1. No category

Preparing the child
to live within the global village
by; Paul Loranger
2
Preparing the child to live within a global village
©Copyright 2013 by Synlogic Publications
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. For
permission contact Synlogic Publications.
Printed in Canada
FIRST EDITION
Published by;
Synlogic Publications
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.teacherzones.com
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Loranger, Paul
Preparing the child to live within the global village
ISBN -– 978-0-9877195-2-2
3 Preparing the child for the global village
Preface
Whom do I call educated?
First, those who manage well the circumstances they
encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and
1honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing
easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others
and being as agreeable and reasonable to their
associates as is humanly possible to be... those who
hold their pleasures always under control and are not
ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who
are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert
their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as
wise and sober -- minded men.
Socrates1
1
Socrates, http://quotationsbook.com/quote/12020/#sthash.uY6q7F8u.dpbs
4
Preparing the child to live within a global village
If this was said two thousand years ago, it must be in our
genes to be and become wisely minded. So I started to study
cultures where wisdom resides and began to map
out those that dealt with the Creator and those
with nature. This gave me a wave that went from
abstraction to concreteness. I also discovered a
second wave in those who focused on human
thought versus physical actions. Then there were cultures that
dwelled on either the interaction of Creator’s consciousness with
human interaction or nature’s awareness with human interaction.
The result produced a DNA design which made me call it, the
Creator’s Signature.
Being an educator and a father of three
children and four grandchildren and an expert in
curriculum implementation, I began to ask myself
when in a child’s mind does he begin thinking
along the lines of these cultures. To my surprise
as you will read through these chapters, he covers
at least forty eight ways to be or become wise
before reaching the age of thirty.
This opens up a whole new aspect to
education as noted in my conclusion because we
now have a means to assess the subjective
metacognition wisdom of the child from teaching
presentations, learning exercises and tests to
inquiries, classroom discussions, group projects
and subjective self-assessment. We no longer
accept the premise that the child is only a blank
slate from which to impose only our thoughts on him.
We can finally not just
instruct but teach wisdom and fulfill
all the community guidelines which
everyone wants to see happen in their
schools as we discover what is
missing to make it right.
5 Preparing the child for the global village
Introduction……………………………………………………….6
Part1 Passive Consciousness......................................................... 9
Chapter 1 – “My child is an angel” ............................................... 10
Chapter 2 – “My child is human” ................................................. 17
Chapter 3 “My child the explorer”................................................ 24
What is missing that will make it work? ....................................... 31
Chapter 4 – “My metamorphic child” ........................................... 32
Chapter 5 – “My friendly child?” ................................................. 39
Chapter 6 – “My child, the planner?” ........................................... 46
Chapter 7 – “The “Me” child” ...................................................... 53
Chapter 8 – “My dreaming child” ................................................. 60
Part 2 Active Consciousness ........................................................ 66
Chapter 9 – “My self-active child” ............................................... 67
Chapter 10 –“My freedom child” ................................................. 74
Chapter 11 – “My adaptive child” ................................................ 81
Chapter 12 – “My normal child” .................................................. 88
Chapter 13 –“My progressive teenager” ....................................... 95
Chapter 14 –“My social teenager” .............................................. 102
Chapter 15 – “My teenager as an idealist”.................................. 109
Chapter 16 – “My designing adult” ............................................ 116
Conclusion: “Dynamic thinking” ................................................ 123
Cultural Bibliography ................................................................. 126
Educational Bibliography ........................................................... 130
6
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Introduction – “Our mind is alive”
One day I was at a beach on Prince Edward Island and
contemplating the story of St. Augustine2 as to why he never
resolved the Mystery of the Trinity. The story goes something like
this;
He saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the
sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing
some water to pour into the hole. St. Augustine asked him, “What
are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this
hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole
you have made” said St. Augustine. The boy replied, “And you
cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.” The story concludes
by saying that the boy vanished because St. Augustine had been
talking to an angel (or maybe a demon who was tricking him into
believing that you cannot experience the Creator).
