Occupy Third Grade?
On a crisp fall morning in the nation’s capital, 3rd grade teacher Rebecca Lebowitz gathered her 29 public school students on their familiar giant multicolored carpet, and reminded them how to make sense of the characters whose worlds they would soon enter during independent reading time.
“What are the four things we want to look for when we meet a new character?” Ms. Lebowitz asked from her chair at the foot of the rug. Several hands shot up, and then nine-year-old Monica spoke confidently over the steady hum of the classroom’s antiquated radiator. “We want to pay attention to what they do, what they say, how they feel, and what their body language tells us.” “That’s exactly right, Monica,” her teacher said cheerily. “When we look for those four things, we have a much better sense of who a person really is.”
As the calendar shifts to the 11th month of 2011 – a year of near-constant revolution and upheaval, from the Arab Spring to the Wisconsin statehouse to the global effort to Occupy Wall Street – what might the rest of us learn from the insights of Ms. Lebowitz’s students? If, in short, we were as smart as a third-grader, what would we observe about the character of this year’s global protests?
1. It is not about “democracy” – As much as we glorify and value the principles and practices of our
