Rethinking the Purpose of School
The most important question is not yet being adequately asked and addressed: What should the purpose of education be?
Read more »The most important question is not yet being adequately asked and addressed: What should the purpose of education be?
Read more »Five approaches for teaching about structural racism in polarized times.
Read more »Four steps to reduce anxiety and despair when it feels like there’s bad news all around.
Read more »Feeling prejudice against someone because of their race is pretty foreign to me, but this past weekend I was blindsided by a tsunami of my own prejudice. My husband and I had finished a walk in Acadia National Park near where we live, and I heard a group of people speaking Russian – a language I’ve studied, and which I love. Suddenly, my heart started pounding, and anger surged through my body. My mind immediately jumped to judgmental questions: Did they support Putin? What were they doing to help Ukrainians? Why were they going on a leisurely walk in Acadia instead of risking their…
Read more »(A Call to Action by Steve Cochrane, Executive Director of the Institute for Humane Education) Over the past two years, life as we know it has changed. We have seen the entire world impacted by disease. We are watching the atrocities of war through our daily news feeds. We are facing a climate crisis, a crisis of racial justice, a crisis in our treatment of animals, a crisis of media bias, and a crisis of political polarization. The list goes on. And, tragically, perhaps our greatest crisis is our consistent struggle as a society to simply come together respectfully, intelligently, and…
Read more »Introduction: Paul K. Chappell is an international peace educator, author, and founder of Peace Literacy. He graduated from West Point, was deployed to Iraq, and left active duty as a Captain. Realizing that humanity is facing new challenges that require us to become as well-trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war, Chappell created Peace Literacy to help students and adults from all backgrounds work toward their full potential and a more peaceful world. Peace Literacy frames peace not merely as a goal, but as a practical skill-set – a literacy like reading and writing – that needs…
Read more »I am a humane educator, someone who teaches about the cruelties, destruction, and injustices we perpetrate on other humans, animals, and the environment and who helps people cultivate compassion and integrity and become solutionaries able and motivated to build humane, healthy, and just societal systems. It is in this capacity – rather than as an expert in geopolitics or Russian-Ukrainian history, which I am not – that I write about how each of us can be a force for good in the face of the invasion of Ukraine. What’s unfolding in Ukraine is horrifying on so many fronts, and it’s worth enumerating a few:…
Read more »On January 5, 2022, Pope Francis spoke in Rome and described people who have pets instead of children as selfish. He went on to say that pet keeping was “a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity.” There’s so much that is wrong about his statement. 1. Spoken by someone who himself chose not to have children, presumably for a higher good, the criticism is ironic. Many people forgo having children precisely because they are acting unselfishly and recognize the imperative of Laudato si’, the Pope’s second encyclical that calls all people of the world to take “swift and unified global…
Read more »Introduction: Bruce Friedrich is the Founder and CEO of the Good Food Institute (GFI). He is a TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum, 2021 “American Food Hero” (EatingWell Magazine), and popular speaker on food innovation. He has penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and many other publications. He has represented GFI on the TED Radio Hour, New Yorker Radio Hour, Ezra Klein Show, Making Sense (Sam Harris), ReCode Decode, and other programs and podcasts. Bruce’s 2019 TED talk has been viewed almost 2.5 million times and translated into dozens of languages. He graduated magna…
Read more »Introduction: Katie Coppens is an award-winning science teacher at Falmouth Middle School, the author of seven STEM-themed children’s books, and an experienced solutionary educator. In 2018 she participated in the Institute for Humane Education’s Solutionary Pilot Program, and her students shared their solutions to the problem of animal testing at our Solutionary Summit in Portland, Maine. Since then, the entire sixth grade at Falmouth Middle School has participated in solutionary units, and during hybrid learning last year Katie and her students continued their solutionary work. Katie’s new book for middle and high schoolers, Earth Will Survive… But We May Not,…
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