Changing Behavior in 1.5 Minutes

Posted on February 18, 2011 by zoeweil

Check out this commercial:

Yes, this is an advertisement. Readers of my blog know the power of advertising. At the Institute for Humane Education we offer free activities for educators to download, and some of these activities focus specifically on learning to analyze ads. Ads are powerful. Even the best critical thinkers often become strangely brainwashed by the messages they receive through commercials.

So what if ads – those extraordinary, brief agents of what some might call manipulation, others mind control, others just “influence” — were deployed for the good? What change could come from them?

You may actually cry during this 1.5 minute ad. You might actually change a simple behavior, or someone you know might. Pass it on.

Zoe Weil, President Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Filed under: changemakers, critical thinking, humane education, media literacy, perspective, positive choices, propaganda, social psychology, videos | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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 universal, general principles of morality shared by people of good will everywhere, and the very different manner of defending any particular application of these principles to actual life situations as conceived from a particular standpoint (liberal, conservative, radical, theistic, nontheistic, American, Russian, and the like.”

This is such an important point, whether written 1,000 years ago, 20 years ago, or 20 years hence, and it represents such a fine line to walk as an educator. Every one of us has a bias. Even if our bias lands us squarely in the mainstream and is perceived as moderate, it is still a bias. None of us is immune to the culture that shapes us, the opinions we hold dear, and the particular ideologies that embody our values in day to day life. It may appear that we have no bias if we find ourselves in the proverbial middle, but this is false. This is why Richard Paul’s quote above is so well-articulated, and so important for educators in general, and for humane educators who teach about the interconnected issues of human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation in particular.

The universal principles of morality that Paul mentions would include such values as generosity, kindness, compassion, integrity, honesty, courage, perseverance, and wisdom and would exclude such things as cruelty, corruption, exploitation and abuse of others, deception, and so on. But what one person considers cruel may be different from what another considers cruel; and one person’s perception of exploitation may be another person’s perception of opportunity. How can the humane educator – whose goal it is to explore ethical issues, invite positive change, and encourage innovative ideas for a healthy world – balance her own vision of what that world looks like with what a particular student’s differing vision might be? How can the humane educator teach about ethical issues while painstakingly avoiding indoctrination?

Here are some ideas:

  • Choose one of these two approaches: Either be honest about your biases and explain their origin and your thinking OR choose to remain utterly impartial in discussions and encourage students to think critically, whether they are articulating your own position or one that you do not share. My personal approach is to be up front about my biases. The truth is that I am choosing texts that provide a point of view, and not choosing other texts. I may try to “balance” the reading, but there is a bias in my choices. Invite your students to critique you and your choices.
  • Be stalwart in your commitment to require those who share your views to be vigilant in supporting their perspective. And be open, receptive, and ready to learn from good critical thinking that leads to different positions. Further, be willing to being persuaded. Be as ready to change and grow from what you learn from your students as you hope they will be open to changing and growing because of you.
  • Agree on fundamentals. Invite students to generate a list of humanity’s best qualities and narrow these down until your class is in agreement that these are indeed fundamentals. Bring back all discussions about systems to whether and how they uphold these fundamental values. Be prepared for complexity and apparent contradictions. Remember physicist Niels Bohr’s statement that the opposite of a great truth is often a great truth.

All education has the potential to veer into indoctrination, not simply education about ethics. Be vigilant. Our world needs more critical and creative thinkers, not more believers.

Zoe Weil, President of the Institute for Humane Education and author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Most Good, Least Harm

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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. These practices continue today with children from indigenous families around the world who lose their languages and cultures as they head off to boarding schools that aim to help prepare them for a very different future than village living. The Dairy Council has been producing “educational materials” for schools and indoctrinating several generations with the belief that we need dairy products for our health, which is patently false. Corporations in general utilize schools to indoctrinate students and influence them to prefer their products over others and to become productive workers within a global, corporate culture.

But this does not mean that education is by its very nature indoctrination. We mustn’t confuse education with schooling, because they are not synonymous. Education happens all the time, through interactions, mentoring, reading, apprenticeships, observation, and simply living. Of course it also happens in school where specific subjects are taught and we gain new skills and knowledge. Schools can be places where indoctrination takes place in a wholesale fashion, as when it serves a specific ideology and seeks to produce graduates who have specific beliefs, rather than simply a breadth of knowledge and skills. And schools can also be places where indoctrination is subtle but still pervasive. But schools do not have to be places of indoctrination. Certainly, we are all enculturated in school, but this is not the same.

