Dr. Domenic Amara on the Key to Education, the Importance of Language Learning and Being Diagnosed by an Ecuadorian Shamen
After all the time Dr. Amara spent traversing the globe as part of United Planets various global outreach programs, he quickly discovered the importance of experiential learning. For him, it all starts with the children. Throughout each community Dr. Amara traveled, even during his time working in the United States educational system, it was the children and their curiosity that led him to dedicate his life to education.
What he discovered is that the leadership within educational communities is what drives the success of global learning. Having a strong foundation combined with family involvement is what separates the more learned communities from the others. No matter where they may be, it was these factors in which Dr. Amara found a spark in his quest to improve educational practices across the globe.
Currently, Dr. Amara serves on a series of educational boards where he continues to help the world build betters systems of learning. His residence on the East Side of Boston grants him access to a plethora of schools many of which he has served in advisory roles. Having been a part of the United Planet team for many years, Dr. Amara looks to continue his global experience with plans to travel to parts of Asia and South America.
If you were unable to catch the live feed, below is a recording of our show:
Full Transcript:
Annemarie: So, welcome to United Planet Radio, a podcast where we chat with leaders,
influencers, volunteers, and visionaries who spend their time promoting our message and
our goal here at United Planet which is cross-cultural understanding and building a global
community one relationship at a time. On United Planet Radio, we have conversations that
we believe are needed in the world today, what we refer to as “global conversations”.
Global conversations go beyond borders and, ultimately, unite the planet. I am Annemarie
with United Planet and today for our first show ever, we are joined by our dear friend, Dr.
Amara. So a little bit abut Dr. Amara, he has an extremely impressive resume. Over fifty
years of experience in education, he has done extensive work for the Boston public school
system from teaching subjects such as biology, chemistry, and physics, becoming a principal,
and eventually serving as the academic superintendent of Boston Public Schools. Dr. Amara
is a graduate of Boston University, UMASS, and Boston College where he holds a doctorate
in science curriculum development. He has published a series of articles concerning dyslexia
while working alongside fellow researchers from MIT and he is very interested in special
needs education. He is also a retired captain of the Massachusetts Guard and he has been a
board member here at United Planet for many, many years. With us, he has travelled
around the world both volunteering and teaching. He also recently consulted with the
president of Cape Verde. So thank you for being here with us here today, Dr. Amara we are
happy to have you.
Dr. Amara: Glad to be here.
Annemarie: Thank you. So, how did you get involved with the United Planet?
Dr. Amara: David Santulli.
Annemarie: Okay.
Dr. Amara: David is the director and David was a parent of a student in my school, the
Warren-Prescott School in Charlestown, an excellent school, and David had the wisdom to
bring the children to that particular school. It became very good for us.
Annemarie: Okay.
Dr. Amara: And he just described his program and I was interested in what he was doing. I
was interested in carrying the kind of message that he was interested in carrying, he was
dealing with students, with kids and I said I would be happy to get involved and I became
involved.
Annemarie: Alright. What did your travel background look like at that time?
Dr. Amara: Not much–
Annemarie: Okay.
Dr. Amara: — basically, it was going to Italy. My parents are in Italy–
Annemarie: Okay.
Dr. Amara: — mostly European countries but never the kinds of places that I’ve gone, and
most of them with David but some without, to visit Saudi areas I would never otherwise
have seen, and I’ve grown immensely, just absolutely incredibly since I have been on those
journeys. I have learned so much by dialogue with people. I have gone to countries I didn’t
even know existed. David said that “we’re going to South Africa.” And I said, “That will be
great, I’d love to see South Africa, I’ve heard so much about it.” And he said, “We’re also
going to Lesotho.” And I said, “Well, where is Lesotho?” And I had absolutely no idea. Now,
I’m not an unread person but I said I kind of where the geography and the world is all about
but never heard of Lesotho. Well, our experience in Lesotho was absolutely outstanding.
We learned so much there with the people, we’ve learned about their needs. We learned
about how much they are like us and how much we can help them, and we did. I mean, one
of the stories about that experience was we walked in and one of the teachers says, “What
are you doing here?” I say, “Well, maybe we might be able to help, we just dropped in.”
