Stopping Thoughtless and Violent Responses 2012-Part 1:

In the days and weeks following the release of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video, many students asked me about the movie and the situation in Uganda.  “What can we do?  Have you seen the movie?  Can we buy an action kit?” 

Several teachers asked a more nuanced question, “What do you think?”  That’s the question we should be helping our students answer.

With the help of members of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, I offer several good resources to help ourselves and our students better analyze the Kony 2012 video and the aims of the organization that produced it.  More importantly, the information and links below propose nonviolent responses that (as history proves) will be much more likely to result in peacebuilding in Uganda. 

We and our students care about local and global injustice and violence.  However, “shoot from the hip” responses, as we too often see, do not yield lasting, peaceful and just outcomes.  Peacebuilder Betty Bigombe explains ongoing negotiations for peace in the video linked below. Project Plowshares advocates for stopping the weapons trade that fuels violent conflict.

After the dust settles, if you and your students are still interested, watch Bigombe’s short video together.  Or, have a class debate the pros and cons of various proposed responses.  Students could even discuss the pros and cons of distributing such a video to raise awareness of an important issue.  I am sure students will be engaged.  Resources include the following:

Project Ploughshares is an NGO that works “to advance policies and actions to prevent war and armed violence and build peace.” The response from Project Plowshares contains clear points and clear action alternatives to the video.  Excerpts are here and link to the full article is below:

1.       “The Kony 2012 video does not make clear that the LRA effectively stopped operating in Uganda in 2006. Kony and the LRA leadership originated in Northern Uganda, but have been roaming the inhospitable border zones of three neighbouring countries since 2008.

2.      Kony 2012 leaves the impression that sustaining the U.S. decision in October 2011 to assign 100 Special Operations military advisors to Uganda’s military is the key to arresting Kony in 2012. In fact, a military-led solution aided by the U.S. may not be the best option for stopping the LRA

3.      Finally, arresting Kony and others in the LRA leadership and handing them over to the International Criminal Court is not a panacea.

So what can we do?
Not mentioned in the video is the key role that the pervasive presence in East Africa of small arms and light weapons makes to sustaining the murderous rampage of the LRA and other marauding groups…..  [Show your] support from the grassroots up for a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty, which aims to stop atrocities fueled by irresponsible arms transfers. You can help by adding your voice to the Speak Out campaign. And you can follow this link to learn about the World Council of Churches Arms Trade Treaty Campaign....”

Betty Bigombe, is a Ugandan government minister and peace activist who has worked for peace in Uganda for decades.  Watching her 4-minute video will give students a much more hopeful, peace-oriented understanding of the Ugandan situation than Kony 2012 does.  The link for Betty Bigombe’s video is below.   

The Africa Faith and Justice Network issued a statement on non-military solutions in Uganda, including this passage: "While we acknowledge and denounce the terrible destruction brought about by Joseph Kony and his militia, and deplore the heart-breaking suffering imposed on so many ordinary people, we stand opposed to the choice of the Obama administration to send further military assistance to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and the Republic of South Sudan as of October 14th 2011. We do not see that further militarization will be in the best interest of the peoples of these countries in the long term; rather we advocate for non-military support to be sent to deal with the complex political issues....”  The link to the website and full statement is below.

Invisible Children, the organization responsible for the video and information campaign, has issued responses to questions raised about the video.  Discussing these responses with students may help them think critically about the aims of Invisible Children.  Many students, for example, think 100% of their dollars spent at the site go directly to helping Ugandan children, women, and men.  They are surprised to learn that only 37% of funds raised by Invisible Children go to humanitarian programs in Uganda, while the rest is used for developing films and other programming.  For other critiques, see journalist Michael Wilkerson’s posting in Foreign Policy, linked below. 

