<Begin Segment 25>

AI: Well, I thank you so much for sharing so much of your thoughts and describing how your philosophy of peace and justice comes alive in your classroom and your explanation of various experiences in your life that led up to that philosophy. Do you have anything else that you'd like to say? I know you've given many messages.

AK: Well, I just would like to say that I want this message of peace to really catch on in the schools, every school should have a peace garden. Peace should be emphasized strongly in education. It would be so helpful, so positive. And learning will be much more fun. We've got to show, show everybody, we've got to recognize that learning is fun, science is fun, peace is fun. It's okay to feel good about everything.

AI: Well, thank you very much for this time. I appreciate it very much.

AK: [Laughs] I kind of ramble.

AI: No, I really enjoyed it. I really wanted to hear about how you put your concepts into play in the classroom.

AK: It's so much fun, you know. Teaching is so much fun. And the letters I get from kids of how peace has empowered them. And I say, it takes so little, and if we do this maybe we could have a better world.

AI: I'm curious, when kids write back to you and say, "This is how peace empowered me," what are some of the things they say?

AK: Well, oh, I should share those letters with you, they're so neat. There was this one girl who said that she got hit by another person -- I'm just gonna', I betcha' it's in one of the albums there -- where she didn't hit back because of her experience in first grade where she, that she learned that you don't hit back, you let peace empower you. And she said she felt so good after that and she wanted to thank me. Because she said, you know -- she wrote it beautifully. And so I wrote back to her and said, "It isn't what I did, it was peace which empowered you and I'm so happy." But, you know, it helped her. And all these years, and they were playing soccer -- she played soccer for Roosevelt -- and she was on the team, and the other team was pretty aggressive. And this, one girl came and socked her real hard and she felt really badly because they weren't even in play and her first reaction was a lot of anger, and then she said, but she remembered, no, she can't hit back, that wasn't the right thing to do. And then, how it made her feel -- after all this was going on -- she said she realized how good it made her feel and how strong it made her feel because she didn't hit back. And she said, "I wanted to thank you for teaching her about non-violence." And so I said it wasn't what I had done, that she had really let peace empower her and that was the empowerment of peace.

So, that was exciting. And then I get these letters, they're saying, "We feel so good about going to the peace garden, I feel at peace at myself." And, it's a buy-in, if, if you want -- what do you say -- if you want to be profitable, invest in peace. [Laughs] The rewards are much, much more than... I think that's what's so exciting, you're not thinking of the material gains, but what it does to you inside and how you feel.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.