A Prohuman Approach to English Language Arts K-12 Education

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

As a lifelong lover of literature and libraries, a mother of two school-aged children, and an English teacher-turned-professional writer, I have been extremely concerned about the state of academia and its impact on literature, libraries, and K-12 education since experiencing an ideologically monolithic climate while completing a doctoral program in the humanities from 2012 to 2018. When I was an undergraduate student (2001-2005) and during my master’s degree (2007-2010), I never saw or heard about any attempt to deplatform or silence speakers. However, in 2012, when I began my PhD program, I quickly realized that there had been a cultural change.

I observed, among my colleagues, high levels of political certainty, anger, and increasing acceptance of aggressive tactics, including deplatforming and shouting down speakers identified as promoting “hate speech.” As Greg Lukianoff has observed, what some now call “cancel culture” began coalescing on college campuses around 2014. As data gathered by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shows, the years 2014-24 had the highest recorded numbers in American history of professor firings, student self-censorship on campus, and speakers being deplatformed.

Shortly after Trump’s first election in 2016, several of my colleagues began writing, on their personal social media accounts, open calls for political violence. Not long after, students rioted at UC-Berkeley to shut down a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, Professor Allison Stanger was physically attacked at Middlebury, and Professor Bret Weinstein was threatened with physical violence at Evergreen State College, among other incidents. I remember thinking in fear, People are going to get killed on college campuses. Sadly, my fear was confirmed with the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk this year.

When I began college in 2001, I never imagined that we would wind up here. At that time, the culture on college campuses was very different. There was a culture of respect—or at least toleration—for freedom of speech, intellectual pluralism, civil discourse, and debate. According to FIRE’s campus deplatforming database, in 2001, there were only 10 documented incidents of deplatforming in the entire country. Compare that with the last complete year for which we have data, 2024, when there were 174 attempts to deplatform speakers.

My strong commitment to free speech made me feel that I was in the minority. My colleagues were deeply concerned about “hate speech,” and they became proponents of deplatforming any speaker whom they designated as promoting “hate.” They argued that platforming hate speech fomented stochastic terrorism. Essentially, they were concerned that when a speaker uses rhetoric to demonize a group or individual, this can lead to a violent act without explicitly calling for one. The speaker remains legally protected by remaining outside of direct incitement laws. While I understand these concerns, I believe, as Nadine Strossen does, that “where offensive or hateful speech is concerned, more speech, not less, should be the solution.”

The faculty of American universities, as research has consistently found, is overwhelmingly left-leaning. My experience confirmed this. Those in the humanities and social sciences were largely adherents of critical theory and its various permutations: critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, intersectionality, queer theory, postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, and more. While my overarching topic—Arab American literature—ostensibly positioned me within the identity-focused camp, I was interested in exploring the themes within the texts, not in imposing any preexisting interpretations on the texts.

Although I was committed to finishing my dissertation, I found it increasingly difficult to think freely in a climate where identitarian interpretations of literature proliferated. The academic books published in my discipline favored analyses that prioritized identity, oppression, power, and inequality under the broad domain of “social justice.” There was not as much interest in formalist approaches that performed close readings of texts to analyze authors’ innovative uses of literary elements.

The main academic project of the era was decolonizing the canon to rectify the under-representation of women and minorities. While I did focus on an under-explored area of American literature—Arab American women poets—I had been the fortunate beneficiary of a wonderful Great Books Program in my undergraduate years, which covered classical texts from world literature. I didn’t want to see the canon dismantled; I wanted to see it expanded.

At this time, the DEI movement had gained momentum. I attended some DEI events and felt that there was some excellent work done by programs that fell under the DEI umbrella, specifically those that provided financial support to students based on economic need. This type of work aligned with an academic outreach program I had worked for during my master’s program, which helped students from low-income families get into college.

