Obama, McCain Call Youth to Action in Exclusive Teaching Tolerance Magazine Essays

The essays are part of a special youth engagement issue offering tips for teachers looking to educate students about civic involvement as the presidential election nears. Both candidates examine the power of community service and the high cost of inaction.

"[A]t this historic moment, we must ask our rising generation to serve their country.... Because that's how real change has always come -- from ordinary people coming together to do extraordinary things," Obama writes in his essay, "Choices for a Rising Generation."

In "A More Peaceful and Prosperous World," McCain explores the cost of missed opportunity. "After 9/11, leaders inWashington missed an opportunity to call young people to service," he writes. "Young men and women, who are willing to give of themselves and sacrifice, want a leader who will ask something of them."

The candidates' essays and the latest issue of Teaching Tolerance can be read at www.teachingtolerance.org.

"Too many people in our country feel that their voices aren't being heard, that they can't change things," said Jennifer Holladay, director of the SPLC's Teaching Tolerance program. "These essays -- and this issue of Teaching Tolerance -- will serve as powerful reminders to students that they can truly make a difference by standing up for what they believe -- and that all of us can and should give something back to our communities and our country."

The magazine also examines how encouragement from teachers and others helps students take action in their communities. And the special issue offers seven great moments in youth activism from 2007.

Keeping with the theme of civic engagement, this issue introduces Teaching Tolerance's newest teaching kit, Viva la Causa, and offers a lesson preview for teachers. The 39-minute film and accompanying teacher's guide spotlight one of the great episodes of the struggle for human rights in America -- the grape strike and boycott of the 1960s. Led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, farmworkers and Americans from all walks of life joined together to demand justice and fairness for exploited farmworkers in the fields ofCalifornia. Teaching Tolerance expects to distribute 50,000 copies of the teaching kit, free of charge, to educators over the next two years.

Teaching Tolerance magazine, published twice a year by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is the nation's leading journal serving educators on diversity issues. In 2007, the magazine was named Periodical of the Year by the Association of Educational Publishers for the second consecutive year. Teaching Tolerance films have garnered four Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., is a nonprofit civil rights organization that combats bigotry and discrimination through litigation, education and advocacy. For more information, see www.splcenter.org.

SOURCE Southern Poverty Law Center

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