Humane Edge E-News September 2009

• LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING: WHAT DOES REAL EDUCATION LOOK LIKE?
  
• GET FIRED UP TO CHANGE THE WORLD AT KINDLE BIONEERS CONFERENCE
  
• FEATURED ACTIVITIES: BECOMING HUMANE BEINGS
  
• HUMANE EDUCATION IN ACTION: CREATING COMPASSIONATE KIDS
  
• RETHINKING EDUCATION: TWO TITLES FOR HUMANE EDUCATORS
  
• FEATURED STUDENT: SHAWN SWEENEY
  

LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING: WHAT DOES REAL EDUCATION LOOK LIKE?

By Khalif Williams, IHE's Executive Director

What is education for?  At what point in school does one explore what education is in the first place?  If someone had asked me what my definition of education was when I was eight years old, I probably would have said something like, “Going to school and learning stuff.”

In my experience, most young people experience education the same way they experience the cold in their refrigerators at home. They open the door (of the fridge or school) and there it is. You just show up and it happens to you. Right? So, what’s to define?

At 16 years old, if I had been asked to define education, I probably would have matured into the trite and tiring: “Learning everything you need to know to get into college and get a good job so you can have a good life.” This kind of response seems clearly a restatement of common urgings young people often hear from well-intentioned adults.

I can’t remember ever overtly being asked to grapple with what education means -- by anyone -- inside a classroom or out. I imagine this is true for a lot of people. What I do remember is that it never dawned on me that there was a definition for education beyond what I was ostensibly experiencing, albeit passively, in public school.

What I had failed to recognize was that I was actually ferociously engaged in education all the time, in perhaps a thousand other ways.  I worked as a vet’s assistant, a photograph developer, a landscaper, a camp counselor.  I was a musician; I organized and played concerts with my rock band; I wrote poetry and short fiction.  I learned sign language to communicate with a special education student they had “mainstreamed” by having him eat lunch in our cafeteria.

But I didn’t recognize any of this as education at all -- I guess because it simply all looked and felt like . . . well, like my life.  And to that point, education had only been presented as an activity that required me to suspend or postpone my real life; something that I needed to get out of the way before my real life could begin.

As you can imagine, my definition of education has expanded dramatically and continues to grow. Not surprisingly, it still includes “Going to school and learning stuff,” just as it did when I was eight.

Let me restate the question: How do we learn what education is? This question is important to me, because I think it’s somewhere at the heart of our struggle to create a better future. It’s at the core of why so many young people are unfulfilled by their schooling experiences. Our society practices education according to a particular definition.  So, if we think the practice is somehow flawed, then perhaps we need to look at the definition. If the definition is flawed (and I suggest strongly that it is), then how do we keep more generations from being passively indoctrinated into the narrow, limiting definition of education, as I was.

The word education comes from the Latin educere, meaning "to lead out.” Socrates, a powerful influence in Western thought, spoke about education in terms of drawing out that which was already inside people.

In contrast, here’s the current definition of education, according to the American Heritage Dictionary:

1. The act or process of educating or being educated.
2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process.
3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level: driver education; a college education.
4. The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning.
5. An instructive or enlightening experience: Her work in the inner city was a real education.
   

Here is a sampling of definitions I found on the web:

“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer

“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” ~Emma Goldman

“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life -- by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past -- and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think — rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” ~Paulo Freire

“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton

“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson

Defining education shouldn’t be left up to professional educators, famous thinkers or, heaven forbid, the lexicographers. Education is an organic, ancient dimension of human culture and its professionalization and commoditization is perhaps quite recent (e.g., the sophists of 5th century B.C.).

What influences have shaped the definition of education in the modern West? Is it meeting the needs of our modern world? How can we dedicate ourselves to education that truly serves our future? How can we “lead out” all that is best in humanity? These are essential questions that we as educators, parents and concerned citizens must explore.

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GET FIRED UP TO CHANGE THE WORLD AT KINDLE BIONEERS CONFERENCE

Hope. Change. A positive future. These are all elements that people who want to create a better world strive for, and many of them are gathering October 16 and 17 in Portland, Maine to find sustenance, support and a shared vision for a compassionate, just, sustainable world. We at IHE invite you to be part of this experience. IHE is a partner in Kindle, a northern New England Bioneers Conference, which invites organizations and individuals who are called to create a healthy, humane, equitable world to come together, celebrate, share, learn and explore.

Kindle is a satellite conference of Bioneers, the leading-edge forum that takes place in San Rafael, California, every year where social and scientific innovators focus on solutions inspired by nature and human ingenuity.