And she said, “Well, if you really want to help us, we could use a roof.” And I said, “Well,
that is exactly what we are talking about.” But it turned out that after we saw what we saw
and spoke to the principal and spoke to the kids, the kids were absolutely — they are like any
other kids they want to play, they want to hug, they want to enjoy, they want to learn, and
they have a hunger for learning. They still wanted their roof and they didn’t have any
money so we finally ask, “Okay. Maybe we can help you write programs or maybe we can
help you write proposals,” but they still wanted their roof. There was a practical aspect well
before the idea of getting us a—getting them a– helping them with a curriculum, or helping
them develop proposals for other donors to help them. They wanted a roof, which is
understandable they wanted something, so we looked around and we say,” How much is a
roof?” It was 5,000 something, we quipped in some quick numbers and it came to about
400 dollars. so David and I, we had 200 apiece in our pocket, we gave them 400 and we
rolled out a contract with the principal and so we fixed the roof so we gave them what they
wanted and that physical repair gave us the entree into doing the other kinds of things and
they did keep up their end of the bargain. They showed us the repaired roof, et cetera. And
now we have relationship with them which we want to grow and grow and grow, and it
could be anything from helping them in terms of their curriculum to helping them write
proposals, perhaps getting people there who want to work with them because they are just,
they are so anxious to get an education, the kids just hunger for education. And the
teachers are looking for help and the conditions under which they work are just– would
make any teacher in the United States say “it’s impossible, I can’t do this” but there, they
are quite– and this is something that’s replicated in all other places we’ve been. We’ve
gone to places like Bangladesh, and Bangladesh is– we’re on the furthest outpost you can
find down the Ganges and it was– we saw a bamboo school house. we were there on a
bamboo school house, dirt floor, dirty people, dirty kids, one little girl who was in charge of
the kids because the kids don’t necessarily– they’re not taught by trained teachers the way we think of a trained teacher. In many cases they’re taught by a high school student, the
good high school students and we saw that kind of pattern in other parts of the world. But
in this kind of situation that we saw, these were beautiful children, hungry to learn, and
learn all the kinds of things that kids would want to learn. They were, you know, know that
the floor was nothing more than packed earth, there was a blackboard about the size of this
desk, and these kids were smart as any kid you would ever find and ready to learn. And all
they need is an individual or individuals that will help them. They want to do it. And we
found this with teachers as well, their teachers want to do it on their own. They don’t want
to be told, they just want the help and they want the experience — they want to meet
people who might be able to help them to start a dialogue both culturally and academically.
This isn’t just the academic piece, but it’s the cultural understanding. That’s what brought us there originally, not so much to tell them how to teach because there are books, et
cetera, but the cultural piece is in many ways what they hunger for. They want to know
about the United States. They want to know about us and the kids aren’t any different,
adults, kids, whatever, it’s just levels of desire in their case. That’s probably a longer answer
than you wanted but that’s a–
Annemarie: No, it’s fantastic. Well, kids are kids all over the world.
Dr. Amara: Oh, absolutely. They’re silly, they can be terrible to other kids, I saw little kids
pulling at other kids’ hair, all things that kids do. I was in Japan, David has been to Japan
and I saw the same thing, and Japan, where you would expect kids to be very proper and
whatever, take these kids, put them in recess, they’re just like any other kid in the world.
Annemarie: As an educator, what is it like to go in to countries and see how it works. Is it
frustrating? Is it inspirational? How do you feel? How do you react?
Dr. Amara: Frustrating in many ways. Frustrating for them and frustrating in many ways for
me as an educator in a country which has so many resources. You would think that the
amount of resources that we have, we would be in outer space in terms of our achievement
and yet kids and teachers can achieve so much with almost no resources and you say other
resources are the avenue to achievement, or is it the human effort that’s behind it? Is it the
human effort of the kid, the family, and we find the strength, at least what I found in
travelling, is the strength of the education elsewhere seems to be strong leadership schools
and real imaginative leadership and strong family, if the stronger the family, the stronger
the desire for an education both in terms of the community and the kids and the family and
resources obviously have, but it’s an imaginative use of resources where in Nepal, I believe,
we were in the bamboo school, which in the bamboo school is literally dozens of buildings
which couldn’t be bigger than a double-sized living room with a cement floor and no
windows and nothing bamboo for walls, for everything. Windows are bamboo, the roof is
bamboo, and everything is bamboo. There is a light socket in every one of these rooms.
