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United We Stand

We ended our school year with a day-long workshop on prejudice, tolerance and unity. Daily we guide the children to look beyond all outward differences - like nationality, beauty, colour, class or religion - and focus instead on the divine spark that lives in each being. However, before breaking for the summer holidays, we wanted to give students a chance to explore how well they understood and practiced this principle of unity in diversity.

CPT's "mother" and school principal, Aleli Warren Brown, began the day with a talk on prejudice. She explained what the word meant and guided the children to explore some of the ways prejudice manifests in the world. The children then separated into groups by age for activities and talks before coming together again at the end of the day to share what they had learned.

The smallest children read The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson, and talked about how important it is to accept others for who they are. Afterwards, they cut out and painted a beautiful paper tree, with the names of all children and teachers in the school on each uniquely shaped leaf. They noted that while all leaves were different, they were still part of the same tree.

The middle children read and discussed The Sneetches, Dr. Seuss' 1961 classic on the cruelty and ultimate illusion of prejudice. "Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches / Had bellies with stars. / The Plain-Belly Sneetches / Had none upon thars." In the book, the Sneetches with stars acted special and the ones without were put down. Then a man arrives with a machine that can add or remove stars, leading to mass confusion on the Sneetch Beach and finally reconciliation and friendship. Using elements from the book the middle group created two dramas illustrating prejudice, how ridiculous it can become and ways to triumph over it.

See God in everyone you meet;
See God in everything you handle;
Live together;
Revere each other;
Let not the seeds of envy and hate grow and choke the clear stream of love.
~ SRI SATHYA SAI BABA

The sessions for the older girls were inspired by exercises Jane Elliot, an elementary school teacher, had done with her third grade class in 1968. For a day, Ms. Elliot had separated the blue-eyed students from the brown-eyed, telling the "blues" they were superior. All sorts of restrictive behaviors were heaped upon the "brownies". They fell into subservience while the "blues" became bossy and arrogant. The next day Ms. Elliot surprised the children by reversing the roles. The result is a landmark documentary on prejudice called, "A Class Divided".

Group leaders for the older girls chose something simpler - a spelling bee with two teams - the pinks and the blues. Initially each team was given words of somewhat similar difficulty. As the bee progressed, words for the pink spellers became more difficult, while the blues' grew easier and easier. The children caught on, but still the discrimination continued. We then switched to math problems and turned the tables, giving easy problems to the pinks and difficult challenges to the blues. Win or lose we are happy to report that the children behaved graciously and were more interested in helping the "losing" team then winning themselves. Still, the importance of treating all equally was driven home while everyone had a good laugh.

Michael Galligan, CPT's President, closed the day with a talk on discrimination and wisdom. He reminded the children that while it is essential to recognize the divinity in all groups of people, it is equally important to use wisdom when dealing with individuals. There are good people and bad people in every crowd. In other words, while the spark of God is certainly in the cobra, don't play with it and expect it not to bite you!

This workshop on prejudice was an introduction to our daily human values curriculum, to begin in our new school year.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~ MOTHER TERESA