Teaching Peace?

I’ve been wondering lately about that one, about whether it is possible (it better be possible, or what would I have studied for and be working for and be dreaming for? Yeah, it better be, but is it?). Don’t get me wrong—I do believe that children can be encouraged to look at conflicts positively, encouraged to empathize more and judge less, given the tools to resolve the conflicts they face non-violently, and above all, helped to grow into happy, healthy adults who feel no need for violence. Yes, I do believe all of that.

But it’s a blind, hopeful kind of belief. Do I believe it because I have seen its results, or do I believe it simply because I want to? A little of both, I think. I have seen its results on a personal level, so I believe it. But at the societal level? There, I think it’s more that I really want to believe or else I would lose all hope, so I believe it. I guess we haven’t had enough, conscious peace education for there to be empirical evidence of its success. Or if there is some, I just haven’t come across it yet.

Ironically, the book that most convinces me that education for peace is possible is one called “Education for death.” A book about the Nazi system of education, going all the way through school and college, beginning right from the maternity homes where single, pregnant women who could certify that their child was “Pure Aryan” lived under the government’s care (what we now call “illegitimate” children were then known as “children of the State” and treated accordingly). This book is a scary read, yet very hard to put down. I read it cover-to-cover in one day, and I had nightmares that night.

But they were strange nightmares. While I was asleep, I didn’t even realize that it was a nightmare; that realization came only when I awoke. The dream, in brief was this: I am standing by the roadside, watching people around me getting killed, and I feel nothing. No fear, no sympathy, no emotion. Nothing. That’s what I mean when I say it wasn’t a nightmare while asleep, only when I woke up did I realize just what a horrible nightmare it was, this feeling nothing.

The book was published in 1942, at the height of Hitler’s power. The author was an American educator who had somehow managed access to Nazi schools before the war began. Throughout the book, and especially in the epilogue, the author’s panic is obvious. One sentence from that book has stayed with me: “They say that nationalism can’t be taught; well, Hitler is teaching it. He is creating fanatics, can we at least create believers?” Of course, this book itself talks in the context of the 2nd world war era, and the author is looking for ways to teach “democracy and freedom,” apart from nationalism, to American students. But it isn’t the specific value that interests me in the light of my work; it is the belief in the sheer power of education.

Hitler successfully used education (amongst other forms of propaganda) to teach war and hatred. Super-systematically, too; I remember examples of Math questions like “If there are currently X number of Germans and Y number of Jews in Germany, and if the Jews are multiplying at the rate of Z, how many years before the Jews take over Germany?”. It doesn’t matter what those figures are like or whether they are accurate—the point is that it’s an utterly twisted but pretty brilliant form of persuasion. Again, Hitler could teach war so effectively; we should be able to teach peace at least as effectively. He does, at least, attest to the power of a well thought out educational system… I can’t believe I think there’s anything to be learned from Nazi education, but it does reassure me that education is very powerful. What we do with that power, then, is where the battle lies.

So, Hitler created fanatics for his cause; can we at least create believers for ours?

PS:

Just in case the last few posts make it seem like I have no life beyond work, I want to tell you that
a) It's true. I don't, really. Even though I work part-time. Kind of sad, huh?
b) It's not entirely true. I started going for a pottery workshop near my house this weekend. Felt rather spoiled, being used to an electric wheel at SUA and all... came home sore from all the kicking at the manual wheel. But still, it was good to get my hands (and clothes and sneakers and everything else) dirty again. And to realize that once you learn to work with clay, you don't forget (I was afraid I had). I mean, sure, you can forget specific techniques, but your hands develop a certain memory-- centering clay, for instance, isn't something I think about now. It just happened. Kind of like riding a bicycle, I guess. Or the way you can't forget how to float/ swim once you learn (OK, I know one person who did, but she's just weird! ;)). Interesting, isn't it, this way that the body has of developing a certain memory? I'm fascinated by the human body!