Links to articles and video:

• Project Plowshares article on Uganda and small arms treaty: http://www.ploughshares.ca/content/kony-2012-now-we-have-your-attention
• Betty Bigombe, Building Peace in Uganda: (4-minute video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7icDkOOHk
• Africa Faith and Justice Network webpage and statement: http://afjn.org/focus-campaigns/militarization-us-africa-policy/133-latest-news/1028-urging-nonviolence-in-dealing-with-the-lords-resistance-army-.html
• Michael Wilkerson in Foreign Policy Blog: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things
• Invisible Children: http://www.invisiblechildren.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/critiques.html
• Peace and Justice Studies Association: http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/

EMPOWERING YOUTH; INSPIRING BRAVERY:

As she usually does, Lady Gaga is grabbing attention.  This time, however, it is for the important cause of building a culture of love, compassion, and empowerment for youth.  At a Harvard Graduate School of Education event featuring Oprah Winfrey, secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius, and Deepak Chopra among others, Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanotta launched the Born This Way Foundation.  Nicholas Kristof summarized the background story in a New York Times article. The Born This Way Foundation website and YouTube videos provide background on the foundation’s philosophy. 

Gaga is seeking to empower youth to engage in transformative change in our culture to promote acceptance, respect, kindness, and civic engagement among youth.  Emphasizing the need for all youth to feel safe in school and online, to have the skills to interact respectfully with others, and to have the opportunity to effect positive social change, the Foundation is partnering with Harvard, the MacArthur Foundation, and others.  The long video of the event at HGSE might interest classroom teachers as a prompt for classroom discussion of school climate and individuals’ power to change negative energy to positive in schools and communities.  Gaga and the panelists frequently refer to various movements (civil rights, anti-smoking, women’s movement, etc.) and the grass roots empowerment that led to key societal transformations. 

Short (1:14) YouTube interview: Gaga and Oprah discuss “safety, skills, and opportunity,” the mission pillars of the foundation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJLh4UarrAQ

Long YouTube (1 hour+) video of the launch event: http://www.youtube.com/btwfoundation

Born This Way Foundation link to mission: http://bornthiswayfoundation.org/pages/our-mission/  

Kristof article link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/opinion/kristof-born-to-not-get-bullied.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=general

INTERRUPTING VIOLENCE, BUILDING PEACE

In my English classes for the past few years, we’ve read an award-winning novel that deals with racism and violence: Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor.  As we explore the strong bonds of family that enable the Black protagonists to fight nonviolently for their human and civil rights, my students and I also explore the bonds of humanity that tie us together as classmates and members of the human family. 

When students share “circles of culture” in which they examine their own backgrounds, multiple heritages, and interests, they delight in finding surprising similarities along with obvious differences between them and their classmates.  We also interrupt our reading to write “kind words” notes to each other for Valentine’s Day.  Former students return yearly to tell me they’ve kept these tiny “put-ups” and feel good when they read them.  When I suspend typical English class pursuits to explore such activities, I ask my students why they think I have taken the time to do so.  “You want us to ‘get’ the book….”  “The book is harsh and this gives us a break….”  “You want us to learn more about each other….” 

“Yes,” I say, “All that.  I want you to see how you can find a way to connect with another person—here in the classroom and anywhere in the world—if you stop to consider that you have similarities as well as differences.”

This week, appropriately enough on Valentine’s Day, PBS Frontline presents The Interrupters, the true story of three street-savvy peace builders courageously intervening to stop violence on the streets of Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods.   The press release states: “The interrupters work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, [whose founder] believes that the spread of violence mimics that of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: Go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.”   More information and interviews with the Interrupters, Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra, and director, Steve James (Hoop Dreams) are available at the link below. 

But, before you check out The Interrupters, read about “Chicago’s Peace Warriors,” working with less fanfare.  Students, teachers, and administrators at Chicago’s North Lawndale College Preparatory High, a charter school in a gang-troubled neighborhood, are employing Kingian Nonviolence to interrupt cycles of violence and build a culture of peace in the school, and ultimately, the community. 

Teacher Tiffany Childress wanted to do something about school and community violence and took nonviolence training offered by the Positive Peace Warrior Network.  Founded by renowned Civil Rights leader Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr. and others, the mission of the Network’s curriculum is to “institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence,” as Dr. King expressed in 1968.

Dr. King, like Gandhi, never saw nonviolence as passive.  Rather, nonviolence is proactive, energetic, and strategic.  The website defines Kingian Nonviolence as “a systematic framework of both conceptual principles and pragmatic strategies to reduce violence and promote positive peace at the personal, community, national, and global levels.”

