Teach for Peace

Dignity and Social Movements

2012-01-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

What is Dignity? And why does it galvanize social movements?

The more I study social movements and conflict resolution, the more convinced I become that dignity is an essential basic human need; denied this, a social manifestation will almost always occur. I wrote about this extensively in Land and Dignity in Paraguay, and have continued to observe the primary role of dignity in the Arab Awakening as well as the Occupy movements that have essentially been demanding economic dignity. It even seemed to be paramount in the recent protests in Moscow which demanded (at a minimum) an investigation into recent election fraud.

I increasingly view dignity as a way to understand these dynamic interrelations. Theorizing dignity, however, does even more than help us understand contentious politics. It can help us progress towards actionable clarity regarding how to expand free democratic space with respect to women, first peoples, minorities and other groups whose specific historical experiences make contentious politics necessary.

This all suggests that we need a more developed theory of what dignity is exactly and why it seems to matter so much to the kinds of socio/political/economic conflict that we’re seeing today.

So then, what is the nature of dignity? Let’s start with what it is not. I recently spoke at a workshop on Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, where it was argued that humiliation is dignity’s opposite. To be humiliated is to be treated as something less than human—dehumanized. Extending this, dignity must involve or enable somehow rehumanization. This is especially true when we think about dignity in post-conflict (or during conflict) contexts, where it arguably matters most.

So, first, dignity is political. I have observed elsewhere that dignity is related to inherently political ideas such as autonomy and participation. As Seyla Benhabib recently (2011) wrote, Arendt was one of the first to really theorize dignity as a political concept. This, Benhabib explains, was a response to explanations of anti-Semitism which Arendt viewed as relying too heavily on economics at the expense of the political. Indeed, the important question to ask is how the political, the economic and the individual (culture, identity) interact in very specific historical contexts. The political nature of dignity is almost certainly why social movements demanding dignity for certain groups simultaneously demand political (and social) recognition/inclusion as well as autonomy.

Second, dignity is relational. While some of us are amazingly, defiantly self-possessed, especially when we think of the socio-political sense of dignity, we know from social identity theory that we define ourselves largely via connection to or in opposition to others. This is why a sense not just of personal but of social esteem is so important to a theory of dignity.

Third, dignity is a basic human need. From the standpoint of basic human needs, then, we know that it cannot be negotiated away. The only sustainable, just way to resolve a conflict in which one party feels her (their) dignity has been lost is to meet that need.

This leads me to the question of why dignity seems to be such a prominent theme in the social movements, like the Arab Awakening and Occupy, within what some have called the “Spirit of 2011”. To simplify quite a bit, social movements tend to emerge when there is

1. Shared grievance

2. Shed helplessness.

Part of this occurs because social movement leaders make political claims that resonate. Other times it is more organic, especially in our decentralized social media era. What’s key here is that individuals no longer see their struggle as individual and they no longer see themselves as to blame. This appears to be just what is happening with the Occupy movement worldwide as a response to the global dominance of neoliberalism. What is it then that people find so dehumanizing about neoliberalism? Quite a meaty subject, this we will have to leave for a future blog.

Speaking on PRESSedent, discussing peace education and human rights

2011-12-13T12:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Matt for the great discussion. "Between fight and flight, there is peace" is the best tagline since good night and good luck!

Here's a link to PRESSedent.

Here's the video!

Peace Economics and #occupywallstreet

2011-10-31T19:36:00.000-04:00

Everyone’s got a theory of why they believe the #occupytogether protests have sparked, and indeed now gone global. I don’t believe we need to over-think it: people have solid evidence that they’ve been robbed. I thought I’d bring a bit of what we can call “peace economics” theory to the conversation to keep the conversation moving forward and hopefully focused on where to head next. What’s most important is putting in place systems, values, laws and maybe even institutions (I suggested Warren’s Financial Consumer Protection Bureau in my last blog) that can make it likely that we won’t end up here again. One compelling feature of the field of conflict resolution, in fact, is precisely that it is based in “systems thinking”—that is, seeing the larger picture of how cultural assumptions and values, political regimes, economic systems and historical forces all interact to produce what we actually see on the ground. Or in Zuccotti Park.

Peace economics, as a relatively new school of thought, is somewhat undefined and still rather invisible. But the Occupy movement suggests it is an idea whose time has come. Perhaps its most important insight is that markets depend on a certain level of social trust and cohesion. This itself is not a new idea. Remember, Adam Smith himself (terminally misused and misunderstood in my view) referred to himself not as an economist but as a moral philosopher. So lesson one of peace economics theory: markets depend on a basic level of social trust and cohesion. It’s clear this has broken down in the US. I hear it not just in the rage at Wall Street banks who broke the economy with fraudulent mortgage securities. I hear it in the everyday suspicion that seems to float around that other people can’t be trusted to do an honest job without threat of being fired, or who seem convinced that the housing crisis was caused solely by greedy middle classers who just had to have a McMansion they couldn’t afford. The data doesn’t support that view, as a new CBO report recently confirmed. (Think #occupy is going away? Ask yourself when was the last time a CBO report went viral!) I hear it from too many GOP candidates who, seemingly without having grasped that we have 9% unemployment, suggest that folks who are struggling get a job. We can’t rebuild markets that work without some basic level of social trust.

Gandhi, not someone usually associated with economics, I think gives us our next couple of principles of “peace economics”. He taught that “wealth without work” and “power without principle” would decay and ultimately destroy a society. Regarding wealth without work, some peace economics theorists have noted, for example, how important it is to distinguish between productive and unproductive parts of the economy. I hear echoes of this idea when people concerned about economic inequality note that the financial institutions most implicated in mortgage-securities fraud make money essentially by moving money around. Indeed one primary concern of #occupy has been the explosion of the financial products industry without investment in sectors that would enable the real economy to grow. Hence the disconnect between Wall St and the real economy, and hence our market recovery while we’re still struggling with 9% unemployment.

A further principle as we move towards some sort of more formal theory of peace economics might be a serious scrutiny of a concept that has only recently been challenged: the idea of the “economic man”. Science and economics are increasingly showing “homo economicus” to be false, and this is peace economics theory building block number four. Of course this is the idea, often associated with Adam Smith, that people are completely (or at least primarily) driven by self-interest and will behave rationally in pursuit of what is best for them. Certainly people act in their own interest but to put this forward as an unproblematic, uncomplicated truth is misleading. To act in our own interest, we need solid information. An increasing amount of research also suggests that our cultural identity and emotions influence our decision making far more than especially those of us in the “rational” West might be comfortable admitting. Consider for example Lakoff’s The Political Mind, which argues that we are shaped and motivated by images, framing and symbols that if not quite ‘irrational’ are certainly super-rational. Along similar lines, Rifkin presented voluminous research in his The Empathic Civilization that the human mind is wired for empathy, connection and collaboration at least as much as it is wired for aggression. In their (our) exemplification of solidarity and local, participatory, collaborative democratic processes, OWS demonstrates this reality (at least so far).

A fifth, and our final, principle of any developing peace economics theory must be sustainability. Bluntly if it were up to the whaling industry (to pick one example) there would be no whaling industry as the population of whales would be extinct. There is a difference between what is profitable or in the economic interests of one company and what is in the interest of an industry as a whole. This to say if economies are to be considered peaceful, they must be sustainable. As peace economics theory continues to develop, it can usefully build on the indigenous wisdom that, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught; only then will you find that money can’t be eaten”. So-called “locavores” (those who advocate eating locally grown food) and environmentalists have been singing this song for some time. In hyper-developed, post-industrial countries like mine, it can be amazingly easy to lose sight of how real our dependence on nature is. When researching the indigenous land rights movement in Paraguay, as I did some food shopping at a market near the room I was renting, wandering past fruits and vegetables from the seller’s own yard and meat slaughtered only that morning, I was viscerally reminded that everything we eat comes from something plant or animal. Such an obvious statement--only someone from the rich world would be surprised by such a reminder! Synergy and partnership just last week between Occupy Miami and a large demonstration of environmental activists suggest this could be a useful collaboration, and further suggests that as a whole, #occupy is seeking more economic transformation than just a drop in the unemployment rate. With the world’s attention and growing momentum now, maybe OWS is becoming a movement which can push forward a global transformation towards economies that enable human security and peace.

Interested in more? This article on Twenty Questions for Peace Economics: A Research Agenda from 2002 is a great start.

Ten Things the Occupy Movement Can Demand

2011-10-23T09:10:00.000-04:00

1. Stop all “robo-signing” of home foreclosures immediately.

2. Allow students to declare student loan bankruptcy.

3. Reinstate “Glass-Steagall”, which separated consumer banking from investment banking.

4. Investigation of the major investment banks who were involved in the subprime mess.

5. Investigation of Fanny, Freddy and the ratings agencies like S&P who gave banks AAA ratings which were false.

6. Implementation of Elizabeth Warren’s Financial Consumer Protection Bureau.

7. Overturning Citizens United. Money is not speech. It’s one person, one vote, not one dollar, one vote.

8. Passage of Obama’s Jobs Act and/or implementation of a WPA-inspired jobs-emergency program. The WPA was a Depression-area government employment program.

9. Similar to #8, an immediate halt to the laying off of public sector workers, especially at the state and local level. Consumers create jobs, and we can’t afford to keep squelching demand.

10. Break up the banks that are (say it with me) Too Big to Fail. Such a move is not anti-capitalist, it’s pro-capitalist. You can’t have capitalism without the possibility of failure for poor investment decisions.

#occupyyourownmind

2011-10-12T11:25:00.000-04:00

"The enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men. We all have the same enemy: The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind. The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized." ~Tom Robbins

"Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities..." ~Voltaire

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ~Malcolm X

The connections between peace, critical thinking skills and a good old fashioned (young fashioned? Pretty young protestors out there) sense of civic duty have not ever been more clear to me. I wrote elsewhere once a few years ago that fascism, or totalitarianism in general if you prefer, is more of a mindset than a government. This was in the context of a discussion a few years back (Obama was not yet president) of a Florida college kid who was tazed by a campus security officer at a Kerry campaign speech. Discussion erupted about whether the kid had deserved it; apparently he’d been going on and on at the mic during the Q and A and someone even mentioned that he had spoiled Harry Potter! And there was the inevitable argument that the security guys did what they had to do. After all, how did they know he wasn’t a threat? I found myself pointing out repeatedly that that wasn’t relevant. In a democracy that’s working, of course, the burden of proof was on the law enforcement. This is because they have greater physical and legal coercive power, and people just don’t handle power well unless it’s constantly checked. That the kid was rude and arrogant was never the point, no matter how true. That he’d spoiled Harry Potter was not the point (though one does sympathize). I was stunned to find myself hearing such arguments by those who say they believe in democracy in support of law enforcement being able to inflict pain essentially to correct public manners—to teach the kid a lesson.

The over-identification with authority and with the elites, in my view, explains such reactions. It explains the need to see the kid put down or even the need to mention Potter-spoiling at all. It also helps explain how so many of our essential institutions seem to have slipped out of our control. This kind of over-identification with authority is damaging to a democracy just as surely as an Al Qaeda or corporate media ownership. Yet it’s so hard to talk about because so personal and intangible. But understanding this dynamic is essential to being a citizen in a democracy because fascism, again, is not so much a regime as a mindset. A mindset that says, “They know best”. A habit that fails to take personal responsibility for being informed and forming one’s own opinions. Our own minds are the real last line of defense against totalitarianism. This is, as others have also said, why regimes even bother targeting academics, journalists and artists.

What’s the relevance to the unrest and peaceful uprisings that we’re seeing now, especially the Occupy movement? Finally enough people across the US—across the world—have begun seeing and saying out loud that we insist on our own voices being heard and the social contract continuing to work for at least most of us. Apathy and cynicism, of course both servants of the status quo, appear to be disintegrating. This is one reason that the “agenda” media folks seem to be demanding (they are of course elites too, deeply implicated in shaping what’s worst about our current status quo) isn’t crystal clear yet though themes of economic justice, jobs, addressing corruption and peace are clearly observable. Because the reality is that a number of institutions and cultural systems (media, political, financial) are seen to have all failed us, the problem is just probably not going to fit into one white paper. Wherever this ends, it must start with citizens doing their fair share of governing if we are to remain a government BY the people. Before we can #occupywallstreet, we must #occupyourown minds.

Straight Outta Tottenham: Anger, Dignity and Austerity

2011-08-12T10:57:00.000-04:00

"To be wholly overlooked and to know it are intolerable” ~John Adams

A clear thread is woven through the fabric of the many different, and often differently expressed, social upheavals that we have been experiencing throughout the year, and that thread is the challenge of global neoliberalism to dignity. Perhaps indeed some late 21st century Barbara Tuchman will tell the story of how 2011 was 1848 or 1937. What’s important now is that we understand how our systems—social, cultural, economic and political—are failing us on a large scale and what needs to be done to begin transforming them.

• London (unemployed youth riots)

•Ohio (union bargaining rights)

• Chile (student demonstrations over access to education)

• Wisconsin (union bargaining rights)

• The U.S. Tea Party (shrinking the welfare state)

• Israel (affordable housing—or as my colleague Aziz Abu Sarah memorably put it, “In Israel, the Rent Is Too Damn High”)

• The Arab Spring/Revolutions

But this goes even further back. Remember those uprisings in Paris a few years ago? Or the spate of anti-immigrant violence in Australia? How about pre-revolution food-price riots in Cairo? What about even the “Battle in Seattle” when the WTO was in town?

Why do I suggest that such different protests as the above all share a common impulse? Without ignoring local specifics, I see current the unrest as an extension of a larger trend that may have been developing throughout the 21st century so far as economic globalization and democracy expand and contract in response to what I believe are tectonic shifts of the global socio-political landscape. A root-bottom driver of the above is the relationship between entrenched neo-liberalism worldwide—which has accelerated to austerity as after-shocks of the Great Recession continue—and social dignity.

Dignity is what allows people to have faith in the social contract. So even if someone else has more materially, a young man or woman can still feel that

1. Others perceive him or her to be a part of society

2. Her role in society has some sort of meaning for her

3. She can have some sort of control over her future, especially as it relates to being able to provide for basic survival

Some excellent research has been done about the socio-political negotiation of social contracts and a community or nation’s security (see for example Beverly Crawford’s work on the “myth of ethnic conflict”). Essentially this is the agreement, sometimes spoken or written, sometimes not, that underlies how a society’s resources are divided up and what will constitute the CONSTRUCTED concept of legitimacy in a society—who gets to hold power, how and why. What we’re seeing in each of the cases above, I would argue, is a demand for renegotiating the social contract.

To my mind this implies the need for a global social contract. What rights can indeed a citizen demand? To what is he entitled? What does a citizen of Country X “look like” and/or believe? These are fundamental underlying questions being struggled over. The more interconnected our economies become, and the more migration continues throughout the 21st century, the truer this will be.

As I’ve written in my book on indigenous communities and austerity in Paraguay (Land and Dignity in Paraguay), when you take away someone’s ability to control their future, you take away their dignity. More than a set of mere economic policy prescriptions, neoliberalism is also a set of social norms and assumptions about human nature. This is where austerity, and Ha Joon Chang’s concept of “kicking away the ladder”, comes into play. The idea is that as one group climbs up the socio-economic ladder, benefitting from public spending on infrastructure, health, education, research/development and so on, they then begin to call for those supports to be chipped away.