There’s a blackboard, but that’s it.
But what’s amazing is the children’s families pay a dollar to come to this particular school a
month and they come there apparently because the transportation to a state school is so far
away that their attendances aren’t always guaranteed but they’ll pay the dollar a month to
come to this particular school. And what makes it amazing is one of the results are
excellent, we saw some of the sheets and their scores were outstanding and the people who
were teaching were almost all volunteers. They would come in, teach a class, give out their
score, and leave. They were college students, high school students, college professors, et
cetera. So the volunteers of people coming in are external and internal to the country, et
cetera. They would come in, offer a class, and they offered classes from elementary all the
way to university.
It was an amazing system. I couldn’t imagine organizing and supervising something like that,
that was an incredible, but apparently it works and I was absolutely amazed. The fellow
that started it was a not even an educator, he was a film producer but he wanted to create
something for children and it apparently works so I guess the answer to the questions would
be, it’s frustrating but, it’s also an incredible opportunity for people who have energy and
who have imagination, who have time on their hands and perhaps have even a little bit of
money. You can’t throw away the idea that money does have an influence on being able to
get things done, but having people there who want to help children, help kids, help
teachers, and even help government officials is, without telling them they have to do
something and just being available, this is how we do it, borrow whatever you want but
we’re here to help if you want help, but if you don’t, we’re not here to tell you, we’re not
better than you, we’re just different. When David and I go to these places, it’s essentially
that the — David’s in the corner by the way, he’s shy, I’m not — but when we go there, it’s a
matter of we’re here and we learn as much. I know I have, we’re here to learn as much if
you want to learn from us. Does that help you answer the question?
Annemarie: Yeah, that helps. And what do you see as the solution then?
Dr. Amara: There are a number of people all over the world and they all have different ideas
and different experiences, et cetera and those kinds of things should be shared and not
necessarily shared by — there are many methods to share, methods we’ve used for
centuries, the written word, books, et cetera, we’ve now gone on to the point when we can
share that with technical media, the computers, et cetera. And that was my world for a long
time books, media, magazines, I’ve learned all of this that way but nothing supersedes the
physical contact of going there and talking to people, and smelling, and tasting the food, and
tasting the air in which they live and seeing the conditions under which they operate and
what they achieve and then saying to them, “Why don’t you come, if possible, to us and see
our environments because our environment is so different” and we behave so strangely
probably in their terms, what we consider to be so strange. We were in Bangladesh, for
example, they have customs which would shake a lot of people up. In Bangladesh, they eat
with their hands. To us that would be unsanitary, taboo, whatever, but to them it’s
perfectly normal. If you want to see some really cute pictures look at David eating a bowl of
rice with some chicken and David scoops it up with his hand and honestly, I was a little bit
more timid, asked for a knife and fork but David gets right in there. If you want to go to the
toilet, go to the toilet there and you say, “Where’s the toilet paper?” Well, you don’t
necessarily find toilet paper there and you’ve got to make do with the methods that they
use and you get quickly accustomed to either carrying toilet paper with you or using the
methods they use. But you get to experience things in ways that you couldn’t otherwise
experience and it’s good for people to experience that when they can. And I know David
runs the program and he has these kinds of exchanges so people can have dialogue. So
when people start to say this government, this group, this country, et cetera is this way or
that way, you can take in to your experience and say, “That’s not really the case.” It may be
what somebody else wants me to think, but it’s really not the case. We’re not getting into
politics because David doesn’t like that, but we are in a situation and the reality of the world
is that people do try to make us think they want us to think because they think it’s right for
them and for us, but as an educated person, and education doesn’t necessarily — sometimes
it’s even detrimental, doesn’t matter if it’s from a university, a school, et cetera, education
comes from self-educating and that can be from experiencing, which is probably the best
way to get an education and hold on to it.
Annemarie: Truly hands on.