Teacher Childress brought the training to her school, and school officials supported trainings for faculty and students, crucial steps in the process of transforming the school.  Students took ownership of their school and wider community, working to promote peaceful solutions to everyday problems that would typically lead to fights.  Realizing violence was not acceptable was a first step.  Teaching their peers to suspend negative judgments and creatively de-escalate conflict situations was the next step.  School officials committed time and importance to the issue, realizing “We have to teach the skills of building peace, just like we teach for the SATs.” 

One year, school violence dropped 70 percent.  Yet, realizing they could not simply create a bubble of peace at school, leaving students alone to deal with their stressed and violent community, Childress helped students conduct civic engagement projects in their communities with the aim of building peace in and out of school.  Students recognize they are creating “the beloved community.  We show people that Kingian Nonviolence is a way of life that can better our lives and society as a whole.” 

You can read about the Six Principles and Six Steps of Kingian Nonviolence at the links below.  But, before you do that, please know that I read about Chicago’s Peace Warriors in the reform-oriented magazine Rethinking Schools.  Veteran teachers for peace and justice will recognize the name.  If you don’t already subscribe to Rethinking Schools, please do so.  Visit their website to learn more about their rich and innovative resources for combining theory and practice to teach for equity and social justice.     

So, now you may interrupt your reading to explore these links.  May we all become interrupters of violence and builders of peace.

Learn more about PBS Frontline’s The Interrupters: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/

Learn more about Kingian Nonviolence and Positive Peace Warrior Network  http://positivepeacewarriornetwork.wordpress.com/kingian-nonviolence/  

Learn more about Chicago’s Peace Warriors: http://rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_02/26_02_haga.shtml

Learn more about Rethinking Schools:  http://rethinkingschools.org/

Learn more about infusing peace education into our classrooms and curricula: http://www.teachforpeace.org/  

TALKING ABOUT PEACE EDUCATION TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

When they were in middle school, I taught many of the students now in high school at The Episcopal Academy, and it was fun taking them down memory lane in my recent speech about peace education.  The theme for our Chapel program is Gandhi's "Be the change you want to see in the world."  I explained why I focus in my book and teaching on teaching for peace and change by teaching students to think, care, and act.  I reminded the students of the ways we had done this in middle school and invited them to step up their work to build a peaceful future--to be the change-- in high school and beyond.  Two former students introduced me.  Since the talk, students and faculty members have stopped by to talk about ideas and to thank me for the message.  We can build a peaceful future.... and we can empower our students to do so.  See the talk on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig3T7vYTNRw

KRISTOF: "AFTER RECESS, CHANGE THE WORLD...."

‎"After Recess, Change the World..." Read Nicholas Kristof's column in NYTIMES about kids and others using Change.org to right wrongs and focus attention on worthy causes: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/kristof-after-recess-change-the-world.html?_r=1   

Nicholas Kristof Affirms the Importance of Teachers

When I asked peace educator Irwin Abrams (Antioch College history professor, biographer of Nobel Peace laureates) how to answer those who ask how we know that peace education works, he had a ready answer. "We work for the unseen harvest," Irwin replied, then in his nineties. "There are consequences of the work we do." This article describes the unseen harvest of one teacher's extra-mile teaching. Keep up the great work, teachers! We work for the unseen harvest.

How Mrs. Grady Transformed Olly Neal

http://www.nytimes.com/  Nicholas Kristof

Teachers have the most important job in America. To understand why, listen to the story of Olly Neal, whose life was turned around by an English teacher.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ARTICLE: A TEACHER WITH A PASSION TO SPREAD PEACE

Art Carey writes the Well Being column for The Philadelphia Inquirer.  Read his profile of my peace teaching from the January 16, 2012 edition:

When she was a girl growing up in Wynnefield, Sue Gelber's sleep was often interrupted by her father's screams as he struggled with nightmares triggered by memories of his experiences as a combat infantryman during World War II.

Come daylight, Fred Gelber talked about the war as a series of funny stories. But once, during a conversation with a grandson, he dropped his guard.

"War is hell," Gelber confessed. "The first battle was my baptism by fire. I was one of the walking wounded. . . . There were thousands of dead people lying around. Not just one, but thousands."

Years later, after her father had died, Sue asked her then 90-year-old mother, "How did Dad go through all he did and still carry on a normal life?"

