In the Face of Unimaginable Catastrophe, We Must Insist Schools Create Solutionaries

Posted on November 30, 2012 by zoeweil

The Atlantic has a series of graphs and a remix of a TEDx talk on global warming that is sobering to say the least.

In the face of this, what shall we do? Where shall we place our lever to have the maximum leverage, the greatest possibility that we will protect our planet from a seemingly inevitable catastrophe?

Each of us has skills and talents to place a lever somewhere where we can have an impact, but if we don’t simultaneously put our societal lever in our educational endeavor, there is little hope that we will have enough informed innovators to take on the tasks ahead quickly enough.

Wherever and however you do the work to avert this looming crisis, please make sure to contact your school boards, teachers, school administrators, educational policy-makers, and politicians, and insist – INSIST – that we educate our children to be the solutionaries they will need to be.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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The Rise of Solutionaries

Posted on November 29, 2012 by zoeweil

For my blog post today I want to share an essay from GOOD by high school student, Nikhil Goyal,  (whose TEDx talk I shared in a previous blog post). I’m delighted that in “The Rise of Democratic Schools and ‘Solutionaries’: Why Adults Need to Get Out of the Way” Nikhil cited IHE and my work as a key to listening to youth. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Twenty years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, a 12-year-old girl from Canada, “silenced the world for six minutes” with her raw and powerful oration lambasting adults for dumping the problems they created onto the next generation. “At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world,” she said. “You teach us to not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others and to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then, why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?”

Last March, Esquire revealed what it called the current “War on Youth.” In July, Newsweek dubbed millennials “Generation Screwed.” In the middle of this mayhem, young people have been left on the sidelines, given the cold shoulder, and ignored. In my life, I’ve been told to shut up, sit down, and listen. I witness this every single day at school. Top-down, rigid policies dictate word-for-word what students and teachers must do and learn. As a young person, very few seem to be on our side and even fewer attempt to strengthen our voice. Education thought leader Paulo Freire once quipped, “If the structure does not permit dialogue, the structure must be changed.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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That Warm, Fuzzy Feeling You Get When You Help Someone in Need

Posted on November 26, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of Ravenwood.

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “That Warm, Fuzzy Feeling You Get When You Help Someone in Need”:

“In my book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life, I write about 7 keys to making MOGO (most good) choices. One of these keys is to pursue joy through service. When I was writing the book, I initially planned to separate these into two keys: to pursue joy and to be of service. Joy is an important component of a life that does the most good and least harm, not only because it is MOGO for us personally to feel joy, but also because joyful people influence others to lead MOGO lives. If we’re activists and changemakers who are angry, depressed or burnt out, we’re not very good at inviting others to join our life-affirming efforts.

But when I asked a few hundred people ‘What brings you joy?’ and so many answered that being of service and helping others brought them joy, I realized I’d landed on a lovely alchemy. We humans experience joy by doing good. What a wonderful win-win.

I had the opportunity to experience this firsthand recently.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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The Fall Harvest

Posted on November 21, 2012 by zoeweil
Image copyright Zoe Weil.

It’s quite a lot of work growing food. And sometimes the results aren’t as expected. I’ve stopped growing corn after losing the entire crop two years in a row to a hungry bear; and I still haven’t managed to grow good-sized onions. There are the hours and hours of preparation and weeding, harvesting and storing. Sometimes there is even the guilt-inducing “problem” of abundance, when a home gardener knows she can’t eat it all but then has to figure out how to get the surplus to people who need it before it goes bad (which is why I’ve stopped growing zucchini).

And then there is the question that I hear in my mind every year when I have so much work to do (my real work – saving the world through humane education), yet my garden requires my attention: “Is this the best use of your time, Zoe?” After all, there are farmers’ markets I can visit, and my food co-op I can support. Why do I feel so compelled to grow food?

I grow food because it’s powerful and magical to tend the soil; to put tiny seeds in careful rows; to thin the seedlings so that each has space to grow; to week after week pull out those plants that are crowding the crops, and to watch over several months as bare earth turns into a spectacular, outrageous, crowded 900 square feet of huge quantities of… food.