I don’t think high rates of unemployment alone would have resulted in the riots we’re seeing in the UK. As a number of interviews with some of the rioters and protestors have shown, the ideas of power and economic injustices have been resonant. As part of austerity, youth services in Tottenham were cut by 75%! Don’t forget that historic Tunisian man who immolated himself in front of a municipal building after the confiscation of his vendor’s cart. It’s not just being unemployed—it’s being invisible!

An under-appreciated movie, “Dirty Pretty Things”, has a scene which captures the importance of “mere” visibility as a first step towards dignity. Several immigrants from various places encounter one another in some of London’s seedier sections. A few grisly scenes suggest that they have gotten caught up in the black market of organ smuggling. Having discovered it, they are soon blackmailed and threatened with deportation. Toward the end of the movie, a security man asks the Nigerian immigrant, “How come I haven’t seen you?” The immigrant replies, “We are the people you don’t see”. In all of the above cases, whatever distinct and valid differences they might also have from one another, the protestors are demanding to be accounted for—to be seen!—in the social contract.

Towards a Mindful Foreign Policy?

2011-07-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

First, a disclaimer. I’m no expert on mindfulness or Zen. I’m (slowly) learning to meditate and, as a peace educator, have been considering some of the connections between inner peace and social, political (dare I even say economic?) peace. Our talk during meditation class recently was focused on “paying attention to your intentions”. Of course this is a lifelong personal journey, but does the idea have relevance for nations as well? Can a country be mindful? If so, will international politics be more peaceful?

On one hand, I am frankly skeptical. The “causes” of war are numerous and complex, rooted in inadequate bureaucracies, autocratic regimes, resource depletion, patriarchy, economic markets, and what’s been called the “heavy hand of history”. In that “heavy hand of history” is there a possible connection between mindfulness and preventing war?

It is possible. What if not just political leaders but a nation’s citizenry “paid attention to their intentions”? As I’ve been writing here and elsewhere, I think a key outcome of peace education, especially any peace education that wants to engage or claims to be inspired by, critical theory must help students be able to deconstruct the causes of war. Part of this means being able to identify—to articulate!—the national narratives that tell the story of who we think we are as Americans (Brits, Irish, Iranians, Mexicans…). How do we explain what we stand for? How do we talk about our role in the world? And does that then lead us to war or peace?

I raise these questions of course because they have everything to do with how we understand—or misunderstand—our intentions in choosing war. Does an unexamined (or even unconscious) assumption about the goodness, the righteousness, of our national intentions lead us naively into conflicts we don’t understand? Surely a more rigorous examination—a more mindful one, you might say—of our interests and intentions in armed interventions is urgent, given that we have in the past decade ended up in at least two wars most Americans do not want (Iraq and Afghanistan).

Peace education, I think, can make at least two contributions to this. One, the systems thinking inherent in peace education can introduce students to thinking critically about the connection between interpersonal systems, communities, nations and the world system. Perhaps such students-as-citizens will be more willing, able and empowered to ask difficult questions about why a particular war is really necessary. Secondly, peace education, when it is effective, engenders in students a sense of themselves as part of a whole. Such a citizen is probably more likely to reject the view (a dangerous one in my opinion) that we can sensibly talk about U.S. national security separately from global, human security. That’s no longer possible in the hyper-connected, interdependent 21st century.

Honestly I can’t say that I’m sold on my own premise here. Again, I’m no expert but mindfulness seems to be such a personal, individual experience that I wonder if that can translate to the socio-national level. Yet clearly groups can act out aggressions, impulses and unconscious “scripts” as individuals do. I have more questions than answers but it sure seemed a question worth asking.

You Might Already Be Teaching Peace If....

2011-06-20T16:37:00.002-04:00

If you've taught K-12, you've been there. A new mandate to plan for. A new test to scantron. Another inservice that may or may not be led by someone who has taught K-12 in the past decade. (Those who run these teacher trainings who have not taught run the risk of getting eaten alive.)

And they want us to "teach peace" too? They want us to seriously be responsible for the moral, social development of students we see 45 minutes a day on a good week? A week without fights, assemblies, tornado drills, fire drills, bomb scares, parent conferences, special ed conferences, state tests to proctor, open houses....

Sometimes, because of the reality I note above, it's almost impossible for teachers today to imagine adding one more thing to that list. So in that spirit, I say take heart! For exhausted, besieged teachers everywhere who would love to "teach peace" if there were only five spare seconds in the day, did you know you are probably already doing it?

It's closer than you think!

You might already be teaching peace if….

1.If you read works like To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men with your students because you want them to understand the seeds of hate and prejudice.

2.If you read works like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 so they know how important it is to think for themselves.

3.If your students know the words “doublethink” and/or “scapegoat”.

4.If you’ve ever told a kid that “it gets better”.

5.If you’ve encouraged a kid to power off and reconnect with nature.

6.If you’ve called a parent to tell her how great her kid is.

7.If you’ve invited a kid to write or speak about struggles s/he’s facing.

8.If you’ve taken a group overseas so they understand other kids better.

9.If you’ve involved kids in making the rules of the classroom.

10.If you’ve formed a partnership with a community organization.

If you're already doing those things or many more, you may already be teaching peace! You're already "being the change".

Got other suggestions of things teachers are already doing to "teach peace"? I invite you to leave them in the comments.

On the Doug Noll Show!

2011-05-26T11:30:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to Doug for a fun and important conversation! We had a great talk about Egypt, global citizenship, power and hierarchy in schools and more. Enjoy!

Here's the link!

Book Talk: Hedge's War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

2011-05-14T09:09:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you come across a book that really matters. I’d like to thank Chris Hedges for writing one of those books, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. Hardly new anymore, but perhaps more timely than ever.

Hedge’s thesis here is that there is in human nature a void, a need for meaning and purpose. This need can be, and too often is, filled by what he frankly describes as the excitement and illusory heroism of war—“war usually starts with a collective euphoria”. His work, I think, helps us link the personal with the political, the micro with the macro. In the natural human longing to matter, the lure of war can be irresistible and here is the power of war lords and ethnic cleansers. Especially in the chaos of major political or economic upheaval, many people experience themselves as powerless and seek war as a way to feel secure or powerful. This is possible because, Hedges argues, of the “collective amnesia” which national myths “ignite” in a society during a conflict.

This amnesia is facilitated, sometimes even engineered, by State destruction of both its own culture (which of course includes human, tolerant and free values in some aspect) and that of the enemy. This is the first step of the dehumanization of the enemy which HAS to precede the destruction of the enemy. Otherwise the safeguards and civilized behaviors that make society work cannot be overcome. This is why such wide spread abuse, to include torture and rape, even perpetrated by “peace keepers”, is so common. Once the mores of civilization are degraded, what’s unleashed is nearly impossible to control. Hedges notes, for example, that porn is sometimes used as a way to begin stripping away social taboos and/or to “divert a society that was collapsing”, as in former Yugoslavia. Once this dynamic is in motion, the worst aspects of human nature are exposed, rendering us nearly incapable of talking about what happened to understand it or heal.

Belying the notion that “ancient ethnic hatreds” are natural, Hedges documents the labor that must go into deconstructing and reconstructing national/ethno-national identities. He describes destruction of old monuments (for example) which might contradict the new desired state narrative, co-opting of art and culture, targeting of artists and intellectuals who do not “read from the script”, targeting of anyone else who does not “read from the script”, rewriting of school curriculum, forced migration, mandated apartment swaps to ensure ethnic cleansing, and years of radio and TV broadcasts deploying state propaganda to foment ethnic hatred. (I’m especially struck that it apparently took Milosevic four years of propaganda to finally foment the violence he needed to accomplish ethnic cleansing.) This selective, rewriting of history, as well as direct propaganda, helps to heighten the “narcissism of small differences” (32) that Freud spoke of. The myth, usually but not always nationalist, masks the lies and contradictions that would probably in peace time be obvious to most citizens. Writes Hedges, “War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially critical thought” (10).

He notes that language itself is “drafted” into the Total War effort, in a very Orwellian sense (34). War becomes peace. Language becomes reduced to a national (or religious or ethnic) script—the “reduction of language to code” (72); if you are not reading from that script, you are a dangerous dissident. Wars, he writes, “feed off martyrs”, whose memory “shuts all arguments for compromise or tolerance…It is the dead who rule. They speak from beyond the grave urging a nation onward to revenge” (94).

I would also observe that Hedges’ work helps us connect, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the humanities with the social and political sciences. He reminds us that the realm of myth, the emotional and super-rational, are as important to understanding human behavior as economic data or public opinion surveys. Men (and it is usually, though not always, men) who fight war do so for reasons they at least tell themselves are eternal. This is why the destruction of real art and culture are so important to war-making; the humanities do indeed humanize.

More than anything else, he argues, as one who has observed war after war firsthand that
1. Wars are fought based on illusion and the actual experience is horrific in a manner only comprehended by those who have experienced it. The experience of war, he argues, exposes the lie of what especially soldiers were told it would be.
2. War is fought essentially based on myths and lies that many willingly believe.
3. Secretly and often with guilt, some who have experienced or participated in war long for the intensity it offered. (See The Hurt Locker.)
4. Nearly every group in history involved in perpetuating violence has believed itself to be a victim, in fact THE victim, and this plants the seeds of what I call “war thinking”—that we are not just good but Goodness and they are not just bad but Evil. This is what makes patriotism “a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship” (10). Hence the enemy’s destruction is holy. As Hedges notes, echoing others, this “makes communication impossible” (69). I would extend this to add that such communication is, of course, central to ending, as well as mitigating and preventing, wars. Violence itself becomes the language through which societies communicate (ala McNamara).
5. He emphasizes the role of fear, guilt (since at heart and soul we know we’re buying lies, hence the extreme defensiveness) and extension of COMPLICITY to all citizens involved. This extension of complicity is a key social mechanism in perpetuating the war and its underlying myth since the shared complicity keeps everyone in guilty silence.
6. He also emphasizes the role of industrial and post-industrial technology in war which makes mass killing so much easier, less personal, more efficient; “men in modern warfare are in service to technology.” Of course this makes understanding war, and how to prevent it, more urgent than ever.

A Phenomenological Reflection on Ethnic Conflict

2011-02-09T10:45:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: It is my pleasure to publish this important and honest reflection from one of my Qualitative Methods students. The personal is the professional.

By: Safeer Tariq Bhatti

Growing up in America, one of the biggest difficulties I had was trying to be like the population I embraced every day. But, exclusion and the definition that I was not one of them was paramount. On the school bus, there was not segregation against black and white, but segregation against difference. My difference was my normalcy in many things, my difference in color, my simple clothing, my simple English and my simple habits. I wanted to be the best simply, but I was not the best in many things. I never knew what challenge was until I received it-until given the opportunity to be better than those who made me an outcast in every way possible. Once I achieved beyond the norm, my acceptance gained prominence.

Throughout my experiences, I could not understand why my ethnicity- why ME, was not accepted here in America. I thought going to my birth place, to a place that looks like me, acts like me and feels like me would accept, but they did not too. I had no identity. My identity was disputed. My territory was disputed. One day, when I was very young, I went to the Beach and I was sitting in the water and the sun gazed on our brown backs. In the water, they were many people that all looked like me. But, as I got closer, everyone had their own groups. Each group was speaking their own language and their own culture. This culture and that language were all different. People prided on their languages and their cultures. As you got closer to each group, each group would say that they are better than anyone- better than all the groups. One nation was so different. They were all Pakistani, but they all said we were different from each other. They all said we are better from each other. Why?

Why were they different in a country which makes them not? Why I was still not accepted? There is exclusivity in a homogeneous population and this exclusivity causes conflict.

Youth Development Is Security: Cairo Edition

2011-02-02T14:59:00.002-05:00

Youth development, as I’ve developed a habit of saying, is security. As we have all watched unrest, riots and protests throughout Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordon, and previously in Iran, I continue to believe this truth.

Numerous analysts have noted how young “the Arab world” (we’ll set aside the fuzziness of that term for now) is. Stanford reports that 37% of Tunisia’s population is young (defined as 15-29). The median age in Yemen, according to the CIA Factbook, is 17. A full 50% of the country is of “working age”—25- 64. For context, the literacy rate in this country, in which the US has been using predator drones, is 50%. Nearby in Egypt, where tanks have been rolling onto the streets as I type, the median age is 24! 63% of the population are between 15-64. (It’s worth noting that Egypt’s literacy rate, at 71%, is significantly higher, which will matter greatly for Egypt’s future.) All of these countries grapple with high unemployment which may well be connected to the global financial crisis (at least in Egypt).

(Click here to watch Frontline’s Egypt: Middle East, Inc. which features a youth development effort.)

I rehearse this data, of course, because it so powerfully underlines an insight that I think is key to understanding the urgency of peace education, which again is precisely that “youth development is security”. Elsewhere I’ve written that I think there is great potential in peace education to “inoculate” young people against extremist views, whether it might be the mercenary violence of an MS13 or the more ideologically-driven terrorism of Al-Qaeda. So what then should we as peace educators be doing now? How can US educators help American students to understand what is unfolding? And how can teachers and schools in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere, equip their students for a rapidly changing future in an increasingly armed and global world?

US educators might begin by opening discussions with their high school students (who are almost certain to be excited to begin driving) about where our oil comes from and the role it has played in shaping our foreign policy. The might also note that, as numerous media outlets have reported, the tear-gas cannons fired in Cairo at the protestors were made in the USA. Do today’s students feel this is right? What about the military aid we’ve given to Mubarak? This is also an exquisitely teachable moment regarding civil liberties and the rights to assemble, to peacefully protest and to petition one’s government, which every human being should have.

I won’t presume to explain to teachers or educational leaders in the Arab world what to do with this teachable moment. But there is some general wisdom from some of the founders of peace education, such as Freire and Montessori, that may be of use here. One insight is that schools too often are instruments of the state. Naturally this is even more the case when regimes are repressive and so use schools as instruments of repression. I would imagine some educators in these schools observe this daily. This use of schools as mechanisms of autocracy can often occur, for example, through plain censorship of what’s taught to encouraging one-sided views of history, lionizing accepted leaders, demonizing the opposition or (more subtly but crucially) shaping curriculum that encourages rote memorization, discourages critical and creative thinking and fosters individualism over community and collaboration. If democracy, or even “mere” good governance in any society is to be fostered or maintained, such an oppressive approach to education must be peacefully revolutionized.

Why We Need Global Citizens

2010-09-03T13:03:00.004-04:00

Cross-posted at http://marcgopin.com!

Perhaps one of the barriers to global citizenship education has been a fear that one must necessarily choose between two identities—being either a citizen of one’ s country or a citizen of the world. In light of the increasingly nationalist and xenophobic dynamic observable in many countries over the past decade, challenging this false choice is urgent. Peace educators and global citizenship educators must make the argument that one can be both a citizen of one’s country and a citizen of the world.

I would even go further to argue that in today’s increasingly interconnected and increasingly armed world, the U.S. needs global citizens more than ever. What is a global citizen and why does her country need her?

