The Other America

A couple months ago, I read Valerie Polakow's Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America. It was eye opening to see the stigmatization of the mothers that carries into the classroom, and the way that many of the children are treated by their teachers. Polakow refers to one of the students she follows as "scarred before he has a chance to be otherwise.” She chronicles the overwhelming problems faced by these single mothers--obstacle after obstacle.

Recognizing the construction of disabilities is one way in which we can empathize with students. When we fail to consider the web of societal and environmental factors that contribute to the many interactions within the classroom walls, we risk labeling students as in need of fixing. Instead, we must continually consider the societal and environmental factors that are in great need of an enormous fix. Polakow argues, “confronting the silence, naming the classroom world with different forms of talk, shifting our ways of seeing, opening up spaces for possibility can shift the tenuous ground on which young children of poverty stand. It is the question of existential value that confronts the silence.”

When we fail to examine the bigger picture and confront the silence, we blindly accept the status quo and oppressive reality of our school system and society at large—a system that further marginalizes the marginalized, humiliates the most vulnerable, and segregates those who are poor or different from those in power. To place full responsibility and blame on a five-, seven-, or sixteen-year-old child and label him or her as deviant or deficient is to give up hope that the larger world can change. It will short-change students for many years and many classrooms to come.

Housing is a human right. I'm hoping to find out how to get involved with Picture the Homeless in NYC which is led by within the homeless community. They're beginning to take action to claim vacant city spaces.

Our Housing Not Warehousing campaign sees homelessness against the backdrop of this massive warehousing of otherwise habitable vacant spaces. We have been pushing city legislation that would require the city to conduct an annual census of all vacant buildings and lots, so that this information is always readily available to the public.

The Housing campaign is working to transform the use of vacant spaces through a range of tactics -- including direct action occupations and renovations, public education, and participatory research. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of safe, secure and TRULY AFFORDABLE housing for the lowest income residents of the city, through innovative community and housing development models.

The Housing campaign is concerned with the warehousing of all vacant property, regardless of ownership. The campaign is organizing to move owners of vacant property, public or private, to turn those properties over to a Land Trust, and permanently-affordable Mutual Housing Associations created out of them. The publicly-subsidized, privately-owned financial services firm JPMorgan Chase is one of our targets. We are also one of the founding participants of the national Take Back the Land initiative, because we are clear that challenging property rights is not a fight that we can win without civil disobedience and other forms of direct action.

You can share vacant buildings in NYC's five boroughs that you know of by texting the address to 917.412.3064 or send it via Twitter using #housingnotwarehousing or @pthny.

They post a weekly reading on their site that is discussed at their Homeless Organizing Academy. Here's one:

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

Finish the poem here.

How'd I Miss This? Maxine Green Tribute

Journal of Educational Controversy has an issue devoted to Maxine Greene.

CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED IN THIS ISSUE

"My vision, in launching this Foundation, is to generate inquiry, imagination, and the creation of art works by diverse people. It has to do so with a sense of the deficiencies in our world and a desire to repair, wherever possible. Justice, equality, freedom - these are as important to us as the arts, and we believe they can infuse each other, perhaps making some difference at a troubled time."
Maxine Greene, Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts and Education

An understanding of the role of public schools in sustaining the life of a democracy requires more than the occasional class in civic education. It requires the development of social imagination. Maxine Greene reminds us of the important role that the arts - visual art, music, performance art and literature - can play in such an education. We invite authors to explore the many dimensions of a vision for such an education within schools and colleges, or alternatively, outside these institutions. We also invite authors to contribute to a special section on Maxine Greene's lifetime work and writings on art, social imagination and education.

So much great reading to do. I began reading Chris Higgins' Working with Youth: In Search of the Natality of the Teacher.

With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.
- John Dewey (1916, p. 50)

A teacher in search of his/her own freedom may be the only kind of teacher who can arouse young persons to go in search of their own.
- Maxine Greene (1988, p. 14)

Overture

In teacher education, what one says about teaching is probably less important than how one addresses teachers. One of the things that make Maxine Greene's work singular and singularly important is her mode of address as a teacher educator. In her classes and her writings alike, she never forgets that she is speaking to teachers, and that in doing so she is speaking to human beings. This is not to say that others address teachers in an inhuman way. It is simply to point out that Greene reaches out to teachers, again and again, as fellow inhabitants of a set of typically human existential predicaments. Nor is this to suggest that she ignores the teacher qua teacher. To the contrary, she views teaching as a uniquely rich and important project, and personal projects are central to the ethical, existential terrain she is interested in.

From Teacher as Stranger (1973) to the latest posting on The Maxine Greene Foundation website (http://www.maxinegreene.org/index.html), Greene has been working to make visible the person in the role of teacher, and even “to make that person visible to himself” (1973, p. 271). Time and again, she has urged teachers to take an “interest in thinking about what it means to choose to be a teacher” (Greene, 1987, p. 181). She has offered us tireless and eloquent reminders that teaching is a transaction between selves in process, persons in need of meaningful projects and freedoms worth taking (see, e.g., Greene, 1986, pp. 76-79). She reminds us that the individual teacher, like any individual, needs some sort of studio space—some opportunity for retreat, reflection, and recreation—if she is to cultivate herself through her work (1973, p. 290). She reminds us that teachers also must fear the isolation that vitiates genuine action, which requires the catalysis and witnessing of others. And she reminds us that we are beginners, beings capable of breaking with the taken for granted, the routine and the mechanical (see, e.g., Greene, 1978, pp. 26-27; 1979). Greene's path-breaking work on these questions is the inspiration for the essay that follows. I explore the existential meanings, risks, and rewards of teaching through a close reading of two writers with whom she has frequently been in dialogue: Rainer Maria Rilke and Hannah Arendt.

Teaching and Natality: Recovery of an Untimely Question

Why teach? What draws us to this daunting practice and what sustains us there in the face of its inevitable difficulties? What sort of love does this labor express? Why might the practice of teaching be worth putting at the center of one's life?

One of the most stirring answers ever given to such questions appears in the last paragraph of Hannah Arendt's (1977) essay, “The Crisis of Education”:

Education is the point at which we decide if we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. (p. 196)

Cool Site

I just came across The Voice via the Teachers College Record. Videos share tidbits of scholarly research. Here's one with Bree Picower discussing her paper from TC Record called “Resisting Compliance: Learning to Teach for Social Justice in a Neo-Liberal Environment.”

Recommended Reading: Random Family

A friend passed along Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx to me. I can't believe I hadn't read it until now. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, along with the individuals and families she follows, share a shocking, real, gritty, eye-opening, and thorough story. I want to read more of LeBlanc's work.

USA Today: 'Random Family': Intentionally Shocking

Random Family, Leblanc's first book, is a seminal work of journalism, a brand of deep reporting rarely attempted anymore. It's written like a documentary, and LeBlanc makes no judgments about the lives she presents. Political spin, statistical analyses, blame and solutions are absent.
Instead, the author lets Coco, Jessica and assorted characters use their own voices to tell their stories. The reader is a witness. Nothing is glamorized or sanitized, not the rats, roaches, bad parenting or faulty reasoning.

NPR: Random Family

NY Times: In the Other Country

Most often when the lives of the urban poor are chronicled, it's within the confines of a few familiar genres: policy reports, sociological studies, newspaper stories about the impact of welfare reform or drug laws. It is rare to read about those lives as, for instance, family sagas, in which character and temperament and circumstance all jostle for our attention, and detail accretes into textured portraits of individuals. So it is partly, but only partly, the novelty of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's approach to the subject -- she spent 10 years hanging out with one hard-pressed, loosely defined family in the Bronx while she tracked its fate -- that makes this such an extraordinary book.

Little Kids, Big Hearts & Minds

Using Their Words features social justice projects from elementary school classrooms. Hurrah!

Making Room for Hope: Howard Zinn

I don't believe it's possible to be neutral. The world is already moving in certain directions. And to be neutral, to be passive, in a situation like that, is to collaborate with what is going on. And I, as a teacher, don't want to be a collaborator.

Have you watched Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train? If not, you must. Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, reminds us that to be neutral is to collaborate with the status quo. Many people, particularly teachers, argue that teachers must remain neutral. No one is neutral. Neutrality, lack of questioning, and lack of action equate to agreement and endorsement of the current state of affairs.

Zinn's People's History reinforces the fact that, as teachers, it is not only how we teach (and the inclusive and inquiry-based practices that guide us), but also what we teach. It is in what we teach that we are able to offer truth or lies of omission and de-emphasis. In the film, Zinn spoke of viewing history as creative--history can either help us to imagine a new future if it allows us to see glimpses of the ability to achieve this future in the past, or history can paralyze us--make us hopeless. History can uncover hidden resistances to power and awaken consciousness within us. Equally important, multiple histories can allow us to see situations from the viewpoints of others'. Zinn inspires me to remember how important it is, no matter how risky, to live in defiance to that which we believe is unloving, unjust, and wrong.

Teaching Resources:

• A People's History of the United States
• People's History: Teaching Edition
• People's History Graphic Novel
  
• Voices of a People's History
• A Young People's History of the United States
• The Zinn Education Project
• Howard Zinn's Website
• A People's History of the Classroom, Rethinking Schools

Definitely check out The Zinn Education Project above!

Summer Reading

Adventures in Peacemaking

Adventures in Peacemaking includes hundreds of hands-on, engaging activities designed to meet the unique needs of after-school programs, camps and recreation centers. The activities teach the skills of creative conflict resolution to school-age children through games, cooperative team challenges, drama, crafts, music and even cooking. The guide includes easy-to-implement strategies and tips for providers to both reduce conflict in their programs and to intervene effectively when conflict does occur. Parent Connection Handouts are also available for purchase through Educators for Social Responsibility.

Creative Conflict Resolution

This classic conflict resolution guide offers more than 20 proven conflict-resolution techniques. Examples and more than 200 classroom-tested activities and games provide constructive responses to your students' problem behaviors.

Becoming Educated and Habits of Mind by Deborah Meier

1. Evidence: How do we know what's true and false? What evidence counts? How sure can we be? What makes it credible to us?
2. Viewpoint: How else might this look if we stepped into other shoes? If we were looking at it from a different direction? If we had a different history or expectations?
3. Connections/Cause and Effect: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before? What are the possible consequences?
4. Conjecture: Could it have been otherwise? Supposing that? What if?
5. Relevance: Does it matter? Who cares?

Remember: The Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison has collected a treasure chest of archival photographs that depict the historical events surrounding school desegregation. These unforgettable images serve as the inspiration for Ms. Morrison"s text--a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of "separate but equal" schooling. Remember is a unique pictorial and narrative journey that introduces children to a watershed period in American history and its relevance to us today. Remember will be published on the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending legal school segregation, handed down on May 17, 1954.

Creating and Exploring Peace with Art

I have always believed that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

The opposite of life is not death, but indifference.

The opposite of peace is not war, but indifference
to peace and indifference to war.

The opposite of culture, the opposite of beauty, the opposite of generosity is indifference.

Elie Wiesel,
Nobel Peace Laureate

Resources for building peace:

• The Art in Peacemaking: A Guide to Integrating Conflict Resolution Education into Youth Arts Programs: amazing and free!
• Peace Games' Blog: tips & tools for teaching peacemaking
• Making Peace, Restoring Justice via What Kids Can Do: covers three successful examples of peacemaking in action
• Early Childhood Adventures in Peacemaking by William J. Kreidler and Sandy Tsubokawa Whittall

New Journal!

Eastern Michigan University's first issue of PowerPlay: A Journal of Educational Justice. It's online and free!