Image copyright Zoe Weil.

I’m lucky to live in a rural area where land is plentiful, but even when I lived in a row house in Philadelphia, I grew food in the postage-sized back “yard.” And friends in inner city neighborhoods have converted squalid, abandoned lots with compacted, glass-filled, trash-covered ground into bountiful, productive gardens.

Hundreds of generations of humans have turned wild plants into cultivated, flavorful, nutritious masterpieces called carrots, beets, kale, broccoli, chard, beans, asparagus, kohlrabi, squash, cabbage, and so many other vegetables. So if you can, grow a radish or a big pot of tomatoes. It’s not easy. But it’s worth it.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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Hooray for the Decline in Sexist Language

Posted on November 19, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy Antony Pranata via
Creative Commons.

For thirty years I’ve been committed to both using and promoting nonsexist language in writing and speaking. I was criticized for using “he or she” on my papers in law school in 1984, instead of the accepted “he,” meaning “people.” When my son was in fourth grade and I sat in on a day of classes, I was dismayed that the teacher used “man” instead of humanity or humankind to refer to homo sapiens, but when I spoke to her about considering using nonsexist language she looked at me quizzically, truly perplexed by my comment, unable to comprehend my concerns.

In our graduate programs at the Institute for Humane Education the faculty all point out to students when they are using non-inclusive language, explaining that “he” used to refer to all people perpetuates assumptions in our culture and fosters continued sexist thinking, and sometimes sexist behaviors.

Because the English language doesn’t have a word to describe a male or female in the singular (we have “they” to describe both in the plural), we are constantly faced with the challenges of using language that is not discriminatory. As a writer, I often turn statements about a generalized person in the singular into a statement about generalized persons in the plural simply to avoid “he or she,” which I admit is awkward.

This is particularly challenging when trying to avoid speciesist language as well as sexist language by not referring to an animal as “it.” It can’t be done without resorting to “he or she,” and so I often choose to subvert our assumptions and challenge the default “he” by referring to a wild animal whose gender I don’t know as “she,” simply to shake things up and get us all thinking. Recently, walking with a group of teenagers in the woods we came upon a snake. I chose to refer to the snake as “she,” and one of the students asked how I knew the snake was female. I explained that I didn’t and why I used the female pronoun, but I knew that none of the students would have asked how I knew the snake was male if I’d referred to “him or her” as “he.”

And so I was delighted to read this article in The Atlantic about the decline in sexist language. It’s about time.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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If This is a NERD, Let There Be More of Them

Posted on November 15, 2012 by zoeweil

I had the pleasure of meeting Nikhil Goyal at the TEDxYouth@BFS conference in September. Nikhil is in high school. He’s also the author of the new book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School, and a frequent TEDx speaker. His talk at TEDxYouth@BFS, “Why Kids Hate School,” was powerful and compelling, and I highly recommend it:

Recently, The Washington Post’s The Fix tweeted: “This high school kid just wrote a book on education? NERD.” Having met Nikhil, here’s my new definition of NERD: Normal yet Exceptional and Reasonable Dynamo. May the NERD revolution begin!

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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Seth Godin: What is School For?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by zoeweil

As readers of my blog know, in my first TEDx talk, “The World Becomes What You Teach,” I ask the question, “What is schooling for?” At TEDxYouth@Brooklyn Free School where I recently gave another TEDx talk, “Educating for Freedom,” Seth Godin, a brilliant thinker, writer, and changemaker, gave a talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams” in which he asks and answers the question, “What is school for?” Check it out:

What do you think school is for? What should it be for?

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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Reach and Teach: Media Literacy

Posted on November 8, 2012 by zoeweil
Image copyright Institute for Humane Education.

I was excited when Reach and Teach, a peace and social justice learning company, shared my new TEDx talk, Educating for Freedom, taking the ideas in the talk about media literacy and analyzing ads a step further. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“When you see an advertisement for a store that’s offering the VERY LOWEST PRICES, for example, taking some time to think about how that store manages to get things at such low prices could provide a great lesson in suffering, cruelty, and destruction.