Yet I was very disturbed by the DEI culture on campus. I didn’t like the focus on immutable characteristics being considered as the most salient aspect of identity. I was very uncomfortable with students’ advocacy for segregated spaces and graduations. The overall climate became very negative. Many students were interested in detecting microaggressions, and it seemed to me that it was rare for a day to pass without someone being angry about a microaggression. The university established a Bias Reporting System (now called “Campus Climate Concerns.”) The number of complaints sent to the university’s DEI office involving race, religion, or national origin increased from a few dozen in 2015 to almost 400 in 2023 (as cited in this paywalled New York Times article.) A 2023 survey, reported on in the same article, indicated that both students and faculty felt less positive about the campus climate than they did in 2016. Students also reported being less likely to interact with peers from different backgrounds.

In 2012, 26 percent of Americans believed that colleges and universities were negatively impacting the country’s direction. By 2024, that number had jumped to 45 percent. After completing my degree in 2018, I decided to leave academia. But there was no escaping it; the culture I had experienced on campus had expanded into the broader culture. Many scholars have traced the confluence of factors that created this cultural change in American universities and institutions, notably Helen Pluckrose, John McWhorter, Musa Al-Gharbi, Joanna Williams, Michael Shermer, and Yascha Mounk.

After the horrific murder of George Floyd in 2020, many K-12 schools embraced curricula that lumped people into simplistic racial groupings and taught that each person’s identity and status is based largely on skin color, leaving no place for people who are of mixed race or don’t place race at the heart of their identity, as Bion Bartning experienced with a curriculum at his children’s school. Similarly, parents and teachers, concerned with what they felt was a divisive Critical Ethnic Studies approach adopted by California’s Ethnic Studies curricula, formed the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES).

Parents have also been registering concerns about the influence of critical theory on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Overall, SEL programs have been found to have positive academic outcomes. A recent meta-analysis found that SEL programs increased students’ grades and test scores by an average of 8 percentile points. Yet there has been controversy over politically influenced SEL programs, such as the Transformative SEL approach, which aims to “disrupt inequitable systems by raising youths’ critical consciousness” (McGovern, Pinetta, and Montoro et al. 2023). Parents have reasonable concerns about these types of SEL curricula.

Since around 2021, many new organizations have been established to counter the influence of critical theory-based approaches in K-12 education, universities, and cultural institutions such as museums and libraries. These organizations promote free speech, academic freedom, intellectual pluralism, and open dialogue, as Jonathan Rauch has discussed. Many of these organizations were formed by parents who had never been politically active but were concerned, like me, about critical theory-based approaches to race and gender in children’s books and school curricula.

It is in this context that the Prohuman Foundation was founded in early 2024 to promote the foundational truth that we are all unique individuals united by our shared humanity. One of our organization’s co-founders, Daryl Davis, became famous for engaging in dialogues with KKK members—and inspiring over 200 white supremacists to leave the organization. The Prohuman co-founders drew on Daryl’s approach and positive psychology to identify nine key character strengths they wanted to promote: gratitude, optimism, grit, curiosity, courage, compassion, fairness, understanding, and humanity. They wanted to create a K-12 curriculum that is informed by, and teaches, the specific methods of constructive dialogue Daryl used to inspire people to walk away from hate.

With my background in education, I was happy to come on board. I started by spending a couple of months doing a deep dive into the leading K-12 curricula in English Language Arts (ELA), SEL, and Character Education. I found that many K-12 curricula are prohibitively expensive, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Due to generous donors, we have been able to make the Prohuman Curriculum available for free to educators in a wide variety of contexts: public, private, religious, and charter schools, homeschools, and alternative educational settings such as juvenile detention centers.

In collaboration with seasoned educators, we created the Prohuman English Language Arts Curriculum. Designed for English Language Arts (ELA) classes, the curriculum meets both Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) standards and the Character and Social Emotional Development (CSED) National Guidelines, created by Character.org—a non-partisan, non-ideological framework for teaching both foundational character strengths and fundamental SEL skills. The SEL competencies covered include ‍self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, interpersonal and relationship skills, and responsible and ethical decision-making skills.

Each month of the academic year focuses on one character strength: optimism, grit, gratitude, curiosity, courage, compassion, fairness, understanding, and humanity. We haven’t seen this combination of character strengths in any other Character Education curriculum. The Prohuman Curriculum focuses on developing multiple dimensions of character, including intellectual character: the cultivation of curiosity, carefulness, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, open-mindedness, and critical thinking.