Dr. Amara: Hands on! I’m a university-developed individual. A lot of students are
university-developed individuals, but if you look back, most of the things that we’ve learned
back then have very little utility in the real world, and yet when you go and visit a place and
actually get your hands into it, experience it. That has a major impact, not to degrade
universities because that’s certainly not the case or what you learning books, but you also
have to have that other piece that was missing. And I was missing it to tell you the truth,
unlimited travel was the missing piece in my education and I’ve filled a gap and I’m still
hungry to fill in other gaps. I keep telling David I want to go here and here and here and
here and here, and he’s listening to me and nods gracefully and says, “Okay, okay,
eventually.” It has opened the door for me in many ways, I do consulting work for other
people and one of the consulting jobs that I have now that I have been giving a lot of
attention to is a fellow, Amadou, and he’s from Guinea. And he and his father are
developing a clinic, a medical clinic, and together we have designed a program miles outside
of Guinea to develop a school and a clinic which will work in tandem so that the programs at
the school lead to medical related jobs which the education could be supported by the clinic
and the people at the clinic. They can get some hands on experience and eventually they
can move outside. Now that the kind of things that certainly people could use help on and
certainly that’s one of things — I’m going to look to David. I’m going to say, “David, these are
the kinds of experiences,” and he’s in the room, he’s listening to me. He’s saying, “Oh, my
god.” What do you mean act the way I normally act? I’ll act the way I normally act. They
need assistance from different people to develop their program. They’re limited in their
resources and you do need resources and those resources don’t necessarily need to be
dollar resources, they could be personnel resources. It could be teachers to teach them
English, for example, one of the programs is to teach them English in a total immersion
program which when you teach languages in this country, the one thing that we do is we
teach them all, we don’t really teach language, we do it totally incorrectly. We give them
the grammar which is really just a little bit of the culture, which is really just wasting time.
The correct way is to really teach in total immersion and to get that total immersion you can
go into a country and spend a great deal of time there, which can be costly or you can
actually bring a native speaker in and bring them in to — Middlebury college does an
excellent job at this and they were the first ones to develop this, you bring them in for a
period of time and all you do is eat, sleep, drink and go to bathroom in the language, it’s
total immersion, and for two and three months at a time so the program developing there is
to bring in an English language speaker and students, as part of their program, the whole
day, for two and three months, will be total immersion in English and then it will be
supported with a regular grammar program throughout the year, it’s a thirteen-year-
program. But the point is the teachers that they have in that particular program have to be
imported from essentially another country and they certainly could use support from people
in other countries. Don’t necessarily have to speak the language, I’m helping them and I
can’t speak a lick of French, but the person that I’m working with can speak English and we
can communicate. So where there is a will, there is way and I’m getting as much out of it as
much as I’m giving and I think people really want to find that piece of their education that’s
missing, they should find a way and sometimes that find a way isn’t cheap, you have to find
a way to get into these places and finish their education, it really is like a finishing school.
You can take all the courses you want and you can read the books, you can retake the
courses, you can talk to people, but you really have to get a way and if you really want to
finish your education, you have to experience the world. Now the world can be across the
ocean or the world can be two cities from here if that is where you want to go, but you
really have to experience the thing. Take yourself out of the comfort zone and David and I
will tell you, we slept in some places that certainly weren’t comfortable, but it’s out of your
comfort zone but that is the only way you are going to learn and in some cases you can’t
wait for a full scholarship to go there and do this. You have to be able to say I’m going to
deny myself this, this, this, and this like you did when you were in college, you know, you
lived on oatmeal box when you were in college, I did and everybody else did. I can
remember having lunch, I could have oatmeal box in my chemistry lab and that’s how you
survive.
Annemarie: Rice and beans.
