Perhaps it was a mistake to pick Refugee, by Alan Gratz for our family “listen-aloud”. It is tearing a hole in my heart, as the tales of 3 children are mingled together through time and space, as they escape atrocities in their homeland. The book said it was appropriate for 9-year olds, but I feel that I may have chosen an audiobook that is too harrowing and intense for my daughter to take in. Even though this is a work of historical fiction, goodness knows its desperately painful and cruel moments were truthful for many people who underwent the moral crises of the Holocaust, the Cuban exodus of 1994 and the more recent Syrian refugee crisis. Luckily, in some aspects, my daughter is unaware of history, and she just finds the story gripping; however, my feeble heart is retching with sadness and compassion, especially when I think about the immigrants in the American detainment centers, with children in cages separated from their families and this talk of wall-building to keep out “caravans of criminals” that are marching toward the American border. I have to wonder if we have no soul left in our politicians and if our societies will move toward extremism, trying to “eradicate” these despairing individuals from within their borders.

Voltaire once said:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

 

And as I consider the research and work of Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, there is a reason to be optimistic. Education, with increasing literacy rates, has played an important role in subduing violence in society, and the trend, despite what the newsfeed may tell us, is that the world is becoming a more peaceful place as access to books is giving us a chance to inhabit each other’s minds and gain insights into new perspectives and cultural realities.  Our hearts are growing alongside our brains and evolving to become more empathetic. Clearly, as I read the book Refugee, I am embodying this experience and can definitely testify the impact of this book on my mind and spirit, so I can only guess that, despite my daughter’s ignorance of the specifics of these situations, she is opening her mind to the point of views of others and the resilience of the human spirit.

Moreover, my daughter, like so many of children her age, are now encountering the Flynn Effect, in which our kids are literally getting smarter with each passing decade with increased IQ scores and an improved ability to reason. This is great news because smarter people do less cruel things and engage in more humane actions. Furthermore, our perspective is shifting on a global scale from this “eye for an eye” mentality, in which violence now is becoming a problem to be solved, rather than looking at each other’s interests as a contest to be won. It is only a matter of time, in which sustainability is no longer a fringe ideal but a Science and Design norm, in which elements of our societies come into a shared understanding of the importance of developing our economies to move into alignment with these values.  What I find especially heartening is that even in developing nations, the IQ gap is closing between those countries and developed countries. This is a global epidemic and, in my opinion, an exciting time to be alive and be in education, as we move into new educational paradigms.

But in my mind, we can set an intention to escalate this transition to greater equanimity and more intelligent thought. As our process of educating young children improves, placing greater emphasis on creativity and critical thought, a direct and compounding effect will occur in the children’s brain, which in turn creates new ways of thinking and problem-solving. However, it can’t only be the methods and tools that improve, the content that we teach to children must improve as well. I don’t think all knowledge is created equal–I think there are certain concepts that deserve more attention than others. With that in mind, teaching the UN’s Sustainable Goals (SGDs) need to be a part of our Programme of Inquiry. If we, as educators, have a true desire to promote greater well-being and peace in our world, then we have a responsibility to advocate for focusing our academic attention towards these 13 goals, and even if we can’t “cover” all of them, making an effort, no matter how small, is a first start in evolving our school’s mission.

There is no more powerful transformative force than education—to promote human rights and dignity, to eradicate poverty and deepen sustainability, to build a better future for all, founded on equal rights and social justice, respect for cultural diversity, and international solidarity and shared responsibility, all of which are fundamental aspects of our common humanity.
—Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO

I know for many schools, PYP coordinators are beginning to prepare a “POI Review” around this time. Instead of just thumbing through IB documents and asking if your POI is transdisciplinary enough, be asking if what the students will be learning is actually going to make a difference in the world–does it connects to any of these goals? And if not, why not?–and How might we change that? There is no reason why we can’t be harbingers of peace through our academics. And, I’d like to add, that making these goals front and center, I believe, will naturally steer our programmes into more transdisciplarity.

It is my desire for us to go deeper in our learning, not just in our pedagogical practices but in the very context of what we are learning. If we can do that, there is no doubt that there will be hope, peace and greater understanding in our near future because we made it so.