"He fought the war every night for 60 years," her mother replied, turning away.

Sue Gelber is Susan Gelber Cannon now, married for 38 years to artist J. Kadir Cannon. She is the mother of two grown sons and lives in Narberth. She is also a middle school teacher of English and history at the Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square.

But her passion for peace - rooted in her childhood recollections of her father's anguish - undergirds all she tries to do in the classroom. In her recently published book, Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future, she describes peace education as "an umbrella" that encompasses a wide range of learning, including critical and creative thinking, conflict resolution, and multicultural and antibias education.

"My interest in teaching students to think, care, and act is that it contributes to their well-being and the well-being of society," says Cannon.

"If they can think and they know how to care, they won't be overwhelmed by the negativity around them, and once I get them thinking and caring, I can inspire them to act and give them the confidence that they can change the world for the better."

Trained in moral development at Harvard, Cannon, 59, has taught middle school students in China and Japan and given presentations and workshops at numerous international conferences. She began researching the book during a sabbatical six years ago. She spent five summers writing and revising it. While the book is designed as a resource for teachers, with the requisite theory and philosophy, it also offers plenty of examples, practical advice and responses from students, and its larger lessons about the importance of peace - especially the possibility and necessity of achieving it - are relevant and applicable to everyone.

"Peace is considered by some a dirty word," Cannon told me the other day as we sat by the fire in her cozy Narberth twin, whose walls are adorned with her husband's art (including the painting that graces the cover of her book). "It means you're passive, you're going to surrender."

Instead of glorifying peace, "we are drowning our children in a sea of war culture," she laments. When she asks students to draw pictures of war, they quickly fill the page with explosions, blood, and guns. But when she asks them to draw pictures of peace, they sit at their desks, stare at the page, and ask, "What do you mean?"

"Why are we accepting this as a global society?" Cannon asks. "I'm not raising my kids to kill other mothers' kids. I'm not teaching my students to kill other teachers' students. We can do better."

Or, as she writes in her book: "We must help children see peace as a positive condition that includes constructive interpersonal and international relations, respect and empathy for all, and cooperative conflict resolution for the common good, rather than simply as an absence of conflict or violence."

A former puppeteer, Cannon has a theatrical bent. She realizes that good pedagogy adheres to Horace's dictum about the purpose of poetry - dulce et utile - to be sweet and useful, to delight and teach, to entertain and inform. There's a science to teaching, but teaching at its best is also an art, and for Cannon especially, a form of performance art, infused with enthusiasm, humor and purpose, which is why it's often so exhilarating and exhausting. She has been called "a coach in the gym class of the mind."

The walls and bulletin boards of her classroom are covered with inspirational sayings and provocative questions (Who makes history? Can a novel change you?), and pictures of people of courage and character who have crusaded for peace. Her style of teaching is to engage and improvise. She invites her students to help her "build" the course, and she solicits their feedback through report cards on her own effectiveness. She also actively works to keep parents informed and involved as well. Needless to say, she is opposed to the "skill, drill, and kill" mentality fostered by a focus on standardized tests.

On the first day of class, she challenges her students with two terms: meta-cognitive thinking (her definition: "thinking about what you're thinking about") and ethnocentrism (the arrogant notion that your tribe is the chosen people, the masters of the universe).

"To think means to question and analytically evaluate TV programs, what your parents and teachers say, what you read in the newspaper and on the Internet, and not just passively accept what people are offering you," Cannon says. Critical thinking is a form of "intellectual self-defense," she adds, borrowing Noam Chomsky's term, "because the whole world is trying to sell you something."

At the outset, Cannon tells her students: "I'm not going to tell you what to think, but I am going to make you think." Her typical approach to an issue: "Some people say this, some people say that. What do you think?"

Thinking also has a creative aspect - "the ability to imagine how to do things differently, and what a better world would look like" - which Cannon spurs by encouraging her students to envision utopian communities and how they might function.

To care means to develop and exhibit a sense of compassion and empathy, Cannon says - "to consider what it would be like to be that other person."

"If you say you're going to act for a peaceful future and change the world, it starts with how you treat your peers in the classroom," Cannon says. "You can't punch someone out on the playground or roll your eyes at the girl who's not wearing Uggs."