Dr. Amara: That’s it, exactly. Exactly. But in the end you got an education all the same if
you want to travel. You say, “Well, it’s so expensive.” Well, you’d have to say that– two
things. One, I want to spend the money wisely and I want to make sure I get the education I
want and I also want to do some good and I think that, not to blow smoke at David because
David is an idealist and he’s not enough of a practical person but he’s an idealist and I’m the
practical person, but I’m not throwing rocks at you David, but he keeps you on path about–
our goal is to develop communications between people and not just you from them but
them from you and they take away as much as we do. The thing is when you go on these
experiences, I call them experiences, and you have to be careful where you go and I’ve
learned enough about going on this excursions, these experiences, but with other
organizations and you have to do it with an organization. You do not want to do it on your
own. All you have to do is read the newspapers and say you really want to do that by
yourself and in some of these countries, you certainly don’t, but David’s program, which I’m
impressed with and again, I’m a board member but I’m one of these nonpaid board
members, I don’t think anybody’s paid and in fact, David doesn’t get much from what he
does, but what you quickly learn is that you get what you pay for. David’s program is, from
my experience not just my reading about it and all, it takes you in a particular well-
researched, you know exactly what you’re going to get and everything from the food you’re
going to have, the safety you’re going to have, the contacts that you have, and the
experiences he’s had in the past, these things aren’t all going to call somebody up and a
group of people showing up, by the way, here you go, here you are. Everything of these
stuff we’ve done and basically, he’s been the organizer of this has been that you feel
extremely safe, even in relatively primitive conditions, except for the monkeys, you can’t
control the monkeys. The story about the monkeys by the way is we were in Ecuador and, I
know David was there at the time, we were at the edge of the Amazon and you can’t control
the monkeys and the guinea pigs. I’ll tell you two stories about the monkeys and about the
guinea pigs, these are some things that you can’t control. We went to see a clinic and the
clinic was in Ecuador, there were a bunch of teachers there and we went to the clinic and
the clinic is right at the edge of the forest, of the jungle, I mean it is in the jungle and I’m
interested in herbal chemistry so that in particular interested me. I went to the clinic and
the clinic was a — two doctors and one doctor is a shaman and the other one is a regular
medical doctor. So I want to see what the shaman is like so he says, “Go in. Take your
clothes off.” Okay, take my clothes off. So, I took my clothes off, there I am, stripped down
to my shorts and he takes a guinea pig out of a bucket and starts rubbing the guinea pig all
over me and the guinea obviously doesn’t particularly like being grabbed by the neck and
whatever so he’s grabbing all over you. And he shakes it through and eventually and I’m
listening and I’m saying, “I’m done riding this boat.” And he grabs the…
Annemarie: What did you say? Anything?
Dr. Amara: Oh, I’m just listening to this thing. I’m going with the flow.
Annemarie: Okay.
Dr. Amara: You know, part of this thing is learning it isn’t so much– so he grabs it and
eventually, I know he has to kill the thing so he snaps its neck, hope it doesn’t offend
anybody but that’s reality, that’s what they do.
Annemarie: I wasn’t expecting that.
Dr. Amara: He just goes and makes a quick thing and he snaps its neck, it dies, they bring it
over to table, and they dissect it out and the medical doctors there and the shaman is there
and they both look at it and they come to an agreement as to what the diagnosis is. So
they’re looking at the thing and they’re saying, “Ah!” They both agree and they said, “Well,
you have problems with your lungs.” Okay, so I have asthma so the shaman writes a
prescription, actually the doctor wrote the prescription and he gave me the prescription and
the shaman took me downstairs to his closet and the closet was half the size of this room. It
was like nothing and there were dead heads on the wall, and there were animals heads on
the wall, the herbs were hanging down. There was no light and he shut the door with one
candle going and I said, “That’s it. I’m going to die.” It was just a closet, literally no bigger
than this room and he’s got all sorts of models and everything else and I said, “This is it. I’m
dying.” So he lights another candle and the other one is eventually worn. Now the smell in
the room is exactly what you would expect with dead heads, dead animals, and whatever in
there. The fella was very, very nice. He had a fedora on, he was a very interesting character
but apparently he knew what he was doing. Anyway, he took some powder out of a jug and
put it inside of an old plastic bag. He puts in the bag, takes it, and he grabs it by the neck
and he pounds it on the bottle. Well obviously, it acts like a funnel coming up in the air. So
all of the powder starts into the air while I’m choking and coughing and everything else. I
said, “That’s it, I’m dying.” And of course, he must’ve done this because he was perfectly
immune to it so he decided and says, “That’s enough.” So I said, “Let me out of here.” So
he said, “How do you feel?” I said, “Wonderful.” Coughing all over the place. So on the
way back, I realized that my asthma was actually going away and I did not have another
episode for the entire time I was there and to me that was amazing. Now it could’ve been
psychosomatic, it could’ve been otherwise, but I have to say that there is more to this world
than you think of but it was certainly an experience. But the point that I want to bring
across is that I never have experienced anything like this — gone way. I would’ve never
learned about it and even if I had read about it, even though I’m describing it here and some
of you say, “Aw, that can’t be true. That’s not really the case.” Or if you believe it, you can’t
get the full meaning of it unless you experience it and I think that’s the key, the experience
of it. By the way, the reason why they have the doctor there and the shaman is obvious, the
indigenous people will come to the clinic and they’ll come there because the shaman is
there and the doctor is also there and the fact that they’re working together and when
patients leave if they walk out with a medical prescription as well as the shaman’s
prescription. So they walk back and say, “Jesus, I got the best of two worlds,” and
apparently it seems to work there.
