What Is Humane Education? 8 Answers

Posted on June 6, 2013 by zoeweil
girl holding globe of earth

Image courtesy flaivoloka via CC.

I’m a humane educator, someone who teaches about the interconnected issues of human rights, environmental preservation, and animal protection in an effort to provide students with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be conscientious choicemakers and engaged change agents for a more just, compassionate, and peaceful world.

I’m also president of the Institute for Humane Education, which prepares people to be humane educators through online graduate programs, courses and workshops; provides free resources for educators and activists; and promotes the field of humane education across the globe. I regularly speak about humane education, including at TEDx events.

So you would think I would have no problem answering the question “What is humane education?”

But I do, because humane education is complex. It’s broad yet specific; far-reaching and global in scope yet personally relevant to our daily choices.

So here are eight definitions of humane education:

1. Humane education is based on the premise that if we address the root system underlying all other systems—schooling—we can transform unjust and unsustainable systems wherever they occur and solve the challenges we face in the world.

2. Humane education is a field of study that explores the connections between all forms of oppression and exploitation—whether to people, animals, or the environment—and seeks to inspire solutions that are healthy for all.

3. Humane education helps students put core values of kindness, empathy, generosity, respect, responsibility, and integrity into practice in a complex, globalized world in which our daily choices affect people, animals, and ecosystems across the planet.

4. Humane education cultivates critical and creative thinking and problem-solving so that complicated issues are perceived in all their complexity, and answers to persistent challenges are addressed holistically.

5. As Matt Hummel, a student in our graduate program, said, “Humane education answers the questions nobody is asking.”

6. Humane education turns students into solutionaries who are knowledgeable and empowered to ensure that the systems within their future professions are just, sustainable, and compassionate.

7. Humane education is itself humane: engaging, inspiring, exciting, meaningful, and relevant to students’ lives and futures.

8. Humane education is the best hope for a healthy and peaceful world.

Whether you are a teacher, activist, parent or concerned citizen, become a humane educator and teach for a restorative future.

~ 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 TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Why Are We Testing Students Before We Teach Them?

Posted on May 30, 2013 by zoeweil
Student holding sign about testing

Image courtesy sarah-ji/Flickr via CC.

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 “Why Are We Testing Students Before We Teach Them?”:

… If students are stressed by the tests, if they are failing to finish them, if they find them too opaque and difficult, then they are being tested before they are being taught, a persistent problem with our test-crazy “reforms.” The choice isn’t between deep or shallow questions; it’s between preparation to answer meaningful and important questions or punitive tests administered prior to full teaching, which demoralizes students and defeats the very purpose of learning.

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 TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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The Purpose of Education — Meet Chris Thinnes

Posted on May 13, 2013 by zoeweil
Chris Thinnes

Image courtesy Curtis School.

I was recently introduced to educator Chris Thinnes’ work and writing through an essay he wrote for GOOD. Eager to learn more, I visited Chris’ blog and am now a huge fan. I wanted to share his great work and ideas with you.

Here’s a quote from one of his essays that I found particularly powerful, provocative and important:

“I wonder why we can’t together think more creatively, and generatively, about a dynamic vision of a future students can create, rather than a static vision of a marketplace they should simply service.”

This quote echoes our own questions at the Institute for Humane Education about the purpose of schooling, and our belief that we need to educate young people to be solutionaries for a better world, not simply competitors in the global economy.

We’ll be highlighting more of Chris’ great work and writing here at IHE, but do visit his site and learn more.

~ 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 TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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Most Teens Don’t Think the World is Becoming a Better Place

Posted on May 9, 2013 by zoeweil
sad teen siting on bed

Image courtesy merfam/Flickr.

At the EARCOS conference, one of the other keynote speakers was Michael Furdyk, co-founder of TakingITGlobal, a fantastic organization we’ve written about and highlighted at IHE.