In addition to providing a live feed of some of Bioneers' renowned plenary speakers, which will include changemakers such as Annie Leonard, Joanna Macy, Michael Pollan, Jerome Ringo, Arturo Sandoval, Dr. Andrew Weil, and Lily Yeh, Kindle will feature an incredible line-up of its own speakers and workshop presenters, including a plenary talk about the power of humane education by IHE’s President, Zoe Weil. IHE will also be leading a MOGO workshop and a humane education workshop at the conference.

Since IHE is a partner for Kindle, the conference will also be a gathering point for humane educators to interact and become part of building the humane education movement in the Northeast. We’d love to connect with you there!

Sliding scale registration: $75-$225.

Register for the Kindle Bioneers Conference.

When you register, please check the box that indicates that you are a friend of IHE.  This greatly helps support IHE in our partnership with Kindle. Thank you!

Find out more about the Kindle Bioneers Conference.

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FEATURED ACTIVITIES: BECOMING HUMANE BEINGS

Right at the start of the school year is a great time to spark students' thinking about the world they live in, the choices they make, what a humane world looks like, and the power they have to help bring such a world to reality. Here are a few of our free, downloadable activities (pdf) to help you do that:

What Does a Humane World Look Like?

Time: 15-30 minutes

What Does It Take to Change the World?

What is a Humane Life?

Recommended for grades 5 and up.
Time: 90-120 minutes

What Makes a Humane Being?

Recommended for grades 3 through 6.
Time: 30-60 minutes

What Would You Do?

What would you do if….? Help students think deeply and critically about the quandaries between balancing personal desires with kindness toward others by engaging them in discussing personal and global scenarios.

Recommended for grades 3 through 8.
Time: 60 minutes

 
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HUMANE EDUCATION IN ACTION: CREATING COMPASSIONATE KIDS

A trip to the animal shelter more than 25 years ago started Caroline on her path to humane living and humane education. Now she works to teach kids about compassionate choices as Director of Education for the Humane Society of Broward County in Florida.

Quick Facts:

Current hometown:   Hollywood, Florida
IHE fan since:   I started my Master's degree in 2008; that's when I stumbled on IHE’s website!
Current job:   Director of Education, Humane Society of Broward County
Your hero:   My Mom...the most giving and unselfish human being I know.
Book/movie that changed your life:  Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. My Aunt who was 100% healthy is in a nursing home and cannot walk or talk. No doctor ever figured out what happened to her. After reading Silent Spring I'm convinced it was the toxic chemicals she was working with before she fell ill. I warn everybody now not to use pesticides, chemical cleaners and other such products.
Guilty pleasure: Almond Milk, holy yumminess!
Inspired by: Others who stop to notice, appreciate and care about the world around them.
Love about yourself: My silliness.
One of your strengths: Open and friendly.
Desired epitaph or tagline: “Believe in yourself and anything is possible.”

 
IHE: What led you to the path of humane education?  

CC: One trip to the animal shelter over 25 years ago.  That trip opened my eyes and my heart to what it truly means to have empathy and compassion for other living beings.  Since then, I try to put myself in the shoes of others and think about how I would feel if I were wearing those shoes.  When you look at it like that, it’s hard not to be compassionate.

IHE: Tell us about how you’re currently manifesting humane education. What are your challenges? Successes?

CC: I am a very fortunate person in that I love what I do.  I have been the Director of Education at the Humane Society of Broward County for fifteen years.  I have had the benefit of creating my own programs, along with a wonderful staff, from the ground up.  We have been very successful in finding clever ways to reach the masses. I think one of the most effective ways to make a lasting impact is to develop partnership programs; we have several.  One partnership we developed is with the Girl Scouts of Broward County. Girls can earn their Humane Society patch by participating in 10-12 animal-related activities per year.  For each level of Girl Scouting they earn a different colored bone for their vest.  After four years in the program they become the experts.  There are over 10,000 Girl Scouts in Broward County, so that’s a lot of outreach.  Another great program that reaches children on a consistent basis is "Lopster's Kids Club." (Lopster is my dog.) The kids meet monthly and spend an hour and a half learning about being caring and humane citizens and interacting and working with the animals.  We have more than 80 members in our Clubs.  One-time visits to schools are great, and our department is always in the schools, but I truly believe we really start to make a difference when the kids are hearing the message over and over. 

A big success this summer has been our camp program.  I was so excited to use some of the lessons I learned at IHE’s Residency and from IHE’s humane education courses.  It was so rewarding to see the kids learn from what I recently learned.  I was able to incorporate environmental education, which was a first time thing for me. 

