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YES! Discussion Guides are designed to help you explore your own experiences, opinions, and commitments as they relate to material found in YES! Magazine. Use them in group discussions, classrooms, or study circles. We believe that when people discuss critical issues of our time with mutual respect and caring, they create a powerful avenue for constructive social change.

You can find the Discussion Guide articles in the Fall 2009 issue of YES! Magazine, and coming soon on our website: see the table of contents for our Learn as You Go issue. You are welcome to photocopy the articles free of charge. If you would like to purchase multiple copies of YES! or subscriptions for your class or group, please phone 800/937-4451 and ask for the Discussion Group Discount.

Many of us are realizing that our education system is not preparing us or our kids to adapt to new realities, like a shrinking economy or climate change. This issue of YES! brings you an education in the things we need to create successful adults and kids: How do we learn to improve our communities, think critically, develop trusting relationships, and use our gifts to make societal contributions? No matter where you are in life, it’s never too late to learn.

This discussion guide will focus on the following articles:

1. John Taylor Gatto, “Take Back Your Education”
2. Julia Putnam, “A Lifelong Search for Real Education”
3. Daniel Fireside, “Life’s Best Lessons are Outside the Classroom”
4. Ron Miller, “Grounded Learning”
5. Parker J. Palmer, “Know Yourself, Change Your World”

Take Back Your Education

Author John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State Teacher of the Year, invites you to reject schooling and reclaim education. Instead of salvaging a public school system that prioritizes obedience and “dumbed-down” curricula over a student’s self-discovery and personal strengths, Gatto says we need to return to a classical education in which independent thought trumps achievement tests. Today’s education objectives are failing our students, says Gatto, but we have the power to change the system.

• Compare your education with the education you see students getting today. How has the education system changed? What do you think is missing from today’s education system?
• Gatto says, “Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it.” What have you done to claim your own path in education, either inside or outside of formal schooling? Have you had mentors who have influenced your life choices? Were you encouraged or discouraged from discovering your personal strengths and abilities in school?

• How can we increase opportunities for self-discovery and mentorship in our schools?

• What’s the appropriate role of testing in schools? Are grades a relevant way to measure student success? How might we evaluate kids on their creativity, critical thinking, and contributions to community, rather than just their test-taking skills? Should we separate grades and degrees from personal worth?

A Lifelong Search for Real Education

Julia Putnam describes how meeting education reformists Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs turned her life around and signaled the start of her “real” education. Putnam became one of the first participants in the Boggs’ Detroit Summer program, a project to revitalize one of America’s most neglected communities. She realized that helping rebuild her city gave her life more direction than getting good grades—and trusting teens with hard work and tough challenges helps them learn the confidence and self-reliance to claim the lives they deserve.

• When did your real education begin? Who shaped it? What did you learn?
• Putnam writes that there are as many paths to success as there are children in a room. What was your unique path to success? What kinds of self-discoveries guided your personal journey?
• Putnam says kids long to hear supportive messages: “Since we are all counting on you for our very existence, we need you to be your best self—to be healthy and kind and committed.” Think about the young people you know. How might you or your community build their confidence and help them understand the power they have to be their “best selves”?
  

Life’s Best Lessons are Outside the Classroom

In many schools, policies like No Child Left Behind place so much emphasis on test-taking drills that students have little time left over for hands-on learning. Daniel Fireside reports on a group of schools that are taking a different approach: They’re connecting children to their communities by giving them a stake in local interests such as food, neighborhood housing, and politics, and they’re raising test scores in the process. The schools are involved in place-based education, which engages kids in service and uses community members as mentors. Students not only learn about their local environments and neighborhoods; they actively seek solutions to the problems they encounter.

• How important is it for schools to help students practice good citizenship?
  
• What engaged you most as a student? Was it a school project, a special teacher, or an extracurricular activity, such as Boy Scouts, 4-H, or a music ensemble? How did the experience help you learn about your skills or your community?
  
• What could you or your community do to supplement the education students get in school and to teach them about their local economy, politics, or natural resources? What steps might your community take to provide opportunities for students to engage in practical skills and critical thinking?
  

