Humane education is a field of study and an approach to teaching that draws connections between human rights, animal protection, and environmental sustainability. Humane education helps us understand the real-world impacts of our decisions, uncover the systems behind those impacts, and build just, healthy, and humane solutions for people, animals, and the natural world.
By harnessing the power of education to effect positive change, humane educators:
Our resource library is full of free lesson plans, teaching tools, and exemplar units that help educators and facilitators teach about pressing human rights, environmental, and animal protection topics in engaging, age-appropriate ways. Lessons cultivate compassion, thinking skills, perspective-taking, and active problem-solving—empowering students to see themselves as part of the solution.
The Solutionary Framework provides a roadmap for assessing local and global problems and creating ethical, actionable solutions. Using the framework, humane educators can facilitate inquiry-to-action projects that invite students to explore how a particular issue impacts humans, animals, and the environment, and to work toward solutions that consider all stakeholders.
Those who want to explore the theory, practice, and transformative potential of humane education in depth may wish to pursue a master’s or doctoral degree in Humane Education. The Institute for Humane Education created the first and only graduate programs in Humane Education, offered in partnership with Antioch University. Students in these programs engage deeply with the interconnected issues in courses like Human Rights, Environmental Ethics, and Animal Protection while developing the skills to educate, innovate, and lead in ways that create meaningful change.
“Changing the world one child at a time.” Those words have inspired my work for more than four decades in education, and they continue to inspire me now. We are at a pivotal point in the evolution of our world. We are facing a climate crisis, a health crisis, a crisis of racial justice, a crisis in our treatment of animals, a crisis of media bias. The list goes on. And perhaps our greatest crisis is our consistent struggle as a society to simply come together respectfully, intelligently, and ethically to solve our problems and save our planet. We need solutionaries. We need young people who have been educated not only to think critically, creatively, and systemically about real-world issues, but also to be passionate, persistent, and humane in their implementation of real-world solutions. And that is IHE’s mission: to support teachers and educational institutions in preparing young people to become solutionaries – and the next caretakers of our planet.
IHE offers a healing vision and a tangible pathway forward for a struggling world. As Executive Director, I am excited, humbled, and deeply honored to join with others to promote that vision and that pathway in ways that make them foundational to systems of education throughout the world – and to each child who is committed to making that world a better place.
Passionate about preparing young people to lead lives of joy and purpose, Steve Cochrane has had a remarkable journey through the field of education. It is a journey that has taken him from the campus of Princeton University, where he served as an admissions officer and an assistant dean of students, to the classroom of a public elementary school, where he had the privilege of teaching – and learning from – his fourth and fifth grade students. Steve has been a dorm director and associate dean of admissions at Wheelock College in Boston. He has also been an elementary school principal, a middle school principal, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and, prior to his work at IHE, he was the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools in Princeton, New Jersey where he was honored with the award of County Superintendent of the Year. In each of these roles, Steve has collaborated with others to prioritize innovations in learning, wellness for students, equity, and a belief that every child should be supported and inspired to achieve their highest potential.
Steve received his undergraduate degree in English from Princeton University and his master’s degree in educational administration from Harvard. He is a competitive road cyclist who also enjoys the thrill of mountain biking. Steve and his wife are both vegans and advocates for holistic health. They currently reside in Spencerport, New York, with their two dogs and a very large Maine Coon cat.
