From Pencils to Peace

It was mid-September, and Greg Mortenson found himself lost, feeble, and nearly out of his mind from oxygen deprivation and exhaustion, having returned to the wrong Pakistani village. His failures were mounting: failed to reach the summit, failed to honor his deceased sister by placing her favorite necklace at the peak, failed to stay on the path that would lead him back to the village of Askole and back to his life, failed to identify what that life would be. The story of how Greg Mortenson's failures led him to a life dedicated to building schools in the remote villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan unfolds in his book Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.

Greg's story has been more than an inspiration for this Montessorian of 30 years; it has been a call to action. While embracing the many ways we Montessori teachers promote peace in our classrooms, I always wondered if, or at least how, peace practices were going to spread in the world. I saw how our work allowed children to solve conflicts and resolve differences. I saw how their lightened spirits became more generous. But my personal failure was in finding creative ways to help children understand how this generosity could flow further than our classroom. How could peace education in my classroom make a difference that would reach all the way to solving conflicts on the other side of the world?

The book Three Cups of Tea was a history and geography lesson all rolled into one fantastic adventure. It was a bit like a Great Lesson, tying together just enough information in an inspiring story to compel this reader to keep on learning. Slowly the foreignsounding names became familiar and began to correspond to the photographs tucked into the center of the book. I traced the routes taken between villages and found the locations where the tragedies of war led Greg into danger. I learned how the Taliban grew and got a glimpse into Islamic culture. Gradually, I began to let go of my U.S.-media-bred fears and to see the very real people who captured Greg's heart and compassion. I felt the love and determination that kept Greg Mortenson on his path to create schools and promote peace.

Mortenson saw an opportunity to help people get something they desperately wanted: an education. In most of the remote villages of Pakistan, education was barely available to boys and almost never to girls. Mortenson watched as fundamentalist Islamic groups took over impoverished villages through propagandist education. He saw young boys enticed away from their villages and toward a life of luxury and power, knowing they would take wives and raise several families, families whose young boys would become warriors for Islam.

Greg realized that when boys received education, they would not return to their homes. But girls, even those educated away from the village, tended to return home to make a better life for their families. He saw how a fifth-grade education meant empowerment and possibility for these girls; he saw how education would allow them to have a voice in their own future. Greg Mortenson saw a way to promote peace using pencils instead of guns.

To date, Greg Mortenson has built more than 55 schools and supported a host of additional projects to help the people of remote villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan improve their lives. The website for the Central Asia Institute, Mortenson's nonprofit organization for raising money to build schools, is easy to access and full of ideas for bringing this very real mission into the classroom through pictures and stories.

The website also links to Pennies for Peace, a program easily managed by a classroom, which can spread into an entire school or community. I was delighted but not surprised to learn that this program was pioneered by an inspired Montessori teacher. A penny, a coin of little value in our culture, will purchase a pencil in Pakistan and set some young boy or girl on the road to education. For our children, it will set them on the road to understanding.

My young students have opened their hearts and their piggy banks to Pennies for Peace. They listened with great intensity to the story of the students who needed their help and were quick to take up the call: I heard responses like, "I have a purse full of pennies, . . ." and "I put all our spare change in a jar. Does it have to be only pennies?" Somehow these little children, many in their first year of Montessori school, grasped that the education they often take for granted, or even wear like a burden on some days, is desperately desired by children on the other side of the world.

There are parallels between the work of Greg Mortenson and the work of Maria Montessori. As Montessori also understood, Greg believes that the people of these remote villages have the knowledge and drive to secure a better way of life. And as Montessori did before him, Mortenson realizes that education is the only way to promote peace-one school at a time.