Green School is honoured to announce that famed social psychologist, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, will be visiting the school during the second week in November. Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, Dr. Zimbardo first became known for his 1971 Stanford Prison experiment, an illuminating study that explored the ease at which average, good people are capable of atrocious acts when put in bad situations.
Dr. Zimbardo has since served as the president of the American Psychology Association, designed and hosted a PBS series called ‘Discovering Psychology,’ and authored many seminal texts on the study of psychology, including notable texts such as The Time Paradox, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Cure. His areas of focus have included time perspective, shyness, terrorism, madness, and evil. His research into the psychology of evil has now led him in the direction of promoting goodness and heroic action as an antidote to evil.
He now travels the world cultivating heroes, which brings him to us at the Green School!
“When I visited Bali last spring, on family vacation, I was told by several psychologists that I met about the remarkable educational programs being created and delivered by the Green School “in the jungle.” I am also interested in developing new lessons in our Heroic Imagination Project on Sustainability and Conservation, and I was told they were core interests of Green School teachers and students. So I made a one day visit and was delighted to discover: some of my research was being taught in a psychology course, that one of my former Stanford students, Chris Thompson, was a director there, and that there was an enormous amount of creative energy and ideas spilling all over among both teachers and the diverse student body. I vowed to return again– on business, and I am delighted to have been so invited to teach and to learn more in my November 2015 visit.”
Dr. Zimbardo will lead a series of workshops and host a community lecture during his time here at Green School. He will work with teachers and students to promote heroism and to train educators in the heroic imagination curriculum. The heroic imagination project seeks to empower ordinary people to engage in extraordinary acts of heroism.