Discussing Terrorism With Students

How do you talk with students about Paris, Beirut, Mali or any acts of terror and violence, or whenever something dreadful happens and you feel frightened or pissed off?  You might feel numb, scared, mute. You might want to cry out for revenge, or cry out to stop the killing. All understandable. All emotion is understandable. But what do you do with it? And how do you teach your children or students about it?

 

This is a complex question and, unfortunately, answering this question needs to be part of the curriculum, especially of secondary schools. There are at least two directions this can take. One is teaching students how to face emergencies. The other dimension is helping students learn about the attacks, what led to them and what might be done to prevent further violence.

 

First, I suggest starting by feeling and hearing what is going on in yourself. You have to be honest and willing to face uncomfortable feelings and look deeply into your own ways of thinking. Then you need to hear from students. “What do you feel? What responses to the violence have you heard or seen?” By listening, you say to yourself and your students, “you are strong enough to face this and I care enough to listen.” You teach empathy and emotional awareness.

 

In the face of violence, when emotions are lighting up like the explosions they witness, it is difficult to be strong and clear headed unless you prepare for it. How do you do that? What is needed to face such violence? I have never been in such a situation, so I can only try to feel and think my way to an answer. People who have faced such situations need to be brought into the conversation. My Karate teacher, Hidy Ochiai, has often talked about the need for inner as well as outer strength, for both mental and physical development. He talks about the importance of meditation as well as Karate, a calm mind as well as a well-conditioned and trained body.

 

Do not mistake inner strength for what some educators call “grit.”  “Grit” can be another way to put students in a box; instead of labeling the student according to intelligence, he or she is labeled according to grit.  As Alfie Kohn stated in a critique of grit, it is a rehashing of the ethic of hard work merely for the sake of working hard, with no social or ethical critique, no vision of what work is worth doing. Instead, you need to be mindful of what you feel so you can focus and act appropriately. You need to trust your skills and know your limitations. You need a mind trained to go quiet and accurately perceive what is going on. It might be counter-intuitive, but it is compassion that develops this inner strength and readiness to act. Hate makes you weak and ready to over-react. To prepare yourself for whatever it is that might happen in your life, study compassion; not just study the meaning and neuroscience, but study the actual mental and emotional state of compassion.

 

Compassion includes the ability to read what others might be feeling along with the ability to empathetically feel what others feel, and care about their welfare.  But it adds one more element, a drive to act to end any suffering you witness. People have said to me, “Don’t talk to me about compassion…” Or “Compassion just sets you up to be attacked.” These remarks are filled with anger and fear. They are not statements about compassion but more about the speaker’s state of heart.

 

But this isn’t enough. Students need to understand the context and conditions that have led to incidents of terrorism and violence. All events arise from a context, cultural, historical, psychological, spiritual, etc.. The context is always multi-faceted. Context doesn’t excuse violence. It doesn’t excuse violence to know that people in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere have, for too many years, faced horrendous conditions. It just helps you understand it better, and understand ways to process and work to end such conditions and prevent such acts in the future.

 

Teach about the destructiveness of hate and the psychology of fear. It is the religion of hate that often causes terrorism, as seen in the U. S. on 9/11 but also Oklahoma City, the KKK, and the Army of God attacks on abortion clinics, etc. When students are afraid, understanding more about the causes and perpetrators of violence can help diminish fear. Being able to voice fear in an open way diminishes fear. Being asked to take positive action diminishes fear. You need to know that when you react with hate and fear, as when you call for revenge and verbally attack others, you actually spread fear and anger.  You spread the attacks and serve the interests of the attackers.

 

In many societies today, social conditioning masks compassion and creates a sense of separation from others. When you feel isolated and in pain, you might even imagine you feel good in witnessing the suffering of others. You might feel that witnessing others in pain lessens your own. It doesn’t. Compassion decreases the pain because it decreases isolation. It changes your sense of who you are. You feel better about life, yourself. By feeling that the welfare of others is important to you, by valuing others, you feel valued. When you let an other person rest in your mind and you allow yourself to feel what she or he might feel, see what she or he might see, something extraordinary can happen. Loosening of your ties to what is normal for you can be a relief. Once you do it, your own perspective expands. You can then respond more clearly to the person you envisioned because, in some sense, you allowed yourself to be the other person. It is worth every second you practice it. And you can teach this to your children.

When Will We Learn?