Cannot a piece of a puzzle tell us something about the
whole picture? If we combine our pieces like sharing our
experience of the ocean flowing through our hole in the sand, can
we not better understand the sea which is greater than any one of
us? Is it through physical measurement or the quality of the
experience that we speak of Creation? Without this qualitative
perspective, are we but dry sand? When we say our life is
meaningful, is our consciousness beyond that of an animal or a
computer bank filled with data?
Is the purpose of education to do only objective
assessments on what we know as we measure the quantity of water
our hole can absorb? Should there not be a qualitative subjective
assessment as to what meaning we derive on reflecting and acting
on it?
This book explores the latter through cultures which sought
more than mere existence and denial that creativity, if believed,
2
Synopsis “The most Holy Trinity” 26 May,2013 http://cbci.in/SundayReflections.aspx
7 Preparing the child for the global village
would, like the ocean, overwhelm us. I believe, as do billions on
this planet who appreciate cultures, that a child cannot truly live
within the global village without doing subjective assessment as to
what is valued within it.
This begins not in active consciousness which is the subject
of the second part after reflections, but in thought before action as
was painfully absent in this bricklayer story.
-The Bricklayer's Story3 -This is a bricklayer's accident report,
which was reprinted in the newsletter of the Workers'
Compensation board. This is a true story. Really.
Dear Sirs,
I am writing in response to your request for additional
information in Block 3 of the accident report form. I put "poor
planning" as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller
explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.
I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was
working alone on the roof of a new six-story building.
When I completed my work, I found that I had some bricks left
over which, when weighed later, were found to be slightly in
excess of 500 pounds.
Rather than carry the bricks down by hand I decided to lower
them in a barrel by using a pulley, which was attached to the side
of the building on the sixth floor.
Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung
the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down
and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of
the bricks. You will note in Block 11 of the accident report form
that I weigh 155 pounds.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I
lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope.
Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the
3
“The Bricklayer Story” http://summitlake.com/Humor/Bricklayers_Story.php
8
Preparing the child to live within a global village
building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel, which
was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed.
This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken
collar bone, as listed in section 3 of the accident report form.
Slowed only slightly by the encounter with the barrel, I
continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my
right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley, which
accounts for the four broken fingers … various lacerations of my
right hand.
Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and
was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of beginning to
experience pain. At approximately the same time, however, the
barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the
barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, that barrel
weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight.
As you can imagine, I began a rapid descent, down the side of
the building.
In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This
accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and several
lacerations of my legs and lower body. Here my luck began to
improve. The encounter with the barrel slowed my descent
enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks
and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to
report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain,
unable to move, I again lost my composure and presence of mind
and let go of the rope and I lay there watching the empty barrel
begin its journey back down onto me. This explains the two
broken legs. I hope this answers your inquiry.
Thanks in advance for expediting my claim,
Sincerely John K. Smith
Or as my editor commented on the reading of this story by
the Woodsmen’s analogy
“You must take time to sharpen the axe”
And I added “Unless you want a dull life”
9 Preparing the child for the global village
Part1 Passive Consciousness
As Richard l. Njus4 puts
it, we need to create a school
that has a soul. We need to ask
ourselves why we became
educators.
What do we want for
our students? Do we want them
to be efficient test takers or do
we want them to be filled with the wonder of learning? I
believe that most teachers want the same for our students
that a parent wants for their children: an education
for the whole child where each child is provided
the tools to reach his or her full potential. As
educators, we have to say, “No! I am not accountable
to the people who mandate the high risk test; I
am accountable to the kids.” In short, we need to
create schools with soul.
A school with soul is one where staff members
work from the heart and keep the whole child at the
center of the educational program. It is a school that
educates minds and touches hearts. As Mary Pipher
(1996, 87) puts it,
“Children need to believe that the world is an
interesting and safe place. The relationship between
children and their teachers isn’t incidental,
but rather is the central component of their
learning. Human development occurs within
the context of real relationships. We learn from
whom we love.”
