Your middle schooler just got introduced to caste in school.
Now what?

Key Takeaways

Many U.S. schools inaccurately connect caste with Hinduism, often leading to stereotypes, bullying, and confusion. As a parent, you can take proactive steps to ensure your child feels confident and informed when this topic comes up in class.

Start by reviewing your child’s social studies materials early and having open conversations about common misconceptions—such as the false idea that Hinduism enforces a rigid caste system. Teach your child the truth: varna was originally based on qualities and actions, not birth, and Hinduism teaches that the Divine is present in all.

If your child experiences bias or discomfort, respond calmly. Validate their feelings, then guide them toward advocacy. Help them learn respectful ways to share accurate information with teachers and peers. Equip them with strategies for classroom engagement and responding to teasing, such as staying calm, using humor, and knowing when to seek help.

By modeling critical thinking and respectful dialogue at home, you empower your child to navigate difficult topics with confidence—and preserve pride in their Hindu identity.

Quick-Action Checklist for Parents

✔ Review materials early – Ask to see textbooks and online resources.
✔ Explain common misconceptions – Teach the difference between “caste” and varna.
✔ Share accurate information – Emphasize equality as a Hindu principle.
✔ Build critical thinking – Model fact-checking and using multiple sources.
✔ Have proactive conversations – Prepare your child before the lesson starts.
✔ Validate feelings after class – Start with openness and empathy.
✔ Teach advocacy skills – Use frameworks like DEAR MAN for calm communication.
✔ Prepare for peer dynamics – Role-play responses to teasing or harassment.
✔ Foster resilience – Encourage friendships and upstander behavior.
✔ Stay engaged long-term – Keep dialogue open and model pride in Hindu identity.

Why Does This Matter for Hindu Parents?

Virtually all public school curricula currently conflate caste with Hinduism, and chances are that you, your children, or your extended family will need to deal with its ramifications. We’ve consistently found that the type of rhetoric that ties Hinduism to inherently discriminatory practices leads to bullying and harassment.

While HAF has been working tirelessly for the last two decades directly on education policy at the state level, with textbook publishers on national levels, and with teachers on local levels to address this, the bulk of Hindu children in this country will still be exposed to this narrative. We need your help in changing this narrative. When you encounter a biased and inaccurate textbook, you have the opportunity to help your children educate their teacher and fellow classmates and be an advocate.

What Can Parents Do When Faced With This Narrative?

Of course, keeping Hindu Dharma traditions alive by living them at home and talking about them is a key piece of the work that we own as parents and community members. These conversations enable the “prophylactic” work of teaching what our traditions ARE and what they CAN BE so our children aren’t afflicted by inaccurate content on what our traditions ARE NOT. Our guide on difficult conversations about caste is a great resource with reflection questions and models of engagement to help you have deeper conversations with your child.

The Pre-emptive Conversation

When Will Hinduism Be Taught in School?

In most states, middle and high school are times when you can anticipate Hinduism and Ancient India being a part of the curriculum.

How Can You Prepare Your Child Ahead of Time?

One of the best ways to prepare your child for this is to have conversations about what they may read in textbooks and learn in the classroom before it happens, so that they’re equipped to respond appropriately, rather than being caught off guard. You can chat with them about some of the most common misconceptions presented and what are more accurate framings.

*Pro-tip: Proactively ask your child’s teacher if you can peruse your child’s curricula and class materials (textbook, online sources, etc.) at the start of the year. If they are scheduled to cover world history in their social studies class, take a quick glance at their materials so you know what to expect.

Reviewing the Resource

As you review the resource, remember that being able to name what is correct helps make the criticism of inaccuracies sharper. Modeling how you fact check and correct the information you see is a valuable process in simultaneously building your child’s critical thinking skills and their pride in their Hindu identity. This comes from being able to see both the strengths and weaknesses of the resource and using multiple sources to understand the truth. We have a wealth of resources at HAF to help you understand what Hindu traditions actually say about “caste” and other challenging topics, and we’re here for you if you have any questions. We encourage you to explore many sources to help your child understand the truth as well as bias in the material. The resources below are particularly helpful in doing this work.

