 How does hatred fester to the point where it erupts in the kind of violence that occurred in Charleston last week?
That is a question that the nation is grappling with to a greater extent than it has perhaps in decades.
Following the killing of nine African American church goers at a Charleston, S.C., Bible study group on June 17, teachers are gathering books, articles and videos to engage students' critical thinking skills in discussions of the killings. Dylann Roof, a white man of 21, has been charged with the killings and is alleged to have espoused white supremacist views. Even though most schools are out across the U.S., teachers are using the Twitter hashtag #CharlestonSyllabus to compile a list of resources they could use to help students understand the context of racial violence in the U.S. The syllabus is posted online by the African American Intellectual History Society. The collective syllabus idea and the hashtag were launched by Chad Williams, chair of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. "The Charleston massacre, albeit in the worst imaginable way, opened a blood stained door to this country's racial history," Williams wrote in a blog post.  A resource that predates the Charleston killings but also is intended to prompt deep thinking about the root causes of hatred has been developed by the national nonprofit organization Facing History and Ourselves. The group is introducing new professional development materials for teachers called Teaching Mockingbird: A Facing History and Ourselves Study Guide. The curriculum is a Common Core State Standards-aligned guide to teaching the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a staple of high school English classes. The story is told through the eyes of a six-year-old white girl, Scout Finch, whose father Atticus is defending an African American man falsely accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama. The Facing History curriculum promotes classroom conversations about the small steps that lead to the "dehumanization" of one group of individuals by another group, said Elaine Guarnieri-Nunn, director of San Francisco Bay Area operations for the organization. Dehumanization happens when a group of people are seen as entirely different, dangerous and in some way subhuman and therefore not subject to justice and empathy. Equally important, she said, is to talk about choices individuals like Atticus Finch make to be "upstanders," those who take action against injustice. Whether it's the injustices of the 1930s depicted in Mockingbird or last week's killings in Charleston, it's important to look at how disparate events like these echo similar themes, Guarneri-Nunn said. "When these events happen we don't look at them in isolation," she said, referring to Facing History's approach. "We take an historical perspective." Teachers will have an opportunity to participate in a no-cost, three-day Teaching Mockingbird seminar beginning July 14 in Los Angeles -- coincidentally the same day Harper Lee's newly discovered second novel, Go Set a Watchman, is scheduled for publication. | 
It's not exactly the summer All-Star break, but the June deadline for bills to move successfully from one house in the state Legislature to the other - or be declared dead - reveals what remains possible in this legislative season.
