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The Different Drummers lessons, stories and activities, and associated
teacher materials address
concepts and attitudes related to nonconforming thought and its place in
society and history. Major concept domains are:
 | conformity and nonconformity |
| attributes of free and independent thinkers |
| seriously
nonconforming views and their consequences |
You will find teacher strategies to guide
students in analyzing stories and in varied classroom and extension activities that reach specific
learning goals. Youngsters scrutinize historical situations and
contemporary conventions (e.g., celebrities, fashions, peer expectations).
They engage in unique and creative writing and reporting endeavors (using
dialogs, inventing web pages, diaries, poems).
Benefit to Students
Learning about all sorts of "different thinkers" helps students to
understand and respect freedom of conscience and other rights belonging to
others.
| They can see the necessity for upholding in our pluralistic nation its
constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience |
| They can learn to appreciate their own freedom to reason independently and
to see things differently from their peers |
| They can grow in forbearance and in their capacity to be indulgent of
those who hold convictions unlike their own |
Benefits for Teachers
| The selection of varied thinkers (e.g., Socrates, Confucius, Cady Stanton,
Galileo, Descartes, Twain), issues, and source quotations supports world
history curricula |
| U.S. history teachers will appreciate the module's emphasis on the
importance of "different thinking" to our own nation's founding
principles, particularly its separation of church and state, and its
constitutional freedom for free and even irreverent speech. |
| The spectrum of historical examples can help a teacher to achieve academic
and impartial treatment of religion. |
Instructional Versatility
Different Drummers is highly useful for teaching about religion.
The professionally developed instructional materials further any teacher's
capacity to conduct objective, accurate, and balanced lessons about religion and
its role in history and society. Dealing impartially and academically with
this subject matter means considering nonconformity to religion (or to a
religious worldview), along with the conventional outlook.
Using DD, a teacher acquires means to
handle other sorts of unorthodoxy--in science, or in politics, as well as in
religion. And because the material explores nonconformist attributes
of varied sorts of thinkers in history, it may augment curriculum areas even
beyond these domains. The
lessons and activities address the risks
and benefits of nonconformist thought and action – not only for the
unconventional thinkers, but also for the societies in which they dwell, and for
posterity.
The material is particularly useful for
teachers who concentrate on human individuality, on critical and independent thinking,
or on individual heroic actions, whether in contemporary or historical context.
Portions
of DD are suited to addressing issues of teen peer pressure
and varied consequences of unconventional personal attire or behavior.
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