Listen to the news:  Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, Brooklyn. I feel like the universe is slapping me in the face, slapping all of us. “Look. Can you see? Can you feel?” Racism, yes, and so much more. Is this what happens when an economic system, and its political and justice system, is lopsided and only a small percentage of “We The People” control most of the wealth and power? I listen to the news and feel angry, and am heartened by protests. But I also recognize fear in myself. The biggest fear is that not enough people will hear what I hear.

 

Will people hear the questions being asked? Questions like: Will substantive change happen? Will the Grand Jury in Brooklyn indict the police in the Akai Gurley killing? Will the federal investigation into the death of Eric Garner lead to prosecutions? Will there ever be a trial for Darren Wilson? Will we as humans make the effort to create a more equitable nation and world?

 

Will we bother to educate ourselves, to better understand our own mental processes so we can understand the importance to all of us of justice and equity?

 

These events are part of the curriculum for our nation. The streets are texts for our classrooms. And I am not just speaking of current events classes but all classes. Science can study the neurobiology of compassion and attunement systems in the brain. Social studies and history can study the effects of greatly unequal wealth distribution. They can study systems of justice and how nations transform themselves—or fall. English classes can write stories of street experiences and read about people fighting injustice and persisting in the face of great challenges. Language classes can study the relationship between language and thought systems and the necessity for diverse perspectives in thinking critically. All classes can ask: Brown, Gurley, Garner, Rice—and Wilson: who are they? They are people who feel and think not much differently than you and I feel and think. To try to separate them from ourselves distorts the substance of our lives and makes us incapable of acting in a humane, well-considered manner. There is no justice without compassion and understanding, no understanding without empathy.

 

We all have to learn enough about how our brains work so we can understand how we can misunderstand ourselves and dehumanize others. I think most people believe in what is called “naïve realism.” We think the world is just as we see it. We can feel our own sensations but not (or rarely) those of others. So we think the red of the apple is all in the apple, the sound of a raindrop is all in the raindrop. We can’t understand why other people don’t like what we like. The person over there who I never look at is not as aware or valuable as I am. I am right and they are not seeing the situation correctly.

 

This study of how events on the streets speak to political, economic, and legal systems, and how they relate to the mind and our social-emotional nature, should be required in our schools.

Why Teach?

Why become a teacher? After high school, I told myself I would never teach in a public school. I wanted to be a writer or do something else that was creative. In my senior year of college, I wrote a poem about poetry. In writing it I realized that what I loved about writing was the feeling of being inspired. I loved pushing myself to pull ideas and images together. It was alive. I felt that I had something worthwhile and meaningful to say. In other words, poetry had the power to teach. The only thing I was unsure of was whether teaching had the power of poetry.

 

And I discovered that it did. A good lesson can have the intensity and artistry of a poem. And when teaching with the Peace Corps, I felt respect from my students. What I was doing mattered to them. So I wanted to do it even more when I returned to this country.

 

In today’s world, the question is not only why become a teacher but, if you are a teacher, why stay one. Because teaching in some ways is more difficult now than it was thirty years ago. Class sizes are bigger, there are fewer support staff, and the profession is more maligned and more strictly judged. If anyone purposely wanted to undermine the teaching profession and public schooling, they could learn a great deal from the present situation.

 

So, considering all these factors, why teach? Because it is one of the most meaningful things you can do. After a day of teaching is over, you don’t have to find other ways to make the world a better place; you do it daily. Of course, this can be as true with other professions as well. Focusing on helping others is very different from focusing on how much money you can earn or how you can stand out or look better than other people. It changes how you view your own life. Standing out is isolating, helping is connecting. With the former, you feel bad if you aren’t at or near the top. With the latter, you can feel good about what you do no matter what.

 

When you walk down the street, you might meet up with an old student who remembers how you inspired him or her. I remember meeting a former student who I thought hated me because I held him accountable for some unacceptable behavior. Fifteen years later he thanked me. He is now a teacher. In any crowd, someone might be there who appreciates what you did for them. So on those days when you forget how important teaching is, or you get depressed because a student dropped out of school or because of some newscast you heard, or you feel overwhelmed by the difficulties many of your students face, you can remember the student who, 15 years later, thanked you for how you changed his life. Or you remember the former student who told you she was the first child in her family to graduate from college and the only reason she was able to do so was the trust and self-belief that you taught her. Now that’s a worthwhile way to live.

 

*The mural is of teachers from the Alternative Community School painted by a few students.

