This article was inspired by my conversations with Louka Parry and David Penberg.
Sometimes I fixate on a subject or idea and find myself buying a bunch of books and watching videos to feed my curiosity and further my understanding of a single topic. Recently, there are two that keep calling me: ancient wisdoms (such as Buddhism, Taoism, and First Nations cosmogonies) and quantum mechanics. I don’t pretend to grasp all the richness and complexities of either, but I keep learning enough to keep myself interested.
This is an article that is intended to provoke thinking by suggesting that we reconsider the experience of school to make kindness the curriculum, to define success as to how our kindness contributes to the world. We’re not talking about a greeting card or a fortune cookie. I propose that placing kindness at the heart of all our thinking and actions is based on the foundation of interconnectedness that has its roots in both ancient wisdoms found across the world and the latest science. There are theoretical as well as practical (and future-saving) reasons to emphasize kindness over the models of education we have today.
Ancient wisdoms and quantum mechanics appeared thousands of…