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Wangari Maathai
b. 4-1-1940; Ihithe village, Colony of Kenya
d. 9-25-2011; Nairobi, Kenya (ovarian cancer)
Wangari Muta Maathai, an environmental and political activist, received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1984.
In the 1970s, Maathai was the founder the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights.
Maathai earned a degree in biology at Mount St. Scholastica (now Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, and a Master of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh. After the job as a research assistant in Nairobi was given to someone else based on her gender and tribal affiliation, Maathai was offered another research position which lead to a doctorate in at the University of Munich and eventually to a professorship at the University of Nairobi.
Wangari Maathai quotes ~
• “In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.”
• “It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”
• “We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.”
• “I have warned people against false beliefs and misinformation such as attributing this disease to a curse from God or believing that sleeping with a virgin cures the infection. These prevalent beliefs in my region have led to an upsurge in rape and violence against children. It is within this context, also complicated by the cultural and religious perspective, that I often speak. I have therefore been shocked by the ongoing debate generated by what I am purported to have said. It is therefore critical for me to state that I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive.”
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Maimonides
b. 3-28-1138; Cordoba, Spain
d. 12-13-1204; Egypt
Philosopher Moses Maimonides was a rabbi, or religious teacher, and physician. He is considered foundational to Judaism.
Maimonides quotes ~
• “Anticipate charity by preventing poverty.”
• "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
• “No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.”
• “Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to comprehend everything.”
• “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.”
• “Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and thou shalt progress.”
• The Guide for the Perplexed
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Thomas Robert Malthus
b. 2-13-1766; England
d. 12-13-1834; London
British scholar, professor, and clergyman, Thomas Robert Malthus, is best remembered for his theories of political economy and demography, placing the long-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency.
Malthus described the dangers of population growth leading to endless progress towards a utopian society. Thinkers like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace built their ideas of natural selection from Malthus, and his influence reached to Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Mao Zedong.
Thomas Robert Malthus quotes ~
• “The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.”
• “The rich by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.”
• “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the Earth to produce subsistence for man.”
• An Essay on the Principle of Population
• Charles Darwin posters
• Paul Ehrlich
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Horace Mann, “Father of American Public Education”
b. 5-4-1796; Franklin, Massachusetts
d. 8-2-1859; Yellow Springs, OH
Education reformer Horace Mann was a lawyer and politican who had no particular interest in education before he was appointed in 1837 to the paid position of secretary of the newly created board of education of Massachusetts, the first such position in the United States. He went on to serve as the president of Antioch College from 1852 until his death.
Horace Mann quote ~
• “...be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
• “Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of man, - the balance-wheel of the social machinery.”
FYI - Mann married Mary Peabody, the sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia Peabody.
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Frankie Manning
b. 5-26-1914; Jacksonville, FL
d. 4-27-2009; NYC
Frankie Manning, a dancer, teacher and choreographer, is remembered as one of the founders of the Lindy Hop, a dance that got its name from aviator Charles Lindbergh's “hop” of the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.
Manning, and his partner Frieda Washington, performed the first air step (an aerial) in a swing dance competition. He also worked with singer/dancer Norma Miller, known as the “Queen of Swing”.
Frankie Manning quote ~
• “I never taught people where to step on '2', because when I learned how to dance there was no '2'. We just danced to the music.”
• Black History posters
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Abraham Maslow
b. 4-1-1908; Brooklyn, NY
d. 6-8-1970; California
Professor Abraham Maslow, considered the found of humanistic psychology, conceptualized a “hierarchy of human needs” - list beginning with the deficiency needs of physiological, safety, love/belonging, and esteem, with self-actualization as to what a person's full potential is and realizing that potential.
Abraham Maslow quotes ~
• “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
• “If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.”
• “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”
• “ ... education through art is a kind of therapy and growth technique, because it permits the deeper layers of the psyche to emerge, and therefore to be encouraged, fostered, trained, and educated.”
Abraham Maslow - Toward a Psychology of Being, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Hierarchy of Needs
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Charlotte Mason
b. 1-1-1842; Wales
d. 1-16-1923
Charlotte Mason was a late 19th century educator whose ideas were far ahead of her time.
