A Modest Proposal: Take Stock of the World Around You

The following blog post was written by THINK Global School Head of School Jamie Steckart during our current term in Mumbai, India, where are staff and students have been confronted at every corner by Indias overwhelming economic disparity

Black Friday, the most eagerly anticipated retail extravaganza of the year (and a make or break day for many companies), has come and gone. After stuffing your belly on Thanksgiving, these brand giants want you to stuff your shopping bags as well. Deals that cant be turned away because how could you possibly continue living without them?

In the innocence of my youth, Thanksgiving was one of my favorite holidays. For those in the United States and Canada who celebrate it, Thanksgiving often means traveling great distances to come together as a family and catch up on the years happenings over a decadent meal. Now there is nothing wrong in being thankful for your luck in life, yet as a white male from the Midwestern states, I was ignorant in the ways of the world and to our collective history as human beings. I am no longer that same child. Luck would afford me the opportunity to find a path that has opened my eyes, and to paraphrase the great Oliver Wendell Holmes, a mind expanded can no longer go back to its former dimensions.

A year ago I trekked the Inca Trail in Perus Sacred Valley as head of school for Think Global School. Moved by the beauty and environmental tragedy of water sources in Peru, I wrote Peru and the Sioux: Thoughts on the Environment from the Head of a Traveling School . Last year, water protectors of the Standing Rock Reservation battled to stop a pipeline going through their land. And as if on queue, last week over 210,000 gallons of oil leaked from a Keystones pipeline from an underground source in North Dakota according to CNN .

After Peru I headed to Morocco, Canada, then Botswana: oceans crossed, traveling from north to south, east to west, Africa to the Americas and back again. Currently THINK Global School resides in Mumbai, India, a city of close to 22 million people and one of the top five largest cities by population in the world. Last week, I went to visit another Indian school and left early before the traffic swung into gear. Along my route, I saw sidewalks crammed with homeless people waking from their sleep, entire families huddled together on the pavement. I saw people taking bucket baths in the streets. 80% of the population does not have access to a toilet and goes about these daily routines in the open. A simple blue canvas tarp provides shelter over the affluent poor in India. The really poor are lucky to have a blanket.

Hollywood and the world was captivated by Slumdog Millionaire , the story of Jamal Malik, a boy who makes it out of the slums of Mumbai by correctly answering questions on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. What is ironic is Dharavi, a slum adjacent to Juhu, the one Jamal hails from, is one of the top five most densely packed slums in the world, holding one million people in one square mile. They work in households, pick garbage, and produce $70 million worth of recycled goods a year while earning an average of $1.50 a day. Kids as young as five are put to work to ensure the survival of their families. Behind the Beautiful Forevers , a controversial read about the slums of Mumbai by Katherine Boo, depicts the tragedy and violence of the slums of India. Making matters even worse, Mumbai is also home to the most millionaires and billionaires of any Indian city, who often live in ornate highrises overlooking the vast squalor, Mukesh Ambanis billion dollar Antilla home being a prime example.

Too often the eyes of the comfortable refuse to see the inequities of the masses. As a child I spent hours in the water, on the water, and below the water. Living on the Great Lakes I took for granted the abundance of clean water. Like a river, my perspective during my travels is connected by water resources. Three days without water, the average person will die -- only lack of oxygen steals a life faster. Women in the slums of India sometimes wait in line for two hours to get water. Like the Sacred Valley of Peru, Mumbais local water sources are extremely polluted and unfit to consume.

As an educator, I am an advocate for learning; I also strongly believe in experiential education. In that vein and much like Jonathan Swift, I have a modest proposal: I wonder how the world would change if powerful people swapped their comfortable existence to live in a slum for a week, 2 weeks, or even a month? What if elected officials had to go through this experience before they could assume office? If CEOs of large corporations had to undergo this exercise as required professional development, would they ever turn a blind eye again? Would they allow a family member to be condemned to a slum?

Objectification is the process of stripping/degrading a person and reducing them to an object -- something that can be thrown away or damaged without care. Its a tried and true method of making soldiers fight, keeping racism alive, suppressing women, holding the poor in place. It provides justification for inequalities and eases our collective guilt.

Objectification is a subroutine in the back of our minds allowing us to sleep peacefully at night, a sound machine whose repeated affirmations of I deserve what I have, my place in society is due to my hard work provides the same effects as melatonin.

But deep down you know these are false statements. If youre comfortable, its because of luck. Luck of being in the right place, the right time, the right gender, the right country, the right color, the right family background...the list goes on. Sure, you capitalize on those moments that cross your path -youd be foolish to let them pass you by- yet most of us have won the genetic lottery, especially if youre reading this blog on your smartphone.

In closing, I leave you one last thing to ponder during this season bookmarked by Thanksgiving and Christmas: What is justice? What is equality? Should the citizens of Flint, Michigan have to stand in line for bottled water on Thanksgiving? Should a child of five in a slum forgo school to stand in line for water? The philosopher John Rawls believed it is unethical to make our lives better if the least of our societys lives are made worse or do not improve. It would be refreshing to begin each policy debate with this question: How will this policy make the lives of our poorest members in our world, country, state, city, or town better? That should be the measure of our success, as only through a truly global collective effort will the war on poverty be won.