Eye Color

Our school just had a PD day with Dr. Michelle Borba presenting a workshop on building moral intelligence.  There were a few things that really caught my attention.  One was that research says that moral intelligence can be taught. Researchers can tell within seconds which child is susceptible to being bullied and which kids are more likely to bully.  My own 5 year old has been the victim of bullying so I was especially keen to hear what she had to say about this.  Borba says that one way to help children not be bullied is to teach children to make eye contact; to see the color of the speaker’s eyes.  Apparently, this is a big factor in reducing bullying.  My 5 year old never looks people in the eyes.  I know if I work with her on this she will be able to it.  So it was very encouraging to learn this information.

Another thing that struck a nerve inside me was when Dr. Borba read a quote from a holocaust survivor.  I don’t remember the exact wording but the message was that the victim witnessed Doctors do terrible experiments on people, nurses kill babies, and engineers build chambers to mass kill people.  All of them were well trained professionals from a school system.  The person doesn’t trust education.  It kind of made the audience think of the need for a moral education in our schools. I can’t help but think of terrorism today.  There are very intelligent people with great educational backgrounds making  bombs and designing weapons to mass kill in the name of some ideology.    And then I think to myself, what if a former student of mine got caught up in some of this?  Having worked in public education back home, I bet the chances are at least a few former students are up to no good; maybe not to the extreme of terrorism, but likely some are involved in things like organized crime.  God forbid they may be using some of the skills they learned in my sciences classes.