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
Image courtesy Brit/Flickr.
It’s easy to feel despair in the wake of evil.
I read a post on Facebook after the Boston Marathon bombing from a person who wondered if she wanted to keep living after such a senseless, cruel, horrible act of violence. I sympathized. How do we cope with such insanity? How do we hold on to our belief in goodness?
Over the many hours that followed the bombings, practically all I read – on Facebook, through Twitter, and in the news – were outpourings of support and love and care for the victims and their families, and for the city of Boston itself. I read nothing that was cruel or heartless; nothing that supported the bombings; nothing that reveled in suffering.
No, millions of people are expressing love and compassion.
There is darkness in the world. There is cruelty and meanness and wanton violence and political violence. But they are ultimately small acts in the face of massive goodness – awful as they are when they happen. History shows a consistent and relentless shift toward greater democracy, greater understanding and tolerance, greater acceptance. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” and he was right.
Don’t we see this everywhere: Women voting and going to school; civil rights spreading across the globe; gays and lesbians receiving equal rights in many countries and states; animals receiving protections (albeit still far too limited) unheard of in previous centuries; global outcry against injustice, against exploitation, against environmental destruction?
Are our violent tendencies gone? Of course not. But we are not cheering at the Coliseum as slaves entertain thousands in fights to the death. Instead, we are crying by the millions as our fellow citizens are injured and killed by bombs detonated at a hallmark of our physical achievement: the Boston Marathon.
Let’s remember this: For every person who is evil, there are countless people who are deeply kind. For every murderer, there are people coming to the aid of strangers in droves. For every act of senseless violence, there are thousands of acts of meaningful goodness.
There is a way to speed the arc of the moral universe toward justice. It is through humane education: education of the mind so that we understand each other across borders and cultural boundaries; education of the heart so that we care enough to build a world of kindness toward all people, all species, and the earth itself; education of the hands so that we have the skills and the tools to solve our still very significant challenges, with our wisdom and compassion as our guides.
Let’s commit to this then, to humane education. Let’s make such acts as the bombing at the Boston Marathon, as the abuse of a child, the rape of a woman, the cruelty toward an animal the story of history.
~ 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 TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”
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Filed under: humane education, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: bombing, boston marathon, compassion, despair, evil, goodness, hope, humane education, Kindness, Most Good Least Harm, violence | 1 Comment »
This morning as I walked by our pond, I saw a Mallard with her seven newly hatched ducklings. I kept my dogs under control as we walked past the pond while the mother duck quickly gathered the babies to keep them safe from us predators. I was ambivalent about seeing this family of ducks on our pond. I love seeing them, love the fast-swimming, sweet-chirping, fuzzy little ducklings, but I have watched too many be killed at our pond by crows and other wildlife. Ours is not a particularly safe pond for ducklings. Year after year I observe their numbers decline as the days go by. One year, a mother duck lost every single duckling in the space of three days. I wondered about her, whether she was a young mother, inexperienced in protecting her babies, unwise in her choice of ponds. Did she have better luck in succeeding years? How did she cope with her terrible loss?
A couple of weeks ago I attended services at our local Unitarian Universalist Church. I was feeling down that day and hoped for some inspiration and solace. The first hymn we sang was “I’ve Got Peace Like a River.”
This past weekend I watched two disturbing movies: Woody Allen’s Whatever Works and Shutter Island. Whatever Works was not meant to be disturbing, but in typical Woody Allen fashion, the protagonist raises persistent questions about humanity’s cruelty and destructiveness, and for some reason, this particular time, such rants left me less amused and more despondent. Shutter Island is a dark movie about people who have perpetrated the worst imaginable atrocities, with Holocaust visuals to boot. So after a weekend of these two films, I was aching for some renewed hope and faith. As luck would have it (or, more accurately, as lack of luck would result in), I got my wish.
At the 
One of the readers of my 
It’s painful to learn about the terrible injustices and cruelties in the world. Sometimes, the more we know, the more hopeless we become. Even when we also learn about the great courage, generosity, wisdom, and dedication of countless changemakers, even when we see success in their efforts to create new systems that solve the great challenges of our time, we can still become despondent in the face of persistent exploitation, destruction, and oppression.
IHE offers online courses for educators, activists, parents & concerned citizens seeking the tools, knowledge & motivation to align their actions with their deepest values & to become more effective leaders and changemakers. Sign up now for an upcoming session. 
