Living According to Our Values Means Questioning Our Choices

Posted on December 15, 2011 by zoeweil

On the way to the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador, I met an observant Jewish man who looked out of place with his yarmulke and long coat in this Latin American, equatorial country. I asked why he had come to Guayaquil and he told me that he is hired to certify kosher food in countries around [...]

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Do You Tune Out or Tune In to Atrocities?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by zoeweil

Zoe’s been busy with speaking & traveling and didn’t have time to write a blog post for today, so here’s a repost from 11/19/10. Enjoy! I’ve always been struck by people saying that they don’t want to know about a particular atrocity or cruelty or problem in the world. It’s not uncommon to hear this [...]

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The Scourge of Hateful Commentary – The Call to Be Kind

Posted on January 26, 2011 by zoeweil

Yesterday, Yahoo! News placed an excerpt from my book, Most Good, Least Harm, (that had been posted awhile earlier by Simon & Schuster under the title “10 Easy Ways to Become a Better Person”) on their front page. I found this out when my and the Institute for Humane Education’s websites got a surprisingly large [...]

Filed under: accurate information, compassion, compassionate communication, integrity, MOGO (Most Good), perspective, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Empathy’s Role in Education

Posted on January 26, 2011 by zoeweil

Check out this TEDx talk by Sam Richards, a sociology professor and co-director of Race Relations at Penn State: At the Institute for Humane Education, we identify four elements as key to providing quality humane education. They include: Providing accurate information about pressing issues and challenges of our time. Fostering the 3 Cs of curiosity, [...]

Filed under: accurate information, compassion, critical thinking, education, humane education, politics, systemic change, third side thinking, videos | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

To All People, But Especially Educators: Please Think Critically

Posted on December 27, 2010 by zoeweil

About 17 years ago, I went to see a chiropractor who came highly recommended to help alleviate back pain I’d been experiencing. I was surprised when the chiropractor chose to use “applied kinesiology” with me rather than traditional spinal manipulation. I had never heard of applied kinesiology and was open to anything that might help [...]

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Ethics Without Indoctrination

Posted on December 22, 2010 by zoeweil

In an essay entitled “Ethics Without Indoctrination” in a now 20-year-old issue of Educational Leadership, Richard W. Paul writes: “If we bring ethics into the curriculum – and we should – we must take pains to ensure that we do so in a morally unobjectionable manner. This requires us to distinguish clearly between espousing the [...]

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Do You Tune Out or Tune in To Atrocities?

Posted on November 19, 2010 by zoeweil

I’ve always been struck by people saying that they don’t want to know about a particular atrocity or cruelty or problem in the world. It’s not uncommon to hear this from adults (though rarely from youth). I think the motivation to avoid new knowledge stems from people’s desire to live with integrity. That might sound [...]

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Conscious and Conscientious Commitment to News

Posted on October 4, 2010 by zoeweil

My friend Gregg Krech, who is the director of the ToDo Institute, told me recently that he and his wife had decided to take a short vacation from the news. When this “vacation” was over, they decided to approach the news in a different way. From now on, he said, they would listen selectively and [...]

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A Plea for Critical Thinking

Posted on September 15, 2010 by zoeweil

A couple of months ago, I was watching a film with my colleagues that was largely aligned with our general worldviews, and I tried to the best of my ability to bring the same critical eye to this film as I would to one that was not aligned with my worldview. It took effort, obsessive [...]

Filed under: accurate information, critical thinking, mindfulness, perspective, politics, responsibility | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Education is Not Indoctrination

Posted on June 21, 2010 by zoeweil

There are some who argue that education is virtually always synonymous with indoctrination, and those who hold this position certainly have evidence to support it. The U.S. government removed native children from their homes, put them in boarding schools, forbade them from speaking their own languages, and indoctrinated them with very specific values and beliefs. [...]

Filed under: accurate information, creativity, critical thinking, Cultural Issues, education, propaganda, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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