The Power and Promise of Humane Education
Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times
Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs
So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed, Fun-Filled Book to Help Kids Help Animals
I listened, rapt, to Barack Obama’s speech on race on March 18. I could hardly believe that I was being spoken to like a thinking adult; that I was hearing nuance, complexity, and a rejection of either/or thinking in a political speech. I’ve written repeatedly in this blog about the concept of “both/and,” urging educators to teach a generation to think beyond either/ors, recognize the truths in seemingly contradictory positions, and help students learn how to create real solutions to seemingly intractable conflicts. To hear a politician speak this way was beyond rare –- it was almost unheard of in the soundbite world of politics.
As I listened, I heard Senator Obama use long sentences, some with double negatives. “Oh no,” I thought. “Some media will pull out this or that phrase and distort his meaning, perhaps even make it appear that he’s said the opposite of his intended meaning. Their soundbites will ruin this.” And that is what happened among some media, but not most. Instead, most media have offered paragraph long reprints, so that we are able to read and understand the complexity of Senator Obama’s statements. His speech has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. I’m hopeful that a trend has begun, and that other politicians will take Senator Obama’s lead and speak to us truthfully, with nuance, offering the complexity of issues, helping us not to take sides but to solve problems.
One week after Senator Obama’s speech on race, I watched the film Crash, a movie that explores the nuance and complexity of race and racism as well, which offers no character as all good or all bad, which redeems the worst racist and casts the good man in the horrifying role of unwitting race-based murderer. Like Senator Obama, the film delves below the surface of racism, revealing its origins, offering us understanding so that we might grow in awareness and through that awareness find better answers. It’s not a happy film, nor is it a hopeless film.
There’s a trend in filmmaking these days to give us brutal, unredeemed reality instead of a happy ending. When No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for best picture this year, I was stunned, and frankly, dismayed. I, personally, do not watch movies so that I can be reminded that the world is full of cruelty, insanity, suffering, injustice, and horrific violence. I can read the news for that. I want art to give me a lens into deeper truths; I want it to offer not sappy endings and unrealistic answers but legitimate hope, vision, and understanding. As I watched Crash, there was foreshadowing of a truly ghastly event: an honest, hard-working man who lifted his family out of the ghetto, but whose young daughter still feared the daily gunshots. A loving, creative father, he soothed his daughter’s fears by telling her a made-up story and giving her his invisible protective cape that would let nothing harm her. We viewers knew what was coming. Without this protective cape, and with the story unfolding of another man –- a victim of prejudice, robbery and fear — accusing this heroic dad of enabling the crime that robbed him of his livelihood –- seeking revenge. I found myself deeply afraid, even though I knew this was just a movie. “Please,” I thought, “don’t let this movie give us nothing but more horror.” It didn’t. Which is why I found Crash, like Senator Obama’s speech, helpful in my own quest for deeper understanding and vision for ways past our prejudices and failures so that we can tackle and solve our complex and persistent problems with wisdom, compassion, understanding, and, yes, hope.
~ Zoe
Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), positive choices Tagged: | complexity, Crash, hope, Obama, positive choices, prejudice, race
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I will never forget that scene. In fact the whole storyline of that man and his daughter was amazing to me.
I just found your blog. I like it. I will come back and read it again. BTW, I wonder if Barak Obama writes his own speeches. I think he does – this can’t be a bad thing!
I sure hope he writes his own speaches, or at least takes serious part in their creation. I had an editor who often reprinted whatever came through the wire, and once I actually went and saw the situation myself, I realized that a lot of what came through the wire was highly questionable, and all of us were basing our opinions about the situation on newspaper propoganda which was either extremely distorted, or downright false.
My favorite movie is Patch Adams because it showed how a few people can change the world for the better using very constructive and humane pacifistic means. When I watched it I realized that I create the light by choosing to be the light, and I spread the light by choosing to be the light.
The Dead Poets Society had similar elements of humanity in it, as did Good Will Hunting. Yes, I know they are all Robin Williams. I’ve heard that as he became better known he was able to pick and choose what he would participate in and therefore intentionally acted for movies that carried important messages, so I guess that would explain the fact that most of the movies that have spoken to me have him.
Although Titanic had some horrible scenes I loved the message it carried because I understood it on a deep and personal level, because the main character’s story so closely mirrored my own. There was this young girl who began to understand what real love was, and saw the real value of love and life. She realized that love was worth more than money, and she chose love over money (in that touching scene at the boats where she looks at her fiance whom she has been essentially betrothed to for his money), and she runs away from him, toward the poor boy she loves, realizing that she would rather be with the man she loves even though he has no money, than live her entire life with a man who has no noticeable spark of humanity or love.
There are books, and movies, which bring out the deepest of the human spirit, that touch the soul, and remind us of what true heroism is, and what is really valuable. Lois Lowery has written some books that inspired many children to look for the deeper and more humane elements in life, like Number The Stars and The Giver.
I think we need to give our kids true heroes to model after by giving them posters and books about Mother Teresa and Gandhi and King, instead of punk and sports stars who engage in lose sexual activity and drugs. I think that sex is a blessing when done in the correct context, and kids need to know that it is holy and profound, something to wait for patiently, instead of being defiled by the latest craze.
After rereading part of the The Power and Promise of Humane Education by Zoe Weil I had some thoughts. She explained that we need to respect people who are different from us. She suggested that we help foster respect for people of different religions by pointing out that common humanity found in all religions, which is one reason why I like John Marks Templeton’s book Worldwide Laws of Life.
