Kyle Herman

Fantastic Kyle! I hope you shared this with the Big History Project too! You can always send them a link to this site so they can see the pictures and read your narrative, as well as other resources.

Great to see the youthfulness and enthusiasm here, but I kept wishing folk in the picture would move away so that I could see their exhibits. Inspiring, even so, thanks.

Thanks, Di! Yeah, I know, I wished the exhibits were more visible, too…I guess you’ll just have to visit Indiana next time we host an exhibition!

Dear Kyle,

I very much enjoyed reading your article ‘A Match made in Science.’ It provided much food for thought.

I don’t know much about Montessori education as I’ve taught in English state and a private (non-Montessori) school. However, I empathize with your approach, as I understand it, that although Montessori’s Cosmic Education was for 6-12 it can be fruitfully adapted to the 12+ years. It seems you are finding Big History a really useful tool to provide a scientific objective foundation of the origins and development of the Universe, Earth and Life. From this firm and sound basis the children can be encouraged to make judgements, shape attitudes and find meaningful relationships to Life. As you say, ‘Montessori can pick up where big History leaves off.’ That sounds great to me!

In a similar vein I would love it if Big History also made an adaptation of their content for 6-12 year olds (this is the year group I teach). However, I feel in this regard, Jennifer’s books are brilliant at providing many of the scientific facts in a child friendly manner.

That being said I feel (Jane and I will present on this in the DTJN programme later in the year) there is also much room to bring Modern Myths into the classroom arena that are based on the latest scientific findings. This way, I feel, we have the best of both worlds – Myth and Science combined. Science to satisfy the logical mind but also myths to engage our emotional, moral and spiritual dimensions of being.

Wishing you all the best in the classroom.
Rod

Rod,

Thank you for your response. It’s always nice to hear feedback, especially from people outside of Montessori. Regarding your comment that you’d love to see Big History for elementary, it’s my opinion that Montessori has already done the groundbreaking work – long before Big History – for this plane of development with Cosmic Education. If you’re interested in learning more about the philosophy and practice of Cosmic Education, you should read To Educate the Human Potential, as I think this is her most important explication of this theory. I know you said you’re not teaching in a Montessori school, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t pull from her teachings and incorporate them as you see fit.

I’m eager to see your webinar about myth and science. Particularly, I’m curious to see how you define the word “myth.” Thanks again for taking the time to read my article and then to comment on it, and I’d love to hear more about your school and teaching experience sometime.

Best,
Kyle

Hi Kyle… It’s a wonderful study you wrote, that inspired me a lot in several respects, even though I differ with your political view towards the cause of what you call “terrorist” attacks.

I agree with you that Big History, even though it lacks a kind of “meta-materialistic” guidance or purpose, it furnishes a first base for education across all civilizations to have a common origin & history story, to start breaking through national & religious prejudice that is ingrained within current History & Religion subjects taught in schools, to start building a global human identity in children.

The problem is we have to make sure that this meta-materialistic guidance that could be complemented by Cosmic Montessori does not waste away this new-held potential within BH, to make sure that this guidance doesn’t play a disguised role that does more or less the same as current national education curriculum – that is, to guide the mass of children into adopting a specific moral, theological, or political view (that is adopted by the majority of the community), & even worse, that this view is favored over other competing views of other communities (like the quotes you’ve mentioned for Wilson).
Also, it is still place to wonder, that even if children & adolescents are provided an unbiased philosophical guidance that transcends all specific metaphysical views of the world, is this enough to bring up children who could potentially change the world into a much better one than the current conditions we suffer in, if those same children are – aside from the school – live within economic, political, & cultural conditions that work in the opposite direction that BH & Cosmic Montessori strive to make humans direct their common path towards? For ex., children being separated in education between poorly-qualified public schools & highly-qualified prestigious private schools according to the “financial-prestige” acquired by their parents (needless to mention, the huge economic & social differentiation between children in developed & developing countries) – is a condition that “teaches” children that it is “natural” to have people living in high-quality conditions, who hold more power over others in low-quality conditions, & that this power is only attributed to the “material” amount of money one gathers up, which works as a reality-check against any attempts of morally guiding children in schools on a theoretical basis!

Thanks Kyle for this thought-provoking study…

Noha,

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond so thoughtfully to my article. I also see that you signed up for my webinar! Thanks for that, too.

Your concern about the limitations of a peaceful cosmic curriculum within a larger world of economic, political, and social injustice gets right to the heart of the matter. It’s important to keep in mind that the scale of this Work is so huge that we cannot expect to “fix” our ills in one or two or even three generations. This is a long-term vision of gradual changes, with each generation making greater and greater inward progress. It’s also important to stress that the goal is not a utopia in which all people always behave ethically (if such an objective standard even exists) and peacefully. It seems to me that a cosmic perspective reveals to us a truth understood very well in eastern philosophy, namely that the universe expresses itself through a duality (most famously represented by the yin yang principle or the concept of “mutual arising”). So, creation can only be understood in comparison with destruction, life can only be understood in terms of death, and indeed, peace can only be understood against the background of violence. Thus, it is not realistic to expect that Justice for All will be achieved. Rather, the goal is to progressively minimize the expression of violence and injustice in the world and maximize the expression of peace and justice.

Now, to the point of Big History or Montessori education playing a “disguised role,” I hope that a closer reading of my article will show that Big History in particular wants to assemble a purely scholarly understanding of the universe and earth and life and humans without making any claims – explicit or implicit – about how our big history ought to be interpreted or used to convey a particular worldview. Fred Spiers in particular is very clear and adamant on this point. Now, with Montessori education, the situation is admittedly a little more ambiguous. After all, the primary goal of Montessori education is to effect the inward progress of man and promote a more peaceful world. So, although we promote free-thinking, celebrate cultural diversity, and invite dynamic discussions from many different viewpoints, if a student (mis)interpreted the cosmic curriculum to suggest that he should destroy life and treat people with disdain or even with violence, then yes, as Montessorians, we would strive to help correct what we would consider a dysfunctional attitude toward the external world. Again though, as Carl Jung so wisely explained, humans are neither angels nor demons. Rather, just like every other duality in the universe, we possess both light and “shadow.” So again, we’re not trying to make children into perfect angels; instead, we are attempting to help nurture their innate light so that it not be overcast by the shadowy aspect of our duality. These children eventually grow up into more “enlightened” adults who shed greater light into the world and raise more enlightened children, and so in this way, with each generation, humanity makes a little more inward progress, and our “shadows” don’t stretch quite so far.

