Looking back on the last decade of Global Village School

As we move into our 11th year of existence we’ve been looking back on earlier times.  Here’s a glimpse of 2002, just a few years after Sally embarked on the progressive homeschooling adventure that is Global Village School:

The drive to Sally Carless’ house is indicative of her nature. The road is a small, private road with huge boulders and wild sage lining its edges. Massive oak trees suspend their limbs above the road, adding a green canopy of vegetation, and breaking up the sunlight with patches of shade. You cross a creek over a small bridge, up a little hill and then back down. There, at the edge of the Los Padres National Forest, with avocado orchards to one side, sits a small older ranch house. Here, surrounded by natural serenity, is where you can find Sally Carless, founder and visionary of Global Village School.

Global Village School is a nonprofit distance-learning school founded in 1999 designed to teach tolerance, practical social activism, peace and an understanding for those of different religions, races, physical disabilities, ethnicities and sexual orientations. Global Village School offers customized K-12 curriculum and a high school diploma program. The School’s mission is to teach children how to become proactive in their own lives for social change and social awareness, while at the same time providing a safe haven for students who are harassed or ostracized in the average school environment. The ultimate goal is to provide a place where everyone “belongs,” and develops a sense of individual self-worth sufficient to produce a conscientious, proactive world citizen.

As one approaches the small ranch house that Sally calls home, it is difficult to ignore the beauty and the peacefulness with which she has surrounded herself. Sally sits at a small table underneath a huge oak tree, her dog by her side. She is unpretentious, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes. She has a gentle, quiet nature and a passionate love of the earth and its inhabitants.

Sally Carless holds a Masters’ Degree in Education, curriculum and instruction, with studies in alternative and experiential education and counseling. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in wilderness recreation, with an emphasis in environmental studies. In addition, she is a California credentialed teacher and has done graduate study in the field of counseling and depth psychology, and she has done extensive training with Jean Houston (Human Capacities Training Program) and Barbara Meister Vitale (Practical Applications of Brain Research).

Ms. Carless is also the founder and former co-director of Ila Wii Chala Summer School, in Redding, California, and has been a director for the American Indian Education Programs, Marysville, California. Sally has been active in curriculum development, teaching, personnel management, experiential and alternative education, and she has been teaching for twenty years. Sally is a true believer in lifelong learning and continues to attend many conferences, seminars and training sessions.

Sally Carless’ peace and diversity school has only been with us for a couple of years (editor’s note:  this was in 2002). But you need do no more than turn on the nightly news to know how urgently this kind of education is needed – globally. Currently the school has only United States students, but the inquiries from around the globe are coming in, and Global Village is in the process of signing up its first student from the Czech Republic.

So what brought on this desire to teach about peace and diversity? And what words of wisdom can Ms. Carless offer on the teaching of tolerance and peace? Ms. Carless has the following to say:

“You can find peace education on the Internet. You can find multicultural education. But they are not generally linked together. The problems, however, have the very same roots – fear, lack of understanding and lack of exposure to those who are different. So that’s how the vision for Global Village came about: minority education grew into multicultural education and into diversity education, and so on, until it became peace and tolerance education.

“Peace and understanding can only come about with personal responsibility and awareness. Our society and many religions teach people to be followers. But in order to build a world with responsible, aware citizens, we must teach our children to think for themselves. And that is where our education comes in. Global Village’s courses provide students with the missing links. Such as, how are human rights and the global economy interrelated? How does it impact a child laborer in Asia when I buy a pair of tennis shoes? What is the true cost of that tennis shoe – not just in dollars, but human suffering? What is the true cost of the electricity I use in my home, of the gas I burn in my automobile?”

Sally saw a need to respect all students. “The advent of schools for minorities was a good starting point. But now we need to take the next step. Because in a minority school, what you have is a group of kids, who, even though they now feel safe within their own group, they still don’t know anything about the other groups. What they learn is still ‘us’ and ‘them.’ And the division is maintained. Global Village is attempting to integrate the minorities and the mainstream, the domestic and the foreign, to produce a microcosm of the real world and to teach all of these students the value of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and social activism.”

Another way in which Global Village addresses personal responsibility and awareness is to introduce students to service learning. The student volunteers to work on a project that improves their community, improves the environment, etc. Generally, the student works with existing advocacy groups like The Humane Society, The La Leche League, Get Out the Vote, or some other special interest group that is helping to improve the world. The student ultimately reports on this project and they are given credits for their “hands-on” learning experience. By volunteering their own time and energy for a project of this nature, the student learns about real world dilemmas and real world solutions firsthand. They use their independent thinking skills and their sense of personal responsibility and awareness to affect the project on which they are working. They learn to be responsible, proactive world citizens. Each child will gain from this experience in their own unique way, but they will all learn that one person can and does make a difference.

Sally continues with her thoughts on teaching peace. “How we are personally affects the whole. If you are peaceful, you have an impact on the world around you. If you are not peaceful, you also have an impact on the world around you. If you are attending a peace demonstration and you act violently or aggressively, you are not truly working for peace. If you work for peace, but don’t want your children associating with that gay couple across the street, then you are not truly working for peace. If we are not peaceful as individuals, how can we have peace in the world? If we cannot individually show restraint in the face of perceived wrongs, how can we expect nations with nuclear weapons to show restraint?”

The vision behind Global Village School is that peace, tolerance and understanding can and must be taught in this ever-shrinking world. “Children don’t start out noticing differences in race. They learn it,” Sally concludes. Children are highly malleable. If a child is taught that they must kill the ‘heathens,’ ‘sinners,’ ‘barbarians,’ he will live that teaching. If, however, a child is taught that we should value our diversity, he will live that teaching. And if a child is taught to think for himself, he will live that teaching as well, and decide for himself. “What we’re talking about here is a higher level of being, a higher level of decision making.”

“Throughout history people have dehumanized the ‘other.’ It was easier to justify slavery, or the stealing of indigenous lands or the murder of people of a different culture or religion or race, if you could convince people that they were ‘less than human,’ that they were ‘savages’ or ‘heathens.’ But the world is much too small now. In the past, people on one side of the world could fight a war and people on the other side didn’t even know about it. Now, not only do we know it instantly, but we are tangibly affected by it. The economy is affected; the environment is affected; our souls are affected. Instability in one area of the world now threatens the stability of all the other areas of the world.”

As the sun begins to sink in the west, a cool breeze drops oak leaves on Sally’s outdoor table. A pink sky paints the whole area with a reddish hue. There is a profound silence as we both contemplate the complex subject that has occupied our afternoon– and much of Sally’s life. An oak leaf lands in my hair, as dozens more dance dizzyingly to the ground. Like the great oak tree that sheds one leaf at a time, we must plant the seeds of peace on earth, one child at a time.

Check out how our website looked during this time period here:  http://web.archive.org/web/20020722010001/http://www.globalvillageschool.org/

Author, Marsha Chandler. Source: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/multicultural/chandler.htm