Fall 2005, Volume 10 Number 3

Table of Contents

Why should we care about people we don’t know?  This is not an easy question to address at any age, yet it is at the heart of the Peace Circle curriculum that was presented to third and fourth grade students at The Caedmon School.  Peace Circle is built upon the belief that, long before adolescence arrives with its socially intense self-focus, children are angels of natural empathy, “trailing clouds of glory” in their ability to imagine themselves into a story, a piece of news, or a lesson.  Given this, there is much to be gained by giving our younger children the vocabulary, the habit, and the encouragement to exercise their naturally empathetic behavior.  Like a language or a fine-motor skill, the empathy of a child needs to be practiced and rehearsed if it is to survive the inevitable turbulence of adolescence and become an adult quality.  By teaching children to rehearse empathy, we prepare them to take responsibility for it once they have emerged as adult, global citizens.

It is Wednesday morning and our weekly “peace circle” has begun - a favorite time for our class – even for the teachers.  Seated around the periphery of the rug, we pass our “squishy globe” to one another.  As each of us holds the world in our hands, we describe one thing that we love about the world.  “I love languages and cultures,” says Michael.  “I love the animals like whales and dolphins,” offers Amanda.  “I love people like my family and friends,” adds Devash.  The second time around, we toss the globe at random to each other to suggest disruption rather than order, and then describe the kinds of things that prevent us from enjoying the things we love.  “War”, “extinction”, and “fighting” are voiced in rapid succession, revealing to their teachers the direction for future units of study.

With such a simple, emotive, yet conceptually potent ritual, the children at Caedmon were led to discover “generative concepts”, those experiential cornerstones of fairness and “rightness”, which lead eventually to a fundamental sense of human rights.  Successive circles led them to discover in their own terms such basic rights as food, shelter, play, medicine, education, freedom of opinion, and choice of occupation.  While rediscovering human rights on their own, the children were introduced to the actual Universal Declaration of Human Rights - the visionary document put out by the United Nations in 1948.  Yet each Peace Circle continued to be a clean slate upon which they painted the world as they thought it should be, and then modified their painting with images of what keeps it from being so.  Like little world leaders composing constitutions, they defined and fought for the world they desired.

            For today’s exercise, the children close their eyes while a teacher reads material from a book titled “The Bread Winner”.  The book tells of a young Afghan girl who must dress like a boy and go out into the market to make money for her family, at the cost of her schooling and most of her childhood freedoms.  Afterward, we all watch a video titled: “I Want To Go To School”.   Produced by UNICEF, the video documents children from all around the world who, for one reason or another, are not able to attend school or receive a proper education.  When the video ends, we naturally progress into discussion of what we have read about and seen.

            This may not be the kind of lesson one would normally think to present to third and fourth graders.  On a purely emotional level, however, it may be easier for children to confront such tragic scenarios than it is for more sophisticated adults.  Less burdened with conflicting layers of morality, conditioning, and rationalization, children are able to engage their imaginations with an immediacy and honesty that is difficult for adults to isolate. 

            When we end our discussion, we pass around the squishy globe once more.  This time, each student is allowed to say a word or two about how they feel.  Amisha loved the video “…cause it was about other children.”  She felt a strong identity with the little girl who had to stuff matches into matchboxes for twelve hours a day.  John was quietly weeping as he said, “If you understood their lives, you would be sad and want them to have an education.”  Many expressed thankfulness that in their own lives “…they could do what they wanted and weren’t forced into anything.”

            Imagination is the soil in which empathy will one day grow.  Discussing their feelings while their imaginations were still engaged, our children were clearly experiencing a very real awareness of the commonalities they share with children they have never met, but with whom they share the earth.  They were understanding that education is not only a privilege, but also a basic right that should be shared by children everywhere.   They asked themselves: “How can we learn from the video?” …and  “What can we do in the future to give everybody an education?”  “Is education a basic human right?”

            A visitor listening to the children express their feelings and thoughts could not help but be impressed by the sophistication of their dialogue.  Were their ideas politically realistic on an adult level?  Perhaps not, but in a very real way the children were experiencing themselves as global citizens assuming responsibility as informed individuals for the squishy globe we all call home.  The visitor would also be left thinking very positively that perhaps children can change the world.

Kids Creating Peace

In recognition of the unprecedented dimensions and overriding significance of issues surrounding war and peace, human rights, social justice, sustainable development, and ecological balance throughout the world, elementary teachers Sachi Porizkova and Laura Lampman created an ongoing “Kids Creating Peace” curriculum for their third and fourth grade classroom at The Caedmon School.  Their curriculum plan states in Part:

The goal of the curriculum is not only to help students understand the base causes of violence and injustice, but also to develop in them the skills, values, and attitudes for social transformation.  As teachers, we believe that a holistic approach to transformative learning helps our students to develop life-long and life-enhancing human values as a necessary pre-condition to peace. 