How to Constructively Engage Your Child’s School Over Inaccuracies About Hinduism – Hindu American Foundation

Guide for Reviewing Your Child’s Textbook

For quick purposes, this is a short overview of the most common misconceptions about caste and what is actually accurate.

Misconceptions about caste

  • Hinduism and Hindu society are described as having a caste system, which is represented as a four-tiered social hierarchy – with priests (Brahmins) at the top – that dictates how Hindus from the four groups must treat and mistreat one another.
  • The concept of karma is often conflated with this, suggesting that good deeds lead to “high caste” birth and bad deeds lead to “low caste” birth.

What is accurate?

  • Caste is a Portuguese word and is not found in any Hindu sources of knowledge.
  • Hindu traditions talk about varna. There are four varnas, and that is what many textbooks call “caste.” But varna is not caste.
  • Varna is not birth-based, but rather dependent on one’s qualities and virtues as well as thoughts, words, and actions.
  • Indian social identity is complex and varied. Jāti is probably one of the more common social groups people identify with.
  • Jāti are tribes which share things like origin stories, history, culture, trade, or language. Some people may prefer marrying people from a particular group of jātis.
  • Caste is an administrative category under Indian law.
    • Caste-based and other forms of discrimination have been outlawed in India. Nonetheless, social discrimination does exist in India across and amongst all faith communities. There have been many movements within Hindu communities to address and reverse social prejudice and discrimination.
  • Hinduism teaches that the Divine is equally present in all.

The post-incident conversation

How Should You Talk to Your Child After the Lesson?

For many of us, preemptive work isn’t enough, and we’ll want to have a conversation with our child if they come home sharing that Hinduism was taught in school that day and it didn’t reflect how they know or understand it.

What Reactions Might You Expect?

Start with reflection to build your child up to address this situation. “How did that feel?” asked with openness and curiosity is important to build your child’s investment. If they share that they didn’t have a reaction or don’t have the words to express their feelings, you can share your own feelings to help them understand the part of why this is important. As a parent, you may share that you feel misunderstood and attacked.

Some of our children will share that they don’t care. Others may admit that they are angry or ashamed. Some of our children will immediately be ready to advocate to address the inaccuracies. Some will be hesitant to “rock the boat”. It’s important to understand that we can start with validating our children’s strengths – whether that’s their willingness to advocate and engage or their capacity to keep the peace. We may not always see these qualities as strengths, but our child will be less defensive and more open to new strategies if we can show that we see and value them, before giving them a new skill. If your student is a peacekeeper, take time to appreciate their concerns before encouraging them to see that there will be times in life where they have to adopt a new strategy, even when it goes against their intuition or their comfort. There is an opportunity here to talk to them about how speaking up may feel like it’s inviting conflict, but is important in the long term to creating the equal treatment that leads to peace.

Is my child comfortable speaking out/speaking up?

Ask your child if they feel that it would be helpful to share what they learned through their research with their teacher. If they say no, understand why and work on addressing their concerns. If they express interest, build a plan with them, whether they’re taking the following steps themselves (as would be appropriate for a high schooler) or whether you are joining them. This will be the most challenging piece for many of us, and teaching children to advocate for themselves is a vital part of parenting. It equips them with the confidence and skills to express their concerns, ask questions, and address misunderstandings respectfully. By modeling calm communication and providing a safe space to practice, parents help kids learn to navigate challenges — whether clarifying a lesson with a teacher or addressing conflicts with peers. Your support reinforces that their voice matters and fosters resilience and critical thinking. Over time, children gain the tools to uphold their boundaries, seek fairness, and contribute positively to their communities, all while knowing they have you as a trusted ally in their corner. By walking alongside your child now, you’re not just correcting a classroom moment – you’re giving them tools they’ll use for life. The ability to advocate, self-regulate, and speak their truth is part of living a grounded, resilient Hindu identity in the modern world.

How should my child respond during class?

If you’ve done the preemptive work effectively, your child may be ready to use these pointers during the lesson itself for the benefit of the students and classroom in the moment. If they share that they’d like to engage the teacher live, you can encourage your child to:

  1. Stay calm. They can take a breath to center themselves and avoid sounding angry or rude. Remind them to assume positive intentions of the teachers and their classmates in order to facilitate engagement. 
  2. Raise their hand and start with an open ended question to decrease defensiveness and increase engagement.
  3. Politely and firmly share their experience and understanding on the matter.