The curriculum also has students practice the character strengths required for effective civic engagement. Students practice demonstrating the virtues and habits to know the difference between what is fair or unfair, to respect the rule of law, to treat all people with respect, courtesy, and dignity (especially individuals from different cultures, religions or ethnicities), to regularly volunteer and serve others, and to contribute their time and talents to the common good.

The Prohuman Curriculum directly addresses the enduring impacts of colonialism, slavery, genocide, state-sanctioned discrimination, and widespread economic inequality. But we do not take a defeatist approach. We focus on the incredible human capacity for grit, agency, and hope by profiling lesser-known people who thrived and made extraordinary contributions amid these injustices.

Because research supports “engagement with virtuous exemplars” as an effective means of teaching character, the curriculum focuses on extraordinary individuals—both historical and contemporary, along with literary characters—who embody the character strengths required for Daryl’s approach. This curriculum includes profiles of many incredible, lesser-known individuals, including many children. Embracing global perspectives, the curriculum features inspiring people from America and around the world, including Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Morocco, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Canada, England, and more.

Just a few of the amazing children featured in the curriculum include: Alex Scott, who raised $1 million to help cure childhood cancer; Gitanjali Rao, who, at age 11, patented a device to detect lead in drinking water to help victims of the Flint water crisis; Yash Gupta, who founded a nonprofit that donates eyeglasses to kids worldwide; Kelvin Doe, a self-taught engineer from Sierra Leone; and Easton LaChappelle, founder of Unlimited Tomorrow, which makes high-quality, low-cost bionic prosthetic arms easily accessible.

The curriculum also focuses on lesser-known historical figures such as Julian Rosenwald, who supported a network of nearly 5,000 Southern rural schools between 1917 and 1932 for the education of African American children; Anandabai Joshee, the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree in the US; Dr. George Carruthers, a space physicist and engineer; Susumu Ito, who in 1945, with the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, helped to liberate hundreds of Jewish prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp; and Dashrath Manjhi—known as the “mountain man” in India—who spent 22 years carving a road through a treacherous mountain to help his community reach medical and other essential services.

The Prohuman Curriculum includes many classic books with timeless themes and enduring appeal, many of which are part of the Core Knowledge Sequence. Examples of classic texts in the K-8 curriculum include Aesop’s fables, The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Little Engine that Could, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wizard of Oz, Charlotte’s Web, The Sign of the Beaver, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Giver, A Wrinkle in Time, Number the Stars, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and more.

We have also included many extraordinary contemporary works of children’s literature, several of which have won the Newbery medal. Some titles we have included are:

• Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson,

• Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai

• The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes: The Story of Dr. Patricia Bath by Julia Finley Mosca

• The Boy Who Grew a Forest: The True Story of Jadav Payeng by Sophia Gholz

• Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation Duncan Tonatiuh

• Saving the Day: Garrett Morgan’s Life-Changing Invention of the Traffic Signal by Karyn Parsons

• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

• William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad by Don Tate

• The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

• The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix

• The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

• All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat

Designed to prioritize teachers’ autonomy and flexibility, the curriculum can be integrated into the classroom in many ways. Teachers can choose to use just one lesson or the complete curriculum. The full curriculum consists of one unit per month, with four lessons per unit, amounting to one lesson per week.

The K-8 curriculum is available now, and the 9-12 curriculum will follow next year. To learn more about the Prohuman Foundation’s curriculum and to download free lessons, visit www.prohumanfoundation.org.

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Christina LaRose is a writer and educator. She received the University of Michigan English Department’s Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award and has taught writing at the University of Michigan, Purdue University Northwest, Ohio State University, and in the Ohio State Young Scholars Program. She has created K-12 and college-level curriculum with the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and the Institute for Humane Studies. Her science and technical writing has appeared in multiple publications, including Live Science, and her academic and creative writing has been published in Third Coast literary journal and others. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan.