A Model of Courageous Parenting: Ducks, Dogs, and a Walk on the Beach at Sunset

Posted on June 29, 2011 by zoeweil

The night before solstice, I walked my dogs, Ruby and Elsie, down to the shore just before sunset. A seal was basking in the last rays of the day on a rock about 100 feet off the shore. A loon cried. Sea gulls soared above us, calling. The dogs and I walked along the shore past the few houses to the long stretch of undeveloped coast, when suddenly a Mallard sprung out in front of us, walk-limping, flapping what appeared to be useless wings, apparently struggling and in great distress. I quickly got Ruby and Elsie on lead so that they couldn’t harm her, as I pondered what to do. My husband is a veterinarian, so I knew I could get the duck medical care quickly if I could catch her. But within moments, I realized what was really going on. From where the duck had first emerged, I heard little chirps.

I’ve heard of mother birds pretending to be injured and flapping around on the ground to draw predators away from their young, but I don’t recall ever seeing this before. And with such drama and commitment, too. This Mallard flapped and limped and struggled for a nearly a quarter of a mile, staying just ahead of us as we dutifully followed (well, that’s the direction we were headed anyway). When finally she felt we were far enough away, she flew to the ocean, keeping an eye on us on the whole time.

What a clever, brave, and good mom she was. She fooled the dogs, who never thought to investigate those duckling chirps. Why do so many of us humans doubt that other species can love their young as we do; can use intrigue and manipulation like the best of us; can feel and love and suffer?

For a humane world for all beings,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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My Amazing Weekend at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary

Posted on June 27, 2011 by zoeweil

My traveling schedule can sometimes get a little overwhelming. For example, in the past two months I’ve been to San Francisco, Florida, the Bahamas, Seattle, Massachusetts (twice), and New York. Periodically, even seemingly awesome invitations – like speaking at the Sivananda Ashram’s Peace Symposium in the Bahamas – can feel like one more thing on the never-ending to do list. And my most recent invitation, to be the keynote speaker at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary’s (CAS) annual Shindig, was one of those where in the days leading up to the 16-hour round trip drive I wondered if it was all worth the effort, especially with our upcoming Summer Institute (July 27-July 1), first ever alumni reunion, and our 15th Anniversary “Crystal Ball” on July 2.

On the drive home from CAS that night, I called our executive director for the second time in a month to say, “Please remind me when I start complaining about my travel schedule to shut up.” I said this because what I thought was going to be a tiring effort on my part turned out to be (like the visit to the ashram in the Bahamas), so profoundly transformative and such a tremendous gift to me personally.

Let me tell you about the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.

Run by the irrepressible, giant-hearted, super smart, hilariously funny, deeply generous Kathy Stevens, who has all the best qualities of the people I most admire all rolled up in one person, this sanctuary oozes joy and love. The people exude it, and the animals bask in it and give it right back. It’s a place where people’s hearts and minds are opened wide. I met Rambo, a very, very special sheep whom I can’t seem to get out of my mind. You can read about his amazing transformation from killer sheep to fierce protector of his fellow rescuees – from turkey to chicken to pig – in Kathy’s wonderful books. Visit this sanctuary if you can.

The take home message I’m leaving with? Keep saying yes. Despite the busy schedule, which often feels like just too much, when I say yes, great things happen. I’m so glad I said yes to the invitation to speak at the Shindig. I left soaring, full of love, with new friends, and much hope and inspiration.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Images courtesy of Catskill Animal Sanctuary.

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Including Everyone in Our Circle of Compassion

Posted on June 24, 2011 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for One Green Planet, a blog dedicated to ethical choices. Here’s an excerpt from “Including Everyone in Our Circle of Compassion”:

“… And yet, despite the fact that social justice, environmental preservation, and animal protection are all part and parcel of a just, healthy, and humane world, I am periodically surprised by activists whose compassion is so exclusive as to actively reject embracing ideas and choices that are humane and peaceful toward all. While I don’t find such people enrolling in our programs, I do find them at activist conferences, rallies, and in the blogosphere, and it’s dismaying.

For many years, I found the most glaring example of the neglect of one suffering group by those active to end the suffering or exploitation of another in the catering at environmental and human rights events. Whether it was meat (and factory-farmed meat to boot) served at environmental events (despite the environmental toll of animal agriculture), or disposable plates and plastic utensils used at human rights events, it always seemed ironic to me that one or more exploited groups were so unnecessarily rejected as deserving of consideration.

As someone who cared passionately about animal exploitation and abuse and sought to eradicate it, and who also cared passionately about human suffering and exploitation and sought to eradicate it too, and who wanted desperately to protect our environment, I found the inconsistency of attention to compassion, care, and respect for all frustrating and upsetting. Why didn’t others feel, as I did, that everyone and everything should be treated with compassion and care?”

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Reflections on this Summer Solstice

Posted on June 22, 2011 by zoeweil

I grew up in New York City. During my childhood I did not know what the solstices were. I was vaguely aware that it was darker in the winter and lighter in the summer, but I never knew that there were two days in the year when the shift from light to darkness, or vice versa, occurred. I did not know there was a longest day or a shortest day, although I should have been smart enough to figure this out. But even if I had, I would not have felt that such a shift marked anything very important.

Had I grown up prior to the Industrial Revolution, the winter solstice would have been quite a time to mark. As the days in December were growing increasingly short and cold, I imagine I would have been happy to know that on December 21st, even as the first days of winter began, the light would be returning, and the days would grow increasingly longer. On the summer solstice, as the days were warming and the seeds were sprouting for a hoped-for big harvest, I would also have been aware that the next day would be shorter, portending winter’s return.

How could I have been so unaware of the solstices for two decades of my life? Easy. In our built world with electric light at our fingertips, drapes to block the rays of the morning sun, and so much to keep us indoors and in front of screens and books and on our phones (and now Skype and email and Facebook and Twitter), it’s not a surprise that I, like many children, barely noticed the change in light. We notice what we pay attention to, and it’s somewhat disturbing to think that growing up in Manhattan I paid such little attention to the natural world that a fundamental cycle of light was lost on me.

On this solstice, I’m asking myself this: To what do I want to attend? I’m resolving to spend 15 minutes each day this summer simply sitting and observing a small spot in the natural world. Whether it is at our pond, teeming, truly teeming, with life, or in our wildflower meadow watching the work of pollinators, or in the deep woods that border the meadow, I will be paying attention to this beautiful earth I inhabit. Whenever I take time to do this, I realize — often quite suddenly and profoundly — that while this land is legally “mine,” of its countless inhabitants I spend the least time actually in, on, and among it. I sleep in a comfortable bed inside, spend hours on my computer each day, live largely indoors. Meanwhile, just outside, life in all its mystery and abundance is happening. For a time each day between now and winter, I plan to notice.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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To Solve the Education Crisis We Must Refute Faulty Assumptions

Posted on June 20, 2011 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for Common Dreams, a progressive news site. Here’s an excerpt from “To Solve Education Crisis We Must Refute Faulty Assumptions”:

Among the biggest challenges we face in “educational reform” are the many faulty assumptions that underlie our efforts to fix the problems we perceive in schools. Because we fail to deeply assess and evaluate these underlying assumptions, we continue to misunderstand the problems, propose answers to the wrong problems, or address only a portion of a much larger overall challenge.

What are some of the common educational assumptions to which I’m referring? Here are a few:

Assumption 1: The goal of schooling should be to graduate students who are verbally, mathematically and technologically literate and who are able to compete in the global economy.

Assumption 2: To best achieve the above goal, we must evaluate students using standardized, multiple choice tests.

Assumption 3: Schools are not the place to teach or discuss values.

There are many more such assumptions that need unpacking, but for the sake of this essay, I’ll simply address these three by attempting to reframe each with questions (and the beginnings of answers) that might lead us toward different approaches to solving educational challenges in the 21st century.

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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You’re Invited to IHE’s Crystal Ball on July 2

Posted on June 17, 2011 by zoeweil

On July 2, the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) will be hosting a celebratory Crystal Ball in honor of our 15th anniversary (you can purchase tickets here). Fifteen years ago, we had a vision of a school through which people could learn about and then teach about the most important issues of our time. We imagined a center in a beautiful setting where people could gather to become humane educators themselves and to experience humane education classes and workshops to more deeply align their life choices with their own values. We also knew that we wanted our reach to extend far beyond our rural neighborhood in coastal Maine, so we created online courses and programs, launching the first Humane Education Certificate Program and the first Master of Education program in humane education in the United States. We also brought our acclaimed workshops to communities across the U.S. and Canada.