Finally, I have to say I’m not sure what you mean that you disagree with my “political view of what [I] call ‘terrorist’ attacks.” The quotes that you put around “terrorist” seem to imply that you have a different view than I do of what would constitute terrorism, so I must not have been very clear in my articulation of this term. In my mind, anyone or any group that kills innocent people, whether in the name of religion or racism or ethnocentrism, or homophobia, or any other “cause” is a terrorist, and such heinous crimes against humanity have absolutely no conditions whatsoever that excuse them. I do hope we can agree on that point.

I should also like to reiterate that any act of terrorism carried out in the name of religion is a “perversion of religious spirituality.” In other words, such acts are committed by lunatics, not by truly religious people. Again, I hope we can agree on this point. I don’t see this as a political viewpoint at all. To me, it’s a humanitarian viewpoint, one that begins from a true love and respect for all people and all beliefs. Herein lies the flaw of sectarian religions, though, which Wilson acknowledges: the very idea that people outside of one’s religion are somehow “wrong” or “less than” or not in the Higher Power’s favor introduces division and possibly (as we see in the examples of extremists) violence toward people outside of that religious “in-group.” This is why sectarian religion, on its own, cannot unite humanity, as it draws a circle that does not encompass every human being on the planet. Only a cosmic perspective includes all of us and reveals our shared ancestry and our shared fate on this planet.

That doesn’t mean that religion is bad or should be banished. In fact, as I stress in my article, religion can elevate us in very important ways, but sectarian religion will have to evolve to incorporate the all-inclusive perspective that Cosmic Education offers. In other words, we need both science and religion, but both of these approaches to understanding our place in the cosmos will have to bend and be willing to learn from the other side to achieve a more resilient and powerful “New Story.”

I hope that helps clear up any confusion you may have felt after reading my article, and thanks again for your comment. I hope you find upcoming webinar equally thought-provoking.

Best,
Kyle

Thank you Kyle for your again thought-provoking reply 🙂

I agree with you that we cannot expect to reach a utopian organization of the world that doesn’t include a duality of good vs. evil. But as you said, we have direct the inner progress of children (through the added philosophical guidance framework suggested by Cosmic Montessori) toward maximizing justice, & minimizing injustice, & not just that… I think also children should be directed toward being greatly dissatisfied with revolutionary tendencies against the current framework of organization ruling societies across the world right now (including the so-called democratic ethnocentric “nations”), because this “international” organization, makes, what we might call evil or injustice, the basic common rule of the day (ex., the greatest influence & power in the globe given to arms & wealth-monopolizing corporations), while actions of justice are very weak & with no widely-spread effect as wars, wealth concentration, & racism/nationalism (ex., compare the power of human rights organizations & environmental movements, say Amnesty International, to the power of arms corporations — I don’t think the word compare is even applicable here to dizzying difference of power between the 2 sides)…

So even though both sides could exist in the world, but in our world right now, we need huge radical change — turn the whole system in the world upside down “literally” speaking (even if gradual through generations like you say), to make this huge power difference goes the other way around between justice & injustice!

(P.S. My Master’s thesis deals a bit with this, as it reviews the possibility of applying a gradual change of the political culture of young Egyptian generations from a traditional towards a civic one, to find alternative sustainable long-term solutions for changing the system in Egypt, after the failure of its 2011 revolution).

I’m currently reading in Big History, so I still didn’t read in Cosmic Montessori, & I agree with your point of guiding a child who might express a dysfunctional attitude. But, because this guidance might be subjectively interpreted by a teacher in a way that doesn’t apply that multi-diversity & transdisciplinary approach of Cosmic Montessori (ex., a children expresses a tendency toward a certain metaphysical view that a teacher holds a subjective bias against, & interprets as dysfunctional); so I think that clear articulated education frameworks should be developed specifically for the purpose of guiding teachers in their philosophical education for children, in a way that equips the teacher to provide a transcendent unbiased evaluation of all cultural, religious, & metaphysical views that emerged throughout history, in a way that brings up a global human identity in the child that doesn’t bound itself within the limits of a specific religious & cultural view of the world (& this is not an easy task, considering that both teacher & child would have to resist their cognitive & psychological temptations to conform with the dominant views within their surrounding society).

As for terrorism, yes, I differ with you, because I think its major cause is the huge political & economic power difference within & among states in our current international system, not religion at all, yes, religion is only used as a justification or psychological reasoning for one’s desire to make such an act, but the true underlying cause is this power difference. I shy away from calling the nowadays so-called “religious” groups’ acts as terrorism, because those groups are on the weaker side of the power structure in the world. On the other hand, terrorism is majorly committed by the other stronger side, namely, state military & security institutions across nation-states (especially the barbaric but publicly unrecognized terrorism committed by army institutions of so-called developed nation-states against the peoples of so-called developing nation-states). The defensive violent acts of those non-state-recognized groups are only blind reactions to the offensive terrorism committed by state institutions (& incomparable in scale to the violence committed by states).

I definitely agree with you (& Wilson’s) approach toward theology… that, like the new BH approach toward science & world history, a new theological framework should be developed, not only to make a match with science & BH, but also to develop an all-encompassing view of the relation between human & the Universe/Allah/God, that doesn’t hold exclusive divisions between groups or individuals of different beliefs, such as the divisive properties that current organized religions hold. And even though this is part of the solution in building a new educational framework for bringing up children with a new global human identity who could change the world, I think that a huge part of the solutions, is how to revolutionize their little souls to strive toward breaking current political, economic, & social systems that are based upon the unequal division of power…

Noha,

I encourage you to read some of Montessori’s work because it will allay your concerns about a Montessori teacher viewing a different cultural belief as dysfunctional. Of course, there will, in any institution, be people who don’t hold themselves to the exacting standards of that institution, but to truly qualify as a Montessori teacher means not imposing one’s “subjective biases” onto children. That’s an integral component of what Montessori calls the spiritual preparation of the teacher, and it’s one of the key features that separates Montessori philosophy from the traditional approach.
I understand your point about power and wealth disparities in the world, but one point that we will have to agree to disagree on is what constitutes terrorism. It would be a glaring form of subjective bias indeed to say that murdering innocent people is not terrorism but rather just a “blind reaction” from victims on the weak side of a power structure. Murdering people will never stop the rivers of blood from flowing, nor will it create a balance of power in the world. And it certainly doesn’t matter how justified one side feels in its violence because the truth is, both sides will always feel justified because so many atrocities have been committed already in both directions.

