In the future, may we be confident about our enlightenment

I can tell you many sto­ries about Ukraine. I offer one because it is time­ly. I was an orga­ni­za­tion­al capac­i­ty spe­cial­ist for Peace Corps Response in 2018–20. Unlike tra­di­tion­al Peace Corps, Response is a small sliv­er of the orga­ni­za­tion that deploys tech­ni­cal experts for short-term, high-impact projects. I was there to coach the exec­u­tive direc­tor of an HIV and AIDS com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion. I worked for the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), estab­lished by George W. Bush in 2003. It is the largest sin­gle com­mit­ment in his­to­ry by any coun­try to com­bat a sin­gle dis­ease. (Don’t get me start­ed on the recent malign dis­rup­tions to that life­sav­ing program).

This sto­ry is not about that. As a Peace Corps vol­un­teer, I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help in many ways. I was a pho­to­jour­nal­ist with a Ukrainian cul­tur­al expe­di­tion called Baba Yelka, which was estab­lished in 2018 to pre­serve vil­lage cul­ture. Also, I worked with a col­league to help design a school cur­ricu­lum about democ­ra­cy. That’s the sto­ry I share.

When Horace Mann estab­lished the pub­lic-school move­ment in America in the 19^th Century, he had a vision for a more moral, lit­er­ate, and pro­duc­tive soci­ety. He believed, and the move­ment that fol­lowed assert­ed, that help­ing young peo­ple ful­fill their poten­tial cre­at­ed a strong democracy.

Today, pub­lic edu­ca­tion is suf­fer­ing amid the squawk­ing and fin­ger-point­ing about the evils of diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion and what is taught by whom to whom. We are aban­don­ing Mann’s cen­tral premise that informed peo­ple make bet­ter cit­i­zens and more pro­duc­tive work­ers. Investments in edu­ca­tion are paid back for gen­er­a­tions. Ukraine under­stands that premise. In 2018, they launched the New Ukrainian School (NUS) move­ment with strate­gies that echo Mann’s aspirations.

My Peace Corps col­league and I helped guide one project in one school that reached for the same ideas. The European Council has pub­lished an abstract of that work, which you can read here.

I’ll give you the CliffsNotes. Here is what the school hoped to accomplish.

“Our desire was to har­mo­nize the par­ents’, teach­ers’, staff’s, and stu­dents’ aspi­ra­tions for the sake of the stu­dents’ well-being. We think that choos­ing and work­ing to com­mon val­ues will ben­e­fit the future of our school and community.”

When I read that state­ment and reflect on our work togeth­er, I remem­ber how con­ver­sa­tions around the school director’s con­fer­ence table always bent back to “student’s well-being.”

Yes, there were chal­lenges. Some teach­ers didn’t want to stretch their les­son plans to accom­mo­date a new demand. There were debates about how and when to involve staff and par­ents. Most road­blocks were cir­cum­vent­ed by return­ing to the essen­tial ques­tion, “Is it good for the stu­dents.” We always decid­ed togeth­er that artic­u­lat­ing shared val­ues was worth hiccups.

In our tox­ic soci­ety, per­haps it would be help­ful to con­sid­er a sim­i­lar core ques­tion of Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children, in London, in 1919 – “Is it good for the chil­dren.” We seem to have a dif­fi­cult time answer­ing that one, whether it is being com­mit­ted to equal edu­ca­tion for all, fac­ing the fact that gun vio­lence is the lead­ing cause of death for US chil­dren and teens, or abject­ly con­demn­ing geno­cide against the world’s children—pick a place—Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Yemen, Syria…the list goes on.

Our work seems like a minus­cule ges­ture in a big, com­plex world—one city, one school, one project. But at the end of the day, those involved believed they became more democratic.

“While doing this activ­i­ty, such com­pe­ten­cies as respon­si­bil­i­ty, coöper­a­tion, and civic-mind­ed­ness were instilled among stu­dents and staff.”

In the future, I hope we can look back on today and be that con­fi­dent about our enlightenment.