A global citizen has a secure and multifaceted identity. What this means is that no one particular aspect of his identity (race, class, religion, gender) dominates the others. Research on identity suggests that this is a kind of “inoculation” against extremism. When someone has a monolithic identity, they are much easier to mobilize to violent conflict. Ervin Staub’s chapter in Ashmore’s volume on social identity and conflict (2001) makes this point powerfully through examples from Rwanda.

A global citizen is cross-culturally competent. She has developed an awareness of her own cultural blind-spots and biases and can apply this to avoiding (or at least resolving) misunderstandings that can often occur in intercultural contexts. A global citizen would be aware of the inherent social violence seen in video games in which players shoot at Mosques and minarets in Austria, and would feel a responsibility to speak up.

A global citizen understands, I would argue, the rapid and increasingly interdependent reality of the 21st century. Flowing from this, he understands that the most pressing challenges humanity faces today (environmental destruction, global terror, authoritarianism, poverty, the Great Recession) are inherently cross-border challenges. They simply cannot be solved by one country alone.

This is not a comment on the strength or weakness of any particular nation. Rather it is a comment on the qualitative nature of the problems the global community faces. Attempts to address these problems unilaterally will be partial and therefore will ultimately fail.

This brings me to a final quality of the global citizen which benefits the “home country”. A global citizen not only has the values and perspective which nations so urgently need right now, she has the skills to actually begin addressing these challenges. She can resolve conflict, build relationships and problem solve in diverse contexts. She can think in ways that are flexible, innovative and holistic, seeing how systems operate at a global systems level—without losing sight of local impacts and contexts. (And she is probably multi-lingual.)

The more of these sorts of citizens a nation in the 21st century has, the stronger, the more agile and the more able to meet current challenges that nation will be. Those who suggest that we must choose between one or the other—being a citizen of the U.S. (or any other nation) or a global citizen—are giving a false choice. They are putting forward a framework that limits our human potential.

Not the Crime but the Cover Up: How Obama Fell into the Gulf

2010-06-17T15:10:00.002-04:00

by Dr. Solon Simmons
cross-posted from Confrontations

As you prepare to watch the President’s speech from the Oval Office tonight (unless other matters demand your time and attention), you might ask yourself why it is that this President is being blamed for this disaster. After all he did win the election against his opponent John “drill baby drill” McCain. Sure, the president did announce support for more offshore drilling just weeks before the disaster, and he did not clean house in the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which is a poster child for fox in the henhouse regulatory capture. But what caught Obama up in this imbroglio was not the crime of allowing BP to play Russian roulette with the Gulf of Mexico, but rather the cover-up afterward in which BP tried to assure the American people that the extent of the damage was going to be far less than it actually turned out to be.

When the President took office, he did have a lot going on: two wars, a run on the banks, the fall of the auto industry, depression era stagnation, health care, student loans, etc. When it came to energy policy he must have thought that splitting the middle with the Republican Party made sense. Obama was pushing for Cap and Trade, a climate approach that relied on market forces that could be used to cut a deal across party lines on energy reform. How bad could it be to rely on some mix of deep sea drilling given that the world’s nearly 7 million people need energy and must get it somehow. The gulf rigs did make it through Katrina after all. Here was a chance to be a uniter and not a divider.

This thinking actually made political sense to me at the time. I did not come out and say this then, but I thought that Obama was being quite savvy in his move to allow the Governors with a taste for more risk to take on more drilling off their own state’s shores. Remember how vicious the attacks on his lack of bi-partisanship were at the time as the health care vote loomed. Obama will face similar problems with nuclear power as we simultaneously confront increasing needs and global competition.

But this reasonable move to cross party cooperation was not what sunk Obama, instead the day that will live in infamy was May 14th 2010, when NPR commissioned an analysis of the flow rate from a scientist at Purdue university with expertise in estimating flow rates from video. If you recall this story, it was a shocker and could have been a pivotal moment for the President, but Obama did not take the bait. Because BP was engaged in an active spin campaign to play down the panic that would attend the validation of such estimates, Obama’s lack of attention to these findings, (which were confirmed by other experts at the time as well), placed him symbolically on the side of the cover-up. Up to that point most people seemed to have the reasonable sense that Obama was far less associated with careless drilling operations than the next best alternative: Sarah palin. After that, the slow transfer of ownership was underway. Today, the spill is widely blamed on Obama’s lack of oversight at MMS.

What else could he have done? I think that Obama’s decision not to take sides on the flow issue was reasonable enough in substantive terms. The administration knew that they could establish the extent of the damage after the fact if things turned out to be as bad as was anticipated, and getting the public riled up would only make it possible for small government Republicans to demand big government non-solution solutions like dumping scarce sand resources into untested barriers as has now been done in Louisiana. Even so, the President could have, and in my opinion should have, demanded that we begin an independent investigation into the extent of the damage to get science on our side.

By doing nothing in response to the NPR story Obama took the path which was the moral equivalent of waiting for science to prove that smoking causes cancer. His reticence made the scientists look like quacks and validated his being in cahoots with (B)ig (P)etroleum. We worry that he is not type A enough for us, that he should show more emotion and “go off”. The problem was that he was too type I for us (geek alert: check out the hypertext). He was so worried about getting behind a false positive test that improperly predicted an imminent disaster that he failed to warn us of the imminent disaster. This says nothing about Obama’s work behind the scenes, and given the Bush era legacies of regulatory strategies, I doubt that there is all that much that he could have done to make this better at that late date.

What he failed to do is to attend to the stagecraft. Obama does not like to vilify legitimate businesses, even those who gamble with the well being of the public at large, because that is the price of capitalism. The problem is that there are times when drama (confrontational in addition to inspirational) is justified and even essential to bending the arc of history toward justice. What Obama did not properly anticipate was that the confrontation of “the people” with BP was inevitable; now he is on the wrong side of it. Obama’s grown-up sensibilities may make him a great administrator, but they have left him with a populist tin ear.

Youth Development Is Security

2010-05-14T11:29:00.006-04:00

During a class discussion on The Freedom Writers with my students at the Juvenile Detention Home School one afternoon, I asked my students why they thought kids joined gangs. Time and time again, from students who had not met one another, the same answer came.

Family.

Students shared in class debate, and in the privacy of their journals, that at the most basic level, gangs are a replacement for family.

Identity needs, such as esteem and relationship, are not negotiable, as we know from John Burton. If our students cannot get their need to belong, to feel safe, and be loved met by family or another group, the appeal of a gang (or similar group) can be overwhelming. Area gang task forces report that MS-13 and other gangs are recruiting not just at middle schools any longer, but increasingly at elementary schools.

Nor is this dynamic limited to the United States. States which have nearly failed have struggled with civil wars and ethnic violence. Sierra Leone is one example; combatants in this war were as young as eight! Ismael Beah, in one particularly harrowing scene from his memoir A Long Way Gone, describes two of his fellow soldiers who had to drag their AK-47s because the weapons were bigger than they were! We can see the same dynamic in the history of Liberia.

As Nick Kristof wrote in a fantastic op-ed today, fundamentalist madrassas are too often the only game in town for young people (let’s say 10-24) to imagine for themselves a meaningful future. Writes Kristof, “I can’t tell you how frustrating it is on visits to rural Pakistan to see fundamentalist Wahabi-funded madrassas as the only game in town. They offer free meals, and the best students are given further scholarships to study abroad at fundamentalist institutions so that they come back as respected ‘scholars.’ We don’t even compete. Medieval misogynist fundamentalists display greater faith in the power of education than Americans do.”

Conflict prevention necessitates that basic human needs are met. This requires the coordination of a number of practitioners who perhaps do not immediately view themselves as partners: those responsible for security and those responsible for education. As many students remind me daily, some feel impelled to join a gang or otherwise engage in violence because they feel they’re not safe otherwise. One young man from Washington, DC, shared his story with me. He told his father one night that he did not feel safe walking to school. His father told him to “man up”, so the boy bought a gun. He was arrested and served his time; months after his release, he shot and killed another young person. My latest understanding is that he will be tried as an adult. Had this young man’s security needs been met, this conflict could almost certainly have been avoided.

This student’s story, Ismael Beah’s and the students of whom Kristof writes, as well as the countless students who have come through my “juvie hall” classroom with tattoos from MS-13 or the Bloods, speak to an urgent need for peace education in every classroom globally. This can’t happen until we act on the clear truth that youth development is security.

The Recession on the Inside

2010-03-02T12:12:00.001-05:00

We got another glimpse recently of what the recession can look like on the inside. Like many institutions, we have faced budget cuts and possible lay offs. Administrative leadership has, of course, been looking for any way possible to bring more money into our Detention Center. Thus staff hours have been extended from eight to twelve hours and we’ve been opening up to many more non-English speaking ICE (Immigration Control and Enforcement) kids. The reason for this is, of course, that more funding comes for housing those kids. Money’s tight, and can you really justify laying off staff when there is a way to bring in more funding? That’s one argument, at least. I personally believe there is, from a macro, social perspective, always the money and time to achieve what we value the most. One can also argue that if we funded our schools and other public institutions they way we should (and the way that we currently fund Defense), these sorts of choices between housing kids that we are not really equipped for (only a few of our staff speak Spanish, the main language of the ICE kids) or laying off staff when people desperately need jobs wouldn’t be necessary. The lack of Spanish-speakers leaves everyone here, including the kids, less secure because if tension is growing between some kids, and we don’t know about it, we obviously can’t nip it in the proverbial bud as we normally would.

So this is the context in which the racially-charged fight, involving about five kids, happened last Friday. Inappropriate words in both English and Spanish had apparently been passed. A black student had been using some racial slurs over the past day or so; a Hispanic kid punched him and then it was, as they say, on. Several other Hispanic kids, at least two or three of whom are not incidentally members of MS13, joined in. Nearly every staff member available was needed to get things back under control. This was at 8:15ish Friday morning, and we were locked down all day.

We’ve made educational changes to better serve the ICE/ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) kids, but they happen so slowly and at times more on paper than in practice. Some of the extra (part-time, sadly) teaching staff that we’ve brought in find they are required to spend more of their time either being trained to give tests, testing or doing paperwork. Only on a rare day do these specialists actually get to teach students. This is compounded in our juvenile detention setting because when we do get to spend individual time with a kid who needs it, that kid might be with another professional (such as a lawyer or parole officer) or locked down. Budgeting has also meant that it’s been difficult keeping and training detention staff; for some, a twelve-hour shift is just too long, especially if they have another job.

So what then is to be done? In our debrief, I mentioned Dialogue and Difference, which I think is a strong program on understanding cultural differences and the kinds of conflicts they can cause. Unfortunately, our “jurisdiction” as teachers is limited here as we only see the kids during class. Each unit staff is supposed to being doing what’s called “group”, a community-builder in which kids are invited to share their thoughts on being in the unit and discuss concerns. I’ve seen it be quite effective, but it has to be consistent and is far more likely to successfully change prejudiced behavior and thinking if the student has important role models outside of our facility.

We will do what we can, but I keep coming back to the fundamental role of policy and the reality that budgets are moral documents, as I’ve heard Jim Wallis say. I worry that so many of the cuts we are making in social services and education are going to be what my grandma would have called penny-wise and pound-foolish. Part-time teachers means more kids fall through the cracks; extended hours for staff means good staff are hard to find and retain, which means security is undermined and too much time is invested in constant retraining. Hikes in college tuition, especially community colleges, means that kids looking for a way to a better (more legal) life see the first step out of reach, and so taxpayers may need to house them in adult facilities soon. How then are these cuts, from a long-term, big picture perspective, actually saving us money? Eventually, the bill is going to come due and if you put it off too long, it will be due with interest.

Fear Factor

2010-01-11T12:05:00.001-05:00

So much has been said about the effect of fear on a society. Murrow powerfully said, “We will not walk in fear of one another”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that, “What begins in fear usually ends in folly.” We’ve recently had a few helpings added to our diet of fear in the aftermath of the failed attempt to blow up a plane headed to Detroit. (A while ago CNN had a tag line I loved: “Fight Fear with Facts”; I wish they’d bring it back.) As Roosevelt said so well, the freedom from fear is a key human right. How should peace and global educators respond, then, to the pervasive fear in society today?

A variety of activities and programs can be implemented in response to our culture’s feasting on fear. Happily for English and history teachers, literature and history are both filled with books, poems, essays, events and leaders who have led societies through fear and those who have led societies beyond it. But I wouldn’t count math and science out either. What is the body’s biological response to fear? What goes on in humans chemically when we fight or are threatened? What’s behind the statistics the media reports regarding terror and crime? Do they distort reality or reflect it? Such “essential questions” can form a vibrant and compelling curriculum, in my view, to begin a dialogue on what fear does to a society and its relationship to violence.

Nor should this dialogue be limited to the classroom. As I was reading some more Ian Harris this morning (Peace Education, 2nd Edition), I was reminded yet again how many other avenues there are for such community conversations—student groups, churches, synagogues, mosques, labor groups, VFWs, local media. Schools are a microcosm of society, and so we can never lose sight of the larger national and global picture.

Nothing reduces fear so much as taking action with others. Therefore students, teachers, parents and community leaders also need the opportunity to design and implement programs which address causes of fear, insecurity and conflict. School systems can partner with local faith leaders on interfaith dialogue, or victims-rights groups serving victims of crime (something like “Take Back the Night” seems like it would work wonderfully). So many of us rightly decry the lack of leadership in our country right now; without giving students the opportunity to lead, how can they gain these skills for the future? Also, such experiential learning respects the fact that, while clearly the media and politicians can foster and exploit fear, the emotion is sometimes quite real (acts of terror and crime of course do occur). The curriculum suggested briefly above is a starting point for classrooms and communities to examine social fear’s sources and causes, and then act, in the true spirit of praxis.

Teaching Against Misogyny

2009-12-07T11:59:00.005-05:00

Misogyny is a theme that appears again and again in my classroom. (I raise it sometimes; sometimes it rears its own ugly head.) We recently finished the Freedom Writer’s Diary, in which some students shared their painful experiences of rape and sexual abuse. The reactions of my young students to this is fascinating. Many of the young men in particular state that they’d become violently angry if someone abused a mother or sister of theirs. I can see them shaking their heads and almost growling as we read. The young women sometimes do the same. And of course, some of my own students have written about their experiences of rape, abuse or even prostitution.

The journal of one of my young women, who is happily not here any more, wrote about having sex with strange men who “offered” her food and shelter. At this point in her life, she was sleeping on park benches. Was she raped? Or was this consensual? I certainly can’t see a thing consensual about it given her life circumstances and age. Just like being a racist doesn’t have to mean you’ve got a pointy white hood for lynching, sexism doesn’t have to mean you beat up women. They both can be much more subtle than that.

How then do we teach against misogyny? How do we make it visible in the Hobbesian world of random, family or gang violence? How do I tell my students misogyny is wrong when I’ve seen other adults here snicker along with the kids at the music video portrayals of women? One recent conversation with my students really drove this home. In a couple of poems we were reading, the young women who wrote them expressed the desire to be taken seriously for their ideas and mind. Some students expressed the view that that’s great except in the ‘hood. There, men are and should be in charge, the argument went. That’s just how it is. Life is too dangerous otherwise. Even more depressingly, it was two of my girls expressing this view! I was reminded once again that part of “reforming” schools is developing communities. All too often efforts at reforming methodology, holding teachers accountable or reducing school violence happen in isolation from or in the absence of community development initiatives. Unless they harmonize, school reform will fail.