She believed that children are born person worthy of respect, rather than blank slates, and that it was better to feed their growing minds with living literature and vital ideas and knowledge, rather than dray facts and knowledge filtered and pre-digested by the teacher. Her method of education, still used by some private schools and many homeschooling families, is gental and flexible, expecially with younger children, and includes first-hand exposure to great and noble ideas through books in each school subject, conveying wonder and arousing curiosity, and through reflection upon great art, music and poetry; nature observation as the primary means of early science teaching; use of manipulatives and real-life application to understand mathematical concepts and learning to reason, rather than rote memorization and working endless sums; and an emphasis on character and on cultivatin and maintaing good personal habits. Schooling is teacher-directed, not child-led, but school time should be short enough to allow students free time to play and to pursue their own worthy interests such as handicrafts. ... back cover description.
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Colman McCarthy
b. 3-24-1938; Glen Head, NY
Colman McCarthy, a columnist for The Washington Post for 28 years, directs the Center for Teaching Peace, a non-profit organization that helps schools establish peace studies programs.
Colman McCarthy quotes ~
• “I admire elementary school teachers immensely. I urge everyone ... to write a letter to a former grade school teacher who is remembered with affection and say thanks.” I'd Rather Teach Peace
• “Unless we teach our children peace, someone will teach them violence.”
• “I'd prefer that my students don't ask questions. Instead, be braver and bolder: question the answers. What answers? Those from anyone who says the answer is violence. Of all the lies, that's the grossest.”
• “What makes us happy is service to others. If schools don't expose students to the joys of community service, we graduate people who are idea rich but experience poor. In these addled times of leave no child untested, we think it's enough to pound ideas into the kids' heads. You can make all A's in school and go out and flunk life.”
• “The most important act of peacemaking? Your next one. Few of us will ever be called on to do great things, but all of us can do small things in a great way.”
• “It's too easy only to blame the militarists, racists, sexists and other pushers of violence for the mess we're in. What is harder is self-examination, moving beyond caring by looking inward to ask the personal question: What more should I be doing everyday to bring about a peace and justice based world, whether across the ocean or across the living room?”
• “Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.”
• “Too many schools process students as if they are slabs of cheese going to Velveeta High on the way to Cheddar U and Mozzarella Grad School.”
• “To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.”
• “Wars aren't stopped by fighting wars, any more than you can fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence.”
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William Holmes McGuffey
b. 9-23-1800; near Claysville, Pennsylvania
d. 5-4-1873; Yellow Springs, OH
Professor and college president William Holmes McGuffey is best known for writing the McGuffey Readers, one of the United State's first and most widely used series of textbooks.
One of the poems included in McGuffey's Fourth Reader was Felicia Hemans' 1826 Casabianca.
William McGuffey quote ~
• “The christian religion, is the religion of our country. From it are derived our prevalent notions of the character of God, the great moral governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions.” (attributed)
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Marshall McLuhan
b. 7-21-1911; Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
d.. 12-31-1980; Toronto (stroke)
Marshall McLuhan, best remembered for his study and theory of media, was a professor of English literature.
McLuhan predicted the World Wide Web (1962) and privately acknowledged the influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's idea of the “noosphere” on his thought.
Expressions McLuhan coined are “the medium is the message”, and the “global village”. FYI - McLuhan embraced the typograhical error of “message” into “massage” as a fortunate play on words, and thought the mistake was ‘right on target’ for what he wanted to say.
Marshall McLuhan quotes ~
• “There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”
• “One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with.” 1967
• “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”
• “The medium is the message.”
• “I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.”
• “The wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing, an extension of the skin, electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system.”
• “In large measure, writing is the spatialization of thought.” 1954
• “Artists in various fields are always the first to discover how to enable one medium or to release the power of another.”
• “The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge between biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.”
• “By phonemic trans-formation into visual terms, the alphabet became a universal, abstract, static container of meaningless sounds.”
• peace & justice education posters
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