The Seeds of Religious Intolerance Start Early

When you examine some of the worst atrocities of humanity, look back through history’s wars, and examine some of the major conflicts in today’s news, a common thread in these conflicts is religious intolerance.  I’m not a religious scholar and this isn’t a treatise on religion.  It is a recommendation based on an incident involving a group of young children of mixed faiths playing together on the playground.

The conversation started innocently enough when one of the youngsters made a reference to one of his Hindu Gods.  Another child quickly stated an opposing viewpoint due to her faith’s differing beliefs. In a matter of minutes, there was an all out name-calling, yelling, my-God-is-better-than-your-God rhetoric, threatening, fist waving, tussle brewing.  Thankfully, one of the older kids interjected and made everyone apologize before these friends damaged each other’s friendship irreparably.  Why do children as young as six years old already harbor so much intolerance for others’ beliefs?  Doesn’t this sort of intolerance lead to the wars and genocides we read about from history and in our newspapers today?  What can we do to foster tolerance of different ideas, religions, beliefs, etc.?  These are questions that came from our youngster after this disturbance.

What did we do?  First, we all agreed that these kids need to remain friends and learn to respect each other’s differences.  As a family, we watched Elizabeth Lesser’s TEDTalk entitled “Take the Other to Lunch”.  Elizabeth does a very good job of showing how much easier it is to accept a person’s differing beliefs if you get to know that person before passing judgement.  And from our observations, this kind of engagement must start in early childhood.  Otherwise, humanity may pay dearly with human lives lost in pointless conflicts.  We should be joining each other for lunch instead!

Watch Elizabeth Lesser’s Talk and tell us what you think.

An Important Lesson in Giving

The dining table is an important piece of furniture in a family.  It’s where we all meet to share conversation, enjoy meals, gather for big holidays, celebrate birthdays, etc.  The dining table  is the root of some of our fondest family memories. “Remember when Uncle Frank told that joke during dinner and Uncle Ralph laughed so hard coffee shot out of his nose?” “Remember Marcie’s first birthday party where she tried to eat her birthday candles?”

For a home learning family, the dining table also serves as a daily meeting spot around learning.  Instructional video creations, science projects, paper sculptures, model rockets, and writing projects took shape around the dining table.  So, it was a big deal when our family decided to upgrade the table and give the old table away.  Everyone in the family had an unspoken connection to the table and no one wanted to part with it at first.  However, it wasn’t in great shape  and a newer, bigger, stronger table presented itself for free.

We decided to give our old table away for free so as to benefit someone else.  We cleaned the table, carefully carried it out to the curb, put a nice big “free” sign on it, and looked upon it with great memories.  Our youngster had an especially difficult time with the idea of giving away such a central part of his young life until we turned the giving into a life lesson.

Lessons Learned

Empathy – Giving away something meaningful to benefit another is a powerful lesson in empathy.  The table, instead of tossed in the trash, has a new lease on life with the chance for another family to build memories and photos around it.  Perhaps the new owners couldn’t afford a table before, and this new table will allow them to sit together at dinner for the first time.

Reuse – Reusing used furniture items can reduce the demand for new item purchases.  A greener, more sustainable model for living in harmony with our environment calls for better stewardship of our resources, including trees and garbage dumps.

Perspective – “Stuff”, no matter how symbolic it is in our families, is just stuff.  It cannot replace or measure up to the human connections we have with each other.  It should never be placed on so high a pedestal that it interferes with what is truly important.  Understand the role that stuff plays in our lives, but don’t let it play the starring role.  The starring role in our lives belongs to our family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and global connections.  What better way to strengthen this connection than through giving?

The First Grader

A powerful new movie based on a true story about an 86-year old Kenyan man who wants to learn to read has just been released. Anyone passionate about learning should seek out a nearby theatre and make some time to see this movie. The old man seeks to attend first grade after the Kenyan government announces free education for all. Of course, the old man is unwelcome in a school that’s already overcrowded with young children.

The fact that this man has a burning desire to learn to read reminds us that free education is not available to everyone around the world. To him, learning is worth fighting for, regardless of who he has to confront. So, although the kids might balk at sitting through something like the First Grader, this is a film they really need to see. Learning is the key to everything, something many of us take for granted, and something that has the power to transform our lives.

Make a Difference with KooDooz

KooDooz.com is a creative, interactive service learning website where kids can contribute to social service challenges. Kid-friendly challenges have easily attainable milestones.  KooDooz provides a fun interface with clear step-by-step instructions on how to complete the challenges, and contributors earn community service hours that are tracked on the website.

Challenges range from making and selling bookmarks to raising awareness and money for literacy to roadside entrepreneurship.  If you’ve got a great idea for a challenge, there’s a way for you to recommend it, too.

Why is KooDooz important?

Consider the following points made on the KooDooz site:

• Relevancy in the classroom is extraordinarily low. Though Digital Natives respond best in peer-to-peer environments, schools continue to teach one-to-many. Additionally, too few schools are leveraging a resource kids care about most: social technology.
• Frustratingly, when technology is implemented in the classroom, the ever-increasing progress of available tools makes any one investment quickly outdated. Kids who are spending recreational time at the keyboard are better versed with technology advances than the teachers themselves.
• The passion points of kids in the context of learning through real-world engagement have not been widely available. 83% of all students (90% African Americans, 83% Hispanics, and 81% of whites) said they would definitely or probably enroll in service-learning classes if they were offered in their school.
• Kids who want to make a difference are quick to discover that there are unequal opportunities for civic engagement before age twenty.
• Though on average, kids have to fulfill 25 to 50 hours of community service in middle school and 40 to 100+ hours in high school before graduation, only a small number of program choices are typically offered.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is an educational video that demonstrates how the process of manufacturing, consumption, and disposal of stuff works, how it started, and how it is damaging not only our environment, but our culture.

