"Peace Empowers": The Testimony of Aki Kurose, a Woman of Color in the Pacific Northwest

Frontiers, 2001 by M, Gail

Why did Kurose's worst critics become her strongest advocates, and how did she find the strength to continue despite racism she personally experienced? Kurose credited her religious faith. "If I didn't have the commitment to peace and the peace testimony, my teaching at Laurelhurst would have been very difficult," she admitted. The Quaker peace testimony means bearing witness to peace through one's life, actions, and choices. Like her longtime friend, colleague, and mentor, Floyd Schmoe, Kurose became a well-known "Public Quaker," living her life "as an example" after the teaching of the Religious Society of Friends. Her Quaker faith became a living and transforming power in her life. As a Quaker she believed that each human being had unique value because there is a "seed," a light, something of God in all people. As a Friend she was committed to "answering that of God in everyone" and opposing any action that diminished, harmed, or threatened human beings. Her concern for peace came from that belief as well as her concern for equality and social justice worldwide. She believed that we must sometimes do things that are hard but that we know are right, and to do what one believes is right whether or not we may readily achieve the desired results. She also believed that love leads to action, and that if a person knows the cause of suffering, that person is bound to speak out and work for change. More could be achieved by appealing to the seed of God, that capacity for love and goodness within all people, she believed, than could be achieved through weapons that harm. She also advocated resolving conflict without deliberate harm and with healing.(16) She stated that her faith had led her to engage in postwar change movements, and her faith and commitment to peace and peace testimony empowered her to continue in what she believed right in the face of hostility.

Kurose's teaching made learning fun for her students and won over her severest critics. Her cognitive curriculum of hands-on discovery rather than rote learning excited her students and their parents. For example, to make sure school was "egg-citing" for her students, she often performed her favorite science experiments: learning how to get boiled eggs into narrow necked bottles and hatching salmon eggs and later releasing the fish into a local creek. Her students left the classroom to observe the sky, learn about clouds, track the phases of the moon and the position of the sun. Seasonal flowers decorating each table grouping in the classroom became the subjects of science lessons, art projects, and even spelling bees. Her learning-through-doing curriculum extended to writing stories in journals to express their thoughts. Consequently, Kurose's students learned to spell words such as metamorphosis, photosynthesis, waxing, waning, gibbous, and crescent because they had observed the processes in nature.

Inextricably intertwined with her hands-on teaching of math and science was her peace curriculum emphasizing peace from within, peaceful conflict resolution, and cultural pluralism. For example, in order to dispel any ethnocentric perspective held by her students, Kurose had a map of the world painted on the classroom floor so that they could see that Seattle and the United States were just little parts of the whole planet. Students sang greeting songs of all the countries in different languages so students of all backgrounds could feel represented in the classroom and so students could realize that different languages and cultures are beautiful. She told them that their class was a peace class and that it was important to learn about peace. She had them talk about how they felt about peace, read about peace, and take field trips to plant trees at the Seattle Peace Park. She sewed them peace pillows and baked them peace cookies. A morning ritual for the children was tai chi exercises outside the classroom in which they exercised, breathed, and gathered up all their anger, frustrations, and sadness and threw them out into outer space. Kurose would tell them not to worry about polluting outer space with their feelings because the bad chi would disintegrate in the air. She would conclude the morning ritual by saying to them that they were energized and refreshed, and ready to make the world a better place for all.