Annemarie: Well, I was going to say I wonder how healthy they are compared to everyday
Americans.
Dr. Amara: Some of them were stronger than us, let me tell you this. There are old people
there that are stronger than I am and, you know, I’m seventy-seven- years-old and we went
to places that– I’m trying to remember where it was. I was in Bolivia and there was a fella
there and the guy had to be ninety-nine and a half, but he could row a boat (inaudible
34:04) couldn’t compare with. I guess the point is that that if you’re going to theses places
and you want to experience it and feel that you have to experience it, the kind of program
that David runs and this is not an advertisement, David, but I’m just saying that you have to
go with someplace that’s safe, that’s primary, and one which has the experience because no
matter how you plan it, there is always things that are coming out and if you really get into
it. There’s always something you could contribute and you will always learn something. You
can never walk away from that not learning something. You’ll meet people, you’ll keep
contacts, the people that you go with. And even some of the people that you leave here
that you never saw before– am I supposed to go?
Annemarie: No, no, no. Just on question of the grid too. If you were going to go on one
quest from United Planet what would it be? Just wondering.
Dr. Amara: Just one? Wow.
Annemarie: Yeah, you had to pick one place and this isn’t a (plug? 35:11) for you.
Dr. Amara: No, no, no. David knows how much I want to go Vietnam, but at this particular
point– wow, that’s difficult. We did Cuba, which was great, great place to go.
Annemarie: Cuba?
Dr. Amara: Cuba was a great place to see, I’d love to see it again. Maybe Russia.
Annemarie: Wow, okay.
Dr. Amara: We went to Romania and I saw what you’d never expect, but I think I’d go to
Russia. That kind of caught me off, but I think I have two things in the world. One I’d like to
see, I’d like to see Vietnam part of a time when I was growing up, I never went Vietnam but
I’d love to see that and I know Vietnamese people and they’re all very nice.
Annemarie: I’ve heard it’s beautiful too. Everyone keeps talking about it.
Dr. Amara: Gorgeous. It’s absolutely gorgeous and I would like to experience the history
I’ve read about and that’s probably the thing that I can get across here that if you want to
experience that what you think you know or want to know more. Whether or not you’re a
college student or professor, etcetera, or a house wife I mean just because you’re a house
wife doesn’t mean necessarily– or even students. Students can learn so much because they
come with blank slates.
Annemarie: They’re a sponge, right?
Dr. Amara: Students have so much to offer other kids because kids communicate with kids.
Taking a group of kids to another country is dangerous because kids being kids, so it’s got to
be under certain kinds of conditions, but the kids come back totally changed. Totally
changed. Anyway, that answers your question.
Annemarie: Well, yeah it does. Moving on to your experience with education. What do you
think are the three biggest challenges that face education today primarily in the United
States and if you could solve them? This a little big question. What would you do?