Lower prices might make you happy, but what damage do they do to get those low prices? Child labor? Slave labor? Bankrupting suppliers by making them sell the store products at a price lower than it costs to produce? ”

Read the complete post.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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Rethinking Assumptions: Roman Sablin and Russian Eco-Consciousness

Posted on November 5, 2012 by zoeweil
Screenshot copyright Sustainable Ukraine.

I was in Krasnodar, Russia, this summer for a couple of days. As a foreign traveler, I was advised to drink bottled water, but it was frustrating to have to throw the bottles in the trash because I couldn’t find any place to recycle them. I was disappointed in the apparent lack of concern for the environment. So I was surprised to read an article on Roman Sablin in the Aeroflot magazine on the Russian airline on my way home.

In all my years of traveling on U.S. airlines, I’ve never read such an in-depth article on eco-consciousness. Roman Sablin is a philologist and artist who grew disturbed by the waste he and his friends were generating and launched an eco movement that would rival the most committed environmentalist anywhere in the world. He went beyond replacing his light bulbs and began shaving his hair to reduce water consumption when showering and became a vegetarian (in a country where vegetarianism is quite uncommon). He leads eco-seminars and has become “something of a celebrity” according to the profile. In fact, all the Russian TV stations have been to his eco-loft, as have the major newspapers and magazines.

Reading the article reminded me that things are sometimes not as they seem. Movements take different trajectories in different countries. Certain norms – like ubiquitous recycling bins in the U.S. – may mask a complacency, while a lack of such norms may potentially spur a more rapid, inventive movement.

While I don’t know how a restorative, healthy, and sustainable world will unfold; where it will take root most deeply and spread; or whose ideas will generate the largest shifts in systems, consciousness, and actions, it was good to see my own assumptions challenged by Aeroflot’s profile of Roman Sablin.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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In Praise of Science & Education: Why Sandy’s Death Toll Wasn’t Worse

Posted on November 2, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of CasualCapture via Creative Commons.

It may seem inappropriate, perhaps a bit crazy, to talk about what went right with superstorm Sandy, but I’ve been struck by how much worse things could have been were it not for the confluence of many good people and many good systems.

It is tragic that several dozen people have died from this storm, and I realize that the death toll has increased each day since the storm and likely will increase further. There are millions without power; there are elderly in high rises who cannot get help, heat, food, or water. But Sandy was a massive storm affecting tens of millions of people in the most populated region of the U.S., and the number of people who have died in the U.S. from this storm is smaller than the number who died from car accidents during the same time period. How is that possible given the magnitude of this storm?

A week prior to Sandy’s landfall, meteorologists predicted the storm’s path with an astonishing degree of accuracy. Sandy was called a “Frankenstorm” for a reason. It was influenced by Arctic air to the north and a cold front and storm to the northwest. Yet the scientists were right on the mark. And because they were, people could prepare. There was time for evacuations; time for sandbagging; time for boarding up buildings; time for Con Edison in New York City to turn off the power to lower Manhattan before the storm did more damage that would delay the eventual return of the subways; time for the Red Cross and FEMA and political leaders in the affected states to prepare and address the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario actually came to pass with the confluence of tide, full moon, wind direction, and Sandy’s landfall. And yet, it could have been so much worse. Far more people could have died.

If this is not a wake up call to deeply, fully embrace education and science I don’t know what is. The scientists proved themselves worthy of our respect and gratitude. And if this is not a wake up call to heed scientists’ warnings about climate change I also don’t know what is. Let’s not forget how much we owe those teachers who trained those scientists; the federal money that has supported their work; and the peer review process that ensures that what is published and shared by scientists is as accurate as possible. Scientists are not perfect, and meteorology and climate science will always be unpredictable, but this is the best we have. In Sandy’s case, we’re lucky we had it.

~ Zoe

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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