TED Community » Kelly Witwicki Faddegon

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Education
Exploration
Sustainability
Sincerity
Positive psychology
Social justice
Veganism
Bringing people together, to become more than we already are.

An idea worth spreading

There is ALWAYS a hidden price beyond the dollar amount on the tag.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country" (Thomas Jefferson).

"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains" (Rosa Luxemburg). And once you find the strength to open your eyes to look at your chains, you will be able to see what lies beyond them.

"What is the ocean but a multitude of drops?" (Cloud Atlas)

Students have Google in their pockets, so let's use class time to encourage exploration, independent thinking, critical analysis, and collaboration. Prioritize how they think over what they think.

Ecological footprint stickers on all products, made by an organization that has the access to account for the entire production process of a commodity; and higher environmental taxes for more ecologically expensive items.

People don't know that I'm good at

Inductive reasoning
Abstract problem-solving
Mental flexibility

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Timothy Bartik: The economic case for preschool

  May 7 2013: bravo!

• A comment on Conversation: Should we force democracy?

  Apr 15 2013: We just can't start peace with violence and can't start democracy with dictatorship, internal or external. If we want the rest of the world to go democratic, we should use positive economic incentives (look how well democratic nations do!) rather than the negative threat of force. The same goes for incentivizing the adoption of communications media, from which democracy will follow because the key to democracy is social communication so that the people of the nation in question can make their government into what they want.

• A reply on Conversation: Should the concept of competition be eliminated from schools?

  Apr 2 2013: I very much agree, it's just that unfortunately most children cannot come to this conclusion themselves, when their parents and teachers are pushing them to egocentrically compare and compete with everyone else their age. We reward and punish (by shame and "disappointment") our children for grades and after-school sport success (a heavy emphasis in the States) rather than for expressions of curiosity or efforts in social bonding. We grow up believing that money buys happiness, and so that one must compete to earn the money to access happiness, when in truth as we now know well, happiness is socially built. If an Earth in which human competition is secondary to broader social wellness and collaborative exploration is to be possible, we have to start by taking steps like Finland, as Amanda says, to encourage children to prioritize social collaboration over egocentric competition early on. Several TED Talks on play hit on this, as social bonding through play is extremely significant to creativity and to social well-being. The desire to do better THAN others can take you far, but the will to do better FOR and WITH others will take us all much farther, and those principles have to start in the classroom alongside other students.

• A comment on Conversation: It's easy to separate a product from its production process. What can we do to change that?

  Mar 21 2013: More on this (part of some research I'm doing for a paper, so I have agriculture on the brain): Basically every one pound of beef we eat (a few hamburgers) costs 2.5k gallons of water (100x as much as tomatoes or wheat, or enough for 1 person to drink for 8 years), 10 pounds of feed, up to .15 grams of antibiotics (this number is sketchy, but ultimately 80% of our antibio use is in daily-pumped livestock), and 8x as much fossil fuel energy as a pound of vegetables, and livestock cause 10x as much water pollution as humans otherwise, and the typical meat-eater requires nearly 20x as much land as a vegan (see the references of earthsave.org/pdf/ofof2006.pdf for more).
  
  Don't worry I'm not preaching, note that I left the typical moralizing animal-rights ethics arguments aside -- this is about how easily we disjoin a product from its process. Our meat consumption is responsible for a substantial part of the world's dehydration and starvation (not to mention the rippling ailments and crimes that come with that poverty), as well as the rise of superbugs, polluted water, and rapid climate change (and all of those dominoes!). And all when vegetable consumption is more energy efficient within the body of the person eating too. BUT because we do not experience these "side effects" immediately/directly, we think instead of the instant gratification of a cheap steak that is super easy to buy right in front of us at the market. So is information enough? Case in point: did that information make you decide to change your meat consumption habits? If not (which I am willing to bet), why is information not enough? What can we do to make me less acquiescent about this MacBook I'm typing on?

• A comment on Conversation: It's easy to separate a product from its production process. What can we do to change that?

  Mar 21 2013: So perhaps we could regulate transparency, like we have done with ingredient labels. Maybe we can't yet work out a complete footprint and history, but we can determine a lot more than the nothing-at-all that consumers currently get. I really hope a system of global standards (ie a limited global government based on transparency and human rights) is on the way.

• A comment on Conversation: How can we encourage children to start recognizing (and rising above) category boundaries from a young age?

  Mar 21 2013: Certainly, getting fictional and historical kids books and films that involve boundary breakdowns into schools would be fantastic! I think we should keep an eye out for how we look at history too, like you said about the gladiators, it's so true, we even have fun gladiator costumes, while I can't imagine seeing someone wear a yellow star of David on Halloween -- I certainly did not know until later in high school that gladiators were slaves and not just cool ancient action heroes. I will definitely not say we should make whatever expressions people want to use illegal (excepting straight hate speech) in the interest of a singular "correct" way to learn about something, but rather, providing our children with multiple perspectives is key to getting them to learn to look for different dimensions themselves!
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: He, she or s/he? Should languages be made gender neutral or be left on their own to preserve literary integrity?

  Mar 20 2013: In response to a bunch of the comments in this thread, I think this is worth considering: Our languages shape our identities and how we perceive the world, so our labels are extremely important. I always write "their"/"they" and my more progressive professors (several of them have very postmodern-derived approaches, which is wonderful) take no issue with it, because languages are continually growing. Not everyone identifies as "male" or "female" so these terms exclude people who do not shove themselves into either of the two linguistically available boxes, nor are all who identify as "female" identical. It is a lot like saying "black" and "white" when these terms mean noting essential as no two people who fall under the category "white" have identical skin colouring, and that "grey area" between albino and ebony encompasses just about everyone. Basically, to use language to assert that difference is important maintains the social significance of difference, and therefore sexism and racism and every other bigotry are permitted to persist. I would certainly not advocate for changing it in books already written though, because our history shapes who we are, it's nothing to be ashamed of unless we don't grow from it.

• A comment on Conversation: How can we encourage children to start recognizing (and rising above) category boundaries from a young age?

  Mar 20 2013: Yeah actually those would be fantastic starts, basically to hire positive psychologists for all K-12 schools and have maybe middle school and high school students choose a TED talk each week to summarize and discuss with the class. That could do a lot to remedy the distressing fact that we expose students to so little, and focus so hard on telling them what they are doing "wrong". Additionally I think allowing students to jump a grade or two ahead or "fall behind" in more areas than math would mean a lot to the kids who get frustrated, and would instantly teach them through example and practice that boundaries are constructs.

• A reply on Conversation: How can we encourage children to start recognizing (and rising above) category boundaries from a young age?

  Mar 19 2013: Indeed! But many parents will not raise their children in accordance with those values of acceptance, creativity, exploration and individuality, so what kind of school curriculum legislation or programs could we put in place to give that opportunity to the kids who won't have it at home?

• A reply on Conversation: How can we encourage children to start recognizing (and rising above) category boundaries from a young age?

  Mar 19 2013: So... once they have a grasp of language and can use the word "leaf" (citing Nietzsche here) require teachers through elementary school to engage in different activities and thought experiments that illustrate the fact that no two leaves are identical nor does any one match the generalized/ideal conception brought to mind by the word "leaf"? What can we do other than explanations like that to allow kids to explore this, and how do we make it a part of the cirriculum, since many parents will not guide their children to deconstruct constructed boundaries?