Grounded Learning

Teacher and author Ron Miller contends that our society needs a “great reskilling”—instead of preparing ourselves for careers in office cubicles, we need to learn to feed, clothe, and nourish ourselves using the resources of our local communities and bioregions. Miller is now educating himself this way, getting his hands in the dirt and teaching himself about permaculture. He says the Earth can no longer afford an education system that prepares us for an unsustainable, fossil-fuel-driven lifestyle.

• Do you agree that a sustainable future will require us to retrain in practical, hands-on skills? What practical skills might you acquire? How would you learn them? How might such an education be rewarding?
  
• What skills do you think your community will need to acquire to become more sustainable and adapt to a changing world and economy? How might our education system incorporate training in those skills?

Know Yourself, Change Your World

In an interview with executive editor Sarah van Gelder, educator and author Parker J. Palmer says that the key to a quality education and career is a better understanding of our inner lives. If people “mine their emotions for knowledge,” we can improve our sense of trust and make positive changes in society.

• Have you encountered a situation at the workplace in which you witnessed or were asked to carry out unconscionable tasks, like the doctors Palmer mentions in the interview? What, if anything, did you do about it? How did it change your mind about the people you worked with or the environment you were in? How might our education system prepare us to make difficult moral decisions or question unethical practices in our institutions?
  
• Does a larger mission guide your work and your choices? If not, how might you find that sense of moral purpose? How can you strengthen your contributions to that purpose?
  
• Palmer quotes Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Have there been pivotal events in your life that have caused you to reassess your place in the world or your quality of life? How did those events change your outlook or habits?
  
• Many of the problems Americans face today—inadequate health care, recession, and environmental crises— stem from a lack of “moral agents.” How can we instill a sense of morality in the choices that governments, corporations, and everyday people make? How can we make this part of everyone’s basic professional training?
  
• Palmer challenges us to stand and act in the “tragic gap,” reconciling the harsh realities we face with the great things we know are possible. What issues in our world require us take on that gap? And what possibilities for change might we be overlooking as a society? How can we encourage others to consider those possibilities?

What are you doing? How are you using this discussion guide? How could we improve it?

Please share your stories and suggestions with us at editors@yesmagazine.org with “Discussion Guide” as the subject.

YES! is published by the Positive Futures Network, an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to support people's active engagement in creating a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world.

YES! Discussion Guides are designed to provide a starting point for your discussion of some of the issues explored YES! magazine. There is no one correct way to approach these issues. Invent your own questions. Try different processes: open-ended discussions, or round-robin discussions. Try relating these questions to your own experiences and asking individuals in the group to make presentations on relevant topics.

The critical thing is to maintain an open mind and a sense of mutual respect. Our experience is that groups who do so, and who care about the critical issues of our time, create powerful avenues for constructive social change.

When you've finished your discussion of this issue, please help us improve future discussion guides by responding to the questionnaire at the end of the guide.

Working for Life
YES! #17, Spring 2001

One of the most exciting reasons to discuss right livelihood in a group is to witness the explosion of individual variety, creativity, and energy that results. Your group should plan to devote several sessions to the material below, so that each person will have a chance to be truly heard and to respond to the group's discoveries. You may want to ask members to keep a journal of their reactions to the questions and exercises.
To prepare for this discussion, group members will want to read the articles below. Simply download them from our website, www.yesmagazine.org, or call 800-937-4451 to purchase multiple copies of the Spring 2001 issue #17, Working for Life, at our group discount rate.
Parker Palmer, "Now I Become Myself"
Juliet Schor, "Real Vacations for All"
Maryann Gorman, "The White Dog's Tale"
Bob Black, "Why Work?"

Right Livelihood Part I: The Personal
Good work. To open the discussion, go around the group round-robin fashion* and ask members to answer a two-part question:1) Which of your work experiences felt most like right livelihood - that is, what work was a pleasure to do and allowed you to be yourself? Why did it feel right? 2) What work experience was the least like right livelihood? Why?
When everyone has spoken, ask the group what common threads they noticed in the individual stories. What are the characteristics of good work? Bad work? How important is it that your work provide a net benefit to clients, society, the environment - or at least, as the Hippocratic oath says, that you do no harm?