That's all! Just adding a little disclaimer so I seem like a real person not just a worker! :)

Since I told you all (or is it just Wendy? :P) about that workshop-y dilemma, I feel I should fill you in on what happened during the workshop... so here's parts of an update i send everyone at work about possibly the msot powerful workshop I have facilitated!

As many of you know, I am currently doing a pilot of a “Creative Writing for Personal and Social Change” module with a group of 11^th std. students. It’s basically a workshop where we use the lens of creative writing to explore some of the same issues that we tackle in FMTW (Self-exploration, identities and stereotypes, verbal and non verbal communication, etc.). There are also some specific sessions on “Point of view” (examining how stories change depending on whose point of view they are told from) as well as a short one on politics of language (using a short memo from Nazi Germany to look at how language can be used to dehumanize).

This Monday, we were supposed to do characters and identities… but after Saturday’s blasts, I felt unable to just go on as normal, pretending that nothing had changed in the interval between the two workshops. So I pushed identities back by a day and did “Point of view” and “Building empathy” on Monday. Over the weekend, I was able to find several powerful write-ups: an HT Sunday editorial called “Please, let me be moved” (talking about how the author cannot fully comprehend a tragedy like the Bihar floods unless it is scaled down to individual experiences), an Indian Express story about the blasts that was starting to tell the stories of some of the individuals who were affected, some really powerful poetry written after September 11, and a letter that the parents of one Sept 11 victim sent to the media about how they didn’t want the USA to respond with more violence and inhumanity.

We started the session by writing “letters to the universe,” drawing upon a personal experience of loss, and helping the universe to heal. The sharing was very intense—some cried, some were silent, and some spoke powerfully about the death of a sibling, a pet’s death, losing a friend, parents getting divorced. We then used all this material to talk about loss in the context of the Delhi blasts, the Bihar floods, and the violence in Orissa… making the connection that, if this (their writing) is what one loss feels like, what do the tragedies mean now?

Before the workshop began, I was a little nervous about the design… it was put together just on Sunday, and I wasn’t sure how the kids would respond to a sudden change in syllabus (they had all brought stories from the previous day and we were supposed to work on those). But I needn’t have worried. Clearly, they wanted to talk about what had happened… many expressed fear or insecurity, one girl talked about her experience of the chaos in CP (she was there when the blasts happened), and many others talked about friends/ family who were supposed to be there at the time but cancelled for some reason. Quickly, that conversation led to a questioning of what the experience must have been like for those who were there… and for the people who knew them (the Sept. 11 poems—especially one called “first writing since” helped make the emotional experience more immediate). One boy talked about how he also wanted to know what the experience must be like for the bombers; he wanted to know their stories and their reasons for doing something like this. We had an incredible conversation about how “it’s hard to hate someone when you know their story,” and the kids are now going to write about human stories behind violence and loss (and that boy is writing from the perspective of the bombers!). They are basically going to respond to the editorial “Please, let me be moved” with a series of essays/ stories/ poems called “Please, sir, be moved.” At the end of Monday’s workshop, the children thanked me in a way that they never had before… I realized, then, how important that particular workshop had been for them as well as for me.

I guess the main reason I came away so moved was that I realized adolescent need to talk about these issues; in general, they seemed to want to talk about them… but they didn’t have the space to do so in school. I realized just how powerful the simple question “What is the human story behind the statistics?” was for them, and how it was already something at the back of their mind somewhere… they just needed someone to ask it and give them a few examples to start thinking about it collectively. I guess it made the work we do so much more meaningful for me personally.

So, all in all, the experiment worked!

Teaching peace in the wake of the blasts

Now that I have had time to begin getting my mind around what happened in New Delhi yesterday, and has been happening all over the country and world for a long time, I have started thinking about tomorrow's workshop. I'm smack in the middle of my "Writing for Change" workshop series, and tomorrow we were supposed to talk about storybook characters, identities, and stereotypes, apart from workshopping stories of learning moments. We just finished brainstorming about it all on Friday, and lots of students were excited about the stories they would bring to the table (well, the floor; we don't have tables in our workshop space!).