From there, caring expands to family, neighbors, the community, the nation, the world, to what Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams in 1907 called "cosmic patriotism."

"If I'm on my game every day, I find a way to inspire kids to think, care, and ultimately to act - even if it means something as simple and basic as being nice to the kid next to them or not laughing when somebody drops their books," says Cannon.

Peace education is a long, slow process, she realizes, but this "optimistic realist" is undaunted. As one of her mentors once told her, "We work for the unseen harvest. There are consequences of the work we do."

Photo by Clem Murray, Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120116_Well_Being__A_teacher_with_a_passion_to_spread_peace.html

COMMUNITY EDUCATION SEMINAR ON PEACE EDUCATION at Haverford College, January 26, 2012

For those in the Philly area, this press release about my upcoming program might be of interest.  Since the publication of my book, I have presented at several national and local conferences this fall: Peace and Justice Studies Association/Gandhi-King Conference in Memphis, National Council for the Social Studies in D.C., Philadelphia Area Multicultural Resource Center, and several teachers-teaching-teachers workshops.  I am hopeful that Haverford College students as well as members of the community-at-large will attend this program:

Susan Gelber Cannon, Episcopal Academy teacher and author, will speak about her book: Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future on Thursday, January 26 at 7 P.M. at Haverford College.  Cannon will connect ideas from the classroom to the living room as she invites teachers, parents, and community members to consider varied and effective ways to empower children to think, care, and act for peace and justice.  The Community Education Seminar, sponsored by Bryn Mawr Peace Coalition, is free and open to the public, with free parking on campus.  The program will be held in the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Café, located in Stokes Hall, Room 104, on Haverford College’s campus at 370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA, 19041.  The College phone number is 610-896-1000.  Books will be available for sale and signing at the event.  More information about the book is available from the publisher at http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Think-Care-Act.

Committed to teaching for peace and justice, Narberth resident Susan Cannon brings to life a teaching approach that empowers youth:

·         to think critically and creatively about historical, current, and future issues,

·         to care about classmates and neighbors as well as the global community,

·         to act—locally and globally—for the greater good. 

Cannon is a peace and character educator with 30 years of experience in primary and secondary classrooms.  She has also trained pre-service and in-service teachers in China, Japan, Denmark, and the United States.  Her special fields of interest are character, global, multicultural, and peace education: developing teaching methods to help students think, care, and act honorably, locally and globally. Trained in moral development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cannon teaches history and English, as well as Model UN, peacemaking, and debate at The Episcopal Academy, in Newtown Square.  With her artist husband J. Kadir Cannon, she has created art and peace education events in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.A.  Her book, Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future, was published by Information Age Publishing in 2011, with cover art by her husband. 

Think, Care, Act depicts Cannon’s methods for encouraging students to envision peace and gain tools to build a culture of peace.  Cannon articulates three imperatives—think, care, act—to infuse required curricula with peace, character, and multicultural concepts in daily activities throughout the year.  Topics include critical and creative thinking; media and political literacy; compassionate classroom and school climate; explorations of racism, gender issues, civil discourse, global citizenship, war, and peace; and school, community, and global social-action projects.  Cannon will discuss rationales, lesson expectations, and classroom “play-by-play,” making connections between home, school, and community.   Cannon’s Think, Care, Act framework will inspire teachers and families to educate youth to build a peaceful future.    

Founded as the U.S. headed to war against Iraq over 10 years ago, the Bryn Mawr Peace Coalition conducts monthly peace vigils and coordinates Community Education Seminars on peace-related topics held at various locations on the Main Line.  Members participate in numerous activities in the Main Line area and throughout the U.S.  Membership is free and open to all. 

TEACHING THE POWER OF NONVIOLENCE? Start with A Force More Powerful.

Daryn Cambridge teaches non-violent social change in Washington, D.C.  At the 2011 Peace and Justice Studies-Gandhi/King Conference in Memphis, we took each others' workshops and appreciated each others' work.  Based on my book, Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future, my workshop demonstrated strategies for promoting critical and creative thinking, compassionate care for local and global others, and honorable and effective social action.  (Read excerpts from the book at http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Think-Care-Act .)