Thinking like a poet. Poets argue that humans think in images, so in this exercise, we're looking for images of right livelihood rather than definitions or analysis. Our goal is to create a group collage from individual portraits of a life well-lived. Again, go around the circle round-robin fashion. This time, have each member describe his or her personal image of right livelihood by answering these questions: What will your life look like when you've achieved your version of right livelihood? What are you doing - more of what, less of what? How do you spend your days? Describe the place where you live - what qualities does it have? Describe yourself working. How do you feel? If some group members say they don't know, ask them to share the pieces of the puzzle that they do know or at least suspect.

Who am I? Parker Palmer suggests that asking the question What shall I do? is the wrong way to start searching for vocation, because vocation is about remembering you are, rediscovering your birthright gifts. The question you should be asking, he says, is Who am I? Ask group members to describe a moment or an event from your youth when you got an indication of who you are. When were you most happy? Is the answer to that question an important clue to your vocation? What are your birthright gifts?
If group members are fairly well acquainted with each other, you might ask them to focus on each individual in turn and describe what gifts they think that person has that are especially strong. This can be a very powerful experience - a chance to see yourself as others see you.

Fear Mongers. Put a bunch of crayons or colored pencils and big sheets of paper in the center of the circle. Then ask the whole group to think for a moment about this question: If you have not yet achieved right livelihood, what is it that keeps you stuck? What are you afraid of? Ask members to answer the question by illustrating their worst fear or fears in the form of monsters. Tell them to indulge themselves, make the monsters as dramatic and nasty-looking as they want to. When everyone's finished, ask them to show their drawings to the group and talk about them briefly. It's important not to let people dismiss or downplay each other's fears or offer solutions. This exercise is not about solutions: it's about listening - to the kinds of fears that limit us all. You might tape the monster portraits on the wall in a sort of Rogues' Gallery.
Did the group notice common themes? Are the fears generally well founded? What is the source of these fears? Who or what keeps us fearful of leaving the fold and doing something different?
Now, imagine what would happen if you did the thing you most feared anyway. How bad might it get?
Ask the group members what they want to do with their monsters.

Right Livelihood, Part II: The Personal Becomes the Political

The right to good work. Is good, satisfying work a human right? What other rights should go along with work? Health care? Time off? Challenge? Growth? A livable wage? An opportunity to make a contribution - to do work that is meaningful and has positive outcomes? Can these rights be honored in a large, corporate setting by an employer with the best of intentions? Have members describe some workplaces they've heard about that achieve this. What sort of work/ social structure would be optimum for honoring employees rights?
Employers often claim, as Judy Wicks did initially, that they'd go out of business if they paid employees a livable wage and gave six weeks of vacation time. How do you respond to this objection? If you have group members who are employers as well as employees, you're lucky: you can benefit from both perspectives.

The right to play. Juliet Schor suggests vacations for all in the European style-6 weeks. Ask for the group's reaction to her article. Why don't Americans have 6 weeks of vacation, too?
We're living in the Golden Age of labor-saving devices, yet we're working more, working faster, for generally lower pay. What ever happened to all the leisure time that was supposed to result from computer technology? Is there a way to turn this trend around? What prevents you from working less? If the answer is "paying the bills," do you have too many bills? Are you trading too much of your time for too much stuff?
Better yet, why work at all? Bob Black asks this seductive question and suggests that of instead of working, we usher in a Golden Age of Play. What is the difference between work and play? Is there something in our work ethic that makes this seem somehow immoral or decadent? Could play also be creative and even a contribution? Can all work - or almost all -become play, as he suggests? If so, what would change in our lives and our world?

Connections. Is this fretting over right livelihood, personal growth in the work place, and long vacations one of those issues that's only relevant if you're relatively privileged? What kinds of questions would you be asking about right livelihood if you were unemployed or homeless? Can you see any way in which both privileged and underprivileged people are actually asking the same questions? If so, what needs to happen to make the connection apparent to both "camps."

Coming full circle. Now go around the circle round-robin fashion as you did in the beginning and again have each member describe his or her personal image of right livelihood. Has your image changed? How have your feelings about right livelihood changed?
If you want to explore further...
If some people decide they'd like the group's help in clarifying their thinking about vocation, you may want to propose that the group convene for what the Quakers call a clearness meeting. In a clearness meeting, one member poses a question to the group -such as, What is my true work? Instead of responding with advice or stories about their own experience, group members can only ask questions of the questioner. It's a wonderful way to help a person clarify his or her own thinking without imposing an outside solution. Also, tell members that if they can offer resources, solutions, connections, or support to someone who's expressed a problem to be sure to connect after the meeting. Networking is POWERFUL resource.