Then, the bomb blasts happened.

I cannot go back tomorrow and act if nothing changed. I cannot resume workshop as normal. I cannot even just do the symbolic moment of silence and then move on with the preset design.

At the end of James' "Cultures of learning" class in my last semester at SUA, I wrote a short essay about including children's lives in the classroom, about letting the world in. I wrote it from the points of view of many different themes we touched, and I do not remember very much about the essay except that it convinced me that any successful, meaningful classroom has to let the world in. I have to let the world in.

Of course, i try to do that anyway. The workshops are structured so as to include students' lives as much as possible, to use a discussion abotu characters to talk about stereotypes, to use a discussion abotu point of view to talk about opression and marginalization. Stuff like that. The world is definitely a part of this writing workshop.

But, right now, I'm talking about a more urgent sense of letting the world in. I'm talking about processing and dealing with what happened this weekend.

After hearin the news yesterday, I messaged several of my colleagues and friends, asking after their families, and sending them love. With only one exception, everyone who replied said, "Everything's fine!" and asking me about mine. My family is OK too but I couldn't say "Everything's fine!". Because, of course, it isn't.

I am guessing that will be the overwhelming mood in the workshop tomorrow as well... unless someone there lost someone they know in the blasts, many will respond that everything's fine, that they were not affected by these blasts. But if I leave it at that, I will defeat the whole purpose of the intervention-- showing them that we are all affected, that these common spaces are our spaces too, and that we cannot isolate ourselves from one another's pain (incidentally, the only person who replied to yesterday's message saying "I can't talk right now, it's all too depressing" was the woman who founded the organization I work for).

So I'm now struggling to redesign tomorrow's workshop. I think of writing and drama as uniquely placed to build empathy... I need to draw upon that power now. I think of writing as uniquely placed to process emotions and regain a sense of control... I need to draw upon that as well. I've spent all morning reading about how different educators in the USA responded to September 11 in their classrooms. I can't find any Indian resources on responding to such incidents (ironic, given that we have experienced terrorism for decades befroe the average American heard of it... why have we not worked enough on building capacities for peace?). I don't know how, exactly, to design an adequate workshop session for tomorrow, but I will do something towards that end, even if it keeps me up all of tonight.

It is a little scary though. What if there emerge emotions and ideas that I am not equipped to deal with? What if I am unable to come up with something that works, and thereby end up cuasing more harm than good... getting them all upset about the blasts but not in any way empowering them to speak out for peace? What if they simply get irritated that I am not sticking to the syllabus I had promised them and I lose the ability to carry the group along?

I don't know.

But here's what I do know: I can live with having worked really hard on this fresh workshop design structure and failing to deliver it well enough. I cannot live with not even having tried.

So, kids, tomorrow we'll still talk about "point of view" in our writing, but I'm afraid you are in for a surprise in terms of what we actually talk about!

Serial blasts in Delhi

I had a lot to write about this afternoon-- stuff I thought was important. Then, just as I was sitting down at my desk to write, my grandmother called. She knew I had been out most of the day and was panicking. Bomb blasts in 3 major markets in New Delhi this afternoon-- 2 that I frequent. Everyone is still n... different news channels have completely different reports of number of blasts and number of casualties. But there seem to have been at least 5 blasts, killing at least 18 people. Now, just keeping one's fingers crossed and praying that neither of those numbers goes up.

Each time one of these things happen, the world turns upside down for a while. Sent out about 30 phone messages... asking after people and their families, telling people who didn't yet know about the blasts to stay home and take care. But other than that, felt helpless. What can you do? What can I do? Except wait and watch?

Nothing I wanted to write about before this news feels important anymore. Or... it does. But I don't want to write about it. Not today, not now. Maybe later. Writing about other things, as if nothing happened today, feels like a sacrilege. Is this why we honor such mishaps moments of silence... by stopping for a moment, by letting this be the most important thing that happened even if just for that moment?

