement

This timely book examines how fascist ideology has taken hold among certain segments of American society and how this can be addressed in curriculum and instruction. Vavrus presents middle, secondary, and college educators and their students with a conceptual framework for enacting a critical multicultural pedagogy by analyzing discriminatory discourse and recommending civic anti-fascist steps people can take right now. For teacher education programs and policymakers, anti-fascist civic assessment rubrics are provided. To help clarify contemporary debates over what can be taught in public schools, an advance organizer highlights contested and misunderstood terminology.

Featuring historical and contemporary patterns of fascist politics, this accessible text is organized in four parts: (1) "Good Trouble," (2) Unpacking Ideological Orientations, (3) Indicators of Colonial Proto-Fascism and U.S. Fascist Politics, and (4) An Anti-Fascist "Reading the World." Readers will come away with a deeper knowledge base that marshalls a century of anti-fascist actions in response to contemporary acts of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, gender and sexuality discrimination, bias against Latinx and migrant populations, and other actions that undermine our democracy and harm marginalized students and their families and communities.

Book Features:

• A groundbreaking framework for incorporating anti-fascist pedagogical concepts into multicultural education
• Descriptions of common characteristics of historical fascism, far-right extremism, and anti-fascism.
• Anti-fascist assessment rubrics for teacher educators.
• Guidance to assist classroom teachers in contextualizing current anti-democracy events.
• Recommended and annotated anti-fascist background readings informed by critical, theoretical, and intersectional perspectives.