Peace Education and the Tragedy at Ft. Hood

2009-11-13T11:31:00.004-05:00

Also published on Dr. Marc Gopin's blog.

Can peace education help to prevent the violent loss of life, such as we all witnessed recently at Ft. Hood? I believe that it is an essential piece of the puzzle. People offer various explanations regarding why a soldier murdered fellow soldiers. Some are pointing to Maj. Hassan’s Islamic identity or possible extremist views. Others point to his impending deployment to Iraq or sense of humiliation and social isolation. Since we know that very few behaviors are motivated by just one cause, I think it’s likely that all of these dynamics interacted.

Why do I think that peace education could have prevented such a violent act? At its core, peace education nurtures two vital skills, which are problem solving and relationship-building. Peace education also challenges stereotypes and resists the easy, pat explanation for someone’s behavior. It fosters people who view themselves as part of a whole, and centers on the values of equality and tolerance. In this way, it is the ultimate “anti-extremist” education. Had Maj. Hassan had the opportunity to participate in peace education at some point during his schooling, it’s possible that he would have not been able to dehumanize his victims as he did.

I don’t wish to minimize the possibility of mental illness here; it’s real and requires a mental health professional. If such details emerge about Maj. Hassan, they should be taken seriously. But students of peace education (and I consider myself still a student, even as I’m also a teacher) learn and practice nonviolent communication and should be able to articulate the cultural and historical narratives of various identity groups. They should also be able to articulate the narrative of their own national and social background so that their own cultural assumptions become visible to them. When successful, of course, this results in at least the beginnings of intercultural understanding.

We (the human race) repeatedly make the mistake of thinking that “basic” skills like cross-cultural communication, building relationships or problem solving are either not that relevant or something that people pick up along the way. Or if they don’t pick it up, they’re not going to. Peace education to me is so powerful precisely because it challenges this mistake; these skills can and must be taught.

Testify!

2009-09-02T14:35:00.004-04:00

People of diifferent faiths often testify as to why they believe what they believe. This is my conflict resolution "testimonial". They say the personal is the political. Perhaps in the work we were "meant" to do, the personal is the professional as well. I invite you to share your testimony too!

Conflict is always about a relationship gone wrong. Conflict resolution is therefore more than a conglomerate of different social sciences. It draws on political science, international relations, sociology and psychology, yes, but from these ingredients something new emerges. I am an evangelist for conflict resolution because of this “something new”. If human beings are ever going to actually learn to transform conflicts so that they are productive and creative, rather than destructive, leaders and communities who have sometimes been through the worst of traumas must be helped to see possibilities they could not see before. Along with the traditional academic expertise IR , history and political science offer, conflict resolution is grounded in a set of values that are essential for a sustainable solution to conflicts. These values include peace, nonviolence, justice and equality. Students of conflict resolution emerge with an ability to imagine, problem solve collaboratively and communicate. They learn the dynamics and processes which both escalate and deescalate a conflict. Nothing is more empowering than knowledge about yourself, and so understanding what is happening both personally and sociologically when we’re involved in a conflict enables us to realize a number of crucial things that seem obvious when a community is not involved in especially a violent conflict but which are easily forgotten in the moment. 1. The rage that is often a part of especially violent ethno-political conflicts is also experienced by the other party. 2. There are in fact reasonably identifiable and predictable processes that communities/nations in conflict go through. 3. Nearly every act of violence in history has been justified as defensive. 4. Conflict specialists can actually identify physical and neurological effects of conflict on both individuals and communities. This means that, however slowly and painfully, great social traumas such as genocide can be healed. Without this healing—and it is all too often neglected by governments who can view conflict resolution as merely political settlement—the conflict will almost certainly become historical memory and emerge again. I believe that this cycle can be broken, but it must first be made visible and then understood. This is the essence of conflict resolution.

Conflict resolution can be transformative in a way that traditional disciplines are not (without detracting from them) because it connects individuals to policies, institutions and social groups. In more academic language, it links structure and agency and then also empowers students with the communication and collaborative problem solving skills needed to create a new solution. Students of conflict resolution learn to view themselves—and crucially, the “enemy”—differently. This is perhaps the most difficult and valuable knowledge. With this knowledge, the anger, fear and trauma can become more “faceable” and this opens new social and psychological and spiritual space for solutions never before attempted.

My project then is to use my gift of teaching in the service of those experiencing violent conflict, especially those most disempowered, as they seek to find a way to finally resolve it. We do not have nearly enough opportunities for interested students to learn how it is that conflicts work exactly—to discover what happens to them and their community when they are entrapped in a conflict that they likely understand is costly to them—and practice the skills needed to not just de-escalate but transform the social system which was at the root of the conflict to begin with. Equipped with the knowledge and values of conflict resolution, community, national and international leaders can generate not just a new solution to an intractable problem but a new way of viewing the conflict and those who have been involved in it. I am a global citizen who has known to her core since she first visited Moscow, capital of the “Evil Empire” at the age of 12, or picked up The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time at the age of 10, that it is possible for people to reach across seemingly vast divides. In fact, the more deadly our weapons become, the more urgent the need to equip leaders with the knowledge and values of conflict resolution. Some dismiss this as fantasy but this is where experiential learning—showing rather than telling—comes in. The best teaching leads the student to believe she has discovered the knowledge for herself, as if she has always known it. I have studied with, led development community programs with and taught middle school-through to-graduate students from former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Columbia, Mongolia, El Salvador, Zimbabwe and the “war-zone neighborhoods” of my own country such as Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. So when I say I know people can in fact reach across the most terrible of gulfs, this is not speculation. No responsible conflict resolution expert would suggest it is guaranteed or easy, but I believe in the liberation of knowing it is possible. From that social and spiritual space, conflict resolution helps equip students with the specifics of communication, problem solving, group identity formation and empathy needed to actually realize the possibility.

Indicators of Peace

2009-08-06T13:36:00.006-04:00

I've been thinking lately of definitions of peace, and how a particular community, nation, or school might know if they are making progress. In my review of the initiatives many school systems have made to create "peaceful schools", what many of them seem to mean is not what I would consider peaceful, but rather "safe". That is obviously a critical component of peace. I'll never forget the young man who came through my classroom here in the Detention Home after having gotten himself "a piece". (For those of us who need the translation, that's a gun.) As I recall the conversation I had with him, he'd told his dad he didn't feel safe walking to school or at school. (He lived in DC.) Dad apparently told him to "man up" (remind me to post on gender identity and peace sometime soon). So the kid armed himself, and landed in a prison classroom, writing about what had happened to him and how the prolonged illness and death of his mother from cancer had been the beginning of the end of it all for him. (Could this have been prevented if we had universal health care?) He did his time with us, got released and soon was re-arrested. He'd shot someone. Peace and security are inextricably linked. In a workshop of Johan Galtung's that I attended, he observed that conservatives often tend to start with security, believing it will result in peace, and that liberals tend to take the reverse approach.

What does this mean for schools trying to become "peaceful"? Clearly, as the above story suggests, there will not be peaceful schools without peaceful communities. You can't fix one in isolation from the other, in my view. Yet I also return to the classic conflict resolution definitions of positive and negative peace. Negative peace is the absence of violence. Positive peace is far more difficult to define and achieve. It involves the existence of just and equitable social, political and economic systems. It suggests the active presence of respect, inclusion and tolerance. Peace education, I believe, is the missing ingredient. We can (and must) "do" gang interventions, counsel kids against drugs, and model respect for diversity. But this is only half of what is possible, in my view. Experiential, interdisciplinary curriculum can empower kids (and teachers) to recognize and change the structurally violent systems in their communities (which are a large part of what causes kids to end up in a Detention Home to begin with). Being explicit about peace as a value is another important part of the recipe. This is often where political "push back" occurs, as it remains for too many such a subversive concept. It means facing our own national daemons, as MLK explained so eloquently in "Beyond Vietnam". He raises the question of how we can preach peace to our children while waging war on another country, in a clear demonstration of the sociocultural belief that yes, violence does solve problems. If that's where we are, let's at least be clear about it! This is why I argue that peace education is so necessary, despite (understandable) charges of bias.
No worries--we're already teaching war.

So what then might some indicators of a school system becoming more peaceful be, especially in light of the link between peaceful communities and schools?

I'd suggest we might consider some of the following:
1. the presence of some sort of democratic method (this includes the kids) for making school policy
2. interdisciplinary, experiential curriculum
3. the presence of multilingualism
4. a culture of community service and activism
5. a culture of classrooms "without walls" where partnerships with other schools and communities are the norm, not just "enrichment"

Live Blogging: International Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2009-07-24T19:47:00.009-04:00

As a conflict analyst and peace educator, I have long thought and written about the links between language, peace and power. Language, of course, is dynamic, social and contested. Elites can use it to exclude; non-elites sometimes use it to resist being defined by elites and reclaim identities. Hence perhaps the most powerful moment I experienced at the International Studies' Association Conference (co-sponsored by the ABRI, Brazil's International Relations Association), was seeing a discussant challenge his panel to restate their papers in "plain, everyday language". (The discussant may not want his name here, so I will not add it.) Using direct language sounds like such a simple thing, but as any academic presenter knows, it is anything but easy. Dense and sterile language can be a suit of armor which keeps others at arm's length. I've done my best not to use it, either teaching or writing. Only my students and readers, of course, can judge if I've been successful at this. When the Discussant made this request, to their credit, both presenters rose to the challenge and their ideas immediately became more powerful and clear. I was reminded of, believe it or not, a journalism class I took back in undergrad (at Mary Washington College), taught by a working local journalist. He gave us a stat that has stayed with me since: writers start to lose their readers when they get to more than 10-12 words a sentence. "Write to express," he told us, "not to impress." If you're not communicating, you're wrong.

This brings me to another delight of this conference, which was meeting an historian and scholar, Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East who has forgotten more about the region than most of us will ever know. I even had the pleasure of a dinner and some local music with him and another new colleague. I know of Juan, of course, frankly not because he teaches at the U. of Michigan, but because he's written for Salon.com and his blog. This brings me to my other point, one which I hear repeated quite a lot but don't see enough action on: peace workers must do outreach to the public. Elections, as we like to observe in DC, have results, which means that information is critical. Juan, I think, does a wonderful job of reaching people because he says it clearly and directly, and therefore helps people bridge history and the present. In a democracy, policy analysis really should be for all. After all, this is a government BY the people. This equality of access to the power of knowledge is the heartbeat of peace education. I'm arguing for what one might call a democracy of language.

I emphasize these points, which have after all often been made by others, because peace and conflict resolution remains a new and often misunderstood, stereotyped field. This means we need to focused on excellent outreach all the more. I'm reminded of a conversation with a friend and colleague as we shared our mutual frustration at the lack of interest we perceived in outreach to the media. Yet this is how a national conversation shifts--talking to people we've never talked to before. I chose the field of conflict resolution because of its commitment to a set of values I hold, one of them being greater social equality. Let's use every avenue available to us to speak out! To do this, we need to say it plain.

To get us all started, here's a great link: Peace Media

A Letter from Mr. Elie Wiesel

2009-04-29T09:38:00.008-04:00

Teacher's Note: Upon finishing Night, I assigned my students to write a letter thanking a local Holocaust survivor for his visit to us. Two young men asked me if they could instead write to Elie Wiesel. I said of course! Below is Mr. Wiesel's letter back to them.

Dear (student names):

Thank you for your kind letter. I always enjoy hearing from young people, and your letter was no exception.

I am moved to learn of the effect that my memoir, Night, had on you. As a writer, nothing is more important. From your words, it is obvious that you are very sensitive to the darkness of which I wrote.

If Night has helped you better understand the tragedies of the past, I am grateful. It is my belief that one who hears a witness becomes a witness in turn. May you use your knowledge and understanding to educate those who are unaware.

Keep learning and reading, more and more.

With best wishes to you,

Elie Wiesel

Curiosity and Imagination

2009-04-24T11:09:00.008-04:00

Einstein is quoted on bookmarks, coffee mugs and t-shirts as saying that imagination is more important than knowledge. I'd refine that (are you allowed to refine Einstein?) to say that the two reinforce each other. Rather unexpectedly, one of the most powerful writing prompts I've given yet this year simply began, "I've always been curious about...." Students were invited to continue the sentence from there. What responses! They wrote about wondering how big the universe really was, how different races emerged, the origins of different languages, why the continents are the size and shape they are, and how viruses survive. Some of them also took a more personal track, wondering about what would happen on an upcoming court date or why a loved one left. When possible, I found articles on subjects the students had expressed curiosity about. I had had another activity planned that day, after the writing prompt, but we didn't even get to it with some classes! Almost every student wanted to share, and the debate about their writings extended into the rest of the class period. It was a powerful reminder that our minds are, in fact, hard wired to learn. This should be natural (which is not the same as saying it's also not work).

I tried a similar activity to inspire some curiosity about a favorite short story of mine, Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergernon". I invited students to imagine what life might be like in the year 2081, the year in which Vonnegut sets his story. They imagined that we'd have cell phones implanted in our brains and have the ability to travel to a place just by thinking of it. They imagined that we'd have a female president by then, though I was most interested to hear that they didn't think we'd have a Muslim or Hispanic president. Such a simple little exercise, but even with my older students here, say seventeen or eighteen, every hand was in the air to imagine.

The question becomes, does this result in actual learning? That is, does the quality of curiosity and the ability to imagine result in a set of knowledge, skills or values which will serve them in their out-of-school lives? I must argue that yes, it certainly does and is a necessary skill in some very practical, concrete ways. Every leap forward in medicine, technology, education or other fields started in someone's imagination. Elise Boulding, in The Hidden Side of History, has even argued that the ability to imagine creatively actually protects democracy! Asar Nafisi has argued something similar in her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Business leaders often talk about the need for creative thinkers as well. Especially with students for whom our educational system has failed, beginning with curiosity, a natural human trait for most of us, is an essential step for engaging students who too often don't see any connection between the classroom and their lives. The curriculum development and educational leadership question then becomes, how can we design learning experiences that begin with being curious about something.

The Kids Are the Curriculum

2009-02-25T10:50:00.001-05:00

To understand many educators’ concerns with an exclusive focus on high-stakes, standardized testing, imagine a piano teacher who gave his students worksheets on the keyboard, and the history of the piano, but never asked his students to play.

What ails American schools and what to do about it has been a national conversation for decades now. In the maze of standardized tests, teacher accountability, metal detectors and school take-overs, we must take care that our efforts to ensure accountability are not counterproductive. Curriculum that is stripped of any connection to real community problems and to the lives of the students will not raise test scores, result in authentic learning, increase teacher retention or more result in more peaceful schools. Nor will it prepare our students to be the global leaders that our increasingly connected and competitive world will demand that they be. The key to successful curriculum reform is designing curriculum around a community’s most pressing challenges, rather than reducing it to multiple choice questions. Such curriculum reform also empowers especially at-risk students to address the violence and inequities which impact them and to understand the relevance of their classes to their lives. The kids become the curriculum.