I finally got too depressed watching the news over and over so swtiched to some music thingy Mom wants to watch. What's the point of following this minute-by-minute? And yet, i feel guilty for not doing so. I feel guilty continuing with work or doing anything else right now... I'm more ok sitting around in a daze because that, in some weird way, feels like a moment of mourning. I need to mourn.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to telling you the stories I hoped to tell today. Maybe tomorrow I'll pretend life is back to normal. But I hope I don't forget the moments during which it isn't normal... and the fact that it will never again be normal for at least 18 families. My heart goes out to you all, and although I don't know you, I am sending you lots of love, prayers, and positive energy. Let's hold together...

Learning to blink

A visit to my eye doc today revealed something that both annoys and fascinates me immensely, so thought I'd share.

Over the last few weeks (especially but perhaps not only) after my recent surgery, I'm finding that my mornings are ok but my vision tends to blur and the eye starts hurting by the evening. Right after doing anything invasive to a graft, all those kinds of things become concern areas (on a constant lookout for early telltale signs of graft rejection), so brought this up at the doctor's today. He checked for rejection, lack of healing, wounds reopening blah blah blah and everything was normal. But my complaints persisted.

After being flummoxed for a while, he started asking questions about what helps the vision get back to normal when this happens and which time of the day it happens... until he finally hit upon the problem: I'm not blinking.

Here's how it goes: during transplants, the nerve endings always get cut, and while other healing is relatively quick, nerves take a long time to reconnect, if they ever do (3 1/2 years after my skin graft on the arm, I still can't feel heat or cold in that area... somehow I hadn't made the connection that the same thing could happen to the eye). So, my eye doesn't register the slight burning sensation that occurs when you haven't blinked in a while.It isnt something you think about in a normal eye: the eye registers dryness and you blink as a reflex... about every 5 seconds, apparently. My eye doesn't register the dryness and so I don't blink until the eye gets really dry and hurts a lot and messes up my vision.

Why do I find that fascinating? Well, think about it. No medication can help this particular problem, and none is needed either. All I need to do is blink. Blink every 5 seconds, and this part of my problem should be fine. Sounds so astonishingly simple to fix. But is so incredibly difficult. How on earth can anyone remind themselves to blink every five seconds of every day? It's one of those moments when I simply marvel at the human body. But also find myself stuck in what I can only describe as a cruel riddle: how do you learn to do something that you do unconsciously, when your unconscious mind doesn't register the need to do it but your conscious mind knows it to be vitally important?

I'll give out a prize for the most creative solution!

I have nothing to write about, really. Am just bored and fidgety and decided to do this instead of annoying my mother or keeping my dog awake against her will. Ain't I nice?

So, in some totally random reading i was doing just now, i found the following sentence by a certain Julian Barnes: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." I don't know why, exactly, but I'm thinking about this sentence, trying to wrap my mind around it because I understand what he's saying. Not about God, though. I don't miss God. But I do miss other things that I don't believe in either. Like perfect people. I miss the people I once (long ago!) looked up to as absolutely perfect, too good to be true. Most of them were teachers, but some were friends or other random people I met. I'd think they were so perfect, and so I'd try getting to know them further and deeper... only to find, of course, that they aren't perfect. And yet I miss thinking that they were. I also miss being completely at home somewhere. Again, I dont know if I ever have been that... maybe in my early childhood in the mountains, but at least since I was seven, home was always "here but there too"... the particular heres and theres have changed several times and gotten more convoluted over the years, but both have always existed. And still, I miss being completely at home somewhere.These are two of many examples that come to mind, but there are many more... and they form a certain sense of loss... of having lost something that doesn't exist. It isn't a bad feeling, just a sort-of emptiness... actually, that guy put it well... it's like missing something. Makes you feel a little empty at its absence but also makes you smile at its memory. Bittersweet.