Dr. Amara: I — and again this comes from fifty years of being in a business — I found that
strong family I think is by far the biggest factor in the success or failure of students. Now I
found this overseas, I found this here, et cetera because parents are the first teachers. It’s a
kind of trite thing to say, but parents are the first teachers. We now that for example that
parentless families, if the parents are actually involved, you don’t necessarily have to be in
the same household, instead if the parents are actually involved in the household, that and
have education as a really value that children tend to succeed. And this isn’t just lip service,
this is really caring about education and if it’s gotten across, it cuts across all cultures and I
found that as a principal, a teacher, a person who is experienced. I could tell you a story, I
have school where I was a principal in which we have a Vietnamese bilingual program and
it’s one of the other reasons that I want to see [Vietnam]. We would get students there
who were from Vietnam, the parents were in a four room suite with half a dozen kids, a
grandparent, parent, mother, father, they did not have the typical (inaudible 39:20) they
didn’t want a bilingual program, they wanted the kid to suffer through knowing English,
understanding the culture, they didn’t want to lose their culture. But if there was a goal, the
goal was we want you to get a good education because that’s how you survive in this kind of
a culture. The parents used this as an example. I had an issue with parent, it’s a true story, I
don’t mean to disparage anybody but the truth is the truth. I had a Vietnamese student
who was not particularly at best deportment. He was a pain in the tail so I called the
parent’s in. well, I thought it would be lie any kind of American kind of situation. The
mother would show up usually in an American situation, but the brother shows up, the
father doesn’t. That’s okay. That’s the way they works but when I was called through the —
the parents are here so I got called to the office and whatever and my room was filled. The
father was there, the mother was there, the uncle was there, the grandfather was there, the
grandmother was there, the whole family was there with this child and I was absolutely
aghast, that was a new experience for me. I was a young principal and I came to realize the
value of education was a family affair not just a matter of that it was a family affair. I knew
this intuitively because my parents were Italian and they came from [inaudible 41:10]
country and it was not much different. But during this entire event, the child was standing
in front of me the father was next to me, the grandfather who was the head of the
household and he had a cane, he kept on nudging the father and I had my interpreter there
and I asked them what was going on why was he nudging him. He kept on poking the father
saying, “This is your fault. This is your fault for not managing the family.” But the point is
that it’s a family affair and you find this with immigrants, people who are immigrants who
come to this country. Immigrants bring a strong sense of values that we kind of lost in this
country. They have that family strength that we’ve lost because we’re so busy, we’re so
busy working. There are two points, one is the family and I think it’s the strong piece, and
the fact just to bring in the point that immigration, bringing in immigrants who are vented to
bring that point up whatever it is but to deny America because America has lost some of its
strength in terms of family, not totally, I’m just saying that’s not the case. But they infuse
with whatever — immigrants bring coming in is not a bad thing and comes out of that as —
the second thing is teachers and teacher training. Good teachers are administrators, I
mean, schools are run by good administrators. You’ve got a good administrator and a good
administrator is by definition someone who can always assume leadership. Ask me what’s a
good principal, good principal is a good leader and what that means to me anyway is that
you’re going to take your crew your soldiers, your team, whatever, places that they don’t
even know yet, but they have to go there. You’re not necessarily popular and they don’t
always thing you’re right, but a good leader has a good vision to say that’s where I want to
go even if you don’t know you have to go there yet and takes guts and you have to be
willing to be wrong and I think that is that. I mean the training of good principals and good
education and the training of good teachers.
Annemarie: So would that mean more money?
Dr. Amara: No, not necessarily. Selecting good principals, training good principals, and
probably training and choosing are probably that kind of things. It’s like picking military
officers. Military officers or, I’m using that only as an example, but you could be an
individual that — you’re a fire captain. You want that person as a fire captain to be
knowledgeable and making the right decisions and making courageous decisions because
sometimes you have to make decisions that don’t necessarily make everybody happy in
many cases. And there are examples where — but you have to make a decision that based
upon– well, the best way to do this is probably to tell a story. Either it’s an individual I liked
as a person. Person was an good great worker, in sense of spending lots of time preparing,
wanted to spend the time with the kids and real empathy for children, et cetera but couldn’t
communicate and I was in a real quandary. What do you do with that? It was a real
quandary because the person was that good of a person and just couldn’t communicate
with the kids. So actually when I get into situations like that, I go back to my father and my
father is an uneducated guy, but he would in his own admirable way, he would come up
with the answer and his answer was very simple. He just said, “Do your job.” Many of
times, he would come with the same kind of answer. He just said, “Do your job.” Which
meant these kids need to get an education, this is the only time they will be in this particular
position to get that. You are not an employment agency for this teacher. Your job is to
make sure the children get educated and I knew what I had to do. I found the person
another job. She was bilingual and was able to do something else, but that person loved
those kids and it was terrible to pull her away from those kids, personally, but the kids were
going to suffer and that was the job. So being able to have that ability to say, “I’m going to
have to make a hard decision here for the people I’m serving.” So having good teachers and
having administrators, we know for example in some countries where teachers are very well
respected and very well paid and very well trained that the students do so much better and
the other is for the strong parents and good teachers and administrators. The other would
be the value that the students themselves see in education. That I mean the heroes that we
have that that kids see in the world, the basketball player, the pop star, et cetera. We have
to spend a little bit more time to say that really the simple heroes like mom and dad getting
up and going to work every morning a bringing back the bread and mom and dad not going
to jail and mom and not getting on drugs, there are real heroes in the world. People get up
in the morning and do what they’re supposed to do for their kids, et cetera and they’re
families. These are real heroes, we don’t idolize the (inaudible 48:07) of the world like we
should. We idolize, I don’t want to pick any one particular person, but we pick a rock star,
we pick this person and we idolize those persons like basketball players. It’s not necessarily
their fault because they need to make dollars and that’s what they’re doing, but it’s a matter
of saying to them there are other heroes out here and we don’t spend enough time– the
media is at a big fault of this because media is there to make money. Media is a business
and everybody understands that. The reason for business is to make money and they are a
business. So if what sells is not Joe and Mary going out work and bringing home the bacon
for their family, it’s Joe Small throwing the thirty foot touchdown or whatever it is. So those
are the three things I would focus on not just the top of my headier given it some thought
before.