In his workshop, Daryn demonstrated strategies for teaching about nonviolent change.  He introduced numerous resources available at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict website (http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/ ) to help teachers teach about the successes of non-violent social change movements, a topic too-often overlooked in typical curricula. 

The site offers the following helpful definition:  

“Nonviolent conflict is a powerful way for people to fight for their rights, freedom, justice, self-determination, and accountable government.  When people wage nonviolent conflict, they withdraw their cooperation from an oppressive system by using tactics such as strikes, boycotts, and mass protests. These actions can disrupt the capacity of rulers to control events and can shift the support and loyalties of the system’s defenders to the side of the movement. Decisive, even historic, change has then often been the outcome.”

After our workshops, Daryn interviewed me about how I use A Force More Powerful, the documentary about non-violent social change movements.  Based on the book by Jack DuVall and Peter Ackerman, the powerful movie details Reverend James Lawson’s trainings preparing students for anti-segregation lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, Gandhi's march to the sea to obtain independence for India, and other non-violent movements in Poland, South Africa, Denmark, and Chile.

Our students need to understand how nonviolent social change works!  As they try to understand the day-to-day development of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, for example, our students will find explanations of historic nonviolent social change movements helpful.  They also need guidance understanding unfolding events in the Middle East arising from the so-called Arab Spring.  I even use such materials as this film to help students understand Colonial American boycotts of British goods in the 1770s!  I hope my 4-minute video interview inspires teachers to use the movie in classes from elementary to university.

View my interview at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDJDnSV1IUI&feature.  

Daryn can get copies of A Force More Powerful (movie) to interested teachers.  Contact him (and read more about his work) at his professional blog: http://daryncambridge.com/.    

Violence is Down: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Today, at the copy machine I heard a colleague whistling the Beatles' "I heard the news today, oh boy," and I just had to laugh.... I was photocopying an article about Harvard's Steven Pinker, who says the news may be bad, but violence is LESS of a problem today than it was in the past. Pinker's assertion is that fear of violence pervades our culture due to media focus on violence.  Media’s insistence on “If it bleeds, it leads” coverage gives us a biased anticipation of danger and violence in the world.  Further, Pinker’s research indicates that we CARE more and differently about violence today, and that rates of bloodshed relative to population are actually down. 

What are some of the reasons for this dramatic development over time?  Pinker cites the rule of law, travel and trade, education, and the empowerment of women, among other forces affecting the decline of violence in today’s world relative to the past.

His work will make provocative reading with students in history and math classes!

Here is the link from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Scroll down for entire 5-page article at http://articles.philly.com/2011-10-14/news/30279505_1_violence-twentieth-century-human-nature

Don’t miss this pearl at the end:
Q: Will we stop caring if we become convinced violence is overestimated?

Pinker: I think that the exact opposite is the case.

What encourages intelligent activism is the realization that some things do work.

Let's figure out what they are.

“Turn the bus around!” Remembering the inspiration of Wangari Maathai

Listening to BBC news early this morning, I heard the announcer mention Wangari Maathai, 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Expecting to hear of a new initiative of hers to help the environment, instead I was saddened to learn of her death at age 71.  It is hard to believe that the energetic Wangari Maathai is dead.  Whenever I think of her—even now—I see and hear a woman full of life, laughter, and an endless energy to work for peace and justice for her beloved Kenya and all of humanity.

I met Wangari Maathai in 2002 when she spoke at a conference at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.  There, she gave an impassioned talk about humanity’s plight.  “We’ve boarded the wrong bus.  We’re going in the wrong direction.  We’ve got to turn the bus around.”  Exhorting us in her melodious Kenyan accent, Maathai made us believe we could reverse backward foreign policy and misguided environmental policy.  In doing so, we could put humanity back on course to create a more just and peaceful world. 

With my middle school students, Wangari Maathai’s message resonates as well.  We study the lives and impact of those who have helped change the world, examining their steps in doing so.   I plaster my walls with inspirational photographs, posters, and quotations and frequently refer to Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Wangari Maathai. 

In her memoir Unbowed and in numerous radio and TV interviews, Maathai described her childhood, education, and family, as well as the political, moral, and ecological awareness that inspired her to found Kenya’s Greenbelt Movement.  Recounting jailings, beatings, and ridicule at the hands of corrupt and dismissive government officials, Maathai wrote, “What I have learned over the years is that we must be patient, persistent, and committed.”  Comparing peace to a traditional African stool, whose three legs represent human and ecological rights, sustainable management of resources, and cultivation of cultures of peace, she reminded us that the trees we plant today benefit others in the future.

