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”

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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”

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Children Change the World in 5 Minutes a Day

Posted on April 22, 2013 by zoeweil

Another video Mike Johnston (see previous blog post here) shared with me was this four and a half minute film of children working together in school to create positive changes in just 5 minutes per day.

A cynic might watch this video and point out that these little acts don’t actually “change the world,” but what those cynics would miss is that these acts prepare these children to be solutionaries. By teaching, empowering, and engaging children in small actions that make a collective difference, these children learn that what they do matters. This is one of the most important lessons we can impart.

Imagine what these children will do when they enter the various professions to which they are drawn? I’m guessing that they’ll perceive themselves as agents of change and problem-solvers who address unsustainable and unjust systems within those professions. After all, that’s what they will have learned in school.

Once again, ask yourself this question: Who are these children’s teachers? What must they do differently in order to create a culture like this? How can we make this culture the norm?

~ 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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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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The “Truth” About MLK, Jr.: Why We Must Teach Our Children to Think Critically

Posted on January 21, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of minasi.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve heard the injunction “Don’t believe everything you read.” This has been a warning that’s been difficult for me to heed. By nature I’m very trusting. I expect that others will tell the truth just as I endeavor to tell the truth. But years of study, research, graduate school, and the influence of my scientist husband, who’s the best critical thinker I know, have honed my own critical thinking skills, and I’m pretty good about not believing everything I read.

It’s even more important in today’s world – with “facts” at our fingertips through our various electronic devices – to be vigilant about assessing the truthfulness, accuracy, and bias of the sources to which we are quickly led when we seek information.

Let’s say that you are a high school student asked to do a report on Martin Luther King, Jr. And let’s say that you Google “Martin Luther King,” as I just did. The first URL that came up was Wikipedia. The second was his biography on the Nobel Prize website. The third was http://www.martinlutherking dot org, presumably a non-profit (.orgs are usually not-for-profits) dedicated to King and his work.

If you were a student you’d likely eschew Wikipedia, because you’ve been told to by your teachers, even though Wikipedia is often far more accurate than other sites, crowdsourced as it is. You might skip over the Nobel Prize site because it represents just one award in his life (albeit a great one). And there’s a good chance you’d land at the third site.

It turns out that martinlutherking dot org is a front for a white supremacy group, but you’d have to dig into the site to find this out. Clicking on a link for “The Creativity Movement,” that’s found on a PDF document, (or clicking on the small “Hosted by Stormfront” link at the very bottom) leads you to websites for an explicitly white supremacist movement. It’s likely that many students wouldn’t get that far, instead taking the pop quiz on the home page and “learning” all sorts of things about Martin Luther King, Jr., brought to you by a white supremacist.

It’s always been too easy to be misinformed, manipulated, and misled, but in today’s world it is even easier. Which is why teaching our children how to think critically, to research, to identify sources, to corroborate information, and to be truth-finders, not simply truth-seekers, is paramount. Without these skills, they will too easily be swayed by those sources that tell them what they want to know – of which there will be many.

This is another reason I always tell my students: Don’t believe a word I say.

~ 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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No Mean Girls Here: The Kindness of High School Girls

Posted on January 14, 2013 by zoeweil

On December 7, I was slated to give another TEDx talk at Cape Elizabeth High School (CEHS) in southern Maine. This was a fabulous TEDxYouth event, and I was so honored to be part of it and to get to be the last adult speaker at the end of the day. The entire junior and senior class at CEHS attended, and loving teenagers as I do, I decided to join them for lunch.

The speakers were all provided with box lunches, so I grabbed mine and headed to the cafeteria. The students were just lining up and the tables were empty, so I sat down in the middle of the cafeteria at one of the round tables that seated eight. I figured students would get their meals and some would join me. I was wrong.

The tables around me all filled up. Some were all boy tables; some mixed, and the one directly in front of me was all girls. It was full, so a couple of girls asked if they could take one of the chairs at my table. I said sure. As I watched them squeeze into the now overfull table, one girl came up and asked if she could take another chair. There were four left at my empty table. I said “sure” again, but added with a smile (not in any guilt-trippy way, I promise), “No one’s going to sit here anyway.”

Moments later, I saw that girl lean over to talk to a couple of others. The next thing I knew, four of them picked up their trays, walked over to me and asked if they could join me. I was so happy to have their company. Kira, Haley, Sammy, and Casey sat down and introduced themselves. They didn’t know who I was, because I hadn’t yet given my talk, but were eager to learn about humane education. They were lovely. They were poised, friendly, compassionate, and bright. They spoke about their school in such positive ways. They talked about the lack of clicks and bullies. They talked about their dreams and interests.

I told the girls who joined me how glad I was that they did. I shared that I was finding myself wondering if I was getting a taste of what it’s like to be an ostracized girl, someone no one will sit with in the cafeteria. We commiserated about what that would be like. One admitted that she has a lunch period each week during a time when none of her friends have lunch and so she spreads her books around her and does homework, ensuring that at least she doesn’t appear ostracized.

