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| L. to r.: Madeleine and Audrey Cameron, Angelo Cassiano and Madison Gibson |
“I want
our school to be the kind of place where Dr King would have liked to send his
kids.”
Welcome
to PAJA, a unique school for activists founded five years ago by the Mennonites,
a branch of Christians known for their commitment to peacemaking. (Less well
known, even among Mennonites, is that King’s perspectives on Vietnam were
shaped in part by years of conversation with Vincent Harding, who had served as
pastor of Woodlawn Mennonite Church in Chicago.)
During
the last three years, four students of PAJA have been finalists—two of them
winners—in the city-wide Martin Luther King Day Essay Contest, even though the
school has only 23 students, grades 6-12. This contest is sponsored by the
Martin Luther King Community Coalition, Altadena and Pasadena NAACP, Pasadena
Unified School District, Ecumenical Council of Pasadena Area Congregations, and
other groups, including the City of Pasadena. Finalists read their essays at
Robinson Park during its annual MLK Day event.
Last
year’s winner was Madeline Cameron, a 16-year-old with
long brown hair, and a passion for justice. Home-schooled by her Mennonite
parents, she and her sister started attending the school four years ago when they moved to Pasadena.
In her
prize-winning essay, Madeleine spoke about the “futility of war,” and the need
to focus resources on ending poverty—themes that King raised in his
controversial sermon at New York’s Riverside Church in 1968, titled “Why I am
Opposed to the War in Vietnam.” Madeline quotes Dr. King, who asserted:
“I
speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my
heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country
stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I
am disappointed with America.”
The
students of the Peace and Justice Academy do not rely only on textbooks to
learn about issues of justice and peace, they also engage in field trips that
provide experiential learning. In her essay Madeline spoke about the plight of
Mexicans crossing the border because she took part in a field trip to San
Diego.
“Recently,
five students from my school visited the wall between the U.S. border and
Mexico,” said Madeleine. “Mexico was just a few hundred feet away, but because
of the conflict between the U.S. and Mexico, the border was almost
inaccessible, and highly dangerous. Many Americans resent immigrants, thinking that
they take jobs desperately needed in this economy. In reality, Americans refuse
the menial jobs that immigrants take; and furthermore, we are the main reason
that immigrants are forced to come seeking work….The U.S. is creating a
problem, but unwilling to admit that they are responsible for the economic
destruction in another country. Is this not violence too?”
Asked
whether training in peace and justice is practical, Madeleine, a senior,
responded confidently: “I feel more prepared to go to college because I know
better how the world actually works. I also know how to deal with conflicts in
a nonviolent way. We have to look at both sides and understand their point of
view.”
This
year Madeleine’s 14-year-old sister Audrey is one of the finalists in the Pasadena
MLK Essay Contest.
“I cannot claim to be as influential as Dr.
King, but I do stand up for peace, serve my community, and strive to be my best
self. I pursue peace, for example, by writing our government representatives.
Recently, I wrote Representative Judy Chu, urging her to vote against a bomb
strike in Syria. If Dr. King were alive today, he would have fought that
proposal with the same determination he showed in opposing the Viet Nam War…
Last year, I served my community by helping organize a blanket and canned food
drive for the homeless and hungry. I also volunteer at a local homeless
shelter, Union Station, making and serving meals to those in that transitional
setting. For three years I have been part of the Thirty Hour Famine, a World
Vision program in which participants endure hunger for thirty hours while
raising money so others may have enough to eat. Lastly, I strive to be my best
self. That may seem trivial, but I truly believe that achieving peace in the
world is only possible once you have achieved it for yourself.”
She believes that PAJA influenced her decision
to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King.
“Everything
we do is through the lens of peace and justice,” explained Audrey. “We begin
each day with a quote by an activist or a ‘call-to-action’ video. We also learn
about media literacy, how to use media to spread ideas.”
Angelo
Cassiano, a 13-year Latino student, explained how thrilled he was when PAJA
invited him to take part in an immigration rally at All Saints Church and he
was interviewed by a Spanish-speaking TV station.
“My
family and friends got to see me on TV!” he said excitedly.