In my classes, we use her advice in our daily academic, athletic, and social endeavors as well as when we take action to help others—in our classroom and beyond.  My history class “final exam” is a social action project.  Students working alone and in small groups identify something wrong in the world and work to make it better. I further invite each student to consider how the problem on which they will work fits into the global picture. Studying Peace Prize laureates allows students to meet leaders who use critical and compassionate thinking about root causes of local and global problems in active service to the global community.   

My students are awestruck at Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement of Kenya.  Maathai started this movement with and for women, to help them organize their communities and reclaim their lands from land grabbers and deforestation.  When students hear how this small movement grew until it has planted over 45 million trees, pairs of students look at each other and exclaim, “We’re going to plant trees! It’s good for the environment, and that’s good for peace!”

Introduce your students to Wangari Maathai.  Her message and inspiration are timeless. 

For middle and upper school students, this 3-minute YouTube excerpt is suitable.  Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GX6JktJZg .  The excerpt is from a PBS Independent Lens production.  Background information on Maathai’s life and work (as well as additional interviews) can be found at http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/takingroot/ .  The Nobel Peace Prize website has biographical information and videos of Maathai’s Nobel acceptance speech and an interview as well: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/# .

For elementary school students, consider reading one of several illustrated children’s books, such as Wangari’s Trees of Peace.  Or, share “I will be a hummingbird,” a 2-minute animated video excerpt from Dirt, the Movie.  Live and with colorful animated images, Maathai cheerfully compares herself to an energetic and ever-hopeful hummingbird, bringing drops of water to put out a forest fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMW6YWjMxw .

“I will be a hummingbird,” Wangari explains.  “I will do the best I can.”  Let’s keep the message and work of Wangari Maathai alive by sharing her legacy with our students.  We can turn the bus around.

Peace education book combines theory and practice:

Think, Care, Act:
Teaching for a Peaceful Future
New release from Information Age Publishing!

Greetings, Fellow Educators,

Thinking critically and creatively…  Caring for classroom and global neighbors…  Acting effectively and honorably for the common good…   My new book presents rationales and resources for teaching students to think, care, and act.  With its reader-friendly combination of theory and practice, readers will find it both practical and inspiring.  It is suitable for college and university peace education classes as well as all-school reading for teachers and parents in elementary, middle, and secondary schools.  Community groups will find it useful as well.  Kindly spread the word to everyone you think will find this book of interest.  Content and ordering information are below.

Thank you,
Sue Cannon

By Susan Gelber Cannon  (Edited and Foreword by Ian Harris)

THINK, CARE, ACT: Teaching for a Peaceful Future

“Peace can be taught in practically every discipline if teachers truly concerned about the fate of this planet and its inhabitants have resources like this book to guide them…. [Cannon’s] sophisticated understanding of how to address these complex issues will help other teachers choosing to grapple with these difficult challenges.  If more teachers follow the guidelines she provides in this book, every student can learn about peace.” 

Ian Harris, Author of Books, not Bombs;
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; from the Foreword

“The writing is excellent: passionate and personal, blending serious content with an engaging,
reader-friendly style.  This is an important book—for character education and all of education.”

 
Thomas Lickona, Author of Character Matters; Director, Center for the 4th and 5th Rs;
Co-Director, Smart & Good Schools Initiative; State University of New York-Cortland

· Purchasing Information: 1-866-754-9125
http://infoagepub.com/products/Think-Care-Act

àSpecial Sale Price of $30.00 per book (paperback) within the U.S.

(àFree shipping if you call and place your order by October 15^th.)

Bulk Discounts & eBooks available.

• Paperback 978-1-61735-426-7 Web Price: $39.09
• Hardcover 978-1-61735-427-4 Web Price: $73.09

The author uses three imperatives—think, care, act—to infuse required curricula with peace, character, multicultural, and global concepts in daily activities throughout the year.  Committed to teaching for peace and justice, the author brings to life a teaching approach that empowers youth:

• to think critically and creatively about historical, current, and future issues,

• to care about classmates and neighbors as well as the global community,

• to act—locally and globally—for the greater good.