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Articles and resource guide referenced in discussion guide:

an interview by Sarah van Gelder with Paul Ray & Sherry Anderson

by Richard Heinberg

by Carolyn Raffensperger

This guide is designed to provide a starting point for your discussion of some of the issues explored in the Winter 2001 issue of YES! magazine. There is no one correct way to approach these issues -- please use this discussion guide to provoke conversation, not to limit it. Invent your own questions. Try different processes: open-ended discussions, or round-robin discussions, where each participant has a certain amount of time to explore his or her own responses and views. Try relating these questions to your own experiences and asking individuals in the group to make presentations on relevant topics.

A variety of approaches will work. The critical thing is to maintain an open mind and a sense of mutual respect. Our experience is that groups who do so, and who care about the critical issues of our time, create powerful avenues for constructive social change.

We've posted the selected articles from YES! referenced below on our website at www.yesmagazine.org. You're welcome to download and photocopy them free of charge, or photocopy the articles directly from the magazine. If you'd like to purchase multiple copies of this issue of YES!, or subscriptions for your group, please phone 1-800-937-4451 and ask for the Discussion Group Discount.

When you've finished your discussion of this issue, please help us improve future discussion guides by giving us some feedback (see last page).

(Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, "A Culture Gets Creative,"pp 15-20)

This issue of YES!argues that we are living at a unique moment in history, a cultural turning point of enormous importance, perhaps the most important change of course in our planet's history. One scholar has labeled it The Great Turning, a crossroads where we turn away from several centuries of materialism and its disastrous results: ecological harm, impoverished peoples and impoverished cultures, and unsatisfying ways of life.

But what are we turning towards?

According to Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, 50 million people in the U.S. alone (almost a quarter of the population) are changing their perceptions of the world, putting more value on environmentally sustainable lifestyles, community, respect across racial, cultural, and gender lines, and so on.

Q: Take the "Are You A Cultural Creative" test on page 19. How well do these values describe you? Do you think they tend to go together? Would your parents answer these questions differently? Your grandparents?

Q: What possibilities would open up if there were in fact 50 million Cultural Creatives in the U.S.? How might so many Cultural Creatives affect local issues you care about? national issues? possibilities for a more ecologically sustainable future? prospects for greater sharing of the world's wealth?

Q: In your own experience, among your friends, colleagues, and in your larger community, have you witnessed signs that we are turning away from materialism toward life?

(Ray and Anderson, cont'd)

Have you ever been called a Pollyanna because you believe we can change the world? Ever felt like an alien from another planet because your primary motivation is notmoney? Or because those bumper stickers -- "Shop 'til you drop" and "Whoever dies with the most toys wins" -- seem more pathetic than funny to you? If so, you're not alone. According to Ray and Anderson, most of the 50 million people in the U.S. who share Cultural Creative values feel, at one time or another, like odd balls.

Q: Share with the group an experience when your values seemed to be totally at odds with the accepted norms of the group you were with.

Q: What are the common themes in the stories your group members shared? What values were you expressing at those times when you felt incompatible with the larger society? What sorts of values were generally accepted by the group?

Q: How important is it for people who share these values to understand that they are not alone? How can they discover that? Does this mean that we simply need to hang around with people who are like us?

(Ray and Anderson, cont'd)

Q: Ray admits that the boundaries of this group are fuzzy and that up to 40 percent of the population of the U.S. is made up of Cultural Creatives or potential Cultural Creatives. If so, why does the gap between rich and poor continue to grow? Why are we buying SUVs and manufacturing weapons faster than ever before? Why aren't we feeling the impact of these Cultural Creatives? -- or are we?

Q: Let's assume Ray and Anderson are right--this group is emerging and changing the values of the larger culture. Why are the Cultural Creatives emerging worldwide now?

Q: Why are there more women Cultural Creatives than men (Ray and Anderson say Cultural Creatives are two-thirds women)?

