Singer/songwriter Peter Yarrow is best known for his role in the popular folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary. However, music is not his only passion.

He has participated in the civil rights movement, performing at such events as the Selma-Montgomery peace march and the rally in which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.

More recently, he founded a program directed at school-age children, called Don't Laugh At Me. Available for Grades 2-5 and Grades 6-8, it uses music and activities to teach children the importance of respecting others, resolving conflicts peacefully, and valuing the humanity in others instead of concentrating on less important things, such as material possessions.

In a phone interview, Yarrow discussed how he felt about the program, and the impact it has had on thousands of children so far.

Yarrow:

"Our program is under the umbrella of a charitable organization called Operation Respect. Its purpose is to change the educational perspective of schools across America, so that they not only address the academic growth of children, but equally address their social and emotional development.

"We know that disrespect and ridicule and bullying are the most widespread causes of physical violence. And they are indeed manifestations of a kind of an emotional violence that is very broadly shown in the adult culture and in the media culture. But the place to intercept that, the place to initiate real change, I believe, is in the schools.

"The Don't Laugh at Me program right now is in, we calculate, between 5,000 and 10,000 schools and has been disseminated to 2,500 summer camps -- 40 percent of the summer camps in America. For it to be really effective, it has to be done many, many days over a period of, really, a couple of years and conjoined with other programs. You can sensitize people in a moment, but to translate that sensitization into new ways of treating each other is something that takes place over a period of months and years.

"What Don't Laugh at Me offers is the heart-connecting elements of music and video in conjunction with very strong pedagogy and curriculum, and some exercises. It's not a course to be taught, like history. It's a series of skills and tools to be learned. And so when (students) hear the songs and they see the video, they become sensitized to the issues and they reach into their own experience and begin to talk about the ways in which they have experienced (disrespect) and how it's hurt them.

"The program doesn't say that there won't be disrespect or bullying in the classroom thereafter; what it says is that if you do the program, you'll find ways to bring people in, even the ones who are habitually disrespectful. It gives them tools and teaches them skills to be able to approach each other compassionately, resolve their problems nonviolently and creatively, and create a peaceful, caring culture -- to build a platform of humanity in the face of what I consider to be a very seriously disrespectful culture.

"The response is extraordinary. We know from the camps that it really, really affected people. But in order for it to affect people incredibly, they have to do it a lot. They can't just show the video and expect things are going to change. They can't just do a few exercises.

"We've encountered very little disrespect of the program from the kids. There are kids who are troubled, who are difficult to reach, and of course those are kids who would best be nurtured by the class. I was in a class where I was doing this and working with kids, and there was a kid who was really showing his disdain for it. He was dressed very differently from the other kids to show that he was different. Then ultimately he was drawn in. The kids put their arms around him. It was an amazing transformation. He started out in one way, but he saw that the spirit of the class was so powerful, it broke down his defenses.

"I don't think that people, kids or adults, really want huge houses, very costly cars, and the kind of power that lets them be disrespectful to their friends, their co-workers. I think that what they really want is to be respected and to be accepted.

"For instance, when I've worked in the civil rights movement, I realized that that's an adult form of disrespect, of ridicule, of put-down and bullying. That's what racism is: a kind of acting out and bullying. So all of this work and organizing has now culminated in trying not to stop adult dysfunctional ridicule, the bullying, insensitive behavior, but really is now culminating in an effort to say, let's build a peace with kids instead of just trying to stop the wars.

"I'm not the first person to do it. I'm not a pioneer in the field. This has been going on for a long time, for 15 to 20 years. But what I brought to it was the incorporation of new elements that I know have a certain connective power and allow people to recognize each other and acknowledge that they are walking hand-in-hand, and their hearts are connected.

"Kids today (must) learn that their real value doesn't come from the sneakers that they wear, or their ability to be smug and put each other down, or their prowess on the football field, or even in academics, but from their humanity and their giving to one another.

"I believe we all have the capacity for great humanity and compassion. And if we learn to live that way, we will not destroy each other through disrespect, ridicule, bullying, racism, intolerance and war."

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Victoria Sahm, 18; Chad Flowers, 14; and Olivia Mozzi, 14.

For more information about the program, visit its Web site at: www.dontlaugh.org

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Y-Press is a nonprofit news organization located in The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Stories are researched, reported and written by teams of young people ages 10 to 18. For more information, call 1-317-334-4125 or send an e-mail to ypress@in.net.

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