Remind them that 1:1 conversations are also important and helpful ways to address the shortcomings they’re experiencing.

Here is a potential scenario, and a way to handle it. This is intended to help you think about how to approach the situation rather than a script, because an understanding of your child’s personal experience is key to being effective.

Your child’s teacher asked them what caste they belong to.

A possible response:
Can I ask you what leads you to ask me in particular that question before I answer? Caste as laid out in the textbook feels inapplicable to me. It’s not something I grew up with as a part of my Hindu experience. If you’re curious about my experience, I’d be happy to answer questions about what we believe or how we practice. If you’re curious about my identity, we speak x, come from y, are a family of z, etc.

Another possible response (potentially for high schoolers):
Can you share why you’re asking me that question? Can we discuss the assumptions that may be leading you to ask me that, before I answer the question? Caste isn’t an accurate term to describe any Hindu concepts. Our scriptures do delineate 4 varnas, but they were fluid rather than rigid and birth based, and related to temperament. If you’re interested in learning more about Hindu concepts, I can continue to describe the varnas, and if you’d like to understand how the term caste became conflated with Hinduism, I can explain more about the history of colonialism.

What should my child do after class?

  1. Ask to start a conversation with the teacher. Your classroom teacher likely didn’t write the text book, or intend any type of offense, so be sure to come in with respect, positive regard, and open ended questions that promote openness and engagement. Putting the teacher on the defensive by coming in with anger will work against you. You may feel justified, given the history you’ve experienced and the harmful impact of inaccurate content, but remember that what is justified and what is effective are often not the same.
  2. As the teacher or administrators engage with you, share the impact the lesson has had on you and why you feel it’s important to address. HAF’s material on inaccurate material being tied to bullying and harassment may be particularly helpful in explaining the scope of your fears and concerns.
    https://www.hinduamerican.org/bullying-prevention
  3. Come in with concrete and positive requests. It is always helpful to articulate what you want the teacher to add to their teaching, rather than focusing on what you want them to stop doing or subtract. Some ideas of positive asks are to recommend supplementing the lesson with HAF material, offering opportunities to visit a local mandir to learn/experience more, or having a HAF Hinduism 101 training in the classroom. That being said, there may be times when factually or historically incorrect material makes it necessary to ask for a “stop”, so use this as a general guideline for effectiveness rather than a rigid rule.

The bones of this method of communication come from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), a clinical psychotherapy that is grounded in many tenets of Dharmic traditions. The DEAR MAN method is effective in creating engagement to foster change.

DEAR MAN

Describe: Non-judgmentally describe the situation using only the facts.
Express: Express your feelings and opinions about the situation.
Assert: Clearly and directly state your needs or what you want.
Reinforce: Reinforce the positive outcomes of getting what you want or the negative consequences of not getting it.

Mindful: Stay focused on your goal and avoid getting sidetracked.
Appear Confident: Maintain a confident demeanor, both verbally and nonverbally.
Negotiate: Be willing to compromise and find solutions that work for everyone involved.

Responding to Peers

For many of our children, a concrete plan to address the teacher may be easier to engage in than talking to their own peers. The tone the teacher sets is important in how peers respond to the lesson, but sometimes teasing and bullying can occur in spite of a thoughtful lesson. Middle and high school are a time of shifting peer dynamics, and unpacking how to understand adolescent behavior can be complicated.

How Can You Tell if Your Child Is Being Harassed?

If you notice changes in your child that indicate that they may be struggling with peers (unexplained injuries, loss of personal items, changes in eating or sleeping behavior, irritability, isolation, declining grades or interest in school, school avoidance), have an open ended and curious conversation with them about what they’re noticing and experiencing. While some of the harassment may be directly tied to their Hindu or Indian identity, having a more full understanding of the social dynamics at play will help you equip your child in the most effective way to respond.

Why Don’t Kids Always Ask for Help?

