Well this morning at the American Embassy School Linda and I didn’t get to actually meet the Dali Lama in person so there ya’ go. Oh well. We were in the same gym – does that count?
1000 lower and middle school kids on the floor and high school kids in the bleachers, my son Landen among them, completely quiet and respectful, which was an amazing thing to see in the first place.
I especially remember some words from His Holiness’ speech: compassion, happiness based on community, and friendship based on trust. Those recurring words got me thinking:
If those are the things that we as humans are about, then why don’t we specifically target them in our classrooms? I know that most if not all teachers desire to bring those things in a general way to their classrooms. Of course they do – they are teachers and ours is a truly noble profession because we want to transmit a lot more to children than information. But the kids don’t seem to be getting a lot of those things in school, crowded out by the process of providing mere content.
But the thought I kept having while listening to the Dali Lama was why if those qualities are so important do we not then target them, design around them in a specific way, when we write our school curriculums? Seems to me like it would make sense.
If kids experience compassion, happiness based on community, and friendship based on trust in our classrooms, then aren’t they going to learn more of the language we teach them?