Sharing Compassion

It is fairly easy to be kind and compassionate to those we care for. It is not too difficult to be kind to strangers or those we just met. To be kind to those we don’t like or actively hate feels like a contradiction. We often imagine that kindness is only for those we want to embrace, not those we want to yell at or never see again. But to be kind to those we dislike changes our whole way of responding to events in our life. When we allow ourselves to simply notice the feeling of “I don’t like this” or “I don’t like you,” without holding on to that feeling or automatically acting on it, then we can break conditioned behaviors. We can just recognize the thought or feeling and move on. We become flexible in our thinking and less burdened by hurtful feelings.

 

How do we share this with our students and ourselves? Here is one practice. The idea is to develop the ability to imagine, “feel with” and care about another person’s inner state. Alfie Kohn said that compassion is not just to imagine what its like to be in another person’s shoes but “what its like to have their feet.”

 

Start, as with other mindfulness practices, by calming and focusing the mind.

 

Sit up, near the edge of the chair, so your back is straight but not rigid. Close your eyes partly or fully. Then turn your attention inwards to your breath. Exhale, noticing how the diaphragm works to push out the air. Then notice the inhalation, how the diaphragm expands downwards on its own, and air comes in. Just notice this. Notice what it feels like to breathe in, to refresh yourself. And breathe out, focusing on the breath and letting go of thoughts or images.

 

Notice the quality of your awareness and attention. Is your mind clear or foggy? Focused or wandering? Awake or tired?

 

As you breathe in, let a friend or someone you get along with well come to mind. Just imagine him or her, or let descriptive words about the person come to you. Notice their face, mouth, hair, eyes. Notice how they look at you, their expression.

 

Then notice their whole body, how they stand, their shoulders, hands. Do they stand straight?  Are they relaxed or stiff?

 

Then go inside. What do you think this person is feeling? What clues can you get from their expression and from their posture about what they are thinking or feeling?

 

In this subtle way, you can teach students about reading another person, reading their body language and facial expression, which is one form of empathy.

 

Now imagine giving a simple gift to this person. The gift is merely a wish for the person to feel kindness, peacefulness and joy. Just say it to yourself: I wish this person kindness, peacefulness and joy. Imagine the person filled with this kindness, inner peacefulness, and joy. Notice how it affects them.

 

Standard compassion practices start with someone you are comfortable with or close to. Then you go to someone neutral. Then to someone you don’t know. Finally, you imagine someone you dislike or are angry with. Then you give the gift to yourself.

 

Just sit for a moment with the sense of kindness, inner peacefulness and joy being all around you, filling you.

 

You could end right there or you might add this visualization:

 

Imagine a ball of light appearing above your head, a beautiful light, maybe white, or golden, like sunlight. The light begins to flow into your body, from the top of your head down to your feet. It fills your body with a warm, healing light. Then it flows out from your feet to the feet of the other person. It flows from you to the person you imagined, up her or his feet, through their body to their head and out to the ball of light above your body. Imagine the light filling both you and the other person, connecting you both in a circle of light. Enjoy the connection for a moment.

 

You can have the light flow from you, or from you and the imagined person, out to the whole class.

 

I usually use a singing bowl to end all practices. If you don’t use one, then end the visualization with:

 

Now, return your awareness to your breath. Breathe out—then allow yourself to inhale– and exhale again. As you inhale, return your attention fully to the classroom remembering the sense of kindness, peacefulness, joy and connection.

 

Singing bowls can also be used when the room gets too loud and you want to quiet everyone. Just listening to the bowl sing can focus attention and give people a sense of inner quiet.

 

Students often report that it is easier to imagine giving kindness, peacefulness, and joy to others than receiving it themselves. It is difficult to feel deserving of such gifts. I think it was the Dalai Lama who said that in the U. S. you must be courageous to be happy—or to allow yourself the gift. However, imagining the gift of joy for another bestows it on yourself. By giving it, you receive it. It is so easy to lose sight of the fact that the joy you imagine is in yourself. That’s one reason why, as I pointed out in my last blog, there are many psychological and health benefits to being compassionate.

 

Likewise, the more anyone can be kind and compassionate to themselves, the deeper their capacity for compassion for others.  Being kind to yourself is something you can practice each moment. Whenever you realize your mind has drifted or when you become aware that a thought, judgment, or emotion has carried you off, in that moment, you can come awake. You hear your thoughts as just thoughts, emotions as just emotional energy. Instead of judging yourself negatively, you treat your thoughts and emotions kindly and as an experience to learn from.

 

I have so far talked about mindfulness and compassion in terms of what one teacher or student could do in or out of a classroom. There is a deeper question that needs to be asked: What can a whole school do to teach compassion? Ultimately, compassion works best when it is embedded in the structure and culture of the school community and curriculum. What can you do you to embed compassion in your community?

 

 

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama