Culture
Educational Evolution
by Heidi Harmony Cohen-Wolff
Have you ever closed your eyes and envisioned a totally peaceful planet? Perhaps this vision includes no wars, clean air and water, flourishing flora, a thriving ecosystem, and all beings living in harmony. As adults, we sometimes begin to lose faith in this dream and become apathetic and undetermined. We believe that it’s out of our hands and the next generation will have to pick up the slack.
A picture perfect world such as this may be impossible to obtain during our lifetime. However, by recognizing the collective impact of our individual choices, we can create a planet more closely resembling this vision. After all, don’t we owe it to our children to strive toward that goal?
Many of the same people who hold this vision for peace simultaneously prevent it through such everyday actions as driving cars that run on fossil fuels, eating hamburgers that come from factory farmed animals and tossing our food containers in the garbage. On the other hand, when we attempt to live in alignment with the fact that we are all intricately connected and each action we take affects the whole, we step into responsibility for our roles.
However, we can’t entirely blame the people. Big business, the government, and the mass media are really to blame, as they are all intertwined with something to gain and pockets to line. They’ve done their best to prevent consumers from truly seeing the consequences and real cost of their buying choices and addictions.
How does all of this affect the health and wellbeing of our children? If we look at the nutritional education in our school systems, we find corporate influence and outdated educational materials. Alternatives are out there, such as The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s plant-based food pyramid which is clearly not being used in our school system. Instead, if you visit a typical school cafeteria, you’ll find a menu laden with fat, sugar, preservatives, and very few, if any, healthy options. Perhaps this explains why we’re seeing so much childhood obesity, diabetes, and confused and misinformed children.
Some say that our world is in a crisis and we are at the brink of either destruction or rebirth. Many mystics have predicted that we are currently stepping into an auspicious era which requires us to commit our lives to ahimsa, (Sanskrit for non-violence), in order to begin an extraordinary acceleration of awareness.
Isn’t it time our educational system evolves to match this rise in consciousness? One of our most crucial tasks to assist this shift is to help awaken children and lead them to make compassionate choices. One of the most beautiful instruments that we hold today to help create this shift is a form of learning that has emerged called Humane Education.
Offered to hundreds of schools across the country as semester-long electives, after-school programs or one-day presentations, Humane Education focuses on teaching in a manner that is thought provoking and emotionally uplifting. It offers curricula based on critical thinking instead of fact regurgitation, competition, and test preparation.
“Humane Education is paving the road to a brighter future and helping to change the dangerous course we are on,” says Zoe Weil, the founder of the Institute for Humane Education. Weil began implementing this form of teaching in classrooms in 1987 to “help create a humane, sustainable, peaceful world for all people, animals and the planet.” The program has grown to offer educators training, certification, and a Master’s Degree in Humane Education.
Humane Educators are instilling thousands of children in the U.S. and Canada with responsibility, curiosity, and reverence to inspire positive solutions in our world.
They enable students to address relevant pressing issues such as global warming, factory farming, world hunger, and prejudice, to name a few.
One hands-on exercise, called “Whale’s Stomach,” involves the teacher dumping the contents of a garbage bag on the floor. The bag contains such objects as 35 feet of rope, pieces of rubber, plastic utensils, cups, soda bottles, and a one-gallon jug. Students are asked what they think all of these items have in common. After the students guess, the teacher reveals that a similar collection of items was found in the stomach of a whale that washed up on a North Carolina beach. It was determined that the presence of these items caused the whale’s death. Students then take the items to their desks to examine in groups whether each item is recyclable or reusable and how we could have prevented these things from ending up in the ocean. A class discussion follows on how we can diminish the trash we produce and use it in more ecological ways.
Humane Educators don’t tell students which decisions to make, but they teach them that their choices matter. By empowering students to examine their impact as consumers, they discover the true role of their dollar in representing their values.
In addition to classroom exercises, students are encouraged to take responsibility through caring for rescued animals, recycling, composting, and gardening at school with hopes that they will take these values home.
Other activities include role-playing, outdoor games, guided visualizations, and student involvement in community service and volunteer projects. There may be field trips to Holocaust museums and animal rescue sanctuaries and other places which inspire empathy and enable youth to examine fairness, justice and rights for all cultures and species.
What else can compare to seeing a child have an epiphany after planting a seed of inspiration? As children gain self-dignity, self-esteem, and the belief that their actions truly count, they blossom into enlightened beings. They feel alive when they take responsibility as their innate ability to care is nurtured. Young people who have been offered Humane Education in age-appropriate ways become agents of change. They are stewards of the earth who make kinder, more respectful decisions that better themselves and the world in which they live.
For more information on Humane Education, go to www.humaneeducation.org. Heidi Harmony Cohen-Wolff is a Holistic Health Practitioner, dancer, vegan caterer and animal activist. She is working to launch a Humane Education program in San Diego with The Animal Protection and Rescue League. To get involved, contact her at healingvegandancer@yahoo.com.