*NOTE: Ray and Anderson's data and their original survey are not published in their book, The Cultural Creatives. We do know that the survey they used to gather their data is not the same as the quiz, although the quiz is taken from their book.

(Richard Heinberg, "Breakthroughs,"pp 12-14)

Q: We homo sapiens (our name means the wise ape that knows it is wise)now have several thousand years of recorded history behind us. Have we gotten any wiser? Thinking back over our history from earliest times, what evidence can you point to?

Q: On the other hand, as devil's advocate, can you think of evidence that humans have made no moral progress at all, or are moving backward?

Q: For which viewpoint can you make the stronger case? Is it possible we could be living in a paradoxical time in which both are true? If so, can we continue to head in two directions at the same time, or will humanity eventually choose one or the other?

(Carolyn Raffensperger, "Love with Claws and Jaws,"pp 38-39)

Q: Carolyn Raffensperger says her environmentalism didn't grow out of love -- it grew out of anger. To what degree are you motivated in your work by love? anger? hope? fear? Which of the emotions sustain and strengthen you, and which ones seem to undermine your work?

Q: How does her experience of "enemies" compare with your own? Who and what are your enemies? What would it be like for you if you were to "swear off enemies" ?

Q: Early in her career, Raffensperger found herself ambivalent about power -- wanting it and, at the same time, hating it. What are your own feelings about power? When is it corrupting and when is it not? In your own life, how do you deal with issues of either having or not having power?

Q: Do you sometimes sense, as she does, that guardians of some sort determine your destiny or guide your choices? If you like, share with the group an incident similar to Raffensperger's car accident when you sensed guidance from outside yourself.

(Pramila Jayapal, "India's Silent But Singing Revolution,"pp 33-37)

Q: The Swadhyaya movement started with middle-class people from the city simply spending time with "Untouchables" in the countryside, poor villagers they would ordinarily never spend time with. What would be the equivalent to this "cross-caste" relationship in the U.S.? Have you had experiences of this kind? What would make it difficult to spend time with people of a very different "caste" in the US? What would be the rewards?

Q: Much of this movement's power has come from people who simply choose to give to others, including very poor people who fish one extra day per week to provide food for those who are without. What would the equivalent be in your community? If food is not needed in your community, what is needed? What gets in the way of that happening? What difference could this type of sharing make?

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YES! Discussion Guides are designed to help you explore your own experiences, opinions, and commitments as they relate to material found in YES! Magazine. Use them in group discussions, classrooms, or study circles. We believe that when people discuss critical issues of our time with mutual respect and caring, they create a powerful avenue for constructive social change.

You can find the Discussion Guide articles in the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine, and on our website: see the table of contents for our Food for Everyone issue. You are welcome to photocopy the articles free of charge. If you would like to purchase multiple copies of YES! or subscriptions for your class or group, please phone 800/937-4451 and ask for the Discussion Group Discount.

Not long ago, people ate a huge variety of fresh, tasty food, most of it local. In the last hundred years, industrial food has taken over and we’ve sacrificed flavor for convenience, driven small farms out of business, and consumed increasing amounts of pesticides and chemicals. We move food across the world and, in the process, pump vast clouds of CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. It’s time to take the best of the old ways and the best of new knowledge and rebuild a food system that can feed us all while bringing back varieties adapted to local conditions. In Issue 49, “Food for Everyone: How to Grow a Local Food Revolution,” YES! Magazine looks at the people who are working to restore flavor, nutrition, and joy to our food, and to make it available to everyone.

This discussion guide focuses on the following articles:

• The Good Food Revolution by Claire Hope Cummings
  
  
• Oasis in an Urban Food Desert by Roger Bybee
  
  
• Restoring the Range by Madeline Ostrander
  
  
• Rajinder’s Remarkable Rasoi by Madhu Suri Prakash
  
  

The Good Food Revolution

SEE ARTICLE ONLINE :: The Good Food Revolution by Claire Hope Cummings

High yield + fast turnover = more profit. This gluttonous equation has caused a severe disconnect between Americans and our agriculture system. In “The Good Food Revolution,” Claire Hope Cummings explains how humans and technology have destroyed and degraded our land, food system, and traditions. With eroding soil, polluted rivers, and chemically contaminated crops, the American commodity agriculture system needs to change. Cummings' solution: Remember the traditions, lessons, and history of those who came before us.