Online Courses and Talks About Globalization and Sustainability

People connect to the world through the internet, and through it, people are changing the face of their governments and the world .   Forty Five percent of the world’s population connects to the internet through a mobile phone, and Google Translate is currently the most downloaded app on Apple’s iTunes store.  Emerging markets are growing around the world, but they’re taxing the world’s natural resources and contributing to vast environmental degradation.

What does this new connectivity and industrialization mean for the future of the world’s people? Global understanding and interdisciplinary studies can help children understand how to look at the big picture and make future decisions about politics, the environment, and technology with a global perspective.

Children who engage with the world through the internet have a responsibility to understand the world’s people, politics, environmental sustainability, population growth, and more.  We’ve found really great free online content provided by some of the best universities in the U.S.   Learn how the world works, why the world looks the way it does, why there’s more conflict in some parts of the world than others, and how to manage the world’s growth for generations to come.

• International Politics – Columbia University
• International Sustainability – Stanford University
• Sustainable Living Lecture Series – UCLA
• Global Population Growth – Yale
• TED Talks about Sustainability
• Globalization Talks from BigThink
• Faith and Globalization – Yale
• Mozilla: Community-Based Organizations – Stanford

Hunger, Obesity and Learning About Food

President Obama recently signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act that will help schools gain access to higher quality food for school lunches.  Perhaps this is a start, but we think simply learning about the issue and the choices are where we need to start.  Hunger and obesity are problems with the world population, in general. As obesity is taking its toll on the average American life span and the American lifestyle is spreading itself around the globe, the hungry are exchanging their hunger for obesity.  To learn more about the issues and solutions, we turned to TED.com, where there are dozens of different amazing insights and perspectives on this issue.  In fact, Jamie Oliver won the 2010 TED prize and here is his wish:

I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

Take a few hours out of your day and help children learn about the factors contributing to obesity,  hunger and the novel solutions popping up around the world.

Rethinking Food TED Talks Video Playlist

View PlayList

The playlist contains the following videos:

Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

Ellen Gustafson: Obesity + hunger = 1 global food issue

Birke Baehr: What’s wrong with our food

Mark Bittman: What’s wrong with what we eat

Michael Pollan: The omnivore’s next dilemma

Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?

We think this is a pretty good list, but what do you think?  Let us know about any videos we should add to our YouTube playlist.  Just add a comment with a link to the video and we’ll consider adding it.  Thanks!

Homeschooling Legalization in India a Bright Spot in Global Learning

Photo courtesy of Jon Hurd

Lately, homeschooling has been pretty much outlawed in some parts of the world (Germany and Sweden being two notable examples), and hope for a global reboot of institutionalized education was waning.   According to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a non-profit advocacy organization that defends and protects parents’ rights to direct their children’s’ education, the Indian Human Resource Development Minister released a statement declaring homeschooling legal in India.  The Minister clarified that the government was only interested in ensuring that schools existed, not that India required compulsory attendance to any of them.  What a refreshing philosophy!

The Times of India Pune Edition published a great article on Indian homeschooling.  The Times of India article quoted one homeschooling parent as saying:

“Tests and Exams are harmful to the spirit and are of no use at all . . . We are not learning for a test or an exam but for life itself.”

As noted in the HSLDA article regarding India, with over 1 billion people and one-third of them under the age of fourteen, India has a tremendous opportunity to innovate in the education space for the good of its people and for the world.

Check out (and join!) The India Group for Homeschoolers and Alternative Education Facebook Group or check out these India homeschooling websites for more information and ideas, thoughts, etc. Indian homeschoolers are sharing.

• Alternative Education India
• Homeschool India Trips
• Wikipedia – Homeschooling in India

Support Social Change Through Music

Most homeschoolers are extremely lucky.  Homeschooled children have flexible schedules and the opportunity to immerse themselves in their interests and passions, especially music.  Many children around the world and in the U.S., aren’t so fortunate.  Since large numbers of children, especially underprivileged children, don’t have the same opportunities for musical expression in school as homeschoolers enjoy (due to funding cuts in arts programs at public schools), expensive cultural programs are out of reach for many children.  José Antonio Abreu, 2009 TEDPrize winner, had his TED wish granted in 2209 and is on course to create social change through music.  As founder of El Sistema, a wildly successful youth orchestra program for underprivileged children in Venezuela, Mr. Abreu announced to the world that he wished to spread the ideas of El Sistema to the United States and beyond.

Through generous donations, a new youth music program is close to becoming a reality in Atlanta this year!  Dantes Remeau, an Abreu Fellow graduate and a shining star, is currently raising funds to pay for instruments and music for youth in Atlanta.   He is a serious and gifted musician ready to provide serious music students with an opportunity to transform themselves through music.

So, what does this have to do with us if we don’t live in Atlanta?  Plenty.

This is the beginning of a model poised to spread across the U.S. It would be a tragedy if the U.S. population was so apathetic about the arts that we won’t support the program with a modest donation.  Most working Starbucks-drinking individuals can forgo two fancy venti Frapp-whatever drinks this week and donate the savings to this cause.
* It’s funded through the generosity of engaged citizens, not schools (which have cut these programs), so you decide whether it has value, not a school.

* Students attending this and future El Sistema-inspired programs are your neighbors, community members, and maybe even your children.

* It’s not somebody else’s program, its yours.

The Atlanta Music Project is raising funds through Kickstarter.com, and you or your homeschooler can donate as little as $15.00

Donate!