Economy & Education

On Bridging Differences, Deborah Meier comments concisely on what I agree with as the connection between education and the economy:

The connection between schooling and the economy interests me—but for different reasons than the usual PR-linkage (you’ll make more money). As long as there are jobs that pay poorly there will be “the poor,” but a well-educated underclass will have a better shot at defending their social and economic interests—as citizens. And a well-educated citizenry in general will give us a better shot at a healthy economy. Maybe. It depends on what we mean by being “well-educated.” And the latest headlines about 46 states joining together to decide year by year school curriculum (and tests) is not the way to decide this.

Will a better educated population alone change our economy? No, not if we still have low-paying jobs that pay salaries that can't make ends meet. If we neglect to teach about social issues, social justice, and social change in in our curricula, we run the risk of allowing underclasses to stay where they are. But perhaps this is in the best interest of many who make the policies and run our schools...

She continues:

The leaders of business and industry (of which there are not many left) may have messed up our economy, but they still have enough money left over to bring the same mindset to schooling. The masters of manipulating symbolic goods—money in all its varied forms—are now designing our schools with the same manipulative mindset.

But “if they work, Debby,” say a few of my critical friends, "why not?" But what do we mean by “it works?” Oddly enough, even on the measures they have chosen, the answer is, “they don’t.” But it wouldn’t convince me either way. How kids do on school tests that measure (at best) school learning is petty compared with…. It’s not a good stand-in for achievement. I want to see how those kids “produce”—the books they write, the movies they make, the cars they invent, the families they raise, the gardens they plant, the medicine they practice, the songs they sing, the fast train system they put into place, the better ways they show us to grow food, to produce energy, and on and on and on. I want to see graduates coming back to see us who are good cops, teachers, nurses, architects, furniture-makers, inventors of new products and new ideas. (And powerful, noisy, feisty citizens.)

Recommended Reading: Keeping the Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools

Plays for Young People

When I was younger, I acted in I Never Saw Another Butterfly - a play by Celeste Rapsanti based on the poetry of Jewish children from Terezin. I can still remember the words of the title poem:

I never saw another butterfly . . .
The last, the very last,
so richly, brightly, dazzling yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears sing
against a white stone . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly `way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it
wished to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto,
but I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me,
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live here in the ghetto.

I often think of the play and how it was simultaneously beautiful and horrific--wishing that I could see it again as an adult. The book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, highlights the art work and poetry of children in Terezin.

School for Designing a Society & Patch Adams

I'm currently researching Paulo Freire's concept of radical love in relation to teaching the arts, specifically in relation to facilitating applied theatre. Patch Adams, doctor, health care activist and clown, conducts a workshop called "What is your love strategy?"

His organization also pairs with The School for Designing a Society. Every school (for little kids and big kids) should have something like this. Amazing--I want to go!

The School for Designing a Society, established in 1991, is a project of teachers, performers, artists, and activists. It is an ongoing experiment in making temporary living environments where the question "What would I consider a desirable society?" is given serious playful thought, and taken as an input to creative projects.

Why a desirable society?

We want to address people: our neighbors and our distant neighbors who, living in the current social system, find that this system maintains itself at the expense of its members so that misery, poverty, hopelessness, violence, and human degradation are daily occurrences. Our social system tells us that human beings are the problem, and that it, the current system, is the solution. We have taken long looks at this system, and we do not want it. As any social system is humanly created, not natural, and is maintained daily by human action, we wish to create new social systems, and to change our daily patterns of action.

Why design?

Criticisms of the problems of the present society are often met with justifications. Once these justifications fail, many a conversation of hopeful intention is stopped with the (final) statement: "The present organization of society is the best we have", or the question: "Do you have a better idea?"

This is a moment of possibility and not one to be left speechless. Indeed, many a time, the respondent finds herself sputtering, filled with a spirit of rebellion which unfortunately gets watered down to the mere language of complaint.