From a Montessori perspective, militarism, whether from a “developed” nation or a “developing” one, only hurts the whole of humanity. She writes in Education and Peace, “The impoverishment of one nation does not make another nation richer; rather all nations decline. Destroying one nation is tantamount to cutting off one hand in the mistaken hope that the other hand will thereby become twice as strong.” So, just as it is self-defeating for developing nations to wage war, so too is it self-defeating for the people of the “developing” nation to commit their own barbaric acts of violence. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so wisely put it, “Hate begets hate and violence begets violence.”

As I said in my previous post, the intentional murder of innocent civilians is terrorism, and it makes not one whit of difference whether the people committing these heinous acts are Western or Middle Eastern (i.e., on the “strong” or “weak” side of the “power structure”). I think that to excuse such crimes against humanity, or to “shy away” from calling it what it really is, is very dangerous because it is a form of assent, however implicit or indirect it may be. As a united world, what Montessori calls “a single organism, one nation,” we must categorically denounce and condemn all forms of terrorism and war, otherwise, we are certainly doomed to remain caught in a senseless cycle of violence that destroys life, squanders resources, distracts us from truly pressing ecological issues, and maintains the very imbalance of power that you rightly identify as very problematic, all because each side has its own means of justifying murder, whether they be religious, economic, militaristic, or otherwise.

We cannot bomb our way into peace. We cannot shoot our way into peace. We cannot maim our way into peace. We most likely can’t even talk (politicize) our way into peace. Following the guidance of Montessori, I believe the only recourse we have is to educate our way into peace by protecting the inborn wisdom that children possess, which makes it astoundingly clear to them that no matter what state of development your country is in, no matter what atrocities have been committed against your country in the past, no matter the type of religion you or your nation practices, no matter what your political beliefs, no matter whatever categories you impose on people to separate humans into “us and them,” the reality of life is that we are all connected, and so our fates are all intimately intertwined. Again, such truths need not be taught; rather, all that must be done is to avoid corrupting children with our own “subjective biases.”

As Montessori explains it, “When individuals develop normally, they plainly feel a love not only for things, but for all living creatures. This love is not something that was taught; it is the natural result of leading the right kind of life. We might say that if love appears, we are within the range of the normal, and if it does not, within the range of the abnormal…Love is not the cause but the effect of the normal development of the individual…Our hope for peace in the future lies not in the formal knowledge the adult can pass on to the child, but in the normal development of the new man.” In the mind and heart of this “new man,” there will be no place and no excuse for murder.

Kyle,

I agree with all that you say, especially to protect the innate wisdom of children to bloom of its own naturally, without corrupting it with the subjective biases that adults’ minds hold. But your last paragraph has left me thinking… That children should be left to develop normally in order to bring up a new man who embraces love for everything around him…

What about children here, who are not living or developing in normal circumstances?! Could we actually say that “most” children in the world now are not developing in normal circumstances?

I was once standing in a clash against the police here, & I found so many young poor boys (we call them here street children, who are homeless & poor) standing in the front, vulnerable to deadly gunshots that the police shoot at us. I grabbed one of them, trying to stop him to go to the front, begging him to leave or at least stand in the back, so he wouldn’t get killed. He shouted at me saying “Let me go, I want to die”, & went back to the front. He was only about 12 years. And you know what’s even worse?! I didn’t hold to him or force him to get back, because when he shouted at me this, I knew he was right, if he dies, or perhaps he already died, it would be better for him than the life that awaits him!

Weren’t those groups, whose actions you call “terrorist”, before children who developed in abnormal conditions?! Weren’t they the very abnormal production of the horrifying barbarism & savagery that developed nations’ militaries have been committing in the Middle East for decades?!

One of the billions of heart-bleeding stories of children I got to know, is an Iraqi child whose whole family got killed in one of the American raids on his city, that was back a decade ago, I saw his picture with his 2 arms amputated. He’s probably grown now to be in his 20’s. Would you blame him if he committed what you call a “terrorist” attack & what I call a “blind reaction”?! Wouldn’t it be a subjective bias to condemn his actions & give a blind eye to the savage American aggression that stole away his “childhood” & “normal human development” potential within his existence?!

How could we bring up such a child?! How could we bring up millions of ME children to love their existence & be a force for peace, when their surroundings are mired with war & poverty?!

Or let me say it more bluntly, did the developed nations leave the children of the developing nations to live in normal circumstances, & have a normal development, wherein “their minds & hearts, there will be no place and no excuse for murder”?!

Yes, I’m against militarism in all its sense. I don’t think that any military, security institutions, or any sophisticated weaponry is needed in our future world, hopefully. As those institutions are mainly used for the preservation of the status-quo, & the accumulation of power & wealth with the elite, & not the protection of the public. But in order to fight against the very notion of violence & militarism, we have to be able to analyze events with an unprejudiced view that doesn’t flow with the mass media propaganda, but instead only apply our own human rationality to it…

If a cat keeps biting at a mouse & chewing at it, & the mouse, in reflex, scratches the cat, it would be against sound logic to look at both cat’s & mouse’s actions within the same scale of interpretation. And putting the violent actions of both the aggressor & the victim within the same judgment, doesn’t only stand against rational thinking & human justice, but it will also hinder our own attempts to find & eliminate the root causes of this cycle of violence!

Noha,

You speak of analyzing events with an unprejudiced view, and yet you characterize America as the aggressor (the cat in your analogy) and extremist/terrorist groups as the victim (the purely reflexive mouse)…herein lies your contradiction, which does in fact “hinder [your attempt] to find & eliminate the root cause of this cycle of violence.”

First of all, we are humans, not cats and mice, and as such, we have the capacity to control our actions using logic and reason in ways that the rest of the animal kingdom cannot.