During his keynote, Michael shared an interesting (if not disturbing) statistic from the BBDO GenWorld 2006 study. When teens were asked if they agreed with the statement, “I think the world is becoming a better place,” only 14 percent (on average) responded in the affirmative. The breakdown by country looked like this:

China 34%
Taiwan 25%
India 26%
Brazil 16%
Russia 15%
United States 14%
Australia 11%
Spain 10%
Poland 10%
United Kingdom 9%
Germany 9%
Mexico 6%
France 2%

What’s ironic about these statistics is that, historically, things have been improving for centuries. As I’ve written about before and most recently shared here, by so many measures the world is indeed becoming “a better place.” There is greater freedom and democracy; girls are able to go to school, and women are able to live self-determined lives in greater and greater numbers; gays and lesbians are gaining rights; nonhuman animals are gaining greater protections; tolerance is on the rise and prejudice on the decline; life expectancy has increased almost everywhere, and death by violence has never been lower than in the last half-century.

True, the expanding human population and increased standard of living for a growing percentage of people has meant faster resource depletion and more global warming; increased rates of species extinction, and higher numbers of animals being brutalized and killed for expanding global appetites for meat. And the rise of the middle class has certainly not reached everyone—far from it—and slavery, trafficking, and sweatshop labor persist.

But even as the problems we face become potentially more grave, the opportunities for young people (the target of this BBDO survey) to solve them expands dramatically as organizations such as TakingITGlobal and IHE help pave the way for greater learning, networking, solutionary thinking, and problem-solving.

I am not surprised that only a small percentage of youth believes the world is getting better. After all, because they are growing up in the information age, they now know more about the grave problems we face, something previous generations did not. Fortunately, the fact that they believe the world isn’t getting better does not seem to stop them from committing to improving it.

I wish these youth had a greater sense of the arc of history, but I’m relieved that they are, by and large, staving off apathy and despair and joining forces through a globally connected world (which, ironically, is a perfect example of how the world is getting better) to solve the challenges we face.

~ 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”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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A Letter to High School Seniors: Don’t Accept College Rejections

Posted on May 2, 2013 by zoeweil
denied and approved stamps

Image courtesy of Joelk75/Flickr.

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 “A Letter to High School Seniors: Don’t Accept College Rejections”:

Dear High School Seniors,

Over the past few weeks, many of you have received letters from the colleges to which you applied in the fall and winter.

Some of you are delighted with the outcome, having gotten into your top choice(s). Congratulations. This post is not for you.

Some of you are content, having gotten into a couple of schools that were high on your list. Wonderful. This post is not for you.

Some of you – all too many – are despairing because you received multiple rejections; got on wait lists that are unlikely to turn into acceptances; didn’t receive the financial aid you required; and realized that you actually have no interest in going to the affordable safety school that accepted you. This post is for you.

Many of you, who worked so hard and expected to get into an elite college with the kind of endowment that would ensure you could affordably attend with good financial aid, wonder why you even bothered to take all those AP courses; to study so diligently in classes that sometimes bored you to tears; to prep for the SATs; and to follow all the rules laid out for you during four years of high school.

Here’s my message to you: Don’t surrender your potential. Don’t accept the rejections. It’s time to forge your own path.

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 TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?

Posted on April 1, 2013 by zoeweil

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 “Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?”:

“In his recent essay in Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque critiques “TED thinking,” which he writes, serves “as a shorthand for the way we’ve come to think about ideas and how we share them, whether it’s through an 18-minute talk, an 800-word blog post, or the latest business ‘best-seller’…. ‘TED thinking’ is just a symptom: and the underlying syndrome is our broken relationship with Great Ideas.” 

 While Haque brings up some important and good points in his essay, the construct he presents creates a false dichotomy between “TED thinking” and deep thinking; between solutions-oriented thinking and theorizing; between application and analysis; between idea generation and Great Ideas. These either/ors are both unnecessary and unhelpful.”

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 TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Critical Thinking is Essential in Classrooms

Posted on March 7, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of Horia Varlan/Flickr.

No less a bastion of critical and scientific thinking – Scientific American – has published the strangest essay about teaching critical thinking to young people. According to Dennis Bartels, critical thinking is best taught outside the classroom.

Apparently, young people are not graduating from high school as very good critical thinkers, and, writes Bartels:

“Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum and for standardized tests…. For that, we have a robust informal learning system that eschews grades, takes all comers, and is available even on holidays and weekends.”