The definition of indoctrinate is this:

in·doc·tri·nate vt
to teach somebody a belief, doctrine, or ideology thoroughly and systematically, especially with the goal of discouraging independent thought or the acceptance of other opinions

School can and should be one of the very best places to encourage independent thought, critical and creative thinking, and broad understanding of and appreciation for a multitude of perspectives. Rather than reject schooling as indoctrination, as some are doing, we need to be developing and promoting schools that are committed wholeheartedly to exposing students to a variety of viewpoints and providing them with the most important tools for their future: problem-solving, and critical and creative thinking along with a deep commitment to living lives that contribute to a healthy world.

Zoe Weil
Author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Most Good, Least Harm

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

Hens in a Cage = Travelers in a Hotel with Room Service?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by zoeweil

This past weekend I had the great privilege of speaking at the Their Lives, Our Voices conference in Minneapolis. I also had the even greater privilege of getting to hear some amazing talks. Paul Shapiro, senior director for factory farming issues at the Humane Society of the United States, gave a talk about rebutting animal agriculture claims. Among the quotes Paul shared were two from Trent Loos, a farmer and radio host who is a spokesperson for a PR group that opposes animal welfare reforms in agriculture. This was one:

“A hen in a cage is actually not that much different from a traveler in a hotel with room service.”

Paul is a witty guy and not easily riled, so he just shared with us two slides. The first of hens in battery cages:

And the second, of travelers in a hotel with room service:

He toggled back and forth between the slides to make sure that we could really tell the difference. Hens in a cage. Travelers in a hotel.

I so appreciated Paul’s humor and way in which he shared such a horrific image in a manner that allowed our compassion to be ignited while using our critical thinking skills and laughing all at the same. Many Americans do not want to see the images of hens in battery cages. They do not want to be confronted with the reality that the eggs they eat – unless they raise hens themselves or only purchase eggs from farms where they’ve witnessed the conditions – almost always come from battery cage facilities in which chickens are treated unimaginably cruelly. To know and to see requires that we either change our behaviors and refuse to let our desires eclipse our values, or to live with the internal conflict that we are regularly contributing to egregious suffering that we would never allow to be perpetrated on our pets.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

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Filed under: accurate information, animal protection, citizen activism, MOGO (Most Good), propaganda, speciesism, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence

Posted on October 5, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve been reading Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. It’s a great book, and I highly recommend it. It’s so helpful to the MOGO-inclined, not only because it spells out the impacts of everyday things, but also because it articulates so well the need for analysis, disclosure, and knowledge so that we can make informed choices.

As Goleman writes: “Our inability to instinctively recognize the connections between our actions and the problems that result from them leaves us wide open to creating the dangers we decry.” Green labels aren’t enough. We need solid science and full eco-transparency so that we can both choose according to our values and collectively change systems.

Ecological intelligence is not innate; it must be acquired and then taught with full commitment. We can add this to our goals as humane educators – to create a generation that’s ecologically intelligent. And we can add this excellent book to our toolbox.

~ Zoe

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“Let’s Visit a Research Lab” – Another Example of Propaganda from the U.S Dept. of Health & Human Services

Posted on February 9, 2009 by zoeweil

In my last post on The Lucky Puppy coloring workbook produced by a U.S. government affiliate to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I described the recent propaganda piece promoting animal experimentation directed at young children. I’ve been thinking about this disturbing behavior in the scientific establishment all day, and felt compelled to share another government, taxpayer-produced piece of pro-vivisection propaganda created for young children.

This time it’s a poster, titled “Let’s Visit a Research Laboratory.” Made for elementary school classrooms, and provided free of charge, the poster displays a lab like a doll house, with all the rooms open to the viewer, labeled, and with details about each room on the bottom. There are only two species of animals at this lab – monkeys and mice. The mice live in “rodent housing,” and each smiling mouse has a name on his or her cage (Lola, Eddie, Lana, Elf, Fuzzy, and Sam among others). The monkeys live together in spacious indoor/outdoor cages, play on tire swings and with brightly colored beach balls. In the “testing lab” one finds a smiling monkey happily playing on a computer. There’s one sad monkey, representing the only unhappy animal in the poster. This monkey is in the “treatment room,” and if you read the description you learn, “Most laboratories have a room just like a doctor’s office to care for animals if they become ill or get injured. Just like kids, monkeys can play rough and sometimes bite one another. They need treatment for cuts and scrapes.”