Secondly, your analogy misses the mark because in the situation we are discussing, both parties are aggressors, neither one (as an entity) classifies an innocent victim. But you know who are the victims? The innocent Iraqi families (and Afghani and Saudi and so on) killed or maimed in American raids. You know who else are victims? The innocent American, Spanish, French, and other European civilians murdered by extremists/terrorists (some of them homegrown right here in our own country).

You ask if I would blame the child for becoming a terrorist and killing other people to exact revenge for the wrongs done to him and his family? My answer is yes. I would blame him, I would blame the terrorist group that armed and trained and brainwashed him, I would blame the American raid that killed innocent civilians, I would blame them all because they’re all caught up in a cycle of violence in which everyone feels justified to kill and no one is strong enough to forgive and work toward peace. Everyone can point to senseless murder committed by the other side and say, “You see?!? Look at what they’ve done! How can you blame me for retaliating with a killing spree of my own?” From each parties’ point of view, they are they mouse, the victim who must now stand up and wipe out that evil cat once and for all. It is a contradiction to say, “I’m against militarism in every sense, but America is the root of the problem, so how can you blame these groups that I won’t call terrorists because they’re just acting outing of blind reflex?”

America is not the root of the problem. Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, and so on are not the root of the problem. As long as we continue pointing fingers at one another, we will surely continue to point guns at and drop bombs on one another. The root of the problem is, as Montessori has explained, the fact that our inward progress has not kept pace with our outward progress, so we live in an extraordinarily complex and advanced physical world with a violent history of grievances for everyone, while our spiritual world is desolate and barren. So yes, I would say that most children in the world – including America – are not developing in the “normal” conditions that Montessori spoke of in which love appears quite naturally. The fact that we still have so much racism, homophobia, religious violence, and militarism in the world is proof of that fact. This is why we need Montessori education in America just as much as it’s needed everywhere else in the world. Just as none of us are innocent victims, none of us stand on a moral high ground, either. The whole world find the humility to accept that we have all lost our way and that the trail of progress can only be blazed by the child, untainted by our prejudices and grievances. We must rally around the child as the teacher, the messiah, the messenger of peace, and follow Montessori’s wisdom by providing a rich environment in which his natural tendency to love can grow and blossom without the poison of violence and blame destroying it.

Kyle,,,

Again I agree with what you say, which you say so beautifully, & sadly – because I know this is not reality – I think that if enough people in the world think like you, it would’ve been a different plant. I hope you’re not angry with me for my, perhaps shockingly different, view towards those groups, but I look forward to you being tolerable to me, because I, myself, am confused & hurt for everything that’s happening around me… Like you, for all the ideals that I hold, but find are shattered & ridiculed, by the unmerciful force of reality!

I want to eliminate a misunderstanding, first that of course I don’t agree of what those extremist people do, & yes, what they do is terrorism, nevertheless, a reaction-, not an action- type of terrorism, & not at all comparable in scale to the terrorism committed by military institutions (just compare the number of victims from the American organized aggression in the ME, & ISIS individualized acts).

“I would blame them all because they’re all caught up in a cycle of violence in which everyone feels justified to kill and no one is strong enough to forgive and work toward peace.” That’s a very beautiful thing, & you’re absolutely right in this. But Kyle, the situation is more complicated than that, because the confusing agent of psychology plays a big role in this dilemma. Neither you nor me can fully understand the situation, because neither of us had his home bombed over him, his loved ones killed, & his body tortured. We don’t know the suffering they went through in wars that made them turn out to extremist groups & commit such actions! It’s very easy for us in our comfy homes, safe environments, around our loved ones to condemn violence, but did we really try to go to the hell-like conflict areas, to live through conditions with those war-victims people, try to understand them, to know why they turn into committing violence as a reaction to what they’ve been through?!

When the American military killed over a million Iraqis, put nuclear radiation in its land, lit a long civil war there that continues to flame our region & darken our lives, what did you expect would come out if this? When ISIS showed up after that, that wasn’t a surprise at all.

Kyle, I want you to understand that I absolutely agree with what you say (whether about letting children bloom in their own protected from our own divisions & biases – whether to condemn all violence committed by all actors, even those who were victims to violence themselves – whether that we’re all connected together, without any natural divisions between us, all the divisions are culturally-constructed illusions). But at the end, we all have to accept that we hold some kinds of prejudices – mainly psychological prejudices. And those prejudices sometimes conflict with our ideals, hopes, & intentions, making us contradictory & confusing, making us humans…

Yes, I know that many children in America & Europe don’t have normal conditions to develop into better humans, but they have a much much better shot at that, because their surroundings are incomparable to the devastating, violent, & poverty-stricken conditions that children grow up amidst here in the ME, Africa, & many parts of Asia & LA. That’s why even my own intended attempt to teach BH to poor children here, I still don’t have any clue if I could target street children with this, they’re around me everywhere, but how could I engage with their poverty-stricken psych, how could I tell them the story of the universe, tell them the story of anything, when their whole mind is engaged with their homeless hungry violent lives in the streets? How could you engage millions of war & poverty stricken children in the ME & elsewhere within the journey of the universe?!

Noha,

Thank you for clarifying your position. I totally agree that I live in the lap of luxury, far removed from the unimaginable reality that you have witnessed and lived through yourself. While that may discredit my philosophy to some extent, I think it benefits me to the extent that I can view the situation with some perspective. Just as when someone wrongs me personally (even on a small scale), I may want to exact revenge, but someone who is not a party to the grievance, someone outside of the conflict who still has clear faculties of logic and reason, can evaluate the situation and give me advice that is not charged with the emotion/psychology of retaliation. I don’t discount the fact that I cannot begin to imagine the reality of experiencing such evil, and I’m sure part or all of me might want to seek revenge should a terrorist, say, kill my family. Indeed, I may be inclined to let hate infest my heart, and I may be tempted to join the growing masses of American citizens who – quite wrongly in my opinion – are developing anti-Muslim/anti-Islam worldviews.