My main challenge in my position is that I have to keep my material as conservative as possible.  The organization I work for leans more towards animal welfare than animal rights.  I do try to incorporate as many aspects of Humane Education as I can in a way that is not offensive or upsetting to others.  It makes it difficult, because I have to teach around the politics, and I feel very limited at times.

IHE: What are your thoughts about the power of humane education to positively transform the world?

CC: I think there is power in numbers and power in compassion.  How can anybody argue with being kind, respectful and thoughtful of the world and the life around us?  If we continue to grow, teach and be positive examples for our future, our individual flames of passion can ignite and form a blazing fire of hope for all.

IHE: Any future plans, dreams or projects?

CC: I'm not sure what life has in store, but I feel like there are many doors of opportunity and possibility that have opened for me.  I love working in the animal protection field, and it will always be my true passion.  However, I feel as though I have expanded my sphere of knowledge and compassion to other areas of Humane Education and would like to use them productively.  My Individual Learning Project for my M.Ed. degree includes writing two children's' books that focus on using your beauty within rather than focusing on your physical beauty.  I would like to publish those books and send a message to young girls nationwide.  I have also started doing research into opening a green consulting company.

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RETHINKING EDUCATION: TWO TITLES FOR HUMANE EDUCATORS

What’s the best way to get to the hospital? The “correct” answer, according to the standardized test, is “ambulance,” but if you’re an Alaska Native 300 miles away from the nearest hospital, the real answer is “airplane” (which, according to the test, is the “wrong” answer).

“Multicultural Education” calls forth visions of kids exploring countries and cultures – an introduction to the way “other” people live, certainly, but not an in-depth examination of how and why we think and behave with people who aren’t just like us, the ways in which differences are connected to power and views of “inferiority,” the kinds of literature and information and perspectives that are considered “normal” and “natural.” Rethinking Schools eschews the tamer, safer framework of traditional multicultural education and has created a new definition of in their book Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice (2009). As one educator defines it, multicultural education equips “students, parents and teachers with the tools needed to combat racism and ethnic discrimination, and to find ways to build a society that includes all people on an equal footing.” (10)

Edited by Wayne Au, the book offers interviews, essays and a sprinkling of teaching ideas focused on this new framework of multicultural education and exploring it via numerous issues, such as:

• The influence of eugenics on government policy and education.
• The effect of “high stakes testing” and fixed standards on multiculturalism.
• An analysis of eight kids’ books on their portrayal of Columbus to exemplify the attitudes and perspectives that are considered “normal.”
• The power and oppression behind “standard English.”
• The prevalence of stereotypes and lack of understanding of cultural differences in schools.
• The role of class in racial issues, such as the “model minority” stereotype.
  
  

Some of the most powerful aspects of the book are the heartbreaking and inspiring essays by individual teachers who share their experiences working with classes, with individual students, or their own encounters with education. One memorable essay is “And Then I Went to School” by Joe Suina, who speaks of the joys of living with his grandmother in the pueblo of his people, the Cochiti –- loving his home, his traditions, his family –- and learning to be a happy, confident Indian. “And then I went to school” at age six, he says.

I expected the book to follow the format of other Rethinking Schools books I’ve read, like Rethinking Globalization, and to be full of specific teaching ideas; I was disappointed at first to find it more essays and articles than anything. But, I actually discovered that the more “general” treatment of multicultural education through the variety of issues and lenses was actually more helpful, as it made me think more critically and comprehensively about education, schools, classrooms and teaching, rather than running the risk of adopting some new teaching ideas without integrating the larger context involved.

As with any collection of essays and articles, some are more interesting and useful than others, but as a whole the book is compelling, enlightening, disheartening and inspiring all at once.  This book is for educators, activists, parents and concerned citizens who want schooling to go beyond “heroes and holidays” and who want to empower students and help them think critically about social, cultural and racial justice.

If you’re an early educator, check out Rethinking Early Childhood Education (2008), edited by Ann Pelo. With so much pressure on Head Start programs, pre-schools, pre-kindergarten, pre-pre-schools, and other early childhood education programs to get kids “ready” for school and to focus on assessments and academics, it can be difficult for a kid to learn to be a kid, and for teachers to provide young children with the experiences that can help them become humane citizens. Filled with essays and articles, the book offers the expertise, insights and inspiration of educators, parents and scholars who work to expose young children to important issues (race, gender, creativity, sense of place, sense of self, family and community, etc.) in age-appropriate ways. (Note: You will find some of the same essays in both titles.)

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 FEATURED STUDENT: SHAWN SWEENEY

Shawn's passion for helping people and animals led him to exciting and interesting work with zoos. Although Shawn enjoyed his work, he knew it didn't quite fit what he was looking for...and then Shawn discovered humane education.

Read Shawn's profile.

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