What does this look like in practice? Consider the opportunity in one of our most challenged school systems, Washington D.C. Reducing gang violence, AIDS and other public health threats, community food security, environmental degradation, and unemployment all remain entrenched challenges. As history’s greatest educators, such as Paolo Freire, Maria Montessori and John Dewey, might point out today, these problems themselves make great curriculum. Yet only rarely, especially in our most violent and troubled public schools, are students invited into such critical inquiry of their own lives and communities. Multidisciplinary projects in which students are invited to be young leaders in their communities, which make math, science, reading, writing and research come alive, are possible. I have seen this in my own writing and literature classroom in a Virginia Juvenile Detention home, where my students have used their writing to grapple with everything from domestic violence, gangs, addiction, homelessness on their streets, racism in their schools and the origins of genocide. Additionally, this approach to curriculum design directly addresses the needs of the very students that NCLB most intends to reach: the poorest rural, urban and minority students. The most effective reforms will be those that empower students to actively use the skills and knowledge we want them to gain in authentic ways, and empower teachers to assess them in authentic ways. Standardized assessments, while they do have their utility, cannot really measure the communication, collaboration and problem solving skills that the 21st century is going to demand if the U.S. is to remain competitive, let alone a global leader.

Carefully Taught

2009-01-12T14:31:00.004-05:00

I couldn't be more energized by the discussion I have had with students today about racism, tolerance, and the origins of hate. It was one of those days where kids were still debating as I collected pencils, after class had ended.

After several concerned discussions with colleagues about some of the clear tension here between some of the African American students and the Hispanic students, several of us decided we needed to address the comments and behaviors directly. I have long argued for this being a part of every kid's classroom, everywhere, and so the discussion was a natural extension of the literature we read (currently 12 Angry Men), and the topics I suggest for writing.

Today's topic asked students to consider whether we have to be taught to hate, or if we come by it naturally. The evolution of their thinking over the course of the discussion was great to see. Many students initially answered that it's natural. One even wrote that there's "no choice". But when I prodded for examples, and asked follow up questions such as "Where'd those negative feelings come from?", students began listing everything from communities and schools to parents, the media and even U.S. foreign policy as ways in which kids are taught to hate. When one student mentioned Iraq as reasons why he feels the U.S. is hated by Arabs, I reminded them that Dr. King had written similar sentiments in his speech "Beyond Vietnam". King wondered how we can credibly tell kids to not solve problems by fighting when their country solves problems with bombs.

Quite rightly, I think, they also emphasized the role of envy in hatred. One student mentioned the inequalities of how students are sometimes treated in schools, a sure "hidden curriculum" if ever there was one. Another mentioned how, years ago in her kindergarten class, a classmate colored on her paper and the teacher instructed her to color on the other girl's paper, to be fair. An eye for an eye? I don't see how that's problem solving, myself. Cooperation and conflict resolution are not simply skills we absorb by day to day life. Nor are they skills teachers just intuit how to teach. It must be direct, explict and a part of every classroom.

Problem Solving

2008-09-25T11:08:00.005-04:00

I've long been advocating for more problem-solving, cross-cultural communications and team work in the English/language arts classroom. Nancy Atwell put it beautifully: "Problems make the best curriculum." She echoes Dewey, Freire and Montessori here in recognizing that experience is the best teacher. As best I can in the context of the Juvenile Detention Home (security is always a factor of course), I try to build team problem solving and an awareness of (mis)communication and culture into my lessons.

Just a few days ago, I posed what seems like it should have been a simple enough problem: the kids were to line up in order from youngest to oldest--silently. They could not speak during the game; of course this forced them to cooperate and communicate in a variety of other ways. A breakthrough occurred in at least two units where it dawned on one student that they could use my whiteboard. The leading students wrote their birthdays up and other students soon caught on, allowing them to all line up in order, without having ever said a word. When we debriefed, I praised the use of alternative strategies and resources. I will continue to advocate for such goals being viewed as a valid aspect of any Language Arts/English classroom. Problem solving is critical to any aspect of life, and if communicating clearly and effectively isn't a "language art", I don't know what is.

It is always a good day when

2008-09-12T15:17:00.002-04:00

one of your students, working on his Martin Luther King, Jr., essays, says he's "not used to thinking this hard." Dr. King would approve, I think.

I'm always amazed at what an intimidating process writing is for so many kids, which is why I repeatedly counsel them to "get it down before you get it right." When we wrote a class rubric together, detailed what an "A" essay should have and do, and so on through an "F" essay, spelling and grammar are always the first thing they think of. That's important, of course, but what about the ideas? Weaning them away from the mechanics over substance is a difficult process, and there is so little time with each kid here to accomplish it.

Savage Inequalities: Invisible Edition

2008-09-08T14:53:00.003-04:00

So a particular student of ours here was meant to have been released Sept 5, and meant to have been released May prior to the Sept tease. Our leadership was pushing a bit to have him released on the 2nd instead, as that was the first day of school, to let him begin a new school year fresh. This young man has been hear since before Christmas 2007! According to our principal, he has not received a visit from his P.O. or lawyer; I'm also told that his lawyer has not returned phone calls.

How is this possible? How can anyone consider this equal justice?

Amazing, the kid manages to come to class each day with a smile on his face. We hear now his new court day is early Oct. I wouldn't blame the kid if he didn't believe it. He's written "never" under Release Date on his class folder.

Quick Hit: Biden

2008-08-29T11:10:00.004-04:00

"Countries that out-teach us today will out compete us tomorrow" ~Democratic VP Candidate Joe Biden

Why are there not more schools that require foreign languages in elementary school?? When we know for sure, from decades of research on the subject, that kids acquire language best under the age of 12?

Isn't that Goldie Hawn?

2008-08-26T12:37:00.004-04:00

With a new school year, a new convocation, and I'm pleased to say that I heard some of my most deeply heard concerns about standardized education at least addressed (in words) by the new Superintendent and....wait, isn't that Goldie Hawn next to him?

It certainly was. Turns out that she has a foundation intended to bring what she called "mindfullness" into the classroom. With all the warmth and likability you might expect from her, she spoke as a mom worried about the violence, suicide, drop out rates and disengagement that I have written about repeatedly here. I loved most of all that she explicitly argued that addressing qualities like empathy and caring in the classroom is a learning outcome. That is, she argued that such character traits support student learning since, as teachers have been saying for decades now, kids learn better when they feel safe and when whatever they may be dealing with in their personal lives gets addressed instead of ignored. I would push her argument one step further, though, and say that we must begin thinking of skills (yes, SKILLS) such as empathy, communication, problem solving and compromise as learning outcomes in and of themselves, rather than needing to "justify" them by noting that kids' reading and math scores will go up, too. Yes, the will go up and yes, that's crucial. But in a country with such high rates of violence, with a prison population at an all time high, clearly we neglect such ideas as ethical reasoning and empathy at our peril. It's good to see someone with Hawn's charm, fame and money money money getting involved. I've visited her website and look forward to perusing the curriculum it offers.

The above said, though, I did have a concern or three about what she may have thought of as an offhand comment but which I felt was very problematic, especially from my viewpoint as a teacher in a juvenile jail. She stated (perhaps with statistical accuracy, I don't know) that our affluent kids are the ones most "at risk". Because she didn't elaborate (at risk of violence? suicide? dropping out? addiction?) and I haven't yet seen a transcript of her speech, it was worryingly unclear what she meant. Does she think we overlook our rich kids ("oh, they'll be fine, they're rich")? All the evidence I've ever seen is that middle class and rich kids go to schools with better trained, happier teachers, are more likely to graduate and more likely to go to college. They are also less likely to be the victim of violence. In fact, if memory serves, just this past school year a study came out showing that suburban kids are far more likely to graduate as urban kids. Social justice as I understand hardly suggests that more resources (financial and social) need to go to affluent schools. Yes, it may be true that rich kids sometimes have disconnected parents with jobs that demand they travel and work constantly, and no doubt there is an impact from that. But what about the kids who show up here in my classroom whose parents are sometimes themselves illiterate, have themselves been incarcerated, themselves didn't graduate high school? Remember, Mom and/or Dad's level of education is still one of THE best predictors of how a kid will do. The invisibility of these kids is dangerous, which is why I had such a strong objection to that aspect of what was otherwise a very worthwhile talk by (wow!) one Ms. Goldie Hawn.

Incidents and Accidents

2008-06-06T10:46:00.005-04:00

Today will mark over month that I have not had a single student in my classroom.

We remain "locked down" on the units, with the kids moving only to gym class.

That said, I have hardly seen my students even ON the units today. We're short staffed, detention staff wise, anyway, which means that the whole unit goes on lock down in their cells if one kid is involved in an incident. By law, once a unit is over a certain number of kids, we've got to have at least two staff at all times. (This is not always actually the case, I'm afraid, but it's the standard.) Some staff this morning apparently just didn't show up, and others were sick. I did not see my first group of kids because of this, and my second group was twenty minutes late because of a security issue with one young man in that group. We could hear him banging and yelling, since we've not been allowed back in the classrooms in the Education Wing yet. Two other young men in the group were crying through much of the class. There's no way to proceed with a typical, standard lesson like that. I gave some low-key praise for being in class, and told the boys it would be a laid-back, quiet day. We proceeded with a little grammar game I had planned, and spent the last ten minutes of class either journaling or drafting the personal narratives I plan for us to share next week.

If I see them next week.

Levels of frustration are high, and I'm no exception. I love the other teachers I work with, and happily, we're all always available to each other for venting and support. I've been meaning for a bit now to blog on classroom management and incentive structures; here's my chance, it seems. I've been (I hope respectfully) vocal about my concern that we have been keeping the kids in their units for so long. The kids remain either in the Dayroom (where we have been trying to teach) or of course, in their cells. Some kids here now have not even seen the Education Wing. I've gone on record about my concern about the lack of computers; any writing teacher can tell you how crucial they are to a writing program. And I've spoken up about my concerns that the collective punishment here, I feel, wrecks the incentive structures that one wants in place for an effective, secure classroom. It's so easy for a kid to think, if I'm going to be locked down anyway, why bother making the effort to control my temper or hold my tongue or put forth effort in class. What's the point? It's been clear to me (though I have not seen hard data) that the number of incidents has not gone down since we've been moving all operations to the Units. Perhaps they have not gone up either, I'm not sure. But I'd be very surprised to see data that showed me incidents have gone down as a result of isolating the units. And now, in my view, we've tied one hand behind our back because the kids who are doing well are being treated the same way as the handful of kids who are behind the fights, threats and assaults.

Some of this is staffing; if we're short staffed, it's much tougher to move the kids from classroom to classroom. And I know our program director has been working to hire a few good men; I'm told she's had trouble finding applications who can pass a background check! Much of the trouble before happened as this movement in between classes took place. But really, as I understand it, they were always supposed to have been moved one unit at a time anyway. That's why that procedure was there, unless I'm wrong. Did it need to come to this? Perhaps there is just context I am not aware of, but I know for sure that decisions should be data driven. This policy of keeping all the kids restricted to their units does NOT seem to be working. Of course, that's not my call, but what I can do is make my case that the data should direct what we do.

The Two Most Dangerous Words in the English Language

2008-05-29T14:45:00.004-04:00

Language is central, of course, to how people relate to each other and communicate, both as individuals and groups. Language is how we negotiate power. If there is any realization at the intersection of peace education and English class, it's the realization that words matter. I have yet to meet a kid who agrees with that childhood playground rhyme that "words can never hurt me." If a kid disagrees with this view, I prod him or her to consider if people get into fights over words. Of course they know this is true, and that people wouldn't bother fighting over them if they were not significant.

Words can privilege or render invisible. Words can liberate and empower, or confine and label. I've repeated on this blog my concern that we do not focus nearly enough attention on critical and creative thinking in high school. Frankly this is a reflection of an anti-intellectual streak in our cultural at large, but it is also I think just easier to grade spelling tests or objective questions on a short story than to vigorously engage with and debate complicated ideas. I'm hardly observing anything new here...so what's stopping us? Why is this conversation still necessary?

One of the critical understandings I want my students to have is the danger of "black and white" thinking. Either ors and false dichotomies abound, and they trap us. They trap how we understand ourselves (women can be smart or pretty, not both), X group of people is either good or evil. Everything from useless products to gangs to wars can be sold with such sloppy thinking. So I recently told my students to guess the two most dangerous words in the English language. Many of their guesses I won't repeat here *ahem*. One student, recalling the Ladder of Hate, said "genocide". Not a bad guess. I then tell them the two most dangerous words are "always" and "never." As they're puzzled by this, I prompt them to connect these words to the Ladder of Hate to understand why. Through discussion, they come to see that you really can't stereotype without those extreme words. Also, avoiding those words forces us to speak, and therefore think, in more subtle, complex ways. I ask them to give me examples of something that is *always* or *never* true about people, and they find how hard it is to do. My hope is this discussion will give them pause and encourage more reflection on the words we choose to define a person or an idea. It's counterculture, but essential.

Of Classrooms on a Cart and Testing

2008-05-05T14:52:00.004-04:00

What a strange couple of weeks this is shaping up to be! We're beginning the end (if you will) of A Long Way Gone, but due to security concerns that are greater than usual apparently, all the teachers have been teaching "on the unit", that is, in the common living space each unit comes equipped with here at the Detention Home. I'm not a fan, and have a new found respect for the Social Studies teacher who teaches there permanently! I can't imagine. It's been fine, but the distractions are doubled and the kids are antsy. I turned it into a writing prompt, asking them which they preferred: having classes "on the unit" or in the classrooms. Most of them, not to my surprise, preferred classes in the classroom. Some felt unfairly punished for the behavior of a few students; others said it was harder to concentrate or focus in a space they are used to having as their "living room". I've only been seeing about half of my kids, since the rest have been on room restriction, due to various infractions. Yikes! No one can really learn, especially when one is already starting with lower skills, in such a "stop and start" manner. Given rumors of riots, though, I understand the need. I look forward to some real critical analysis of how it came to this and the plan for preventing such problems in the future. And I was glad to hear the underlying (and sometimes quite explicit) racial tensions between the Hispanic and African American kids acknowledged. Addressing this will be key to security, peace and to learning.

Tomorrow should really be the last day that we're on the units, though, since we have another round of SOL testing coming up on Wed-Fri. This will be the third time this year that we've tested kids! That seems stunning to me. I can understand once a year, but especially given the limitations of standardized testing to begin with, what is this really accomplishing? It's funny, as I look over the testing schedule, I just finished reading an article about a local teacher who apparently inspires her kids. A real pleasure to read it--but I have to wonder, with articles like that, and yet a system that enforces teaching to the test, what mixed signals a new teacher must be receiving! No wonder the retention rate for new teachers is still so low, even after years and years of political and educational leaders trying to keep them! On a more positive note, it looks like a colleage of mine who was caught up in the war in Sierra Leone will indeed be able to come pay us a visit--something I hope will really bring the memoir to life as we finish it.

Little Is Known of Sierra Leone....

2008-04-28T11:36:00.004-04:00

So we've been reading and discussing Ishmael Beah's amazing memoir, A Long Way Gone. It explores his experiences as a conscripted soldier in Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. Beah describes children with limbs chopped off, families burnt alive, weeks of hunger and the agony of not knowing where his family is or if they are even alive. His writing is honest and vivid, sparing no one, least of all himself. This makes his book an especially book candidate for the "reading writing connection". The other day we selected especially great visual detail from Beah's work, and then with highlighters (a writer's best friend), I asked the kids to identify a particular line or description from their own journals that they thought was vivid.