Chapters address critical and creative thinking; media literacy; compassionate classroom and school climate; explorations of racism, gender issues, civil discourse, global citizenship, war, and peace; and school, community, and global social-action projects.  Chapters include rationales, lesson expectations, and classroom “play-by-play.”  Students’ feedback about the impact of lessons is also featured.  With its combination of theory and practice Think, Care, Act is inspiring and unique. 

SUSAN GELBER CANNON is a peace and character educator with over 25 years of classroom experience.  Trained in moral development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cannon teaches history and English, as well as Model UN, peacemaking, and debate at The Episcopal Academy near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 

“To act in a world whose problems seem overwhelming requires being able to use the powers of critical and creative thinking and compassionate and inclusive care. 
Employing these tools, adults and youth alike can act effectively and conscientiously to solve problems big and small, global and local.”
Susan Gelber Cannon

Healthy Relationships with Technology: Building real and virtual relationships

As the school year begins, we might offer information about healthy relationships with technology to the families of our students.  How does this connect with teaching students to think, care, and act?  We strive to promote good relationships at home to support the children we teach, and strong families contribute to a culture of peace.  We also aim to help students develop media literacy—to develop what Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self defense.”  We accept that new technologies are crucial to our lives and teaching today.  We have seen the role of technology in non-violent social change as well.  However, we also need to help our students, families, and ourselves pay attention to the inner life, to the immediate, to the truly alive, to the real person in front of us, and to making true—as well as virtual—connections.

Sherry Turkle directs the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self and has written numerous books on human interaction with technology, including Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.”  In an interview on the radio show On Being, Turkle shares ways—and whys—parents should model healthy relationships with technology for their children.  The following is a summary of her findings, including quotes from the online transcript of the interview. 

Ms. Sherry Turkle:  “I don't have a crazy nostalgia for, you know, an unplugged life…   I'm just saying that we have to ask ourselves really what is served by having an always-on, always-on you, open-to-anyone-who-wants-to-reach-us way of life?  Because in my research, I've found that it actually cuts off conversations as much as it opens out conversations. So, for example, you can be too busy communicating to think...”

She deals with issues of personal time, interpersonal and inner connectedness, “aliveness,” intimacy, and privacy issues.  Can we really tune in to nature’s tranquility, for example, when we walk along the beach with our earphones in, texting?  Does it matter that children no longer care if a thing is truly “alive?”

She says we are living with an immature medium, and in a sense, WE have become ITS killer app.  How?  Because we are always on. 

Turkle explains a line from her book, “‘Just because we grew up with the Internet, we think that the Internet is all grown up.’ That is that we think that we have a mature Internet in front of us, and we don't. We don't have a mature Internet in front of us. We're in the baby stages, and that's good because that means we can make it right.”

Turkle explains that while parents worry their children are too connected, their children report feeling the loss of their parents’ connection as well. 

She was surprised at her research findings: “It ended up that it was a story of parents — as much a story of parents leaving their children feeling lonely and alone and modeling the very behavior that then they came to find irritating in their children…..  In psychology, it says, ‘If you don't teach your children to be alone, they'll only always know how to be lonely.’ "

For healthy relationships, she encourages us to find times for being fully with each other:

“To make our life livable, we have to have spaces where we are fully present to each other or to ourselves, where we're not competing with the roar of the Internet and, quite frankly, where the people around us are not competing with the latest news off the Facebook status update.” 

Her rules for setting limits, based on decades of research with new media and technology, are simple: Make moments to truly be with each other.

“It's dinner, it's sharing meals with your family, it's that moment at school pickup when your kid looks up and is trying to meet your eye. You know, you're looking down at your smartphone and your child is trying to meet your eye.  I have enough data from children who're going through this experience to know that it's a terrible moment for them.  It's on the playground…. I mean, be in the park. Be in the park with them….  Make it a moment. These are important moments.”

n  Sherry Turkle was interviewed by Krista Tippett on the American Public Media program On Being (formerly Speaking of Faith).  The full interview and rich resources (including podcasts, transcripts, and blogs about the show, entitled “Alive Enough?”) are available at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/ccp-turkle/.