Teaching Kindness and Peace: How Stories Cultivate Creativity and Prevent Violence

Teaching Kindness and Peace is written for everyone who works with children: parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and child-care workers. The opening chapters describe the relationship between Art and violence, and show how literature appreciation is a cornerstone for a new educational philosophy based in Love, Sincerity, practicing the Arts, and Reading. The book then explains how to use the world’s great stories and novels to teach children three life-enhancing habits: the habit of reading, the habit of asking questions, and the habit of talking openly about important experiences, feelings, and ideas. Included in this 252-page book are five complete classic stories, chapters from five great novels, Henry David Thoreau’s radiant essay about Reading, and a list of more than 100 stories and novels that kids love. Also included are three original essays about thinkers who promote “reverence for life”: Mary Shelley, Neil Postman, and Nikos Kazantzakis. The book’s theme is simple and profound: The prevention and cure for violence in our world is not more violence, it is to show examples of human kindness, and to teach peace.