Tag: good

The Evil Question

Speak No Evil, See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Evil exists. I can’t speak to the broad evil outlined here, but the narrow definition of evil is real. In attempting to explain, I’m also attempting to avoid the supernatural bird’s nest of thinking that doesn’t serve the conversation.

Evil exists because we need the word. People take actions in the world toward which I would point and say, “That is evil.”

The difference, the frustration come in our willingness to too easily ascribe evil as the cause of most of those actions with which we disagree.

Suggesting that and expecting anyone in America can rise up from poverty given hard work and a firm grasp on their bootstraps is wrong. It is not evil.

Fostering hatred of the poor, the different, the other and advocating they be treated as less than and denied human and civil rights is evil.

Actions which result in the unintended oppression of others, the pain and suffering of your fellow humans are wrong. They deserve fitting consequences for the actor, and they are still wrong, not evil.

Actions made with malice and the intent of silencing, oppressing, and breaking the spirit of others are evil. Even if those actions fail to result in their intended effects, that does not make them any less evil.

Evil does not have to be effective to be evil.

We all carry some piece of it with us. I’ve always imagined that the horror I experience when I see man’s grossest inhumanity toward man is partially driven by my fear of such acts being perpetrated on me or a community to which I belong. Somewhere, splintered off in the dark part of my psyche, my horror is also driven by the possibility that I too could perpetrate such evil.

That is humanity, living with and recognizing the evil we could do to one another and actively working against it – choosing compassion, good, and empathy in both the big and little moments.

I do not know if I believe people are inherently good or inherently evil. It makes more sense, instead, to believe that each person holds within them the potential for unimaginable good or unimaginable evil and to stand back in awe of how good the vast majority of us actively choose to be each day.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Things I Know 242 of 365: Now is a teachable moment

The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.

– Gene Sharp

My brain has been playing the “What if…” game with #occupywallstreet since I learned about the movement as things were getting underway.

It isn’t a game of “What if the movement succeeds?” or “What if things get out of hand and go terribly wrong?”

It has been a game of “What if I were teaching right now?”

When I was in high school, Mrs. Henning-Buhr taught a class called Literature of the 60s and 70s. It was amazing.

In order to understand the texts of the time, we first had to learn the history of the time – a history we didn’t know existed as our American history class barely made it past WWII.

That semester was when I learned about The Chicago 8, Kent State, the 1968 Democratic Convention, Vietnam, and so much more

Though I know she had them, I don’t remember Mrs. Henning-Buhr ever pushing her views of the events on us one way or the other.

She gave us the space to examine the history and draw our own conclusions. Some of the richest debates of my high school career happened in that class as I listened to the evangelical Christians and the stoners argue what was “right” after both groups read the same texts.

I don’t want to be in the classroom right now in order to influence kids’ thinking one way or another about what’s going on in urban centers all over the country.

I want to be in the classroom right now to encourage kids to think one way or another.

In between sleeping and being a student, I’ve been clipping artifacts I’d use if I were designing a unit around #occupywallstreet.

First, I’d show this e-mail that showed up in my inbox yesterday declaring Netflix’s decision to stay, well, Netflix. We’d talk about it’s purpose and brainstorm whatever questions we could around what process led to that e-mail.

Then, we’d read this piece from the New York Daily News reporting FOX’s resurrection of Family Guy years after the show had been canceled. Our questions about the process would take their place alongside our questions about netflix.

Next, we’d read this piece by Cord Jefferson over at GOOD who took the time to sample and analyze the trends present at the #occupywallst tumblr. Again, questions.

Next, we’d take a look at John Titlow’s piece on ReadWriteWeb about Google handing oner a Wikileaks volunteer’s gmail data sans search warrant. If you’re not seeing the trend here, you’re not paying attention. More questions would line the walls.

Finally, we’d take a look at this note my friend David posted to his Facebook wall as an open letter to the Wall Street occupants. Again with the questions.

From there, we would devise a plan for finding answers to our questions. As more resources were uncovered, we’d tag, share or tweet them. Then again, maybe we’d come up with something better. As we amassed information in answer to our questions, we’d realize the need for someplace to put it all – a place to share the learning.

Every other day or so, we’d take a look at our answers, pause and attempt to draw some sort of connection between everything we’d found and begin to devise hypotheses of cause and effect. We’d write, record and talk – sharing everything and inviting comments from the world.

We would make meaning of history as it happened around us.

Not for the politics of it, but for the history, it is incumbent upon us to teach what is happening.

If our students join in, we must make certain they know why.

If they rally against, we must help them find their reasons.

If they propose a better way, we must help them inform their understanding.

#occupythought

Things I Know 200 of 365: I trust Liz Dwyer

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

– Edward R. Murrow

Liz Dwyer has given me some of the best and worst news I’ve ever received about education.
She’s pushed my thinking on as many issues around teaching and learning as any one other person in my life.
When I can’t sleep at night, she’s there to help keep my mind busy. When I need to make a point to friends, she’s got my back.
She even helped me raise money for college.
And we’ve never met.
Dwyer is the Education Editor at GOOD.IS.
Though I knew I was head-over-heels for Good’s print mag when I picked up their first issue, it took me a while to realize how much Dwyer’s online work meant to me.
I’ve got it now.
While every other online education writer is stuffed comfortably into the “EDU” folder of my feed reader, Dwyer sits in her own thread.
I needed to shut down my browser the other day. Rather than waiting for each of the dozens of tabs I had open across two monitors to find their ways back to their respective pages, I shut each one and decided what to bookmark and what to send into the ether of the Interwebs.
As I shut down, I started to take account of how many tabs marked content Dwyer had created or shared.
Final tally – 16.
No other online writer owned as much of my browser space.
With all of the world and its information at my disposal, this one writer had caught my attention at least 16 times in the last week to the extent that I felt the need to keep open and share what she had written.
I am reminded of visits to my grandparents when I would sit down to lunch and my grandmother would hand me a stack of newspaper clippings from stories she thought I would be interested in.
I’d inadvertently done the same with Dwyer’s work on the chance someone would ask me a relevant question, and I’d be able to share.
My generation will never have an Edward R. Murrow. Anderson Cooper might be as close as we get.
Tom Brokaw and the later Peter Jennings belong to my parents and grandparents.
Finding a voice or two in the din of neo-journalism’s protean nature that serve a reliable and constant purveyors of understanding and information is grueling.
I’m glad I’ve found Liz Dwyer.