By Corey Harbaugh
The pirate was there again today, but the wizard was gone, and he’s the one I had returned to see.
Yesterday at Bethesda Fountain in the middle of Central Park, I saw the wizard from the top of the terrace, sitting on the water’s edge, a deep red robe hanging down past his ankles, pointed cap, bushy beard, and a large, gnarled walking stick in hand. He sat there quietly, looking peacefully off into the distance, and didn’t bother with anybody near him, or even move much as far as I could tell.
I didn’t see a bucket or box or any place for people to toss spare change, and passersby weren’t really paying attention: fifty feet farther down the fountain a pirate was entertaining the crowd with a mug of rum, collecting the silver thrown at his feet. It seems the wizard was just there like anybody else would be, to rest a few minutes at the fountain’s edge on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and except for a couple of small town Michiganders looking his way, he blended in with eight million other New Yorkers, minus one pirate, Supergirl, a musician playing two trumpets at once, and a really tall guy with muscles that bulged like a shirt full of Volkswagens.
Since we were trying to get in as many sites as possible during her last day in New York City, and the wizard wasn’t on the agenda, Loriann and I watched for a moment or two, and then went on our way. But when I said goodbye to my wife this morning at La Guardia, I began two weeks here without having to pack in so many sites so quickly, and I can dig into these things a little deeper. I noticed yesterday that under his beard the wizard was holding a sign that read “Blackwolf Dragonslayer”, and I wanted to ask him if that was his name, or his occupation, or neither, or both.
On a guided tour Saturday past the United Nations building and the Waldorf Astoria hotel, we learned that because the flags of nations weren’t on display, there were no foreign dignitaries in residence, and United Nations wasn’t in session. And then today along the Avenue of the Americas I saw United Nations in session myself, at a street market, where I ate Mexican food for dinner and a French crepe for dessert, passed on the insect delicacies from Asia, danced to a little Reggae playing from a Carribean booth, and considered buying an African drum for a very reasonable price. The woman behind the counter, dressed in colorful kinte cloth, with a deep and musical West African accent said I played the drum well, but I bet she said that to all her customers.
To paraphrase what my friend Phip wrote in a response to the book we’re reading for the Holocaust Education Seminar (The World Must Know. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. John Hopkins University Press. 2007 Edition.) education in and of itself does not equip society to avoid the atrocity that was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was planned and carried out by some of the most educated people on the planet at the time, so education wasn’t enough to prevent genocide. But I think education is the only thing that truly can. If education is going to have a chance to change the world it has to be taught with values. The question, as Phip so rightly asks, is whose values. Is there a universal set of values that can be written into some kind of curriculum to be the foundation of all learning, the alpha and omega of each lesson plan? Should there be? Can a universal set of values as the basis for teaching and learning also honor the different faith and cultural traditions our children live with their families? Can these values be taught in effective, deliberate, and meaningful ways?
If preparation for this Holocaust Education seminar has taught me anything, the answer to those questions is absolutely and unequivocally YES! There is a set of values that is universal, and yes it should be taught. One of the things that makes Holocaust Education so compelling is that students read and learn about what happened to the victims and know deep in their beings that what happened was wrong. It is amazing what happens in a classroom when students share such a clear sense of value: the conversations are richer and deeper, the engagement is stronger, and the inquiry is farther reaching. Instead of wanting to push away from teaching and learning that has strong human values attached, students are hungry for it. Education and values, it seems, are both made stronger by each other.
At the street market today thousands of people from different cultures shared space and experience, stood elbow to elbow at food tables and vendor booths, laughed and danced and carried on a bit together in the spirit of the day. It was good, and it was effortless. Aren’t these shared values? Yesterday a man in a wizard suit followed whatever bliss or other compulsion sent him to the fountain for the afternoon. There is space in this world to live and let live. Last night while we waited for fireworks to begin, the Latina mother in front of us was working hard to comfort her crying baby in soft Spanish whispers, and my wife and the woman standing next to us, an African-American woman with two tween kids playing video games at her side, understood her language perfectly without knowing the words. Both women longed to reach for that baby with the instinct of motherhood, to love on the child and give the young woman a moment of rest. The baby soon stopped crying and all three mothers smiled. There are shared values.
So tomorrow I meet the leaders of the Summer Seminar on Holocaust Education and all of the students I’ll be journeying with for the next two weeks. My friend Phip will arrive and we’ll return to the rich, fun collaboration that has been the basis of our friendship for ten years now. We’ll be introduced at a welcome reception, swap stories, break bread and drink wine together, and settle into our homes away from home at Columbia University.
What happens starting tomorrow is full of promise, and I plan to give it my best: two weeks of working with other educators in the Summer Seminar on Holocaust Education dedicated to combining best classroom practice with universal values and our responsibility to remember the lessons of the Holocaust. Believe me, I’ll be keeping an eye out for that wizard, and whatever other surprises this experience throws my way.
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Corey,
You have captured wonderful snapshots with your words, but my absolute favorite is the paragraph about waiting for fireworks and the latino mother with her fretting baby, the language understood by the two other mothers. I know that feeling well, but I have never seen it written about in the way you described it. Very insightful. Thanks for sharing your experience.