Food for Thought:

Dear all,

Hope you are having a good long weekend, you all deserve a break.

Thought that I would keep this Food for Thought short and related to the big news of the week, the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. There have been many articles written questioning how this could have happened so thought that I would share this TED interview which took place ahead of the election. You may be asking how does this link to ISHCMC and why should I care. Well, during this interview with Jonathan Haidt a leading social psychologist,' Can a divided America heal?' it becomes apparent that the characteristics portrayed in this election relate closely to normal human behavior and that with the declining influence of the 2nd WW generation we are now moving into the era of the baby boomers. Near the end of the interview Haidt refers to ways that people can address the polarization that is taking place world wide, and I think this links to our work with positive emotions and in particular empathy and compassion. When reflecting upon his arguments I felt that if the world was full of schools practicing mindfulness, positive education, and looking towards breaking the old authoritarian model of education we could avoid some of the problems that appear to be emerging on the political horizon. I hope watching this might also equip you with a few answers for when our students want to talk about the election and how Donald Trump managed to win. It might be an interesting interview to share with some of our older students in I&S or ToK or MUN club, as it does raise lots of questions about our next decade and international relations and politics.

Finally, this week also marked the passing of one of my favorite musicians/ philosophers/ social commentators, Leonard Cohen at the age of 82. I only grew to understand his work recently as I became more mature in my life and thinking. Discovering I liked Cohen's work, writings and thinking so much shows me that although we may think we know who we are at different phases of our lives we won't really know till we are nearer to its end. If you don't know much about Leonard Cohen here are two articles about him, this one from Rolling Stone is about his career, and the other from Brain Pickings is more about the predictive nature of his writing.

Have a good Sunday,

See you all on Tuesday, we will have a briefing at 7:15 in the MPR.

Yours

Adrian