Fifteen years later, we have launched a new affiliation with Valparaiso University and added four additional graduate degrees to our humane education training programs. We’ve developed new and exciting online courses that people can take no matter where they live. Our reach has expanded dramatically, and we have students from around the globe. And as we envision the next 15 years we can see humane education growing tremendously to reach people of all ages in all settings. And together all these students of humane education will have the tools and knowledge and motivation to solve the pressing challenges we face.

On July 2, we’ll be celebrating where we’ve been and envisioning the future we’re trying to create: a more humane, peaceful, just, and healthy future for all people, all species, and the environment. Toward that end, students in schools across the country have been creating their own “crystal balls,” decorating them with images and words that depict the future they hope for. Many of these artistic renderings of their greatest hopes will be on display on July 2, where we’ll gather from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at our beautiful facility in Surry, Maine, to enjoy the music of concert and ragtime pianist Masanobu Ikemiya, partake of yummy desserts, hear stories from IHE alumni and leaders in humane education, participate in a silent auction, experience a taste of humane education, celebrate, learn, and have a great time. We hope you can come, and if you are unable to attend, we hope you’ll support our work, because our celebration is also a fundraiser to advance humane education.

Please share this invitation widely (you can download a copy here to share). We hope to celebrate with many of you who are also working to create a humane and restorative world!

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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The Hope That Lies at the Root of Humane Education

Posted on June 15, 2011 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from The Hope That Lies at the Root of Humane Education:

As Joan Baez put it, “Action is the antidote to despair.” So when I feel hopeless, I harness my fading will toward action once again. And when I do, when I teach and watch my students become energized, enlivened, engaged and enthusiastic, my hope returns. I feed the part of myself that is starving for renewed faith, and I feed those students eager (and sometimes even desperate) for meaning, purpose and relevancy in their education. And that is when I know that a humane, healthy and just world is possible: as long as we refuse to give in to despair, but instead work just as tenaciously when hopelessness takes root as we do when we are hopeful.

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of DieselDemon via Creative Commons.

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Must It Take Media Stunts to Address Global Problems and Create Real Solutions?

Posted on June 13, 2011 by zoeweil

Take a look at the heartwarming and powerful video of 7-year-old Olivia Binfield auditioning on the show Britain’s Got Talent.

When I watched this video I got teary. Britain, and now the world, listened to this little girl speak the truth so eloquently and beautifully. Who could not be moved to reconsider buying an alligator handbag or snakeskin belt?

And yet, I found myself feeling strangely irritated, too. Not by this wonderful little girl, but by the ways in which we fail to respond to pressing issues – like the rapid extinction of countless species – unless they are packaged in a cute, shocking, media attention-grabbing way. While Olivia is a gem, and while I by no means want to diminish what a fantastic job she did, every single day we are losing countless species forever (literally countless, because we don’t even know all the species whose lives are being snuffed out). And the sad reality is that choosing not to buy rhino horn aphrodisiacs or tiger penis Chinese remedies or reptile-skin handbags will hardly scratch the surface of the plight other species face, as their habitats are destroyed through a combination of deforestation, climate change, pollution, and expansion of human settlements. The direct killing of animals to satisfy our desires, while a terrible thing, causes only a tiny fraction of extinctions.

But were Olivia to ask people to buy less stuff in general, to forgo meat (a huge contributor to deforestation, pollution, and climate change – the primary causes of extinctions), to live in smaller, solar-powered homes, to devote their energies to changing entrenched systems that cause environmental harm, and thereby actually prevent so many species from becoming endangered, to elect legislators who will not be beholden to corporate donations and who will work for serious, far-reaching, and systemic change for a restorative world, her performance might not have received the three “yes” votes to bump her into the next level of competition. In fact, she might not have been on Britain’s Got Talent at all.

So I reluctantly find myself trying to think up media stunts to gain attention for the field of humane education, because far too few people have even heard of it, even though it is an educational approach that holds the key to solving all of our interconnected challenges, including the rapid extinction of species. Humane education isn’t sexy; it’s not attention-grabbing, and hence it’s largely unknown. But the truth is that if every child were to learn about the interconnected issues of human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation in school; if every child were provided with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be solutionaries for a better world; if every student understood that they had the capacity and the skill to ensure that the systems in their chosen professions were just, humane, and restorative, we would solve the world’s problems. We would raise a generation of Olivias.

Any ideas out there? Any stunts we at the Institute for Humane Education could perform? Any outrageous acts that would garner media attention for this powerful field that could truly change the world by striking at the root problems and engendering wise solutions? Any brilliant 2-minute viral videos that would send people in droves to become trained humane educators to bring this work to every child and teen across the globe?