Peace education is a transmission of the knowledge and insight needed to achieve and maintain peace.  It is about developing our critical and reflective capacities in order to control, reduce, and eliminate various forms of violence – physical, economic, and psychological.  Issues of conflict, disease, poverty, hunger, migration, drug trafficking, pollution, illiteracy, disarmament, child labor, and unemployment are not confined within national or even regional boundaries.  They affect the entire global community and impact future generations as well as our own.  It is crucial that we educate for global citizenship, because our personal, national, and global interests are linked within an increasingly interdependent world. 

            The Peace Circle “ritual” that Ms. Lampman and Mrs. Porizkova created to begin each lesson of study, soon came to embody the entire curriculum.  The dialectic of hope-tragedy-hope that Peace Circle enacted became key to their strategy for addressing weighty issues such as injustice, tragedy, and violence with young children.  As teachers in an unjust and war-minded world, they believe it is important to demystify images of unpleasant reality by counteracting them with concrete images of peace - and not only peace in response to violence, but also positive peace; peace for the sake of peace alone; the kind of peace you just want to live in, now and in the future. 

            Just as images of violence are encountered and absorbed by young minds (especially through the media) long before the reality of violence is understood, images of peace and habits of empathy must also be offered as daily bread.  To the extent that we teach and encourage our children to duel with light sabers, root for the winner, or seek entertainment, shouldn’t we also teach and model for them the vocabulary and habits of inquiring after another’s feelings, shaking hands after a game well played, and pulling one’s own weight in shared tasks?

            To guide their curriculum, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child were used as primary conceptual frameworks.  In addition, students studied historical human rights violations, past and present peace heroes, the history of social activism, successful non-violent peace practices, world population and spending patterns, paths to inner peace, and the role of the military in global security.  Their exercises and lessons involved read-aloud sessions, poetry studies, field trips to the United Nations, discussions, debates, role-playing activities and games, geography-map work, art, music, yoga, and meditation.  To document their learning and growth, the students were asked to keep peace journals, including reflective pieces, drawings, photos, poems, and quotations.  Their journals served as a source of ongoing dialogue between the teachers and the students. 

            For instance, during a Peace Circle on nuclear disarmament, the children learned about Dr. Helen Caldicott, the renowned advocate of nuclear disarmament, and then performed a contemplative exercise in which they closed their eyes and listened to beans dropping into a pot - each bead representing so many people who died in the bombing of Hiroshima.  They were then asked to make journal entries on three questions:

What are some of the consequences of nuclear war?

How can we prevent a nuclear bomb from happening again?

How can we convince political leaders to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty?

Here are some of their remarks:

“Some of the consequences of nuclear war are getting leukemia, because when the atomic bomb hit Japan people got sick.  Also dying, getting injured, and losing family members.  Also the environment could be destroyed and polluted.”

“We can reason with the other governments.  Or we can write a calm nonviolent letter to the government saying we don’t want war because of an argument.  Or we can calmly talk about the problem and work it out.”

“I would tell political leaders that if they don’t sign the treaty they might pollute the air.  Also that it is going to hurt everyone, even you.  Also, that if you don’t sign the treaty you’re risking everyone’s life, even your own.” 

From the mouths of babes came such simple, yet potent answers to the one essential question behind our curriculum: Why should we care about people we don’t know?  Do these children fully understand the reality of the things they are describing?  Perhaps not, but they are learning the words, rehearsing the skills, receiving the validation, and stretching their imaginations in the direction of global,                      adult understanding.

            It may be that we, as parents and teachers, too easily overlook the necessity of proactively introducing issues of human rights, global citizenship, violence, and peace to our children.  It may be that we too easily take it for granted that our children will contemplate questions of war, deprivation, peace, and empathy on their own, when they have little or no incentive to do so given the abundance with which their needs are met and the unlikelihood that they will ever experience anything like true hardship.  It may be that we need to teach them how to care about people they don’t know, even before we can realistically expect them to understand why they should do so. 

Laura Lampman was a Middle Level Teacher at the Caedmon School and currently teaches 3rd grade at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She may be contacted at llampman@yahoo.com.Greg Minahan is Director of Development and a former teacher at The Caedmon School.  He  may be contacted at minahan@caedmonschool.org.

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