I honestly don’t know how I would feel if my sister or brother had been one of the 49 innocent people murdered or one of the 53 other people wounded in the Orlando club this week by a lunatic gunman claiming allegiance to ISIS. Indeed, being that directly affected by murder in the name of Allah may cause me to sympathize with the call for a ban on all Muslims that is being proposed by our country’s republican nominee, Donald Trump (who, I might add, has a frighteningly large number of people supporting him). I hope, though, that my perspicacity would not fail me, even during such a confusing and heart-wrenching experience. I would hope that my logical understanding that violence and hate begets more violence and hate would allow me to see that we have to seek an avenue toward peace, not double down on discrimination, mistrust, fear, and war. I don’t know, of course, but I hope so.

As far as engaging poor children in your region, I don’t have any authority to offer advice there, either, but I will say that the poor children of Rome were the first children that Montessori worked with in her Casa de Bambini. I really, really hope and encourage you to look into her method. It will be of great inspiration and service to you, I’m sure. Of course, Montessori’s children weren’t mired in violence like yours are, so that certainly makes it double difficult, but they did exhibit many behavioral and learning disorders that were quickly corrected once placed in a prepared environment. Even though the task ahead of you is arguably more daunting than Montessori’s, I hope you remain passionate and determined to help the children in your area cultivate their Love, as they are the most important ones in this whole discussion. You and I can only change so much. The children of today will change the world as the children of the past are changing the world now. It’s just a question of which direction they will take us.

Kyle,

You have to realize that you hold your own prejudices that the social, economic, & political context around you forces upon your psych. Thinking that you are an unbiased observer hinders your ability to understand & analyze the dilemma of violence going on, instead when you lay bare your prejudices in front of you, this would be an important step toward your attempting to step outside the box.

Examples of your prejudices: how you equalize in sequence & scale between the organized mass violence committed by your country’s army & the individual acts of limited violence committed by ISIS; how you manage to describe the ISIS gunman as lunatic & extremist (who’s from Afghanistan, the country that America’s terrorist military has been murdering its people everyday for 15 years now), but fail to do so for American political & military officials involved in this violence (like Trump); how you express your ability to imagine being a victim of Orlando’s shooting, but not say as a father who’s children were bombed to pieces by American warplanes in Afghanistan… You, yourself, are part of the representatively-elected political system of America, you chose your officials who decided to turn our region into a pit of hell, and you paid your tax-money for a military machine that mass murdered children & families by hundreds of thousands; so yes (excuse me for saying this), you, yourself, are a kind of murderer – by representation.

Sadly, Kyle, nobody in our today’s unprecedentedly interconnected world, with its huge & psychologically-smart media propaganda & cultural orientation machines can be, what you say “someone who is not a party to the grievance, someone outside of the conflict who still has clear faculties of logic and reason, can evaluate the situation and give advice that is not charged with the emotion/psychology of retaliation”.

That’s why to have a clearer look at our problems, construct mutual understanding & empathy, & dig through all the cultural & psychological barriers to finally reach the true common ground between us all, we first have to lay our own prejudices in front of us…

That’s why I will lay bare to you my prejudices, to encourage you to lay your own prejudices, & that would definitely foster a better understanding between us both:

1* I feel ANGRY & HURT, because all my efforts (wasting 3 years of my life in the streets in protests & clashes, getting arrested, beaten, humiliated, & nearly escaped death) in the revolution, that failed, have been for nothing. One of the reasons (there are other reasons of course) is the American occupation of Iraq & flaring a huge civil war across the region, that currently engulfs Syria, which stomped the Egyptian people from continuing the revolution & toppling the regime, out of fear of turning into something similar to Syria & Iraq. Needless to mention that our own authoritarian military regime (& others across the region) have formed in the 50’s as a reaction to the formation of the Zionist entity in the middle of Palestine, to so-call protect the Arab masses from the Zionist entity’s expansion in the region, & the regime continues its authoritarian militaristic rule in the name of defense against this nuclear-armed (protected by America) entity.

2* I feel HURT & ANGRY, from all the images, news reports, & stories I’ve been following since the beginning of this wretched century, including women & children (I don’t care much about men) being tortured, raped, murdered, bombed in masses, in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria. They stuck in my memory forever. I’ll tell you only one ex., a report I read more than 10 years ago, about a 14-year old Iraqi girl that was raped for a whole week by American soldiers & thrown naked from their helicopter in the middle of her family’s farm, & then committed suicide. I suffered then (I was yet in my late teens) from a horrible depression episode that kept me in bed for more than a month, imagining myself in the place of that girl. No sooner & the Abu Ghreib photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqis showed up, & that was the start of another depression episode for me.

3* I feel JEALOUS, of people in the West enjoying conditions around them that give them the chance to live like human beings, in clean welfare satisfying self-achieving happy conditions, conditions that I only dream & pray to Allah that I could live in, in Heaven after I die (if Allah & Heaven exist). And the only time in my life where I thought I had the chance to transform conditions around me to be like in the West (the revolution) was blown up, & America was one of the reasons it blew up (like I mentioned above).

4* I feel HURT, PERSECUTED, & LONELY, when I read news sites & comments all over the internet, filled with hate-speech & name-calling against Muslims, that I feel AFRAID to take part with my own comment. I also feel HURT how the whole world engages & sympathizes with victims when a few dozen people are killed in the West, & turn a blind eye & a stone heart to the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the ME because they’re Muslims.

That’s, to be brief, some of a whole of confused psych of feelings, that I hope to deal with & lay rest in peace.

Noha,

Unfortunately, it seems that our conversation has taken a turn, and I regret that it seems we cannot have a productive dialogue. I am not angry with you, please know that, but calling me a murderer is deeply offensive and reveals an underlying lack of respect for me as a human being independent of the decisions my country has made and is making. Though I do cast a vote for my elected officials, they don’t always get elected, and not one of them so far has asked me personally whether I want my tax dollars spent on our military machine (which I don’t), nor have they consulted with me on air strikes or military campaigns, though if they do, you can be sure I will emphatically advise against them. To revile my character based on my nationality is the VERY sort of prejudice and misunderstanding that divides our world now and allows hatred to seethe and spread. Some Americans do the exact same thing in regards to Muslims, and no matter which direction such generalized condemnation gets directed, it disturbs and saddens me.