Annemarie: The third is an interesting idea about American culture, like, a broader
conversation to have another time but fantastic. Finally, since this is the United Planet
Radio, we want to know three ways you could unite the planet. So these could be thigs that
you do in you daily life or maybe practices that are listeners. People that are listening right
now can do themselves me their community. How do you unite the planet and what can we
do to unite the planet?
Dr. Amara: We don’t have that much time. That’s a– –
Annemarie: First thing that comes in mind probably. First thing
Dr. Amara: I think communication is the biggest and that kind of encompasses everything.
Communications and doing. You can’t just think or talk about something, you actually have
to do it. I’m going to use David as an example because he is here in the room and I want to
embarrass him, but not really. He has a thing with his kids and his kids were students at my
school. He has a thing of cleaning up the environment which is a universal issue. It could be
happening on the street across the way, it could happen in the city, it could happening
Uganda. It’s all the same and came up with a technique about telling his kids if you see
something not the streets, like a piece of paper of somewhere, make the effort to pick it up
and put it in the trash. You can look at the piece of paper and say, “Someone shouldn’t have
done that,” they ought to be a lot of someone saying that, but David’s approaches, “I’m
going to teach my kid the right thing to do and have my son do something about it” and he’s
done it too. He’s all about that and to the point where I see him stepping out of the way to
go pick up a piece of paper. I’m like, “Okay, that’s alright. That’s nice.” He literally walks
the talk and that’s the kind of thing that I think that if you want a united planet, say, “What
do we all have in common?” We share an environment and we share resources even
though it’s a large planet we share resources. We kind of share like a living space basically
we share a living space even though someone may be in Uganda somewhere. We share
that kind of responsibility to each other as well because we can talk about diseases, we can
talk about food, we can talk about pollution, et cetera, but every one of those although it
seems like they’re independent issues, they’re not particularly in today’s world because they
definitely meld. I think if you have that kind of opportunity to make that melding a little bit
faster then I think that’s what you have to do and one of the things that I do is try to do that
and coming here and talking about this when I could be home tending to my tomatoes. But
this is important to let people know that there’s another world out there and that you can
learn about it and by sharing it, you are actually not only helping others, but you are also
helping yourself because it is one world acne eventually it is going to become more one,
more one, and more one. My efforts with the clinic and school in Guinea, if I pull it together
if I work with this fellow, it will hopefully be one of my achievements because it takes a
town in the middle of the jungle and it actually brings education the way it should be, at
least the way I think it should be, and a clinic so you can take care of both their mind and
body. Eventually, take that and maybe take it to the outside, maybe using David’s facilities
to get people to go there and sharing people to come here. That’s where I’m in right now.
Does that answer your question?
Annemarie: Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for all that you’ve done and continue to
do for United Planet and at United Planet, our vision is to build a global community one
conversation at a time so please remember to share your daily actions to unite the planet by
tagging us at #United Planet. To learn more about how you can get more involved with
United Planet’s programs, our missions, and more than 25 countries around the world,
please visit us at unitedplanet.org. Thanks for listening.
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