Provide a Critical-Thinking program for 40 teens

A warm hello to you,

We have arrived at the end of another school year in Guatemala and with it the end of our Critical-Thinking/Philosophy program. It has been a great ride and as always the end of the year is a bitter sweet moment for all of us. We are very proud of our students for all of their growth and development they have shown but sad because we won’t be seeing them as often as usual until the middle of January.

In the CT module this year we focused mainly on ego, ego development, shadow, and managing ones emotional states, not entirely for personal benefit, but for the sake of the other person(s) with whom we are relating. The kids loved this class and in fact we had 6 new teenagers join, all brought in by referral from their friends!

Since the summer, Debora and Mick, the co-founders have been working on the translation of a book on philosophy written for one of our board members, Jeff Carreira. The book, “Philosophy Is Not a Luxury” became the holiday homework for our 32 students. They were very excited when we gave them the book and many of them began reading it right away in the class as we were assigning them the books.

One of the key areas by which we can measure the impact of this class is in the evidence for shifts in perspectives. In 2013 we challenged our students to write a one-page article titled ‘My Perfect Day’ and then to share that with the class the following week. Many, as you can expect where egocentric, personal experience based narratives. However, two of our student revealed to us by means of their story that their perspective had shifted quite dramatically. Here are their stories;

Miquel who is 21, a 3^rd year student of ours, who is also being sponsored by one of our donors to study for a career as a chef. As part of his practical work his class was invited to select an impoverished village to cook for and feed for a day. The village they selected was only reachable by horseback. Miquel described this experience of helping other people as ‘blissful’ and incorporated not only such an event as part of a homework exercise called ‘My Perfect Day’ but also the fact that he saw himself with a worldwide chain of self-sustaining and free restaurants for the poor.

Jenny, 16, is a first year student who was referred to our work from another school after she expressed an interest in learning about philosophy. Also as part of our homework exercise called ‘My Perfect Day’, Jenny, who wishes to study to be a nurse, expressed a wish to open medical clinic for the impoverished throughout the world.

We are also Facebook ‘friends’ with many of our students and a curious way we have found to seek progress is by the content of their posts. For instance, one of our superstar students (an individual who possess the potential and interest to become a junior teacher of this content) recently posted quote from The Little Prince (a course book) and additional quotes from the Greek philosophers and Descartes (his own research and reading).

And finally, we are hosting two special events for our students in the month of December: one of them will be on the 4^th and will be a lecture as part of our Wisdom Speakers Series. Amy Edelstein will be visiting us and giving a full day workshop on “Morals, Ethics, Spirit and Changing the World.” On December the 7^th our students will also be participating in the event “Meditate to Educate” in which we will be meditating during a 12 hour period in order to raise funds to cover this education program.

Thank you so much for all your support of this project which we are all finding is of great importance for the world in which we live today.