Teaching Testimonials

Is nonviolence a realistic alternative to military force in providing security and well being to all the people of the world?  Rick Grier-Reynolds has devoted his life to answering that daunting question.   The more he learned through direct involvement in non-violent action, study, and teaching the more he came to respect how immensely daunting the question is, but also how promising is the power of non violence in saving the human race from mega fratricide and environmental suicide.  How to get from where we are now to where we must go is the theme of his course, “Peace, Justice, and Social Change” which he has honed to perfection in over thirty years of teaching.  As the title suggests, the path to survival requires a commitment to peaceful methods toward bringing equal justice for all humanity through social transformation of attitudes and institutions.

“Peace, Justice, and Social Change” is a state of the art social science seminar, -- political science at its core closely supported by economics, sociology, anthropology, and history.

Each lesson requires research and analysis that focuses on one essential question to which there are alternative plausible solutions from which each student is asked to formulate and support his/her own conclusions.   Homework and class presentations draw on the diverse informational media available today supplemented by guest speakers and field trips for direct experience on how policy issues look from the top down and the bottom up.  

This course meets the highest scholarly and pedagogical standards.  It could be readily taught by Rick Grier-Reynolds at the college and post graduate level.   Adapting it for use by wider audiences through distant learning techniques is highly desirable. Replicating and scaling up this seminar with its inspirational coaching-style leadership would be quite a feat.   It’s well worth the effort.  I beg you to take up the challenge as the content is excellent and the cause is urgent.

 John J. Beer,

Associate Professor of History, Emeritus

University of Delaware

October 2004

Peace, Justice and Social Change is a remarkable course for its combination of BREADTH, DEPTH, and presentation of BREAKTHROUGH CONTENT.

The breakthrough content is the new understanding of nonviolent action as a means of conflict waging as well as resolution.  The course brings a twenty-first century appreciation of this new paradigm, which is reflected in the course's attention to the nonviolent overthrow of dictators and genuinely humanitarian intervention in violent conflicts.

The depth is that this breakthrough content is rich with case studies and class exercises, so it cannot remain merely on the rhetorical level.

The breadth is that the breakthrough content is contextualized in the real-world puzzles of Delaware's (and the nation's) economic distribution, global economic justice, dynamics of new democracies, and environmental challenges.

Altogether the course takes a major step in preparing young people for leadership in the coming decades.  I wish our Congress could have been so well prepared in its youth, in order to face more creatively the challenges of today!

Good luck.

George

George Lakey – author, activist, non violence trainer, Visiting  Professor for Issues in Social Change, Swarthmore College          

As a life-long global educator, I have been truly inspired by Rick Grier-Reynolds, a social studies teacher at Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, DE.  My organization, Global Education Motivators (GEM) is an NGO ant the United Nations and we organize and facilitate many on-site programs at the UN each year for schools.   No group accomplishes more than the students under the tutelage of Rick Grier-Reynolds. 

Each spring Rick will bring his 10th grade global studies classes to the UN for a day of classroom interaction with UN personnel.  We facility ate this in a panel format, but UN personnel do not give speeches to Rick's students.  His students spend time before the UN trip researching and walking in the shoes people in developing countries to learn about their struggles to sustain a democracy.  It is the students who take the lead and ask the panel questions and make comments related to their classroom experiences at Wilmington Friends.  I remember one UN panelist last year telling me she was shocked when told that these students were in the 10th Grade.  Their understanding and interaction with the UN panel led her to believe that they were college students.

I can honestly say the Rick's students always come the this annual UN Day event at the United Nations well prepared and they have developed such an excellent reputation that it allows me to provide them with special inside things at the UN that most schools would not have the opportunity to experience.

Wayne Jacoby, President

Global Education Motivators (GEM)

Chestnut Hill College

Philadelphia, PA (USA)

Rick Grier-Reynolds's syllabus. as well as his over-all approach to

peacemaking, justice-seeking, and conflict transformation in the

syllabus, "Peace, Justice, and Social Change 2002-2003,"  is an

imaginative and substantive approach to teaching.   It is, in fact, a

model for what might be done in a secondary or college course to

introduce students to major issues of nonviolent social change,

combining practical and theoretical approaches.  I particularly admire

the combination of learning techniques--readings, films, speakers,

thoughtful writing assignment, and field trips that appeal to a wide

range of students.  The structure also provides a critical yet positive

examination  and exploration of concepts and strategies.  I say these

things on the basis of my long experience teaching peace and conflict

studies at colleges and universities in this country and abroad, and as

former Co-chair of the Board, Concortium on Peace, Research,

Education, and Development, and President, International Peace

Research Association Foundation.

        Michael True, Ph.D.

        Emeritus Professor, Assumption College

My son took Rick Grier-Reynolds course entitled, “Peace, Justice and Social Change” and came home with his syllabus.  My immediate reaction was, “Is this a graduate level course in a University?”  The breadth and depth of the course is amazing.  And to Rick’s credit, he allows the students to journey far and wide, thinking and treating them as adults.  The growth they realize and the world view they develop is fabulous.  Most importantly, these students are taught to think of those things positive, just and sustainable for the world.  I’ll never forget Rick’s first question to the kids, “what do you want the world   to look like in 30 years?”  Peace, Justice and Social Change builds on this question covering vital areas like visioning of a positive world; the international system in the 21^st century; the US role in the global village; sustainability (including national and international economic issues) and, non violence that causes action and social change.  A truly magnificent course that should be a requirement for all graduating high school students!  

Bernard J. David

Chairman

The Global CO2 Initiative