Chemical Classrooms

Dear teacher:
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is:
Help your students to become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

- Author unknown; in Haim Ginnot, Teacher and Child

How ironic it is that the ninth most Conservative university in the country has fostered my complete politicization. I left the manicured classrooms of my university so I could feel the truth. I am on the battleground of ideas: the slums, diamond mines, churches, NGOs, and homes of where pedagogy becomes reality. This type of experiential learning has weight, facts now have "heart and bones."

My classroom no longer allows neutrality. A recent visit to Durban, South Africa champions this experiential pedagogy. We spent one morning in February learning about ethics and environmental justice in a chemical classroom. South Durban is a product of the Group Areas Act, neighborhoods gerrymandered by the apartheid regime of South Africa. Indians/"coloureds" and blacks were legally moved to the dirtiest neighborhoods. Their homes, schools and streets are now saturated with deadly chemicals. The same chemicals countries in the North have not only outlawed, but made movies about, are leaked into the community. In the wake of the apartheid state, the Rainbow Nation must now fight environmental racism. The poor and oppressed are now left to resist the multinational corporations. Those with the least agency - the smallest amount of money, education and mobility - are only used for one thing, their labor. Their bodies are exploited. For example, if you live in south Durban, the risk of cancer is increased by 250%. As our virtual classroom followed the route of the "toxic tour," we learned that students in a school crammed between paper mills and chemical storage facilities suffer a 52% asthma rate!


After bearing witness to South Durban, it would be a crime to leave as simply more human. I hope we all follow the advice of Des, our guide, and "stand up and be counted."

Why learn in a vacuum when we don't live in one?

our "Toxic Tour" classroom

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To offer your support to those fighting in Durban, start by using the resources available through the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance.

Petitions are available here, by issue