The core essence of every religion demands that we treat people and animals with compassion, respect, and charity. Mohammed specifically emphasized that we must treat widows and orphans with compassion and respect. He warned people not to eat too much meat because they would become addicted to it, and demanded that people treat animals with compassion, chastising those who maltreated animals. Moses and Rebecca were both chosen to be leaders of the Jewish people because they demonstrated compassion towards animals (Moses proved himself to be a fit leader by demonstrating compassion toward sheep, while Rebecca proved herself to be a worthy matriarch of the Jewish people by demonstrating concern for camels.) St. Francis is revered for his love of animals, as are so many other religious leaders from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, and Taoism, as has been recorded in Rynn Berry’s Food for the Gods, and Diet for Transcendence by Steven Rosen.
OK, the next point I pondered after rereading part of The Power and Promise of Humane Education revolved around a story she told about a boy who was placed in a special school for boys who were violent threats to society because they were emotionally disturbed as result of being abused, and a gentle teacher reached inside this boys disturbed mind by teaching him how to gently attract birds. I worked with children who had similar psychological maladjustment as result of abuse. And, just like Zoe Weil wrote about in The Power and Promise of Humane Education, I found that these children were reachable. I was only a volunteer. I took the bus up there twice a week in order to help teach the kids and play with them. It does make a difference. These kids can be salvaged. They can overcome their psychological disorders and go onto live relatively normal lives, provided we give them the attention they need. It is also imperative that we intervene before the kids become adults because they will become a danger to society if we don’t give them they care they need in their formative years.
And lastly, Ms. Weil spoke about how the media affects our thoughts, and how the kids began to understand how their media affects their thoughts but the kids were unwilling to place restrictions upon what the media said because that would be inviting Big Brother into the world. I understand that concern, very deeply, and I do not think that we are ready, as a society, at large, to correctly identify what should be censured and what should not be censured. But the media does have the power to create massive mayhem or peace, therefore, I hope that we will be able to, as a society, evolve to the point when we will be able to accurately identify what should be prohibited. We have not reached that point. At this point, we need complete freedom of speech in order to make sure that the sane productive ideas are not silenced, but I think that the time will come when we will be able to accurately distinguish between an idea which is productive and an idea which is destructive, and we will not allow destructive ideas into the media.
The other thing which repeatedly touches me about Zoe Weil’s writing is how she tells her students that they can disagree with her. Only a teacher with true integrity could allow her students to disagree. If a teacher can’t allow me to disagree, then there is probably something I should be disagreeing with.
Many of us, including myself, were schooled in an indoctrination fashion, in which we were handed text books, or given notes, and told to memorize out text books or notes, and then regurgitate whatever had been given to us in those notes or books, without any real analysis. The analysis was provided for us. We were told what the cause and effect were, and no one ever asked us to counter or question if there had been a different cause. Case in point, for the first 12 years of my education they repeatedly repeated the same exact “facts” about WWII and it’s timeline, but when I got to college I had a professor who told us that we had better think really carefully, and pulled out numerous videos and books and ideas which all made what we had learned up until 12th grade seem highly questionable.
I spent the first 12 years of my education memorizing text books and notes, regurgitating word for word whatever was written in those text books and notes, but once I got out into the world, and began reading books other than the ones prescribed by that system, I began to realize that 95% of what we learned in school about history and science and health was up to debate, and not absolute fact as we had been led to believe.
Particularly with relation to health, I realized that I had better look for alternative theories, because it was quite possible that what they taught us in school was closer to destructive fantasy than scientific fact. As a matter of fact, I no longer believe most of what they taught us in health. I haven’t taken a single pill, not even a mainline painkiller, since the summer of 2001, and I feel better than I ever did.
I was sick my entire life, until I stopped following the Standard American Diet and became a vegetarian. I have found numerous books and magazines which all support my growing doubts about the medical system, suggesting that there are major side effects to taking prescriptions drugs, that major ailments like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, colitis and Crohn’s can all be cured or prevented by reverting to a raw food or vegan diet, and the Standard American Diet perpetuated by schools actually makes people sick. One of my favorite sources of information on “alternative” health, healing and diet is Living Nutrition Magazine, which has said pretty much everything I just said at one time or another.
I remember the first time I heard random gunfire in an uncontrolled situation. What was so remarkable about the experience, was that, although I knew what gunfire sounded like because I had heard it in a contained environment many times, I didn’t even notice it the first time I heard it in an uncontrolled environment. The reason I didn’t notice was because I was sitting at a lecture, given by a very old and wise man, and he just kept talking, as if nothing was happening.
He simply used himself as a distraction, as a means of keeping us all calm. I think it was several minutes before I became conscious of the gunfire, and another few second before I realized what it was, and how long it had been going on without it penetrating my conscious mind, and even longer for me to realize that the speaker had been aware of the gunfire the entire time, but had used himself as a calming force, to prevent more damage from occuring. You see, it is possible to keep calm, to chose to remain completely calm, and that is the key. You see, when we choose to remain calm, and to be a calming force, that prevents more problems from occurring and alleviates some of the problems which already are occurring.
[...] thought – show that you understand both sides, but decline to demonize one or the other. Zoe Weil talked about this idea of avoiding black/white, yes/no, Christian/Muslim kinds of [...]