I also miss a part of myself that may never have existed... or perhaps she has for a few moments or days here and there, not much more. Should I describe her to you? She's the part of myself that I like thinking of as writerly, although she may not actually be writing. She's someone very closely in touch with the natural world... someone who remembers the joys of my childhood by the river and trekking through mountains, someone who hasn't lost touch with all that. She is humble and gentle because how can one not be if one is so closely in touch with nature, especially with nature on a scale as majestic as the Himalayas? (Sarah Wider pointed out teh the root of the word "humble" derives from the Latin hummus-- earth. She also pointed out that this may be the root of the phrase "being down to earth"). She's also closely, deeply in touch with other people and their stories. She knows the power of imagination. She wakes up every morning believing in the beauty of the people and the world and the work that she does. don't know if that me has ever existed; I know she hasn't existed for more than a few hours or, at most, a couple of days at a time. But I miss her. I feel that same bittersweet emptiness mixed with nostalgia without her.

Haha, I'm not making any sense, am I? Oh well, as I warned you right in the beginning of this post, I had nothing in particular to say, was just shaking of fboredom and fidgetiness. I'm ready to go do something a little more useful with my evening now!

What a two weeks since I last blogged!

First, went to Shimla for the long weekend. For my non-Indian readers, Shimla is a hill town about 8 hours from Delhi. I spent my babyhood in Shimla, and my mom has spent many years of her life there, having gone to school there as well as lived there for many years later. We both needed to get away from Delhi for a few days, and we both absolutely love the HImalayas, so a trip that side was decided upon.

I did have my doubts, though. One keeps reading about how Shimla has gotten so touristy and dirty and everything. Which it has-- parts of it. But, I found to my great delight, many of the roads in Shimla are still non-motorized and construction is prohibited there. So, if you know where to go (and fortunately not that many tourists do know!), you can come across many beautiful walks through pine forests and old, colonial buildings. Like going back in time. It was such a lovely break from work and the city and everything.

I got back to Delhi on the 18th, all charged up for work again... but only ended up being in office for two days. On Wednesday, another stitch broke in my eye, the area around got septic, and I went into surgery on Thursday. More weird stuff happened during the operation; i'll skip the gory details, but I basically landed up in bed and lots of pain for the next 5-6 days. Lots of sleep, lots of painkillers (the doctor even prescribed me wine! I don't like wine, but i must admit that i felt like i were in one of those old English novels where they do things like that and it felt rather cool... i have never been prescribed wine before!), lots of pampering. But no, not much fun. I was glad to open the eyes again a week later. Am still dealing with some discomfort, but believe the worst is over.

Illness makes me think. And dependence makes me humble. When was the last time you exclaimed with joy at eating a whole meal by yourself? When was the last time you boasted to your mother (or anyone!) that you got out of bed and brushed your teeth all by yourself? And if you even remember a time when you did, do you remember the last time someone took you seriously when you said that? Well, try a few days without opening your eyes or doing anything, really, because of the pain. Suddenly, little everyday acts become achievements, milestones on the road to recovery. Kind of cool, actually. Don't get me wrong, I'm not romanticizing dependence-- it's one of my worst nightmares!-- but it does have its upside.

Being ill is also such a wonderful excuse to catch up with friends you haven't seen in a while. I was really glad of the chance to have visitors and touch base on where our lives have gone since we all started working and got too busy for our too-long phone calls and regular coffee dates. One friend in particular, whom I have known since I was seven, suddenly became so much closer and more comfortable to talk to because of the way he was there when i most needed him to be. I guess that's the other upside-- after each such episode, I come out with a clearer and deeper sense of gratitude and love for all the amazing people I call my friends.

Oh well, despite those upsides, i'm glad the last two weeks are over now. Back at work from today, and thinking how I can NOT afford to fall sick again, at least till November. There's just too much to be done, and i don't have time to waste in bed anymore. Universe, are you listening?