So what do little children learn from this free educational poster provided to their schools with our tax dollars? They learn:

  • That laboratories name their animal friends who enjoy their happy lab life, when in fact animals are numbered, called “subjects,” and are killed at the end of the experiments.
  • That “testing” is game playing, rather than being force fed drugs, cosmetics, household products and other chemicals.
  • That monkeys are spaciously housed together and provided with lots of toys and enrichment, when most are in small, isolated indoor cages, with little or nothing to play with.
  • That the only reason to “treat” an animal is because she or he has been hurt by other animals, rather than burned, shocked, cut open, or drugged by those who conduct research on them.

This particular poster is long out of print, but I still use it to train humane educators and as a critical thinking tool in schools. I had hoped that our tax dollars were no longer being spent on this absurd level of propaganda, but The Lucky Puppy, just published this past fall, proved me wrong. So, lest you think that The Lucky Puppy is an aberration, now you know that it follows a long trend of child-directed propaganda.

It’s crucial that humane education spread; that teachers bring critical thinking to students in age-appropriate ways; that we engage in citizenship to reject the cynical and manipulative use of our tax dollars; and that we commit to educating for a humane and sustainable world.

I consider these pro-vivisection propaganda publications as opportunities to engage in vigorous debate and even more rigorous humane education. I hope you do too.

~ Zoe

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The Lucky Puppy Coloring Workbook: Propaganda Instead of Humane Education

Posted on February 6, 2009 by zoeweil

A graduate from our Humane Education Certificate Program just emailed me the link to a new coloring book produced by the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research. It’s called The Lucky Puppy, and it’s not simply a coloring book: it’s simple propaganda. Coming from a supposed scientific organization, it is also egregious.

In the story, two children are sad because their puppy, Lucky, is sick. Mom and children take the puppy to a veterinarian who gives him the appropriate medicine. The curious children wonder how the vet knew what medicine to give Lucky, and the vet explains:

“A long time ago, a research scientist found the medicine I gave Lucky. I’ll tell you how. She did research in a lab. A lab is a place where scientists work, and it is short for laboratory. She had mice in her lab. They lived in nice, clean cages. They were fed good food. But they were sick with the same disease Lucky had. She gave the mice many different medicines. At first, none of the medicine she tried made the mice better. But she kept trying. Then one day she tried a new medicine that helped the mice. So, she did more research using that medicine. She tried a little of it on one group of mice. But that was too little. They stayed sick. She tried a lot of it on the second group, but that was too much! They got even sicker. At last, she tried just the right amount of medicine on a third group. They all got better! It turned out the the medicine not only was good for sick mice. It also was good for sick puppies, like Lucky….”

By the end of the story, the little boy wants to be a veterinarian to help animals, but, clearly even better, the little girl wants to be a research scientist because, as she says, “Then I can help animals and people!”

What is so terribly galling about this propaganda is that it is promoting science through lies, distortion, and manipulation – the opposite of what science is. Science is meant to be rigorous, factual, and truthful. Scientists are supposed to be honest and committed to accuracy.

The Lucky Puppy would have children believe that mice happen to get sick with diseases, and that helpful scientists work diligently to cure them, helping those suffering animals, as well as people, at the same time. The Lucky Puppy omits the part about actually giving mice –- or the many other animals used in labs, including apes and monkeys, dogs, pigs, ferrets, cats, etc. — diseases, as well as starving them; burning them; practicing surgery on them; addicting them to drugs and alcohol; testing cosmetics, cleaning products, and industrial chemicals on their abraded skin, and force-feeding them huge quantities of the same in order to determine the fatal dose; using them in military research to test chemical weapons and explosives; and ultimately killing each and every one of them (with the exception of some chimpanzees, a few of whom have been allowed to live out the remainder of their lives in sanctuaries).

You may believe that it is ethical to experiment on animals no matter how much suffering it may cause them. Or you may believe that some animal experimentation is justified while others is not. Or you may be opposed to animal experimentation entirely. This issue is contentious and controversial and deserves to be debated honestly by adolescents (not young children) and adults. There are important ethical and scientific issues involved in vivisection that should be considered carefully, honestly, and deeply. So when a pro-animal research lobby turns what should be an issue in education into pure indoctrination, we should all be outraged.

This is why we need humane education, taught age-appropriately with a commitment to the 3 Cs: fostering curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. That a pro-science organization would choose blatant manipulation of little children over critical thinking is appalling. But I will use The Lucky Puppy in humane education programs, nonetheless; I’ll use it to turn help youth and adults become better critical thinkers and engaged citizens.

~ Zoe

Filed under: accurate information, animal protection, critical thinking, humane education, propaganda | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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