I look forward to your ideas.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Ruby and Coral — The Best Kinds of Activists & a Tribute to Humane Education

Posted on June 10, 2011 by zoeweil

This past winter, two high school seniors, Ruby Treyball and Coral O’Brian, asked if they could do their Independent Study Project (IS) with me. Having watched my TEDx talk, they wanted to experience humane education and learn about human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation. I put together a two week curricula that included five books, a dozen films, and a bunch of websites. I gave them questions to discuss for each day, and actions to do to so that their education wouldn’t be divorced from changemaking efforts. And on every day I was in town, I met with them.

Truthfully, I was a bit anxious about taking on the mentorship of an IS project. My schedule was already too packed, and I was going to be traveling for five days of the two weeks. While we stretched the two into three weeks, using some of the girls’ February break, I still wasn’t sure I really had time for all this. Just putting together a solid syllabus took the better part of a day. But I loved these two girls, whom I’ve known for years, and there was no way I was going to say no. Thank goodness I didn’t!

Those few weeks were a joy, and what’s happened since has been one of the most rewarding and heartening experiences I’ve had as an educator. Our one hour meetings the days I was in town extended for several hours, and then to weekend dinners. The girls were so committed to learning and then acting upon what they learned, and watching their transformation into kind but persistent activists was amazing. At the end of the IS project they had both decided to become vegan; they started a school activity group for the remainder of the year, during which they taught their fellow students; they spoke at their school’s Parents Association gathering; they hosted a film and discussion and helped develop a discussion guide for the soon-to-be-released film Vegucated; and they committed to being interns at the Institute for Humane Education for our Summer Institute and our 15th Anniversary Crystal Ball celebration on July 2.

And every step of the way they have avoided the pitfalls to which so many activists have succumbed. Despite ribbing at school and irritating comments in the cafeteria about their vegan diet, they have remained poised and respectful. Those who have dismissed their concerns have only strengthened their resolve. They could not be better, warmer, more measured, more thoughtful advocates for the voiceless, even if they had trained for such activism for a decade.

I am so proud to know Ruby and Coral, and I’m so grateful to count them as friends. They are a reminder to each of us of the power of humane education. In just a couple of weeks, these two young women dove into their education with gusto and took what they learned and began to make a difference. Imagine what would happen if humane education were part of every student’s education.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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An Orgy in My Backyard: Falling in Love with Nature

Posted on June 8, 2011 by zoeweil

It’s been a cold, rainy spring in Maine, so it was no surprise that after a beautiful, sunny June day, on a warm clear night, there was an orgy in my backyard. I’d never imagined experiencing so much sex happening all around me, but there I was in the thick of it. The June bugs who weren’t flying all around (and bumping into me) were paired up so thickly on the ground that I had to walk slowly and carefully, so as not to crush dozens of them. And at the pond, the peeping and trilling of the spring peepers and tree frogs was so loud I had to cover my ears.

Normally, it’s not easy to find the tiny spring peepers and the perfectly camouflaged tree frogs who quiet down as one approaches, but they were so seemingly determined to find a mate that night that they didn’t stop their calls for even a second. I even saw two peepers hook up (whereupon they stopped peeping and just focused on mating). It wasn’t just the process of creating life that was occurring that night. The big green frogs were looking for dinner, and I came upon one who was eating a tree frog. It was quite an extravaganza of life and death by that pond. Even the nightcrawlers – big, dark earthworms – were out in force, slithering back into their holes as I passed.

I reveled in it all, amazed to witness such an event in my backyard. Most of the time other species are hidden. With the exception of diurnal flying birds and lawn-hopping squirrels, it’s uncommon to see wildlife, even in rural areas. We’re so divorced from the natural world in our built environments, so when we get to experience the extravagance of nature, the deafening sounds coming out of animals no bigger than the top joint of our thumb, the reality that under our feet worms are teeming, turning refuse into fertile soil below the visible grass, we are reminded that we are one species among many, interdependent, all participating in the grand drama that is life.

It’s so important that we ensure that our children have opportunities to witness and experience nature in this way, to understand the mysterious and amazing and wondrous world that lies beyond their TVs and computers and classrooms, to know that they are part and parcel of something precious beyond words and currently threatened by the actions and choices of our species.

Please bring a child into the woods, or a meadow, or a park, or a seashore, or a prairie at night this spring. Let them fall in love so they’ll protect whom and what they love with all their power.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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