What comprises this robust learning system? “Museums and other institutions of informal learning” along with The Daily Show and The Maker Faire.

Museums and The Daily Show are great, but to depend upon them to teach our children critical thinking is not only folly; it is utterly irresponsible. Bartels is correct that critical thinking is paramount, but his solution is backwards. Instead of throwing up our hands and accepting the sorry state of schooling that fails to teach this most important skill to our kids, we ought to commit ourselves to the following:

1. Embrace a bigger purpose for schooling than passing standardized math and reading tests and “competing in the global economy.” Our students need to grow up to be solutionaries for a just, healthy and peaceful world, and they need critical and creative thinking skills to achieve this goal.

2. Identify what forms of teaching and learning produce critical and creative thinkers and jettison curricula and approaches that don’t achieve these goals.

3. Have schools do what Bartel suggests informal institutions do so well: eschew grades, take all comers, embrace questions, welcome failure, and while we’re at it, get rid of standardized tests.

~ 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 TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Take This One Small Step for Big Change in Education

Posted on February 28, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of cruiznbye/Flickr

As the president of the Institute for Humane Education I spend most of my days advancing the field of humane education, training people to be humane educators, and working to transform the very purpose of schooling so that we graduate students ready and able to embrace their roles as solutionaries for a just, compassionate, restorative, and peaceful world.

In my first decade of work as a humane educator I taught middle and high school students regularly; but these days, only periodically do I visit schools, and often only for single presentation. Every year, however, I have the pleasure of teaching a week-long humane education block at a local 7th and 8th grade. It is often one of the highlights of my year.

This year was no exception. The last week of January I spent five afternoons with a group of 25 students who affirmed my belief that change is possible, is happening, and that this generation will succeed in transforming unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems, if we simply provide them with the tools and knowledge they need for the tasks ahead.

Why do I believe this?

  • This group generated the most beautiful, nuanced, and powerful list of humanity’s best qualities – qualities they valued deeply.
  • They ALL wanted to make a difference and were eager to start by addressing their own school’s system of recycling, composting, and waste disposal to dramatically minimize the waste they produced.
  • They all made very specific, very achievable personal commitments on top of their commitment as a group.
  • They have a teacher ready and able to support their commitments, nurture their dreams, and guide their process of creating change, starting in their own school.

This last point is key.

Children need our support, guidance, mentorship, and knowledge. Many of us are formal teachers; most of us are not. Yet all of us are educators and all of us have a role to play if we hope to see a solutionary generation.

Let’s begin by each committing to do this one simple act:

Contact your school board and your legislators and ask that they embrace a big enough purpose for our children and their future: to educate a generation of solutionaries.

~ 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 TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Believe and Never Give Up

Posted on January 24, 2013 by zoeweil

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 “Believe and Never Give Up”:

“… while the evidence is clear that we’re living in less violent times, we are simultaneously living in more dangerous times because we now have the capacity to cause so much irrevocable destruction of our planet. Climate change and habitat destruction are leading to the extinction of so many species that we may lose half of them by the end of this century. Nuclear weapons – tens of thousands of them – are a constant threat. A growing human population, all desirous of a better standard of living, could denude our planet.

And yet, never before have we had the capacity to collaborate and innovate with people across every border to solve our challenges. Anyone who says that we cannot feed the world through humane and sustainable agriculture; produce products ethically and sustainably; develop enough renewable energy to meet our needs; cure cancer and other diseases without animal experimentation; be safe without the war machine, or have thriving economies without endless growth in the GDP simply lacks imagination. This is why imagination, the capacity to envision solutions to our challenges, is the most essential ingredient in the complex recipe that will lead us closer to a peaceful, just, and healthy world. This is why it’s so critical that we nurture our children’s – and our own – imagination, our birthright as human beings.”

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”

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

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Sam Chaltain’s Art (and Science) of Great Teaching

Posted on December 6, 2012 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I wanted to share educational changemaker Sam Chaltain’s great new TEDx talk, “The Art (and Science) of Great Teaching.” Enjoy and share!

~ 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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