Wow - this is a big question!
One of my favorite classes in college was psychology of prejudice. I won't go into all of the details as to why psychologists believe prejudice exists, but I will tell you about some of the conclusions that have led to solutions for school age children because really those barriers that we learn from society, tv, parents and human nature can be broken down easier in school age children than any other age group.
I think that busing children into school systems was a great start since school systems are based on neighborhoods and neighborhoods more often than not contain a specific socioeconomic class which hampers diversity from the get-go.
Our minds are predisposed to categorize everything, including people. Since we know the most about ourselves, we tend to see people "like us" as diverse and different (heterogeneity) and people "like them" all the same (homogeneity). Psychologists have found a couple of strategies to break down these schematics to be more all-inclusive, which removes these barriers so they can see everyone as the same.
1) Simple everyday exposure to people that have different backgrounds, religions, languages, ethnicities and socioeconomic statuses. Having kids play with, work with and learn along side other children who aren't exactly like them in a sense gets them used to seeing people that are different than them.
2) Focusing on the similarities. If is easy for our brains to pick out differences because they tend to be more visual which is the first impression that you get. By having the children focus on their similarities like their favorite sports, favorite cartoons, favorite school subject, etc. they stop focusing on the differences. Which is a building block to friendships.
3) Working together towards a similar goal. This is the solution that had profound positive results when it came to changing perspectives, building friendships and creating lasting effects perceptions of people who are different from themselves. This can be anything from group class projects, to kickball teams to group art pieces. Anything that requires the children to communicate and work together to get something done.
If you want to explore this more for yourself, this is a fantastic book! Easy-to-understand and practical in application and theory.
Hope that helps. Good luck!
This answer was edited by mahalo 249 days ago.
Reason: add book
