KIPP King: It's Not Tolstoy

Happy countries are all alike; every unhappy country is unhappy in its own way. 

Otherwise, there is little more than passing resemblance between the oeuvre of the 19th century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the 8:30 a.m. class taught by Jared Kushida. 

For many in KIPP King Collegiate High School's first graduating class, War and Peace (the class) is the highlight of their grueling pre-collegiate academic career. 

Not because it's easy — students I spoke with said it's among the most rigorous courses offered at the school — but for the relevance so many students don't find till college.  

"The goal of the class is to be an intro to political science, ethics, and international relations," Kushida said. "We help them form their own idea of conflict and peace. We build that back to looking at the history of the development of war and peace. At the mid-year point we turn to looking at current situations. We look at the UN, we look at the ICC, we look at the role of international bodies in creating peace." 

Few traditional public schools could afford to let a young teacher like Kushida pitch and execute his own elective, one of the things he said makes him so passionate about teaching at King. 

The other is the students. 

There is something very urgent about teaching the world—and not simply the European world of a "World History" textbook— to a room full of students from half a dozen non-European countries, many of them conflict-torn.

In recent years, the school has seen an increase in students from Africa and the Middle East, who join immigrants and first generation nationals from Latin America, East Asia and the Philippines.

"It's the most intense class I've ever had," said former student , who very nearly failed it. "I did the most thinking there."

Explaining the mechanisms of power to a group culled from those who have exercised it least  is enchanting, on both sides.

"Honestly, our conversations are so much more rich because of it," Kushida said.

Senior Daniel Colhour had a slightly different take.

"Sometimes, I even tell him he's building rebels," he said.

Let's to the PowerPoint, shall we?

All was confusion in al-Bashir's house. The South had found out that the North was having an affair with their former French governess...

Sorry, that last bit about the governess was Anna Karenina, though the rest of it holds.

Monday's lecture begins in Sudan's bloody Darfur region, among the world's most urgent humanitarian crises.It's the fifth of eight final group projects that have dominated class for weeks.

As part of the course, each student will make an 150-minute group presentation, spread across three days, on one of eight conflict regions: Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Sudan's conflict in Darfur, the Latin American drug wars, Haiti, North Korea and the ongoing strife in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Mideast conflicts are popular, for all the obvious reasons. The drug wars, a new addition, are gaining traction. The DRC is a bad luck draw—nobody really knows what's happening there, they just know it's terrible.

 Darfur falls somewhere in the middle. It's among the world's better-documented horrors, but it's also one of the newest. It would be an understatement to say this project is hard.

 "I had all the research I could have ever needed," Bea said of her own presentation on another extremely well-documented conflict—Israel and Palestine—last year. "But getting the work done..."

Although today's lecture is taught by students (Kushida sits in the back), like every class at KIPP, it's divided into the same recognizable pieces, identical for English and math, science and history — Do Now, Objective, etc.

Objective: Identify the three main factors of why genocide is occurring in Darfur. Know the Sudanese response to international pressure.  

The four student leaders fan out across the classroom to check their peers' homework assignments. 

"Why didn't you do it?" junior and unofficial group leader Maritere Guerrero asks, gently but firmly. She and the delinquent student discuss.  

Next begins the lecture. The four student presenters—three juniors and a senior—display an impressive command of the history and gravity of the conflict and the refugee crisis it spawned. They also teach well: Participation is broad and enthusiastic. 

Partly because this is high school, much of the conversation turns on exactly who's at fault here and whose problem it is to solve. Mostly because this is high school, the brunt of the blame comes to "us."

"Do you think it is the responsibility of the government, or the responsibility of the international community, to solve the refugee crisis in Chad and the Central African Republic?" Maritere asks. 

Enthusiastic Ahmed shoots up his hand. "I think the international community is more responsible," he said. 

 Daniel agrees.

"I think the international bodies are the main ones that should help at this point," he said.

Surprisingly, China—the U.N. security council member most stubbornly opposed to intervention, and a country whose oil yuan help fund the genocide and whose weapons were used to execute it—comes up only once. It's a student named Alex who mentions it. The class doesn't dwell.

Instead, discussion drifts into the country's much longer North/South civil war, where the seams of the  students' research (and grasp of geopolitical current events) start to show. 

Maritere is the only one in the room apparently aware that the south will become an independent country in July. Her classmates are fairly shocked. 

"Who is splitting it?" someone asks.

"I don't know," Maritere says. 

(Point of clarity: Southern Sudanese voted overwhelmingly for secession in a January referendum. The referendum was held as a stipulation of the country's 2005 peace agreement. The north and south are set to split on July 9 of this year.) 

But the fact the teenagers in the room know enough about Africa's largest country to debate its future at all should be seen as a success. 

"I hear adults talk about these things," Bea said. "It helps you grow up for sure. You become an adult real fast."

So how do you solve a problem like Darfur?

That's the takeaway for today's lecture, in case you were wondering. The students have no shortage of ideas. They mention teaching other students about the crisis and pressuring elected officials to take greater action. A student named Monica suggests a bake sale.

"That investment in this current event stuff is really hard to get, and to get all the groups to think globally and locally is really a challenge," Kushida said. "Part of me feels like this is too much of a blitz. Really, you could take any of these crisis areas and spend two months on them."