I would also like to rebut, though it probably makes no difference, that I never claimed to be unbiased, as all of us are products of our culture, for better or worse. I was only trying to say that I understood why people directly affected by violence would want to lash out in revenge. I understand why, given the horrendous things you’ve experienced, you might be inclined to justify or perhaps rationalize retaliatory violence. As I said, I may well have the same reaction, which is why we can’t rely on that retaliatory attitude to show us the most logical and advantageous course of action we ought to take because, in the words of Gandhi, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Moreover, I think anyone who murders innocent people is a lunatic, whether that lunatic be American, French, Afghan, Egyptian, Martian, whatever. Such a human being (or alien in the case of the Martian) is not rational. And while the Orlando gunman’s dad was Afghani, he was actually American, born and raised, so my condemnation of him has nothing to do with where he comes from; nevertheless, the insinuation that because his family is from such a worn torn place his actions are somehow less egregious, perhaps even justified, is disturbing to me, and it’s a position that I cannot sympathize with.

Also, just for the record, I think Trump is not so much a lunatic as a whiny, narcissistic, ignorant, petulant man-child, and I desperately hope that my fellow countrymen have enough common sense not to vote him into office. If for some inexplicable reason they do, though, my next biggest hope is that the world does not condemn all of us for it, because there are legions of us who shudder at the thought of such a leader.

Finally, my eyes are not blind, nor is my heart stone, and if you knew me, if you could see past my American nationality (and perhaps my gender, since you “don’t care much about men”) and see me for the human being I am, then you would know that. Nor am I alone. Yes, some Americans hate Muslims and want to ban them from our country and wage war on them. Many other Americans, like myself, are disgusted by and even ashamed of this attitude, so it’s not as simple as saying that Americans do not sympathize with the plight of the Middle Eastern world, or that Americans support the military actions that have been taken in that region of the world.

Noha, what you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis, I can’t imagine. I truly admire you for trying to make a difference in a positive way, and even though you say you failed, you haven’t because the very act of standing up for peace is a success, and I hope you continue to fight for the children and protect their “normal development” insofar as that is possible in such circumstances as you find yourself. I would apologize for the unconscionable atrocities committed by some of my country’s soldiers, but that would be a pathetic gesture, so I will just say that I categorically condemn their behavior, and it makes my stomach turn that such is the representative image of America in the Middle East. I can assure you, though, that those sick lunatic soldiers do not represent all American soldiers, and they certainly do not represent all Americans.

In closing, I will say that I have learned a lot from you in our ongoing dialogue, and I’m sure I could learn a lot more if we understood one another a little better, but it does seem to me, as I said at the start of this comment, that the tone has changed. I’m interested in having conversations based on mutual respect with people of different cultures, life experiences, and opinions, and while it seemed we had that at first, I don’t feel respected after your last post. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that you have taken something positive away from our conversation, as I know I have.

Best Wishes,
Kyle

Noha,

There’s more I want to say…my reaction to your last post was reflexive, and I’ve thought a lot about it since I commented this morning. The truth is, your perspective matters to me, and it deserves to be heard. It needs to be heard, especially those of us in America who denounce the heinous acts that some of our soldiers have committed. You are a living witness to what must be the most divided, complicated, war-torn region in the world, and as such, you have invaluable insights to offer anyone who really wants to know the truth, however hard it may be to hear, about our military’s behavior and impact there.

The way I see it, if you and I can’t have a productive conversation about this situation, then who can? You and I want the same thing. We come from different countries but share the same human values. We have to be capable of helping each other come to a more robust understanding of our political relationship so that we can better serve the cause that we both share.

You asked me to lay bare my biases, and that was a fair thing to ask, since you did the same. Mine are much more simple than yours, though:
1. I am white
2. I am a man
3. I am American
4. I am “middle class”

Basically, I come from privilege, and I have never known discrimination, oppression, poverty, hunger, persecution, or any other of the hardest trials of existence. I contemplate the world’s problems with relative safety and comfort from afar (with the exception of the possible election of Donald Trump, who I forgot to describe as also a misogynist and a bigot), and I give some but little thought to how much my own country has done to generate the kind of extremism that now threatens us.

Please accept my apology for not hearing you more fully and honoring your perspective. I do admire your passion and strength of will in the face of such unimaginable brutality. That you would be willing to engage in such an honest conversation with me shows a great deal of courage and poise, more than I showed you, I’m sure. I have much to learn from you, and it was wrong to shut down the conversation because I took offense and thought no further.

You have taught me a lot already, Noha, more than I realized this morning.

Thank You,
Kyle

Hi Kyle,

Many thanks for your reply. And thank you for the link – “To Educate the Human Potential.” I’ve given it a quick look and will need to find time to give a more in depth study but one quote really stands out for me : –

“If the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying. ” In my experience this is one of the great things about the Universe Story in that it can do exactly that – create a deep sense of Awe and Wonder” in the child.

Very much looking forward to your webinar too!
Best Wishes,
Rod

Rod,

I’m glad you’re finding that work helpful – it’s one of my favorite works of Montessori. The quote you chose is one I’ve gone back to many times. The universe story is more than a way of generating interest, though it certainly does that. Rather, it generates the kind of deep contemplation and fascination that leads to profound epiphanies about nature and our place in it (a concept that Montessori calls our cosmic gift/cosmic task). Hence the reason that origins stories have been central to cultural identities for millennia.

Please let me know what you think after you finish reading the whole thing. I’ve got a lot more recommendations if you want to hear them!

Best,
Kyle

Dear Kyle & Jennifer,,,

I truly cried when reading your comments. I don’t know what to say! Thank you so much for being tolerant with me, with all my faults, confusions, & misunderstandings!

Kyle I’m extremely sorry to offend you, it was at all of no intention from me! I didn’t mean at all to direct the word murderer as a personal description, & believe me if I had the slightest hint it would offend you, I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. I’m sorry, as I don’t talk to people a lot, that’s why when I get to talk I say my heart out, without any regards for personal communication norms, that people get angry with me, without me intending it at all! I’m so embarrassed of myself, I’m so sorry.

