This is such an incredibly encouraging statistic! I’m honestly a bit surprised I have never heard about this success before, although I think what surprises me even more is that the baseline in 1990 was a whopping 36%! Looking at some more recent statistics, it appears the rate dropped to 9.2% in 2017. According to a report from The World Bank, however, 2020 may have caused our first regression in several years. While this press release was written in October and the information shared is merely speculative, they believe that the pandemic may cause as may as 1.4% of the world population to sink backward into extreme poverty.

Here is the press report: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021

I was quiet disappointed to find, upon a bit of brief research, that it appears that the only People’s Report Card’s ever issued were in 2015 (as shown during the TED Talk) and 2016. However, I can’t imagine that we would have progressed very far in the past four years, especially with there only being about four letter grades separating us from the goal of an A. (C+, B-, B, B+, A-) Unfortunately, 2020 was a year that I imagine could have set back the worldwide average by a noticeable bit.

I find that the call's to action which I hear so often about various social (and other) issues can be very overwhelming to me. When we're striving to address problems on a world scale, as the Sustainable Development Goals do, a single person feels so weak and lost among the billions. I often wonder what I could possibly do to make a change when so many age-old, hulking obstacles remain in the way of progress. But this mindset of defeat is discouraging – Although what I do in my daily life isn’t necessarily shifting global tides, I can still go forward with passion and purpose for what I believe in. It’s so very cheesy, but some of the most important things we do in our lives are incredibly intimate, involving individual people on a small level.

This section up to this point, and this sentence in particular, reminds me of something written by CS Lewis where he discussed the concept of moral law. I believe this was in his book "Mere Christianity." While I was unable to find the exact passage to share here, what he talked about (in general terms) was how interesting it that we universally hold moral ideals within us as something to strive for and simultaneously fail to meet them.

It's incredibly important to be open to new ideas and when one closes themselves to any new input, it truly is impossible to grow. However, I think it is really fascinating to consider where we each, as individuals, draw the line on this concept. I think it is universally obvious that there are some ideas we don't want to open our minds to. And rightfully so! Not all ideas are created equal - some are simply horrifying and deserve to be shut down rather than considered. In the end though, we all have different places where we draw this line.

I think there's another important part of a basic compassionate response that isn't exactly covered here, although I understand why. In more personal interactions, it's also important to not be rude and speak derogatorily of others behind their backs. Gossip is a serious vice which can tear through relationships and leave them in unfortunate places, and it’s unfortunately very easy to fall into. However, this passage is written to specifically consider situations within the classroom. Those situations don’t exactly carry the same weight personal situations do, so I understand why avoiding gossip was omitted.