Madison
Gibson, a 12-year-old African American student, came to PAJA two years ago
because she wasn’t thriving in her previous school:
“People
were mean to me. And I didn’t learn anything. Here everyone is nice. We’re not
a bunch of little groups, like in bigger schools. We’re like a big, happy
family. Well, we sometimes have conflicts but we learn to work them out.”
Angelo agreed
with Madison: “There is more communication and we feel closer to the teachers
and principal.”
Angelo
also appreciates the “labs”and field trips that enable him to understand
history in depth:
“We
went on a field trip to Manzanar, where the Japanese were interned during World
War II, and we learned how the people there really lived. I feel we are being
prepared for the real world.”
Besides
field trips, PAJA students take part in peace events, like the Gun Buyback that
took place in Pasadena last May, the “Seeds of Peace” conference sponsored by
the Parliament of the World’s Religions at All Saints Church, and the annual
Palm Sunday Peace Parade in which hundreds of Christians gather walk to the
Paseo with palm branches in one hand and peace signs in the other, proclaiming
that the “Prince of Peace” was actually a peace activist. (Last year’s parade
even included a donkey like the one that Jesus rode.)
Peace
and justice themes are integrated in all aspects of the curriculum. Christopher
explained: “Our teens study the intricacies of algebra and geometry, and
fund microloans for people all over the globe with money they DO NOT get from
their parents. They not only perform community service, but learn the causes
and cures of societal ills - and learn to empathize with those they serve. They
study the lives of well-known and little-known peacemakers, and learn
restorative justice techniques to use themselves.”
PAJA is
fully accredited by WASC and all of its graduates (two, so far) have recieved
early admission to their first-choice colleges.
Peacemaking
sounded like a lot of hard work, so I asked the kids: What is the most fun you
have had at the school?
“Making
pies for peace” was the response from Madeline and the other students, whose
faces lit up as they explained what they meant.
Last
year PAJA collaborated with a comedy team called Ted A Company to bring the
Peace, Pies and Prophets (a nation-wide tour) to Pasadena. The evening included
a satiric show called “I’d like to buy an enemy” and was interspersed with a
pie auction. This show not only generated a lot of laughter, it also raised
funds to help the school and a group called Christian Peace Teams that goes to
hot spots in the Middle East and around the world to foster nonviolent conflict
resolution. Bidding on the pies went as high as several hundred dollars. (In
the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I bought three pies and
now serve on the board of the school.)
PAJA is
still a work in progress. Not content with its unique status as a peace and justice
academy, it is in the process of becoming the first interfaith high school in
the United States.
“We
have always tried to represent diversity,” explained Christopher. “We’ve had
economic, ethnic and racial diversity, but not religious diversity. We saw how
religious differences were causing conflicts and wars. This seems odd because
all the world’s religions teach tolerance, compassion, justice, and
hospitality. We felt that an interfaith high school would reflect those values
and promote peace.”
When Christopher
and co-director Kimberly Medendorp learned that the Claremont Lincoln
University (which began as Claremont School of Theology, a Methodist seminary)
recently became an interfaith seminary, with students and professors from
various faith traditions, they were inspired by this pioneering experiment in
interfaith education.
“We saw
a need for such a school here in Pasadena,” explained Christopher. “Our biggest
fans have been the heads of Pasadena’s New Horizon (a Muslim school, K-8) and
Weizmann Day School (a Jewish school, also K-8). They’ve spent a lot of years
working to teach religious values to their kids, and then the kids have to go
to a secular high school. The idea that these Muslim and Jewish students can
continue their faith studies, and learn about other faith traditions, is very
attractive.”
The new
interfaith PAJA will have people of diverse faiths on the board as well as
teaching classes. Students will learn about Judaism from a Jewish instructor,
Islam from a Muslim instructor, and Christianity from a Christian instructor.
“Parents
and students were ecstatic about this idea,” explained Medendorp. “By having an
interfaith board, faculty, and student body, we can expand our students’ faith
development by enabling them to learn about other faiths from believers in
various traditions.”
How would
King feel about this experiment in pluralism? In one of his final books, Where
Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King recognized the need to foster
understanding among people of diverse religions as well as races: "This is
the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited ... a great 'world house'
in which we have to live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner,
Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu ... Because we can
never again live apart, we must learn somehow to live with each other in
peace."
This is a
part of King’s dream that the Peace and Justice Academy is turning into a reality.
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