Any dialogue would hold many misunderstandings, bumps, & obstacles, but we have to always keep trying… But after all we all descend from one human being, from one living entity, from one universal origin, our differences were constructed by time, & they can also be removed by time & perseverance…
Yes, you’re right, we should look to each other all as human beings. I shouldn’t have judged you as an American, but as a human being. & you’re definitely right, no political system that currently exists in this world now, not even the so-called “democratic” systems truly are representative. All political systems have become corrupt with money & corporations-interests prevailing above all. Even the larger masses (not only the American, but all the peoples across the globe) have become corrupted with the education systems that incorporates them into a prevailing social & cultural setting that absolutely contradicts the human purpose. People accept this setting as “reality”. They accept (& actually are indoctrinated in schools from the days of their innocent childhood to think) that “reality” is the world being divided into “States”, each “State” has a “military” to fight other enemy evil “States” or protect themselves, & when they “vote” for the government (that actually preserves this delusional reality) they are being self-determined “citizens” because they choose who gets to “make things never diverge from this corrupt constructed reality”, that entertainment for children is to buy them play station games to play as if they’re killing other evil nationalities or play wrestling & football to “play-fight” each other on the field, the whole entertainment-culture around us is indoctrinating violence & divisions in children’s & adolescents’ minds…

And this brings me to what you mention Kyle, that those horrendous actions have been committed by only “some” American soldiers, & that this doesn’t represent the American “army”. But what made you think this is the action of “some” not “most or all” the American military? Is it because the American media portrays the American soldiers as the “heroes” who protect you & the “American nation”? Those selfless heroes who give up their lives & comfort for “honor & duty”? After all this media propaganda you can’t get yourself to imagine that “most” American soldiers do these barbaric acts, that the whole American military is based on the idea of “destruction & terrorism” – that it destroyed “whole” societies & even regions, & murdered over a million people, whom you’re so angry about one of them coming & murdering fifty people in your country? Why do you think that ISIS is terrorist & extremist & the American army is not? Is it because ISIS uses beheading while American soldiers use bombing with air strikes? Or is it because ISIS wear rag clothes & American soldiers wear fancy suits? Or is it because ISIS kills in the name of “Allah” & American soldiers kill in the name of “honor”? Tell me, what’s the difference between ISIS & the American army, the Egyptian army, or any other army in the world?!

Yes, this is not only the American army, this is about ALL army & security institutions, including the Egyptian army. The Egyptian army, & all other armies around the world, are terrorist institutions. Why?! Because their very mission is the murder (& mass genocide) of people in other places in the name of defense & protection of what?! Of me (in the case of the Egyptian army)?! Of my family?! They’re only protecting the regimes, the few numbers of people who have accumulated political & financial power that they keep this military-industrial complex going on to protect their power. And believe me, there’s no difference here between authoritarian regimes & so-called democratic ones. If authoritarian regimes do it by coercion & force, so-called democratic regimes preserve it by the indoctrination of the people (which also happens of course in authoritarian regimes), making them think & believe that this is the “natural state of affairs”, corrupting the minds of innocent “humanly natural” minds of children in education to grow up “knowing” this as “reality”, making façade election scenes to make the people fancy they can “choose” between different actions, when in fact they’re choosing between different rotten fruits within the same preserved “crooked basket” of a system!

Why should we then be surprised or blame or be shocked at the seemingly divergent violent actions of some dispersed individuals & groups, & hail “Terrorism” at them, because they talk different than us, or wear different than our fancy clothes; when actually their actions are not divergent at all; their actions are exactly within the same direction that our whole “State Systems” works on, & their “terrorism” is just a minuscule version of the organized legitimate “terrorism” (or in the media-speak “honorable defense of the nation” – & I don’t mean by this only the American media’s description of its army but also the Egyptian’s media description of its army, & all national media across the world) that state military institutions are built to commit?!

There’s a wonderful piece in George Orwell’s 1984 book (which is a book banned in many countries including here in Egypt) explaining this:

“The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the 19th century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society… From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, & therefore to a great extent for human inequality, has disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, & disease could be eliminated within a few generations… But it was also clear that an all-around increase in wealth threatened the destruction – indeed, in some sense was the destruction – of a hierarchical society… For if leisure & security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate & would learn to think for themselves; & when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, & they would sweep it away… The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare… The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, & hence, in the long run, too intelligent… And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, & therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival…”

I would add to Orwell, that creating external enemies & sense of war with them, more so, making sure the preservation of a divided human global society into different nationalities within “States”, religions, races… divided within borders, & “educating & indoctrinating” the masses into fake “national” identities, & mobilizing them to aim for protecting their “national honor, borders, values… etc.” against the “other barbaric terrorist extremist enemy” (ex. In Egyptian media: a world conspiracy to overthrow the Egyptian state like Syria. In American media: Islamists trying to sow fear in our free nation. In Russian media: Americans want to overpower Russia in the world. In European media: Islamists want to turn Europe into a Muslim state. In Chinese media: Americans want to disturb the increasingly growing power of China. In Arab media: the West wanting to keep the Muslim World underdeveloped & defeated), because not only the machine, but furthermore the “internet” has turned into a very dangerous instrument against this “international system”, it provided a huge potential to bind the global human society & raise an awareness of the futility of the constructed divisions between them, so to preserve the status-quo (power & money accumulated with the few), the minds of the people have to be directed to an illusory danger… & that’s why the whole media keeps on chanting against ISIS, while ISIS is nothing but a natural legitimate “even if legally unrecognized” baby off-spring of the corrupted violence-institutionalized international system we were indoctrinated to accept as our “reality”!…

Dear Noha, Thanks to Jennifer Morgan, we have been reading your letters to Kyle, and we would like to write you a short note now. If you wish, then, we could correspond again, maybe at more length. First, just about ourselves. One of us, Juliana, is a teacher who founded and for years administered a school for young children. The other, Dick, is a retired pastor in the Episcopal Church, who has taught sociology for years and studies the way social systems work, or don’t work.
The story you told about the boy whom you reluctantly let go, as he rushed back to the front, very possibly to die, moves us because it is so compassionate. You fully understood his wish to die. You know what that is like.
We are also moved by the depression you have experienced, from reading the story about the girl raped by the American military, who later committed suicide, and in response to the stories and photos coming out of Abu Gharaib.
We can only imagine her shame and despair. We can only imagine your depression. But we know it is serious. Deeply serious.
We are very moved by your compassion for the boy, and for the girl, even if it plunges you into deep depression. We wish there were something we could say that would help you to avoid such suffering, but you understand the local, regional, and global reality far too well. Despair and depression make sense, seem unavoidable, because they absolutely reflect the reality that you are describing and that we know is there..
What saddens us even more is that you would suffer less if you were less compassionate, but if you lose your compassion, then we do not see what hope there is, either for those you love and serve, or for the rest of us.
Your moment with that boy, before he ran back to the front, is so critical. You two were so close in heart, soul, and spirit. Your memory of his struggle and of yours, of your spiritual connection with him, of your parting, and your wondering about what happened when he did go back to the front, all these will last, will continue to matter, will long move you, and will move all others to whom you tell that story.
We hope you will keep telling this story.
If there is heart and soul anywhere in this struggle, there it is.
Let us know if you would like to talk further.
Juliana McIntyre Fenn and Dick Fenn

Dear Richard, Juliana, & Dick,,,

Thank you so much for this beautiful comment, which has truly moved me 🙂 I’m very happy to see that you have the same appreciation for human empathy & compassion as I do, which it seems arises from our common interest in psychology.

