One Heart for Humanitarian Education

Today I had the pleasure of having breakfast with Neale Donald Walsch, who is an old friend of mine. He was in Phoenix, Arizona speaking at the annual Celebrate Your Life Conference and had just finished videotaping an interview for the sequel to my film, CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect.

While we waited for our meal, I showed him my newest book, Bird of the Soul. He pored over the charming illustrations, and the edges of his eyes crinkled into his winning smile as he christened them as “sweet.” I signed one of my advance copies for him, and, delighted, he offered to write an endorsement for it. Along with our usual good-natured banter and catching up, we also told each other about our current projects and felt that uncanny harmony in our philosophies and ideas all over again, a resonance of our hearts that transcends time and space and language.

One topic of particular interest to both of us is education reform. I told him about my ideas and my plans for the Earth Citizen School, especially in the United States, and for an online alternative school in South Korea that I’m calling the Benjamin Humanitarian Prodigy School. (The school is named after Benjamin Franklin, whose dedication to self-development and humanitarian values I particularly admire.)

In 1997, in his second book, Neale wrote about an entirely new curriculum for the world’s schools. He wrote that the world’s schools needed to shift away from a curriculum based on academic topics and toward a curriculum based on values such as honesty, compassion, tolerance, patience, persistence, and a general sense of goodness to life and to each other. I agree that intellectual knowledge is easily looked up in this day and age, but what is missing is education on humanitarian values and character and integrity. What the world needs right now are not mathematic, scientific, artistic, or athletic prodigies, but gifted humanitarians—prodigies of character and integrity.

We’ve both known this for a while, but I believe that now is the time to take action. We’ve delivered positive messages for many years, written many books, given many speeches, but now is the time for taking responsibility for what we said and gathering people, young people who will become the leaders of our future generations. We ourselves may not benefit from these efforts, and we may not live to witness the beautiful blossoming of the seeds that we planted in the past and are avidly watering now. But we’re polishing the foundation. When those seeds sprout and grow, when a lot of people come together and develop, they will go in the right direction. We can get the ball rolling and point everyone in the right direction.

As Neale said this morning: “Many people are saying many of the same things, yes? The challenge is with all of these people saying the same things, what’s the tipping point, what will it take for these messages to begin to have an effect in the world? That’s why I’m excited about the Earth Citizen School. Because you can write all the books you want to write. You can give all the lectures you want to give. Give all the TV interviews you want to do. But unless you have a group of people like you’re doing who are young and trained out there, and they become the teachers of the next generation, that’s the only way. When I was younger, I had a foolish thought. I thought I could change the world. I’d like to think I’ve done some good. I’d like to think I added a little bit.”

I think he has. And both he and I, we’re still going strong. With our hearts united as one, Neale will give his lectures at the conference and travel on to Florida and later Europe this year. I’m back in Sedona and will soon return to Asia. But we’ll meet again in the fall, when I get to update Neale on how well the Earth Citizen School is going, and when he’s teaching the Earth Citizen students for a couple of days and giving a commencement speech for them at their graduation ceremony.

I hope through the Earth Citizen School, we will cultivate and inspire many young people who follow in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela as prodigies of character and integrity who live according to their values and for the benefit of all humanity. I know that every human being has this potential. All they have to do is choose it.