How I describe my thesis...

Every other day, someone asks me what my thesis is about, and I've begun taking this approach to describing it:

"Well, it's about helping adolescents understand prejudice".  To which they reply something like, "Oh wow, that's really cool".  And then I say, "It's about how history teachers can help adolescents understand prejudice".

And finally, "It's about how history teachers, using the tool of historical contextualization, can help students understand prejudice in the context of ancient civilizations".

Going step-by-step seems to make this less of a mouthful.  But contextualization - and why ancient civilizations? - requires some explanation.

 "I think that contextualization is important for understanding prejudice, because that it how we understand why people think and feel the way they do.  What is it about a persons environment that creates the conditions for certain prejudices to take root?  That's what I want to help students figure out.  And I think its really cool to do this in an ancient civilizations class, because that gives students the opportunity to examine and compare many forms of prejudice.  Because students can't trace prejudices in the contemporary world back to the prejudices of ancient civilizations, its an emotionally safe way to explore the topic, and gives them time to practice exploring prejudice before jumping into American history.  And if students get to contextualize a few different prejudices, that way of looking at prejudice may sink in and transfer not only to other history classes but to their own world: hopefully I can help them get into the habit of contextualization - not only asking why people do what they do, which students tend to think of as an individuals responsibility, but what is it about the persons environment that allows for a prejudice to make sense.  I think that without this contextualization, its easy to judge people and hold anger, and difficult to come up with solutions that will alleviate the problem of prejudice".