I've been in contact with Beah's publicist, as he travels frequently telling his story and speaking out on behalf of child soldiers and other kids impacted by war, in the hope that he can come speak to us. I have also connected with a friend and classmate of mine (I'm finishing up my doctorate at ICAR) who himself was impacted by the war in Sierra Leone. He's happy to come speak to my students and we're working out a time. I know he'll have a story to tell that the kids won't forget. I love seeing them learn about a place so unfamiliar yet contemporary that so rarely makes the curriculum. We can't create global citizens without knowledge of life beyond one's own borders. I was impressed, when I asked my kids about similarities between Ishmael and kids here in the U.S., to hear them identify broken and separated families, hunger and gangs (the rebels, as they said). Such discussions are also a good way to begin, to whatever extent possible, talking about some of the tensions I observe here, especially between some of the Hispanic and African American students.

Savage Inequalities (Guatemala Edition)

2008-04-16T14:57:00.005-04:00

So one of our most difficult, damaged students was just released today. This was a young man from Guatemala, here illegally. He'd apparently jumped trains from Guatemala. He's told staff here of being on his own since about the age of five and of having been prostituted. As with a lot of our kids, the irony is that here behind barbed wire is probably the safest, healthiest environment he's ever been in, and now he's presumably being deported. Maybe that's the right decision; after all, plenty of American kids need more support than they receive. But I fear for this kid like I've feared for few others who have been released from the Detention Home and frankly, I fear for some who may cross his path. He assultled another of my students one morning, kicking him repeatly out of the blue, and bit a staff member after an apparent escape attempt. He was on Suicide Watch for his final couple of weeks here, but apparently did achieve enough progress under those circumstances that he was allowed his journal from my class, which he constantly wanted to have with him. He was always eager to show me new English sentences he could write, and I'm told he did well in other classes to. What amazes me is this capacity, despite all of this kid's struggles. What angers me is the loss of human potential he might represent.

Some staff here, myself among them, believe this kid to be diagnosable with PTSD or even multiple personalities. What will he go back to? There are civil society and government organizations throughout South America, and even UNICEF, which work to support kids who struggle with prostitution, abuse, gang violence and addiction. Will he find one of them? If so, will they have the capacity to help him, to whatever extent possible? One of the most unsettling dynamics of this place is that there is really no way of knowing.

Security and Community

2008-04-01T15:14:00.004-04:00

It's been said by one of my favorite writers and thinkers on peace building that conservatives start with security, believing it will lead to peace, and liberals start with peace, believing that it will result in security. Where ever one falls on that spectrum, I hope most would agree that security and community (peace) are inherently linked.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as someone who believes that a classroom is (or can and should be) a community. Writers and thinkers grow best in a community of other writers and thinkers. That's why I involve so much discussion in my classroom, as well as projects that ask kids to draw on a variety of interpersonal, communications, language and problem-solving skills. Yet this is of course a particularly challenging environment to build community in. For one thing, kids come and go very quickly. Secondly, with some students who are struggling with the most serious of charges and mental health issues (one might soon be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder), keeping myself, staff and other students safe is responsibility one. Kids can't learn in a tense classroom where every move is corrected; neither can they learn when they don't feel safe. (It sure affects my teaching, too!) One of our security guys said he's never seen kids like some we just got in. He's been here over 25 years, so I'm inclined to listen. I've recently had a student assault another student, out of nowhere, in my classroom. Just today nearly have of last period was on lock-down. Apparently things had not gone well throughout the day.

I've reflected all year on how best to build community in my classroom here, and I think I've hit on a few things that work at least sometimes. I think the journals can be key to this. Students regularly ask me to bring them back to their living units to write in. We share daily. I get inappropriate responses that I stop mixed in with humor, honesty, missing home, missing cats, your own bed and self-reflection. Right now we're exploring media literacy, identifying techniques of propaganda in ads and commercials. The final assignment for this will be to create a commercial (using the handy wonderful video recorder our Executive Administrator scared up for us) that shows two or more of the techniques. They'll be putting text together, essentially, and along with all of the creative, critical thinking and language skills involved, it will take community for my students to put together a successful project.

Live Blogging: CIES Conference, Teacher's College, 2008

2008-03-18T15:35:00.003-04:00

Any conference that doesn't send you away with a million ideas and questions swirling probably was a waste of time. This is my first time at the Comparative International and Educational Studies Conference, hosted this year by Teacher's College of Columbia University, and I'll be back. I was honored to present on the role I feel hip hop can play in peace education. This conference has confirmed the suspicion I've been harboring that teachers have in fact been at the forefront of any lasting social change. It didn't begin with Freire, I think it began with Socrates and one could no doubt identify examples prior to him.

I had the pleasure of breaking bread last night, after the Monday sessions, with a senior official of a Ministry of Education. He is a deep believer in the role of education in bringing about progressive social change. In fact, he argued that education itself is a political act. There is, he said, no neutral. This is a critical truth to my mind. It is not "neutral" that so many U.S. schools graduate students who have studied the American Revolution, the Civil War and mostly likely WWII as the sum of history. (Maybe some of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution was in there too.) Where is Vietnam? Rwanda? Iraq? What about the hopeful, disturbing, exciting election season we're in right now? Of course I don't argue that more contemporary or even controversial issues are not addressed in history, social studies, government and language arts classrooms in public high schools. But the culture of standardized testing (when there are no standard kids or for that matter teachers) greatly restricts and actively discourages this kind of inquiry, I think. Several presentations thus far have reminded me of the need to actively study peace just as we study war. What has enabled peace? What stands in its way? Too often, our very assumptions about education themselves do.

It is also not neutral, as this gentleman and I discussed, that so many school systems track some kids off to college and some off to "vocational" skills. The underlying belief about who those kids are and what they can be must first be made explicit and then repudiated. To be crystal clear, there is not a thing wrong with being, for example, a taxi driver or a plumber or whatever. There is something morally very wrong with an education that offers critical and creative problem solving to one group of (already privileged) kids and "basic skills" and little but worksheets to other kids who are already dropping out in droves.

Another Brick in the Wall

2008-03-06T08:43:00.004-05:00

A conversation with a couple of colleagues, both of whom I like and respect, got me thinking yesterday about some of our most basic philosophical assumptions about education and why we do it. We're providing certain skills that we judge to be critical to getting on in the world--reading, writing, a understanding of how one's own government works, and so on. Kids need to get into college, because they need jobs that will actually allow them to support themselves and a family. In the specific context of the Detention Center, how and what we teach is revealing of what assumptions we make about these kids and where we think they're headed. Will they be teaching? Fixing cars? Checking people out at Target? Nurses? Doctors? Working in an office? Back in jail? Running an office?

I don't think the role of curiosity, self-expression or problem solving in education can be overstated. This brings me back to the chat with my colleagues. One colleague and I were in agreement, it seems, that students can produce a variety of "products" to demonstrate a certain skill. In art, it might be a painting, or a sketch. It might, in English, be an essay, a journal entry, a skit, a thank you letter to a visiting speaker, or participation in a debate or discussion. These are all assignments my students have produced. Another colleague seemed to express that if a product wasn't "computational", it might be nice and fun, but was not necessarily actual learning. As I understand it, memorization as a means of building the capacity to concentrate and focus play a role in this classroom. These are necessary to learning, of course, but to my mind this beg the question of what one then does with the facts one has memorized or to what end one applies such focus. The argument went that life is full of unpleasant tasks and students need to learn to focus on them and do them anyway.

The underlying assumptions here about what's worthwhile and what isn't fascinate me. Thought processes, by their nature, can't be 'seen'; when expressed they can be read or heard. Is loving a poem a "product" of a quality education? What about the kid who was in my class for a few weeks as we were reading The Diary of Anne Frank, the one who was released before we finished it? He returned to us a couple of weeks later and asked me if Anne and Peter had gotten together, and did she survive? Where's the role of inspiration in our classrooms, of excitement about a good book because it's a good book? Isn't that what being "life long learners" is about? Or do we view that as an extra, great for the kids who have passed their standardized tests but not a priority for kids with low skills who still struggle with the basics. I am, of course, arguing that creating that excitement is necessary to raising those basic skills. I believe human beings are hard-wired to want to learn. Every society has had art, music and stories to tell. Every single one, period. Do we believe still, in the 21st century, with our industrialized, standardized schools built to suit kids for jobs, in the joy of learning? This approach is counter-culture today indeed.

Now, don't misunderstand. Learning is work; knowledge, like anything worthwhile, is earned. And clearly, an important job of our schools is to prepare kids for the jobs they'll have. In the midst of all the worksheets and testing, curiosity and problem-solving can be tough to quantify. Yet I believe, I insist, that an education that is not centered around powerful, resonant themes (my classroom's theme is telling your story) does not serve a democracy well. After all, what else are those critical basic skills for?

Debating American Justice

2008-02-28T09:08:00.004-05:00

As we begin reading 12 Angry Men, I invited my students into a debate and put the following claim on the floor: the U.S. justice system is the best in the world. Given that my kids have direct experience with the American juvenile justice system, I knew this would be relevant and look forward to hearing what they think of the play, which I consider to be a powerful look at human weaknesses and biases, as well as human courage and integrity.

I think I was most impressed with the balance many students brought to the discussion. Many students thought that, while certainly not perfect, the U.S. justice system offers much that some other countries don't. One student raised the point of an article we'd read earlier on a woman in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes for being raped. Another noted that when U.S. soldiers commit abuses or war crimes, they are (usually) charged. Certainly, students brought up the racial and class prejudices that weaken our justice system. If they hadn't, I would have. One student even noted that he sentence, he felt, was lighter that someone elses might have been since his family had the money to hire an excellent lawyer. But I was impressed with the ability to see both the positive and negative aspects of such a complicated and, for many students, personally painful subject. Not every student--or every person--has that ability. Not every student is willing to make a claim of what she or he really thinks and try to back it up; that takes some real mental courage. It's a risk to be real. But building critical thinking skills cannot happen otherwise. Growing as a writer, reader and as a person can't happen otherwise. This is the heart of why I give so much time in my classroom to discussion and debate, even though the "product" is results in is intangible.

Perceptions of Poverty

2008-02-21T10:41:00.005-05:00

As a part of my unit on the connections of hip hop to other kinds of poetry and to peace and social justice movements around the world, I show my students several video clips (god bless YouTube) on the hip hop movement in Uganda, a country of course torn by a terrible civil war. The hip hop artists there call for peace, and work to educate orphans, raise AIDS awareness and empower Uganda's poorest citizens. Here at home, local groups like Peaceaholics and others strengthen community peace building and raise awareness about homelessness.

As I'd hoped, this lead to come revealing discussions on homelessness and povetry, and who is responsible for it. Especially in the Uganda clip, my kids (many of whom are by no means rich) were shocked by the sight of kids so malnourished that their stomachs were distended, or kids who had one pair of shoes, and those were broken plastic flip flops! Interestingly, a lot of the kids (reflecting what most Americans believe, I fear) felt that homeless people were homeless by choice, and could just get a job if they wanted. This was obviously a teachable moment; I pointed out that not all educations are created equal (as they know) and that mental illness is a major factor in prevented a lot of homeless people from being able to hold a job down. Yet despite our continuing lack of a living wage, we blame the poor for their poverty. We also romanticise overwork, such as when President Bush beamed proudly and spoke so highly of the woman who was working three jobs to support her family. Like many others, he seemed to have completely missed the reality that it shouldn't be necessary to hold down three jobs! I hold more the view of Sen. Obama, who recently said, "If you work in America, you shouldn't be poor in America!"

Living History

2008-02-01T14:23:00.000-05:00

The student of Room 5C revceived a visit today that I don't think any of us will forget for a long time to come. Ms. Schiff, a local Holocaust survivor who volunteers with the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, came to tell her story. She shared her memories of living in a forest for nearly three years as they dodged Nazi soldiers. She told of hunger and cold and still, some 60 years later, not knowing for sure what became of her mother, father or sister. She's the only member of her family to have survived. She explain to my students about how indifferent the world had been as entire towns were rounded up and murdered. To my delight, she also noted that much the same is now occuring in Darfur and the Congo. She spoke of her love for American and the second chance it, and a good education, offered her. Knowing that my students are all, of course, currently detainees, she challenged them to seize the second chance they will all have when they leave and stressed the role of education in making that second chance real.

I think what I loved the most was seeing the thoughtful and respectful questions they had for her. What was it like not knowing the fate of your family? How did you first make it in America without speaking English? Having faced such racial hatred yourself, what did you think of the segregation of whites and blacks in your new country? (This elicited a story of how her husband, who was then in the Army, once refused to be served dinner because the restaurant wouldn't serve some of the other men in his squadron who were black.) Have you met other Survivors? Didn't Jewish people fight back and if not, why not? One student didn't have a question, he just wanted to shake her hand. Privately, some students shared with me their surprise that she didn't mind coming her (to a detention center) to talk with them. Mrs. Schiff was warm and kind and a gifted speaker, able to share vivid details of a living nightmare. To judge by their response writings, what impressed them most was the courage she finds again each time she tells her story to essentially relive it. Along with reading and writing skills, a major goal of mine is to teach tolerance itself, and so I especially enjoyed a young Muslim student of mine referring to Mrs. Schiff (who is, of course, Jewish) as a "godly woman".

Amen.

Savage Inequalities

2008-01-30T12:08:00.000-05:00

With admiration and love for Kozol, of course.

So an interesting conversation happened in class the other day as we finished Anne Frank in preparation for our visitor from the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a woman who is herself a Holocaust Survivor. I've always believe that literature is one of the most wonderful ways to learn history, and that history is a lot of what brings literature to life, so I've emphasized some of the WWII history surrounding Anne's circumstances. As always, there are kids who have not heard the word "Holocaust" or "Hitler". I've created a bulletin board with pictures from the Museum's website with pictures from the Concentration Camps and of Nazi propaganda to engage kids in what the scale of the Holocaust really was as we read about this fourteen year old who chronicled both the horrors of genocide as well as the more ordinary struggles of growing up. During one of these conversations, a couple of students protested that "we all know this already". This was a teachable moment, and I used it to reinforce that schools in our country are of staggeringly varied quality and that not 30 minutes before, I had had to explain in full who Hitler was, and that Germany and Holland are countries. The boys who had assumed all of their classmates would of course know were, I think it's fair to say, surprised to learn otherwise. No kid in my classroom here has had it easy; none of them are privileged. But perhaps a little more awareness of the "savage inequalities" their own peers face is the most valuable lesson I can offer.

A Writer's Power

2008-01-18T10:23:00.001-05:00

A major theme throughout my language arts class is the power of telling your story. Maria, Sharoud and the other Freedom Writers did exactly that. As we finish Anne Frank, we're discovering that she did the exact same thing. I've asked questions to prompt this observation, such as asking who it is that has the power in the Secret Annex where the Franks and the Van Danns hid. Some of their answers included Anne's parents or Hitler, all valid suggestions, but I went on to suggest that the most powerful person in that hidden attic is Anne herself. This is because it's her voice that, generations later, we still hear.