I sadly, cannot claim that I closely understood the boy’s wish to die or the raped girl’s situation, & this is the thing that hurts me the most, & causes my depression; the idea or image that another human being has gone through suffering which I cannot fully fathom because I’m not put in their situation. This drives me to force my mind to imagine being in their situation, to try to ease my pain from knowing that I can’t relieve their suffering. But the exhaustion of my brain, along with knowing that I can’t change anything, neither relieve their suffering, nor “be” with them to suffer along with them in a sense of “sharing” the suffering together; causes my depression. I especially feel this when I encounter the suffering of children & the sexual assault on women, because they embody the innocent & pure conscience within fragile physical bodies being tortured by unnatural aggressive force that their conscience – of a simple serene peaceful existence – cannot fathom.

What causes also my depression, anger, & an urgent need to radically change our present, is what I perceive to be a widespread numbness & apathy of many people around the world toward this daily suffering of their fellow humans (a numbness & apathy that I admit to hold in myself too, & that angers & depresses me even more). A common thing people tell me when I talk to them about this is: “Why don’t you just shut off the news channel & live your life?!”, or “This is “reality” since the beginning of history. We can’t change that. We have to accept it!”, or “Thank God this is not happening to us, & our lives are happy & peaceful!”.

So that’s what people do, “if” they accidentally get to see some of this suffering, “if” they open a media outlet that actually covers a part of this suffering… They “thank God” their lives are better than this, they turn off the channel, & go play some video games or party with their friends! Or even attend to their business work & daily life tasks without any second thoughts! Perhaps they’ll have one moody day, give out some donation to a charity organization, but that’s it, everybody goes on with their lives, because this is how “life goes on”!

Perhaps this would’ve been fathomable in older days, when many people didn’t get access to live communication & news of other people’s suffering in other places. Their only direct witnessing of human suffering was local, & they could then establish a communal solidarity network to support those who suffer. And when the TV & newspapers outlets outspread, they were majorly biased & selective in covering the news of people suffering in other places, to serve the interests of solidifying & preserving a so-called “national interest” in people’s cognitions vs. other “nations”.

But now, with the huge flow of free information & live videos/images over the internet, & the evolution of a means to develop a human conscience of an instantaneous coexistence with fellow suffering humans – with the boundaries of space, time, & power censorship annihilated -; still the boundaries of psychological selfishness (taking my family in, closing the door, & thanking God we’re not in their situation!), psychological disguise (shutting off the news communication & living my life as if nothing is going on!), & identity perceptual illusions (ex., a so-called “White Christian American” human unable to break illusory perceptions of religious, racial, & national differences, & geographical distance, to re-unite with a so-called “Colored Muslim Arab” human to experience a holistic empathy with their suffering); those boundaries, if not showing any signs of weakening, are actually showing signs of more intransigence against the unifying means of the internet!

Yes, I’d love to talk further with you 🙂

Dear Noha,

I’m deeply grateful to you Noha for baring your anger and hurt in this conversation, as difficult and disturbing as it is for us to hear about atrocities committed by our own country supported by tax dollars that we paid.

Your effort to reach for mutual understanding by expressing your prejudices is courageous and comes from a yearning to speak truth. I hear you and believe you. We don’t hear this side of the story in our news media but for little glimmers. The horror of so many thousands of innocent women and children being slaughtered by American forces doesn’t get through. I have never heard the story about the woman being raped and thrown from a helicopter. The images from Abu Ghraib I have seen. I cannot even imagine the horror it must be to see your people treated this way. Bernie Sanders has been the one voice in the campaign speaking the truth about the horrors of invading Irag. He voted against the US going into Iraq, which turned out to be so disastrously destablizing for the entire region.

Your hurt and anger are totally relevant and completely within bounds of the story of the Universe. When Thomas berry says, “We are a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects,” he’s talking about the importance of subjectivity . . . the importance of understanding that each thing/being/person has a within that’s valuable and contributing to the evolution of the whole. To objectify and deny the importance of the within is contrary to what we’re about. Your feeling count and a hugely important. Maria Montessori talked about all innovations in evolution being preceded by someone imagining them. Our interiority is of utmost importance. That’s why your feelings count in the bigger story. What are we yearning to create? What world do we want to live in? These desires are drivers of evolution.

It has been so troubling to me in all of the recent news coverage of terror attacks that no one asks the obvious question: Why are people so angry to be driven to kill people?

Your voice, your anger and hurt, and the anger and hurt of others subjected to these horrors do not make it onto the news. We don’t get the subjectivity, the within, of the people living in the ME. They are objectified in our media. It’s so easy to focus on the lives of the people lost in this country. Far easier message to “sell.”

I was deeply involved in the Philippines during the time of dictator Ferdinand Marcos who received support from the United States. For 20 years people were tortured and killed by Marcos—including friends of mine—while the media said nothing in the United States. Marcos was hailed as the darling of America in Asia. It took years for the truth to get through about Marcos.

Your voice is so hugely important Noha. Thank you for sharing your picture of the world.

Please do also be patient with us since we need you to tell us what you see. We’re not getting the full story here.

With gratitude and admiration,

Jennifer

Hi Kyle, This resource is so valuable and enduring. It’s one of the most popular resources on the Network. Thanks so much for creating it. Jennifer

Fantastic Kyle! There’s going to be a lot of interest in this! Jennifer