Middle and high school girls have a reputation for being mean and gossipy. TV shows like Gossip Girl reinforce this stereotype. I well remember those girls in my own school who fit the stereotype. Even worse, I recall a couple of times when I was truly unkind, too. But this stereotype may have the unintended consequence of reinforcing itself, as it did in the Gossip Girl series when the new Queen Bee of the class felt compelled to be mean, against her desires and nature, to maintain her status. But as often as not, high school girls – like all of us – are kind, and this is the stereotype we should be reinforcing.

My conversation with these girls made my wonderful day at TEDxYouth@CEHS even better. And it reminded me that these lovely young women were not only already making a difference but were also poised to do great things in the world.

~ 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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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”

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Humane Education Prepares Students Better

Posted on March 12, 2012 by zoeweil
Image copyright Institute for Humane Education.

Recently, a participant in the Institute for Humane Education’s online course, Teaching for a Positive Future, shared her experience of showing my TEDx talk on humane education with her twelfth graders at a college preparatory private school. While the students liked the talk, they wondered if such an education — one that focuses on learning about relevant global issues and becoming critical and creative problem solvers for a better world — would be preferable to the curricula they were used to. Was it “academic” enough?

About a year ago, an administrator at another prep school said that his faculty, after reading one of my essays on humane education, was concerned that if they embraced a humane education vision, they might not meet the expectations of parents and students alike, who are seeking acceptance at elite colleges, which, they believe, is secured by taking AP courses and following the standard curricula that colleges expect from their applicants.

I found these responses to humane education terribly dismaying. Not only is it worrisome that people might not consider learning how to be a conscientious choicemaker and engaged changemaker for a more just, healthy and humane world important enough to embrace wholeheartedly, but it is also my experience that humane education actually prepares students better than traditional curricula. Humane education demands much of our students: that they rigorously investigate the truth of statistics and information; that they critically evaluate everything (even what their teachers say); and that they not regurgitate memorized facts or argue a single side of an issue, but use their knowledge and skills to develop creative solutions to complex issues. Moreover, humane education invites real world engagement, and in the real world it actually matters how well you express yourself in writing or speaking, or how fully you develop a cost effective plan to improve some aspect of your school or community.

For example, I recently asked an 8th grade class to listen to a This American Life episode about the production of Apple products in China, and then to write letters to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, expressing their concerns. I helped them to understand that this letter to Tim Cook had to be good, because it mattered. It had to be respectful, clear, well-written, heartfelt, thoughtful, organized, and to the point. This was a demanding assignment, and they told me the next morning how much time they spent on their letters. And it showed.

Tim Cook has since written back to the class, which has been diligently following the news of Apple’s increased attention to unjust and inhumane conditions in the factories that produce its products. These students have gotten to experience the power of their voices directly. Humane education has asked much of them, and the results — both in their work and in the real world — have been significant. They have learned to care about others far removed from themselves, they have learned to voice that care and their ideas, and they have learned that their voices can have a positive effect.

While we and our kids may want the opportunities that elite colleges provide, it’s important that we not buy into inflexible systems of schooling in our pursuit of some imagined future success. My guess is that great colleges would actually like nothing more than to read applications from students who’ve made a difference in their young lives; who have tackled real world challenges and learned what it takes to succeed in creating positive change; who have decided that taking AP course after AP course is not necessarily the path to a better education; and that engaging in relevant real life issues helps them acquire the practical and theoretical skills for a truly successful future.

It’s sad that some think they’re taking a risk by embracing humane education enthusiastically and making it the core philosophy of schooling when the real risk is the one we are taking every day: that we don’t choose to make raising a generation of engaged solutionaries the highest goal of our schools.

For a humane world,

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 TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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The Power of Humane Education

Posted on January 27, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of soot+chalk via Creative Commons.

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “The Power of Humane Education”:

“It really doesn’t take much to ignite a passion for good among youth and adults alike. A week of [teaching humane education] classes turned an eighth grade that, on Monday, did not feel particularly moved to action or responsible for helping to create a more just and humane world, into a deeply caring group that eagerly embraced a project to make a difference by Friday. I witnessed this transformation as each day brought out even more of the compassion and kindness they had identified on day one as qualities that were most important to them.

“What is harder than sparking concern, care, and commitment is sustaining and nurturing this energy; providing the breadth and depth of accurate information about entrenched and pervasive challenges; and teaching them critical and creative thinking skills so that they remain the bedrock of each individual’s approach to healthy, positive, wise changemaking for all.

“The issues that humane education addresses are complex, covering human rights, animal protection and environmental preservation. The solutions to the interconnected – and sometimes conflicting – problems in the world aren’t easy to determine or implement. A week-long humane education course may seem life-changing, but for many that change may fade unless it is fostered and nourished.”

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

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 TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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