At one point, Anne says that she is determined to "go on living" after she has died. I asked my students if this was really possible. The strong opinion was that yes, it is possible, and that this is exactly what Anne accomplished through her writing. She is immortal now.

Relating to Anne Frank

2008-01-08T15:03:00.000-05:00

So we're heading towards the middle of Anne Frank's Diary now. I'm impressed by how much many of my students know about WWII--though at the same time, it's also important to say that I've had students how hadn't heard of the Holocaust. Seeing them respond to The Freedom Writer's Diary was rewarding, but I'm even more impressed to see some of the connections they are making to Anne. The connections to this young German/Dutch girl from the 1940s hiding for her life in a little attic in Amsterdam are not as obvious as some of the themes of gang violence, addition and broken families in the Freedom Writers. But they are making those connections.

When one student asked why the Freedom Writers had loved this book so much, other students jumped in to answer before I could. "She's locked up." "She's hated for her race." The fear Anne and her family faced is the same fear of a kid who hears bullets outside his or her window at night. Some students are also related to the frustrations Anne writes about with her family, whom she doesn't think are really capable of understanding her. (Is there a fourteen year old alive who feels differently?) As with any book worth the time, its themes are universal. I can't wait for the local Holocaust survivor who is coming to visit; what a powerful experience that will be to hear her experiences first hand!

On a bit of a more humorous note, referring the the Franks' constant efforts to be silent so they won't be caught, one student said, "Imagine being on quiet time for three years!"

Unlearning

2008-01-03T14:45:00.000-05:00

I find myself often emphasizing ideas that I want my students to unlearn.

In my Language Arts classroom, one of the things I want students to immediately begin unlearning that the crazy idea that writing must be perfect on the first try. There simply is no such thing. Revision does not make you a bad writer; it makes you a good one. Nor do we expect this perfection on the first try outside the classroom. No coach only puts her players on the field during game time. There are drills, scrimmages, and practice. There must be a "safe" space to practice writing, make mistakes, fix them, and try again without penalty. Freewriting, for me, is that space. It's also a wonder way to let kids tell their own story, which to me is the most meaningful kind of writing possible. I know kids are "learning" that it must be perfect from somewhere. They constantly want dictionaries for spelling and exhibit a focus on, for example, handwriting. I tell them those things are important, but not yet. Eventually, most of them relax and simply begin writing.

Does it count as "data" that some of my students have asked to take their journals with them when they left the Detention Center? I think so.

This is why I philosophically stand behind the practice of "freewriting", though some argue that it is too unstructured and informal to "do any good". In freewriting, the topic is wide open, and the only rule is you must keep your pen moving. If you get stuck, write that. As I say to my kids nearly every day, it's not that you get an idea and then start writing. You start writing and then get an idea. This is the second misconception that I want kids to "unlearn"--that you must know exactly what you're going to say before you put pencil to paper. Writing is a process of discovery of one's self and the world. There's no way possible to know where you may end up once you start.

The Lottery

2007-12-20T10:32:00.000-05:00

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is one of my very favorite short stories for the whallop it packs at the end, when the villagers set upon poor Mrs. Hutchinson, who drew the paper with the fatal X, with stones. If kids are are going to become peace makers (in their own lives, in the community, in the world), or at least be brought to consider deeply need for peace, we must also talk about the causes of violence. I think "The Lottery" is an amazing little tale of how many times violence just simply becomes ritual or habit. It's tradition, and no one really questions why.

When we'd finished reading, I asked the students to give examples of "real life" Lotteries--ritual violence that a society seems to believe will keep it successful, healthy, fed, safe or redeemed. They mentioned the Aztecs and the Gladiators, which I thought were great examples, as well as various methods of the death penalty and gang initiation. Some kids disagreed with this one, as the DP is, at least in theory, applied to someone guilty of a crime, unlike the Villagers in story. One student even mentioned tattoes, which I would not have thought of. I am not sure I agree, and some other students disagreed as well, but there certainly is a ritual side to many tatooes.

Today, we're going to take a look at my example of a "real-life Lottery", which is the woman in Saudi Arabi who was recently sentenced (and then pardoned) to 200 lashes for having been raped!

The Ladder of Love

2007-12-10T14:58:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the kids take control.

"Ms. D, if there's a Ladder of Hate, why is there no Ladder of Love?" (The Ladder of Hate is a graphic and discussion starter I use to illustrate how humanity too often has started at the bottom rung of stereotypes, on to prejudice, to discrimination, to scapegoating and finally to genocide itself.

So why is there no Ladder of Love? A fine question. So I put it back on them. I put "love/peace" at the top of the whiteboard and asked them what specific qualities and steps were needed to get us all there. There answers, honestly, were profound.

Risk. Tolerance. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Communication. Integrity. Honor. Knowledge. When I asked them to order them (after all, the idea here is a progression), the discussion became even more nuanced, with the kids asking themselves and each other questions like, "Shouldn't knowledge be at the beginning?" Others felt that risk should be, since communication won't start until someone takes the plunge. There was also debate about whether integrity or communication should be at the beginning. On one hand, you won't wish to communicate with someone who has no integrity; on the other hand, if you haven't communicated, how do you know if the other person has integrity or not?

My favorite, however, was one student who asked to draw his own graphic on the board. He drew "U" (which means "you" for those of us not as down with hip hop) and "enemy" connected by an arrow forming a circle, explaining that if you forgive an enemy, then that enemy will forgive an enemy of theirs, and so on, until the circle connects back to you.

The Ladder of Hate

2007-12-06T15:08:00.001-05:00

So as previous posts suggest, I center my classroom here in the Juvenile Detention Center--the discussions, writing and literature--on the themes of peace and tolerance. With a little (actually, a lot) of inspiration from the Anti-Defamation League, I designed a discussion lesson on what I've come to call the Ladder of Hate. It helps kids to think about some of the major themes of important literature, yes, but it's also a too-prevalent theme in their lives. Finally, it helps get them thinking about the concrete connections between stereotypes and actual genocide! I want them to understand how something as "little" as racial cartoons not only can but have led to mass murder.

The Ladder of Hate starts with Stereotypes. From there we escalate to prejudice, and on to discrimination (ACTING on prejudice). I lead us in a discussion of what each of these terms are and the kids never have trouble with examples. (That said, yes I have had kids who had not heard of the Holocaust!). From discrimination, we move up to scapegoating, the blaming of one group for a whole society's problems (paging Lou Dobbs!). Finally, at the top of the ladder, is genocide. I brought in pictures of Nazi doctors measuring noses and ears to determine if the "patient" was Aryan enough. I pass around a copy of the Diary of Anne Frank, as well as The Freedom Writer's Diary, which includes a copy of a ugly racial cartoon drawn by one of the students in that class. I make sure to note that "simple" stereotypes not only can but HAVE led to genocide. Some of the students literally have a hard time imagining, for example, live human crematorioms or "medical experiments" that involved removing the arm of one patient and sewing it on to the arm of another. Since we can't go to the Holocaust Museum, I am planning for it to come to us, in the form of a local Holocaust survivor. I am hoping that will bring to life the Diary of Anne Frank when we begin reading it.

On Relevance

2007-12-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

Relevance, as you also may have observed, dear reader, can be a dangerous thing. In preparation for reading a poem from the perspective of an Hispanic immigrant yesterday, I brought in an article on immigration policy in Arlington (only 10 minutes from where our school is located). Many of the kids even knew some of the Vietnamese or El Salvadoran restaurants mentioned in the article, as they were eager to mention in class.

One of the central and vital goals of peace education, of course, is addressing and combating racism. It is ugly, and can come from anyone, even (and perhaps most likely) those who experience racism themselves. As I suspected I might, I encountered some of the stereotypes people can hold against "immigrants" in my classroom today as we discussed the article.

"They take our jobs". This was immediately challenged (by kids clearly of Latina/o background) to note that there is often no choice due to economic or political circumstances in the home country. Other students pointed out that we're a nation of immigrants and unless you're for example Mohawk or Navajo, there is probably immigration--voluntary or otherwise--there somewhere. One student, usually one of my best and most appreciative young men, said he felt that "immigrants are perverts". When pressed on this point, he described some behavior his sister and mother had experienced at the hands of people they assumed to be immigrants (they may well have been right). We've talked endlessly about the danger of stereotypes--the false belief that if one person in a certain identity group holds a certain quality, everyone in that group does. We've talked about how stereotypes have been the seeds that sowed genocide (I call it the "Ladder of Hate", of which more later).

Because I will not tolerate intolerance, I spoke with this student at length after class, along with my principal, who shares my educational goals of character and peace education. He stated to the student that conversations like that are what education is really about, and I couldn't agree more. But I'm aware that it is also quite counter-culture in a nation that can vilify immigrants, that self-segregates and that sees violence as a way to solve problems. We've raised offending others "because it's my right" to an art form and defined it as American. That, however, doesn't mean that peace education is doomed to failure or should end because it can be hard or messy or raise difficult issues. That's all the more reason for it to exist in every classroom!

Why Do We Always Cry in This Class (or, The Affective Domain)?

2007-11-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

The "affective domain", of course, is the clinical, detached and sanitized language we use to refer to FEELINGS and EMOTIONS in the classroom. Ironically, many of us English teacher types work daily to provide our kids with examples of language that has life, voice and power. It's interesting, then, that we used (use?) the lifeless phrase "the affective domain" to talk about emotion and its role in learning.

This struck me the other day when my students were sharing, as I invite them to daily, from their journals. Reality being what it is in the Detention Center, kids come and go without warning or notice. One young woman who has come such a long way simply disappeared today. I filled out her transfer form with a sigh, hoping that someone "downstate" (as the kids call it) will have the eye out for her that we have here. Several of the other girls in the unit wrote about her sudden departure, and the tears flowed. Mine included, I don't mind sharing. One of the girls, sniffling and laughing at the same time, asked "why someone always cries at least once a week in this class?" An answer came from one of the Detention Staff that it's because the classroom is a safe space where students can share what's really on their minds. I agree, and I think that's the magic of these journals. It makes THEM the curriculum; it also allows them to write in a space that will not be judged or graded. Hence they can practice without penalty, just like one would with any other skill. (I can't imagine learning piano as if it were a recital every time I sat down to play.)

CS Lewis once said that we "read to know we're not alone." We write for the same reason. We write to connect and be heard. Vygotsky noted time and again that writing should be taught for the natural-as-breathing survival skill that it is. Allowing and in fact creating space for "the affective domain", that is EMOTIONS, in the classroom, honors the power of language.

Telling Our Story

2007-11-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

It's a common observation (complaint, really) that teaching can be a very isolating, atomized profession. So it was a pleasure this morning to spend about 30 minutes chatting with my principal and our social studies teacher, as the three of us were free at the same time.

This does not occur outside of rushed staff meetings in "regular" schools. We currently have some extra time on our hands (very much needed "extra" time) since Units 1 and 4 are combined. This is one of the reasons I have been able to bring in guests and such--the very "extras" which bring a curriculum to life. Anyway, we shared about students and some of the ideas we have to problem solve regarding finding resources, transitioning kids back to their home schools and so on. One result of such "chats" is that my colleague has probably identified a donor for laptops for each kid! I cannot overstate how exciting this is (I had to pry my girls off the laptops and away from their Freedom Writers Diary final essays today).

Teachers need to tell their story--first to each other and then to the public, who tends to think it knows what teaching must be like whether or not this is true. These productive conversations need to be firstly recognized as such and secondly prioritized, in my view, by educational leaders. What might this look like in implementation? For one, let's carve out real time for teachers to collaborate. Yes, this probably will mean a lighter teaching load. That in turn means we need more schools and more teachers, and that will likely mean more funding (unless a particular state our country is especially nontransparent or wasteful of their resources). I would also challenge us (not sure who I mean by "us" really) to think along the lines of how we literally design the building of high schools! That is, schools should include a SPACE for productive collaboration and research. I fear we are in the 21st century building on and tinkering with an industrial era 18th century model. This is one of the major reasons why I don't think we can "get there from here."

We Just Met a Girl Named Maria

2007-11-13T08:33:00.000-05:00

With support from my principal, other staff and community members who want to see better futures for local kids, the students of Room 5C yesterday received a visit from one Ms. Maria Reyes, Freedom Writer. If you have seen the movie, she's the one the character of Eva was based on. Jumped into a Latino gang before she was even 10, Maria became "third generation", meaning both her father and grandfather were in the same gang, believing it was what was necessary to protect and provide for their families. As she puts it, she was raised "a warrior". Otherwise, there might not be heat or food in the house. (Folks like David Brooks, who seem to think poverty in America means not being able to afford the newest Air Jordans, might do well to take note.)

To prepare for her visit, we spent the day prior making a welcome banner and generating a list of questions the kids wanted to ask her. Most of them wanted to know how she left the gang (after all, it's not like they just let you walk away) and how she found the courage to tell the truth on the witness stand and admit it was her friend and fellow gang member who had shot a bystander one night in a convenience store, not the rival gang kid who had actually been charged with the murder. That was the beginning of the end of her gang association, and ever since, she's reached out to kids who have been struggling with similar issues. To answer their question, she said that "when you know better, you choose better." She related the courage she found on the witness stand to risk her life by telling the truth to the power of education, specifically to the power of words and writing to help you find your own voice. Once education had helped her find her own voice, she said, it wasn't so hard to do "the right thing just because it was the right thing to do". (I loved that Maria was quoting Miep Gies here, the woman who risked her life to shelter Anne Frank and her family during the Holocaust.) My students had all written her letters asking her to comee, and she made a point of telling the kids that it was those letters that convinced her to make time for us. An audience for a young writer can hardly get more real!

Maria is warm and passionate in person, and she directly challenged my kids to not blame others for the choices they've made. That, I think, is the beginning of freedom. My favorite moment was when one of my students responded to Maria by saying that was being a "true warrior". If there is such a thing as "assessing" peace education, that's what it looks like. She'd truly internalized what Maria was trying to say.

Are Grades...Peaceful?

2007-11-09T14:55:00.001-05:00

So this question has been asked by so many teachers in so many ways, and I found myself facing it again last Tuesday as I tallied up participation and class assignments and essays. Few people will argue anymore that evaluating especially writing or, say, a student's response to a novel or poem is anything but subjective. (Surely they don't still exist?)

Montessori, Freire and so many others eshew grades totally. I hear them! What do they really, honestly tell us? It's a snapshot, at best, of whether or not a kid is thinking critically and creatively and growing as a reader, writer and human being. And of course, grades force teachers into such dilemmas as what to do with the kid who has started at "zero" and made considerable progress, but might not still technically be up to what the State has decided upon as a standard?

It's not like positive, practical (yes, practical) alternatives do not exist. In my view, Montessori's model of narrative evaluation is solid. I say solid, I mean revolutionary. That is, the teacher observes the kid and his or her work and composes a paragraph or so on the student's behavior and scholastic work let's say weekly. Each quarter or semester, parents, the student and the teacher could then sit down and discuss. What a rich record of the kids' growth this would be! No hierarchy or abstractions needed. And yes, it IS possible, if we were to rethink our schools. Why have we not cut class sizes in half yet? That's a start. Yes, it will mean more teachers and more schools themselves, but that's a mere matter of funding our schools like we think they mean as much as we say we do.