While our instinct may be to encourage our children to ask for help when facing harassment or bullying, the reality is that many children don’t feel comfortable involving an adult. This can be frustrating, but it can also be a mark of strength and independence. Instead of asking them to always share with you, you may be better off clearly articulating behaviors, such as physical violence and repeated patterns of behavior, that would make it important for them to escalate the situation to an adult. Encouraging them to find a safe adult at school, if not just you, can be a helpful way to make sure that they have multiple resources available to them.

How to Support Without Blame or Shame

As your child does open up to you, be sure to avoid blaming or shaming your child for their own behaviors, avoid encouraging them to engage physically, and avoid minimizing what they’re experiencing. You may have dealt with a lot more yourself, but your child’s experiences are a big deal to them, and empathy is the first step towards resilience.

In equipping your kid: help them understand what’s happening, through their experience as well as through yours. Then, talk about the different ways to be assertive:

Staying calm

This is a great opportunity to teach them about sadhana. Meditation, pranayama, yoga, and the arts (Hindu and otherwise), are all possible ways to stay calm in otherwise emotional situations. Using breathing techniques in the moment can be really effective.

Using humor to deflect

Humor is a really valuable tool in social settings to diffuse tension as well as to redirect the situation. Self deprecating humor can be useful and intuitive in some situations as it can be disarming, but in bullying/harassment situations, it’s better to avoid engaging in humor that gives others an opening to tease them. You may be pulled to encourage your child to tease the other child back, but remember that this can invite more emotion, and that while there may be effective and kind ways to put the attention back on the bully, teasing someone about something they cannot change about themselves is always mean, and rarely helpful.

The DBT FAST Skill can be helpful here:
F– be Fair to yourself and the other party.
A– don’t over Apologize. Don’t look ashamed, or communicate defeat in your body language.
S– Stick to your values
T– be Truthful and honest about your experienc

Building safety with people they can trust.

Having close friends is the best buffer to bullying and attacks on confidence. While this can be challenging for some of our children to do, especially as their social landscape is constantly shifting and changing, it’s important to know that this is a lifelong skill your child will need that you can model for them (have your own close friends!) and support them with (setting up playdates and other opportunities to practice social skills from early ages). Having good relationships with teachers and administrators is important to building that safety as well.

Another aspect of this is showing them that they can engage in “upstanding” rather than “bystanding” behavior themselves. You can model this yourself, in standing up for what’s right, and by emphasizing that while this can be really difficult to do for most people, it’s an important way to stand for justice. When your child stands up for others who are experiencing bullying, it’s more likely those kids will also see how they could behave if your child is in that situation.

Example Scenarios

Here are some potential scenarios with peers, and a few ideas of how you can encourage your child to handle them. Consider using these scenarios to role play potential conflict preemptively.

A classmate tells your child they’re going to hell

Possible responses:

Firm: That may be what you believe, but it’s not what I believe, and I don’t appreciate you being unkind. My religion says our actions right now have a lot more to do with any divine fate than who we worship, and you’re making a poor choice right now.

Humorous/Deflecting: Well I better go put on some sunscreen then, see you later.

Engaging: Why do you think that? Would you like me to share more about what I believe?

After the lesson on Hinduism, a classmate makes fun of your child for being “low caste” or “high caste.”

Possible responses:

Firm: You don’t know me, and you don’t know my family, and I don’t think your ignorance is funny or worth engaging in. Stop.

Humorous/Deflecting: Wow, did you actually try to pay attention in class? You’re pretty far off, but thanks for trying.

Engaging: That’s not quite right, and if you want to understand more about me and my family, I’d be happy to share more about what we actually believe, who we are, and my culture. We have to drop the name calling to do that.

Final Thoughts

Navigating how Hinduism is taught in schools—especially caste—is not easy, but it’s a challenge we are equipped to face together. By having proactive and informed conversations at home, supporting our children when they encounter biased or inaccurate information, and modeling calm, respectful advocacy, we build not only their confidence but also a more accurate understanding of Hindu traditions in the broader community. This is long-term, generational work, and it starts in our homes, with our children, and with the courage to speak up. With the right tools, support, and mindset, we can help ensure that our children grow up proud of who they are, and empowered to ensure that the world sees them as they are – deeply good, deeply Hindu.