Having had the time and opportunity to create--in conjunction with others of diverse experiences--detailed maps, dreams, plans, scripts, scores, videos, and blueprints of her desirable society, we imagine the situation could go differently.

Imagine an atmosphere of audacity: She's asked the question: "Do you have a better idea?" Everyone taking a coffeebreak looks at her or their shoes. She looks the interlocutor in the eye and reaches into her purse? knapsack? briefcase? kitchen drawer? for a booklet of proposals, slaps it on the table scattering cigarette butts, and answers: "Here, read this--this will give you an idea of what I want."

Missing Opportunities: Arts and Social Justice

On Community Arts Network, a San Francisco Public Health official offers her thoughts on the connection between arts and social change.

Artists not only document social change; they promote, inform, and shape it. Whether through music, plays, graphics, paintings, songs, films, media, architecture, textiles, jewelry, photography, poetry, sculpture, pottery, landscapes, written word, spoken word, dance – art is powerful. And it is San Francisco’s greatest, most cost-effective missed opportunity. For art is the intellectual underpinning of social change; nowhere is there more potential and more need for art than here and now.

Farewell, Augusto Boal

In loving memory of Augusto Boal, 1931-2009

Rio de Janerio, May 4, 2009:

Brothers and sisters in arms, companions in the struggle

Our beloved comrade Augusto Boal, that tireless sower of seeds, who travelled the four corners of the earth scattering the seed of the Theatre of the Oppressed, is on yet another journey. He set off in the early hours of the second of May. He spent the First of May, May day, in a vigil of solidarity with the workers fighting for a fairer and happier world, a world of solidarity.

He set off on this special journey, for which reason he was not able to be physcially present at any event. But, as was his habit, he lived,, loved and worked to the last drop of his energy, leaving ready (for publication) the new version of his book, The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. He also left express instructions that no event should be cancelled because of his absence. ’Isnt that the very point of Multiplication?“

Yesterday, on the third of May, we held a farewell ceremony . His cremation of his body marked the start of a new phase of the Theatre of the Oppressed, in the physical absence of the Master himself. We wept, we talked, we sang. Celse Frateschi declaimed, beautifully, a passage from Arena Conta Zumbi. We sang a song written bz Nuno Arcanjo. And Cecilia Boal, with all her strength and vitality, told the world that her husband should be remembered as the warrior that he always was. We dried our tears and acclaimed Boal,s leaving.

His body has gone, but not his presence! Probably, this Saturday, the 9th of May, we will ratify his presence with a homage, at the Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed. We will celebrate the life, the struggle, the productivity, the work of Augusto Boal and the continuity of that work.

It will not be easy to follow our Master, Partner, Friend and Comrade in the Struggle. But what has ever been easy in the trajectory of the Theatre of the Oppressed?

Ethics and Solidarity will be our foundations and our guides. Multiplication will be our strategy. And our goal will remain the mounting of concrete social actions to bring about the transformation of oppressive realities.

Viva Augusto Boal

Barbara Santos, 4 may 2009

CTO Rio

Lucia Brawley on Arts Education & Social Justice

Luci Brawley has a great article on Huffington Post about arts education: Mordecai's Metamorphosis: Why Arts Education is a Matter of Social Justice and Why it will Save the World.

My musician friend, Derrick Ashong - who was born in Ghana, raised between the U.S. and Middle East, went to Harvard, and now speaks internationally on the nexus of art, justice and peace - says:

People often forget that at it's heart, artistry is human communication taken to the highest possible levels. The power in art lies not only in its ability to inspire, but also in its capacity to expand the boundaries and quality of other forms of communication. The truly educated person does not consume art as a mean of diversion from the world but rather as a tool for learning how to better engage it.

Check out Part 2 of the article as well.

Looking for meaningful children's books?

The Jane Addams Childrens Book Awards are given annually by the Jane Addams Peace Association to children's books that promote peace and social justice. It's an excellent list of books. I know I often have trouble finding children's literature with a social justice foundation.

