Schools in Africa, Middle East Are Combating Extremist Ideology by Using Peaceful Garden Program
WASHINGTON — Republican and Democrat members of the United States Congress have voiced support for an education program that has proven to be effective in bringing about a positive change for radicalized youth in three countries in the Middle East and Africa.
The Virginia-based Hardwired Global is working to help train teachers in areas of Northern Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco to prepare them to serve on the "frontlines" in the world's war against religious extremism.
On Tuesday, Hardwired President Tina Ramirez presented the findings from the group's recent research report focusing on its rights-based program and lessons that have been incorporated by over 56 teachers and have impacted over 12,000 students in those three countries.
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As governments continue to spend trillions of dollars trying to find an answer to the violence in the Middle East and Africa, Ramirez suggested that the place to start in the war against extremism is in the schools.
"When [these kids] go home, they are isolated. Many of the intolerant ideas they get at home are reinforced," Ramirez said during an early Wednesday morning reception on Capitol Hill that served as a side event to this week's State Department Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. "So schools are often the front lines. But that means the children who are also vulnerable to being influenced by the ideas of hate and intolerance need to be in an environment where teachers are prepared to help them counter those ideas and prepare them to work toward the common goal of recognizing and [validating] and accomplishing peace."
Thanks to funding through the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ramirez said that Hardwired was able to convene a diverse group of teachers from across the Middle East and North Africa that included people who are Jewish, Bahai, atheist, Yazidi, Sunni, Shia and other faiths. The group came up with a lesson called The Peaceful Garden.
The Peaceful Garden is a lesson where teachers help instill an importance on diversity by having young school children pick out flowers from a garden but prohibiting them from picking out one particular color of flower. Once all the flowers are gone except for those of one color, teachers are to show students that the garden had lost its beauty because now only one type of flower exits.
Since the program was first instituted in schools in Northern Iraq, the teachers explained to students that what happened to the garden is the same thing that happened when the Islamic State ravished their homelands and forced them to flee the region in 2014.
The teachers then explained to the students that there is still hope to restore the beauty to the garden. The students were given seeds and worked together to bring the garden back to its former glory. The students also learned that they can build an inclusive society by planting their own "seeds of peace" that will go a long way to help secure freedom for themselves in the future.
"This activity ... the officials in that region invited us to share it with all of their students across Northern Iraq because they said that this is the hope that we want every child in Northern Iraq to have," Ramirez said. "From that, we began a project with two other countries in the Middle East, with Lebanon and Morocco. We began to work with human rights clubs in public and private schools with 56 teachers and 12,000 students."
Another lesson included in the Hardwired report is called "Sanctuary Island," a simulation activity that "utilizes an analogy to explore the importance of religion and belief in human life through the use of fruit." Essentially, students learn what it is like to be attacked and having to flee for being part of a certain community group. It also teaches youth how to "construct solutions for how diverse groups can live together peacefully."
"Peace is possible in the final stage of the lesson, as fruit groups share the rules they created and agree upon a set of rules for all members of each fruit community," the lesson states. "Participants recognize the rules are created to protect the rights and freedoms of each community to practice their unique beliefs and culture without fear of attacks or oppression from others who believe and practice differently from them."
Ramirez, a former policy researcher at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and former foreign policy adviser for various members of Congress, explained that the data show that such rights-based education methods have taught students over time why they shouldn't be afraid of people of different beliefs and why they shouldn't be afraid to interact with one another.
The organization's report states that 100 percent of students who went into the program voicing that they would exclude minority groups from leadership positions became more inclusive of them.
Three out of four children who came into the program with negative views of other ethnicities or religions became willing to defend others. Fifty percent of youth who would have reacted with violence or extremism made a "positive change in their behavior," the report notes.
Seventy-eight percent of students who experienced a second lesson exhibited a "greater understanding and respect for the rights of others."
The data also shows that 100 percent of students exposed to the program learned to support girls' equality in education. Sixty percent of boys willing to discriminate against girls learned to support girls, the report states.
"We were able to plant the seeds of peace in the minds of these teachers and their students," Ramirez said. "The results are just amazing."
Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, Ramirez's former boss when she was a congressional staffer, voiced his disgust with a story that was told in the report of an Iraqi teacher catching students at her school play-pretending to behead another student as if they were Islamic State militants.
Bilirakis stressed that such actions show just how impressionable young children are. He warned that without the right education and guidance, these children could learn to idolize terrorists.
"Instead of 'cops and robbers,' they are playing 'ISIS versus everyone else,' as if a group of terrorists and thugs were anything to be admired," the co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Caucus said at the reception. "This must stop. One would think with all the advancements that have been made in the modern society, that there would be universal acceptance of all of humanity for the freedom to think, believe and worship without fear of reprisal."
Bilirakis argued that Hardwired's report shows that rights-based education can teach children to find common ground "as human beings." He stressed that the world must start educating its youth about religious tolerance and freedom as early as possible.
"They can be guided and develop a realization that they are all victims of intolerance and injustice," Bilirakis said. "The example cited in this study shows that children who were given rights-based education found ways to empathize with each other's God-given dignity regardless of their gender or faith. In other words, it is not too late for these children who have not lost their generation. We know that even in the United States that the most formative years in a person's life take place when they are children."
Democrat Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Thomas Garrett, R-Va., also voiced support for Hardwired's program.
"I think that Hardwired is onto the right path here, which is education," Raskin said. "Certainly, it is a Jeffersonian concept that if you are going to try to be a people with radically different systems of beliefs to live together, they need to have some kind of common education, at least in the principles of government and principles of toleration."