• Cummings explains how the Hopi and Christian creation stories have influenced many people’s views on food and agriculture. What stories, traditions, or values have shaped your views?
  
  
• How might you develop a connection with the land you live on or the food you eat?


• What values and ethics should guide our use of agricultural technology and science? What decisions would our country make if we followed those values? What personal decisions would you make?
  

Oasis in an Urban Food Desert

SEE ARTICLE ONLINE :: Oasis in an Urban Food Desert by Roger Bybee

Roger Bybee’s article “Oasis in an Urban Food Desert” talks about how Will Allen, his daughter Erika, and their Growing Power projects in Milwaukee and Chicago have proven you can have fresh, healthy food even in an inner-city neighborhood. With his 14 greenhouses, 10,000-gallon aquaponics tanks, and 6 million pounds of compost, Allen helps feed his community, fights “food racism,” and each year teaches thousands of youths and adults how to grow similar systems in their communities.

• How does this article change your views on what it means to grow and purchase food?
  
  
• How does our current food system create or reinforce social and health inequalities? How might Will Allen’s projects be applied on a larger scale to address those inequalities?
  
  
• Does your city have access to healthy food? What might you do to make healthy food available to others in your community?
  
  
• If you’ve experienced any of the things in this article —composting, growing a vegetable or herb garden, buying from a farmers market or CSA, running a nutrition education program—how has that experience affected you? Have any of those experiences led you to deeper relationships with the soil, with your food, or with other people?
  
  
• Allen talks of composting food waste from a local brewery and coffee shop. Can you think of other ways communities can work together to make their city’s food more sustainable?
  

Restoring the Range

SEE ARTICLE ONLINE :: Restoring the Range by Madeline Ostrander

In the article “Restoring the Range,” Madeline Ostrander tells the story of the Mortenson family and their successful endeavor to restore the rangeland of their South Dakota ranch back to its original landscape. These sixth-generation ranchers are proud to have adopted a holistic management style of ranching that produces lush grasses and wildflowers, healthy soil, and twice as many head of cattle.

• What parts of this article do you find surprising? How does it affect your views on ranching? On meat consumption?
  
  
• What do you think the role of animals in our food system should be? Would your opinion change if more meat was produced using sustainable techniques?
  
  
• Jeff shares his grandmother’s lesson of looking at the land as an interconnected whole. What might American agriculture look like if more farms and ranches adopted that ethic?
  

Rajinder’s Remarkable Rasoi

SEE ARTICLE ONLINE :: Rajinder’s Remarkable Rasoi by Madhu Suri Prakash

Parathas, naan, lassis. Even if you’ve never tasted these traditional Indian foods, in “Rajinder’s Remarkable Rasoi” Madhu Suri Prakash paints a delicious picture of her mother’s slow food, inviting you to imagine the sights, sounds, and tastes of her mother’s kitchen. Here in the United States, instead of taking time to carefully prepare a meal, Americans rely on quick, inexpensive, and unhealthy fast food for many of their meals. In an effort to restore the integrity of slow food, schools across the country have started buying local food, growing their own gardens, and teaching students to farm.

• Who are some people in your life who bring out the rasa in food?
  
  
• How do you feel (before, during, and after) when you take the time to prepare a full meal as opposed to grabbing something on the go?
  
  
• What differences do you notice when, instead of digging right in, you pause before you eat—enjoying the sight and smell of your food?
  
  
• Prakash talks of the relationships built between her mother and the ingredients she used, the peddlers she purchased from, and the food she created. What kinds of relationships are created when people share recipes, food, cooking tips, and meals?
  
  
• What foods connect you with a sense of home? Does your family have any cooking habits or rituals that bring you together? What would rasoi mean in the context of your family’s kitchen?
  
  
• Prakash leaves us with a vision of schools infused with leisure. What do you think a “slow food” school lunch would look like in your community?
  

What are you doing?

How are you using this discussion guide? How could we improve it?

Please share your stories and suggestions with us at editors@yesmagazine.org with “Discussion Guide” as the subject.

YES! is published by the Positive Futures Network, an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to support people's active engagement in creating a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world.