One book that caught my eye:

Poems to Dream Together=Poemas Para Soñar Juntos, written by Francisco X. Alarcón, illustrated by Paula Barragán, and published by Lee and Low Books, Inc., has been named an honor book in the Books for Younger Children category. In nineteen short and heartfelt poems in Spanish and English, Alarcón encourages and inspires us to dream alone and to work and dream together, as families and communities, in order to make our hopes for a better world come true. The stylized paintings of Paula Barragán colorfully extend and interpret the theme.

The World Becomes What You Teach

On Leaving the Theatre

Do not leave the theatre satisfied
Do not be reconciled
Have you been entertained?
Laughter that’s not also an idea
Is cruel

Have you been touched?
Sympathy that’s not also an action
Corrodes
To make the play the writer used god’s scissors
Whose was the pattern?
The actors rehearsed with care

Have they moulded you to their shape?
Has the lighting man blinded you?
The designer dressed your ego?

You cannot live on our wax fruit
Leave the theatre hungry
For change

Service-Learning and Human Rights Guide - Free!

Human Rights Education Associates has published Human Rights and Service-Learning: Lesson Plans and Projects. The lesson plans touch on five human rights topic areas: environment, poverty, discrimination, children's rights to education and health, and law and justice. The full text is available for free in a pdf format. It's very detailed, with some interesting concepts, lesson plans, and activities to pick and choose from.

Augusto Boal on World Theatre Day

March 27 is World Theatre Day. Augusto Boal writes the 2009 message. He comments: "Theatre is the Hidden Truth." Some excerpts below:

All human societies are “spectacular” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.
....

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.
....

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the “spectacle” which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.

Poverty, Education, Eco-Justice and More

The Winter 09 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy focuses on The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education. Mohammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and founder of the Grameen Bank, has written the prologue.

Poverty is not created by poor people; rather, it is created by institutions and policies that we have built up. In order to tackle poverty, we have to go back to the drawing board, and redesign our concepts, our policies, our institutions. My experience has taught me that poor people are as hard working, as talented as any other human beings. They are not lazy or unskilled or inefficient, as people tend to think. They just never get the opportunity to tap their own potential. An effective poverty reduction program is one that allows the poor person to unleash his or her potential. Microcredit is one way of doing that.

So is education. Yunus speaks about our acceptance of the idea that some people will always be poor. He argues:

What we want and how we get it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create a world in accordance with our frame of mind. We need to invent ways to change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our way of thinking. This is where education, one that encourages us to challenge conventional wisdom, can try to play a significant role. I believe even the biggest problem can be cracked by a small, well-designed intervention. That is where our creativity comes in.

Creativity does not only help us to invent solutions or well-designed interventions. The most important part of creativity is the important part it plays in our ability to imagine a different world--to imagine, to hope, and to believe that another way of being with people and with the world can exist. (This is why fostering imagination and creativity--via the arts, especially--is so important...rather than only encouraging and rewarding rigid adherence to existing routines and structures.)

Other interesting stuff:

In "Poverty and Class: Discussing the Undiscussible," John Korsmos encourages dialogue and listening to understand the experience of struggling community members. He asks: "What would happen if we knew each other?"

C.A. Bowers talks about "Rethinking Social Justice Issues Within an Eco-Justice Conceptual and Moral Framework," commenting on unspoken cultural commons that need to be addressed within curricula:

The starting point in a commons-oriented curriculum is to have students conduct a survey of their local cultural commons, as well as the aspects of the larger cultural commons that they have a right (in spite of past exclusions) to participate in. The survey should involve learning who the elders and mentors are, who the keepers of the community memory are, what forms of cultural commons activities exist—such as playing chess, painting, writing poetry, musical performances, gardening, working with wood and metal, volunteerism, and political action groups. In a word, the survey should cover the activities and relationships within the community that are less reliant upon a money economy—and that lead to the development of skills and interests that contribute to a less damaging ecological footprint.

And much more..