Don't Go It Alone

2007-11-05T14:33:00.000-05:00

Rule #1 of really trying to reach your students: don't go it alone.

Rule #2: If in doubt, refer to Rule #1.

I was reminded of the importance of seeking support from parents, volunteers or others in the community today. I've been trying to nail down plans for Maria, one of the original Freedom Writers, to come visit my class now that we've finished the book. I want the kids to see someone who empowered herself through writing and "came out the other side" of the violence and hatred that marrs so many of their lives. As things began to unravel when the date of her visit approached, I found myself looking at having to foot the $400 myself. As I'd put the ball in motion, I was willing to do so, but not looking forward to it.

So, I rallied the troops and called my Angel Parent. Her son was once here at the Detention Center, so she truly gets it. Within a few hours, she had made a number of emails and phone calls to various faith groups who work with both youth and prision ministries. By the time I had finished lunch, she'd found the funding. Not only that, but our beloved funders are interested in a meeting to better understand our long term needs! SCORE!

As a teacher, it's so easy to become isolated in your classroom. But if we want rich, relevant curriculum that is impacting the lives our students, connections to the community should be the norm, not the exception.

Behold the Power of Chocolate

2007-11-01T16:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday of course was Halloween, and so I took the opportunity to hold a "special" freewriting. Usually the rules of freewriting are that there are no rules. As long as things are basically, tolerably school appropriate (I suggest to my kids that the Freedom Writer's Diary is a good guide), the topic is wide open. Yesterday, though, I met my kids with Reese Pieces Butter Cup and the Five Senses--sight, sound, touch, smell and TASTE. The idea was that we went through each sense, to build vivid description in our writing. Even in this quick exercise, I was delighted by some of the results. One ESL student, who is always game to try but struggles with standard ESL issues, wrote that the sound of chocolate "makes your ears perk up like a dog who hears his master". Another wrote that "When you first eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, it is like your away on a vacation all by yourself sitting in a hot tub spring...it tastes like the world has stopped for you." One of my girls, a naturally gifted writer, said the sound of chocolate was the "sounds of screaming children craving more".

I loved it and will work to find more devices like this to bring out the fun and creativity they naturally have. When encouraged to think in terms beyond just description in terms of sight, the images began to shine.

And hey, maybe if I write Reese's, they'll sponsor us! Bring on the laptops for EACH KID!

Making the Writing Real

2007-10-30T15:39:00.000-04:00

As my students and I finish The Freedom Writer's Diary, we've written letters to one of the Freedom Writers whom we hope (God? Are you there? It's me, Ms. Duckworth....) can come visit us. Some barriers still stand in the way of this happening but I find myself determined to do all I can, including considering nutty things like paying $300 myself for a copy of the books for each kid if that's what it takes. I've approached folks for funding and am hoping the city will see the importance of an event like this too. I will be persistent.

While there were a number of "grammar and style" aspects of the kids' letters to work on (at least in some cases), I was impressed especially by some of what the kids shared with our Freedom Writer. They took to the spirit of what I'm tryin to do. They wrote about relating to her struggles, making mistakes (of course, that's why they're here at the Detention Center), and respecting her strength to overcome it all. I'd love for them to be able to tell her that themselves. I don't want this to fall apart as the last pieces fall into place. Two students in particular stand out because of the difficulties they have with writing (one of whom I suspect is dyslexic); despite this, they wrote with detail about the book and their lives. It's amazing the difference that a "real" audience makes. So many writing theorists know this, and yet it seems to happen in so few writing classrooms. I sure don't recall it as a student at all.

And so, I keep making phone calls and writing emails am willing to come in for her visit on a day off (Veteran's Day) if that's what it takes. I want to deliver for them and see what the results may be.

Practicing What You Preach

2007-10-22T15:46:00.000-04:00

A quick note today, but I couldn't let this conversation with a student today go by. We're in the middle of Freedom Writer's Diary and of course one of the major themes is how these students grapple with racism and stereotypes. One Middle Eastern female student of mine raised her hand and said she'd just earlier that day been stereotyped by another teacher here. Apparently the teacher had asked her if she ate couscous! The student--quite rightly in my view--felt demeaned. I asked her if she'd shared how that comment by one of my colleagues had made her feel, and she said yes, but apparently the teacher didn't really respond. This left the student with the impression that the teacher "just didn't want to own up" to what she'd said.

It also left me thinking, as I sometimes do, of the invisibility of my own ethnicity as a white woman. My race is the standard. No one will ever look at my skin color and ask me if I, say, eat burgers or hot dogs. I am therefore expanding my call for peace education in every classroom; let's be sure it is a part of every teacher education program too!

Keep on Moving

2007-10-17T15:15:00.000-04:00

Komplex's third and final visit was today, and I was blown away by several of the poems my kids shared. One was called "The Next Great Black", wondering where the next MLK could be hiding. It was inspired by our class conversations on the Letter from Birmingham and "Beyond Vietnam". A second student read a poem about past pain and the reality that here, locked up, is not where he wants to spend the rest of his life. I hadn't heard either of these poems before (apparently they wrote them in math class *sigh*) but I was amazed by the coherence, voice and images. I wish more students had shared, but I wasn't about to force anyone, and I think it's especially intimidating to share your work with a professional hip-hop poet whose work is so strong.

I have been building on KOM's presentations to impress on my students that they already know a lot of what in previous English classes may have seemed so removed or obscure--alliteration, metaphor, plays on words, rhyme, rhythm, this is what poems and hip hop are both made of. They already know it! It's just a matter of, as I said to them, realizing you already know it. Their reaction to his presentation convinced me that more slam poetry and creating a class book (even if it's "just" online) is the way to go. Publishing is the most powerful experience I think a writer can have.

Can We Get There from Here?

2007-10-11T15:26:00.000-04:00

First, a shout out, much love and a thank you to Komplex, who came to visit us today to share some of his music and hip hop poetry. If you haven't had a listen, treat yourself. I can't wait for his final workshop for us on Tuesday, our poetry coffeehouse.

I'd asked him to focus on the themes of the course, which are peace building and non-violent conflict resolution. The kids free write daily, as a way to "get their heads on paper" and focus. Daily writing builds fluency. It also makes the curriculum about them (always everyone's favorite subject) and I can see it's also allowing them to really connect with the characters in the Freedom Writer's Diary. They've asked if we can bring Meip over to visit; she's in her 90's now, so that's not likely possible but why not a "real" Freedom Writer or two? I don't see why we can't make that happen. I'm looking for grants and will challenge the kids (and my colleagues) to think of ways we can fund raise. But at the same time, I find myself asking the question I always ask when funding raises its nasty ugly head: don't we all pay taxes? Isn't this why I pay taxes? Why are teachers being asked and encouraged to write grants for "special projects" when those are kinds of things that bring a curriculum alive and that therefore should be the standard, not the exception. And doesn't expecting grant writing discourage overworked teachers from doing that "extra mile" thing, when precisely the opposite incentive is what we want? Do I feed a broken system by helping it continue to limp along? Educational leaders and theory types talk so much about "teaching the whole child" (including character and citizenship education, for example), but when educators are atomized and disincentivized, is this possible?

I was reminded in reading Freedom Writers with my students that over half of teachers leave within 5 years, and understood again as I prepared to research a grant or two why.

Can we get there from here?

My Native Costume

2007-10-08T15:24:00.000-04:00

We've been reading The Freedom Writier's' Diary for about a week or so now, and the kids are responding well. It's so accessible and relateable for them that there is plenty of time for real discussion, which is my highest priority. As I say, I'm anchoring our curriculum around the themes of nonviolence, tolerance and peace building. FWD of course is perfect for this, but I am bringing in a number of other role plays, speakers, news articles, poems, short stories that are centered around these themes.

Along those lines, we began class (after our daily free writing) with Martin Espada's "My Native Costume". It's a sharp, funny, sad and powerful poem all at once. With some guide questions to lay the mental groundwork (how does the narrator see himself? how does the teacher in the poem see him?), they readily connected this poem to the Freedom Writer's and our themes of the dangers of stereotypes. As they put it, all the teacher in the poem sees is the he's Puerto Rican.

Can Language Be Violent?

2007-09-28T15:16:00.000-04:00

As a professional in conflict resolution, as a student of history, and as an educator, I think the connections between language and violence are incredibly salient. I want my kids to understand that language--language the dehumanizes and demeans and stereotypes--is linked to all kinds of "real" violence, including rape, assult, even genocide.

With a little help from Youtube.com, I had Oprah "visit" class today, featuring part of the town hall she hosted after Don Imus referred to the women of the Rutgers basketball team as "nappy headed hos". I dislike even typing the words, but there they are. We watched several clips featuring different perspectives on hip hop, race, treatment of women in our sexist culture. My kids overwhelmingly agreed that language can be violent, sometimes even worse than physical violence. Yet when it came to connecting that with the language Imus used--and the language that hip hop, rock and roll, movies, use to define and lable women, but especially women of color. I was amazed to hear some of the students (and a couple of staff! yikes!) suggest that Imus's comments didn't make sense because there were white women on the team. I was saddened but frankly not amazed to hear that especially many of my male students felt that that language was OK for women who shake what they've got on videos (but not all women, they hastened to add--only the actual hos). I opened the floor for discussion, but of course had my say as well. Wanting them to understand the connections between those attitudes and staggering rates of domestic violence and rape in this country, I mentioned the actual case of a judge turning over the conviction of a man who had raped a young girl. I believe the victim was 7; she might have been 10. Either way, the judge overturned the conviction because the girl was "dressed provocatively".

The problem we have in this culture is far larger than Snoop or Nelly or any of the others. We have a culture that finds it OK, even admirable and funny, to belittle and dehumanize. And ultimately, such language is precisely what legitimizes violence.

Isn't Radical Bad?

2007-09-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

As we finish up our essay responses to Dr King's amazing speech, "Beyond Vietnam", one of my students honed in on King's reference to himself as desiring a "radical revolution" of American values. (Amen!) "Isn't radical bad?", he asked. I waited a couple of beats before answering, in the hopes that another student would pick up from his comment, and sure enough the response came from the kid next to him: "Depends on what you're radical for?"

This struck me because I so often reflect that if we were more radical sometimes--more bold, more audacious--we'd possibly be so much closer to the vision of "a brotherhood of man" which Dr. King describes in this speech. He identifies "militarism, materialism and racism" as three main causes of war, and my students overwhelmingly agreed that these are still problems today. Identifying the social values so many people (not just Americans, I rather suspect) have internalized, such as militarism and materialism, as linked to war is a truly radial, even revolutionary thought now. Recall the way so many of us who spoke out against the Iraq War in 2003, calling it a false war for oil, were ignored and disparaged. Alan Greenspan, by no means even centrist left alone liberal, just said the same (about four years too late).

So no, ladies and gentleman of Room 5C: radical isn't bad. Your classmate had it just right. Depends on what you're a radical for. Given the authoritarian culture we continue to absorb, though, isn't not surprising that some kids would think so. Nor is it any wonder that MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is so often taught--but not so the speech where he presciently calls the US government out on the major foreign policy mistake of his day.

If they learn nothing else from me, I want them to learn to think for themselves. That is truly both a survival skill and a skill of peace building.

Jena, LA

2007-09-20T17:02:00.001-04:00

So I called another audible today, and I'm glad I did. As I've mentioned, my students and I have been reading literature focused on civil disobedience, nonviolence, peace and justice. Given the rallies and demonstrations on behalf of the "Jena Six" today, and the all-day coverage of it, I decided to just turn on CNN. We watched and discussed. Needless to say, my students (a good 97% of whom are black or Hispanic) had a lot to say. Much of it was simple disbelief and sadness that there are still schools where nooses can be hung on trees. Unbelievable. As an educator, I shared with them how upset I was in particular that a fellow educator (the principal of the school, if memory serves) would refer to hanging nooses on a "whites only" tree as a prank. That simply cannot be. I was also gratified that many of the detention staff joined in the conversation. Tomorrow we'll return to MLK's amazing and under-taught speech on Vietnam.

Responding to MLK

2007-09-14T15:08:00.000-04:00

We have finished our creative exercise on MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail today. The kids had four choices: be a defense lawyer and write Dr. King's Defense, be a journalist and write an article covering the story, respond in a creative form like poetry or write a letter back to Dr. King.
While the kids made different choices, poetry was the most popular by far. Several students were asking to present to the class, so I called an audible (as they say) and made time for that. The poems were tributes to King, really, on his courage and how much strength and the word I'd use is godliness it must have taken to respond to violence with nonviolence. There were kids who took prodding and several who spent more time sketching than writing, but over all, I'm so pleased. When I asked them if they'd ever been asked to do something like this before--that is, respond in some creative written way to a piece of literature--most of them said no. I'll continue learning about these kids as time goes on, but it would not stun me to learn that most of their assignments have been worksheets they were to fill in.

MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Suicide Watch

2007-09-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

We began today with an all-staff suicide watch training. Apparently a bit ago there were a couple of suicide attempts made by a some of the kids here that were not handled quite as they should have been. I'm familiar with some of the warning signs, such as not enjoying any more things a kid used to love. But I have to say, learning that suicide was the 2nd cause of teen deaths was shocking, although perhaps not as shocking as learning that it's 2nd to the leading cause--which is homicide! I ask again: why is there not peace and conflict resolution education, explicitly and unapologetically, in every single school?

When classes did start after the training, we continued reading the amazing and inspirational letter by MLK, written during his time in jail in Birmingham: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." The kids were actively discussing, ideas like slavery, just and unjust laws, and civil disobedience. This was especially rewarding since discussion was a bit more like pulling teeth yesterday. I especially loved the observation by one student that hate is really about fear of the unknown.

Addressing Stereotypes

2007-09-06T15:26:00.000-04:00

I was rather horrified the other day to hear a news story on CNN about protests against a public school in NYC teaching about Isalm and teaching the Arabic language. Naturally, the rhetoric against it is peppered with use of the words, "madrassa", "terrorist" and "immigrant". (The linking of those two itself could be the subject of a dissertation!) I showed the kids the video clip of the story and printed out copies for each student to read. As I'd hoped, this lead to discussion of racial stereotyping and fear of the unknown. For example, I was pleased that my students, in the writing activity I designed to prepare for discussion, wondered whether a public Arabic school would be a problem for people at all before 9/11.

The First Day

2007-09-04T16:21:00.001-04:00

First impressions can mean everything. Committed to establishing from day one that my classroom would be about exploring peace and peacebuilding, I decided to establish a "baseline" with a written response to the question of "What kinds of things do you think cause conflict or violence in our world and our communities?" I was so pleased with much of the thinking that I got in response. The kids identified alcohol, drugs, gangs, sexism, racism, stereotypes, oil, war, poverty, miscommunication and "trying to change people" all as possible causes of conflict. They also even asked if conflict had to always be thought of as a negative thing, leading to some disucssion of nonviolent conflict. I hope that laid some good groundwork for looking at the lives of men and women like MLK and Gandhi.

Tomorrow we'll take the next step and do some written reflection and discussion on what then can be done about violent conflict? I also have an article that profiled kids from several places around the world (including a U.S. city) working against the violence in their communities.