4
Richard l. Njus “Creating a school with a soul” o s.greatideas.org index.php NC article download 66
(2010)
10
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 1 – “My child is an angel”
Through the eyes of a new born child the wonderment of
life begins. Through a lullaby we appease the active mind of a
child as they reflect on Spiritualism. Through brief conversations
we raise the consciousness of the child to thoughtfulness and
through playful interaction we touch upon the Will of the Creator
as the child begins to contemplate the ‘newness’ that exists all
around him from the will of parents that want him to be happy.
This chapter will reflect on Spiritualism, Thoughtfulness
and the Will of the Creator for our existence. Does a child within
his first year feel a sense of belonging? Can he sense
thoughtfulness as he begins to interact with others? Does he
believe that he has purpose in who he is as a person?
Many go to India with the intent to rekindle their
Spiritualism and return empty handed. They perform all the rituals
and pay their tribute to the statues of the divinities but nothing
happens. They are like music apprentices who want to produce
music but noise only results because they have shut out creativity.
I myself was frustrated in reading the Vedas5, the holy
book on Spiritualism of India because I expected a word or a
phrase to describe what is Spiritualism. George Strait’s “I Saw
God Today” put in song what I could not say in words.
Got my face pushed up against the nursery glass,
she's sleeping like a rock,
my name on her wrist,
wearing tiny pink socks,
she's got my nose,
she's got her Mama's eyes,
my bran new baby girl,
she's a miracle,
I Saw God Today
5
The Rig Veda Ralph T.H. Griffith, Translator [1896]Vedas http://www.sacredtexts.com/hin/
11 Preparing the child for the global village
Perhaps as will be the case in many of these chapters, I was
looking within the wrong area of my consciousness. I was trying to
do something rather than listen to a fine musician or a choir, or
sense the reward of the doing of a kind act. Had I done the latter as
I do now, I would have felt the Spiritual creativity within a
universe that scientists tell me doesn’t exist.
But as I look back to my song lullabies to my new born
child and watched him relax and smile, I can’t but question the
scientist who tells me that this qualitative experience is
immeasurable and as such should be not be included in the child’s
assessment of himself.
There is such a thing as qualitative assessment that is
subjective and one can clearly see it in the child in the enjoying
this Spiritual moment all around him with his sense of
contentment. This I have found not only in India but in every place
that people gather to share their music or show kindness to each
other. Without this Spiritualism once in a while in my life, I would
miss the sense of the way we are all connected in being able to
share this mystical experience. I would foolishly assume that the
child and I have nothing to share in common.
Even the deaf person like Evelyn Glennie in “How to truly
listen”6 who plays the xylophone, stated that she could feel the
music through the vibrations. This makes me wonder if part of the
vibrations exist in a physical universe that is measurable and the
other part in an abstract dimension which we cannot quantify but
can enjoy through our passive consciousness. Perhaps this explains
why noise irritates us and music calms our nerves.
But music that is constantly repeated annoys us as if new
creativity in not being present holds no Spiritualism within it.
Hence a child’s first self-assessment is for newness as every
teacher learns in giving a presentation that is not new to one’s
audience.
6
Evelyn Glennie: How to truly listen, Nov 17, 2012
http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html
12
Preparing the child to live within a global village
A second form of creativity is storytelling. A baby in its
first year of life says very few words but it enjoys seeing and
listening to a story. One would not expect it to understand the
parables in the New Testament as first spoken by Christ, but we
who make the effort to communicate with our child exemplify the
words “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with
them.” 7
In this experience, the child observes a different aspect of
sharing the same phenomenon of people trying to communicate
with each other with the intent of sharing an understanding. What
would happen to a civilization if such Christian approach was
actually occurring among its people?
Gibbon’s notes in his view of human history:
“If” said Gibbon, “a man was called upon to fix the period
during which the condition of the human race was most happy
and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the accession of Nerva to the death of Marcus
Aurelius. Their united reigns are possibly the only period of
history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole
object of government”8
During this period, people actually made an effort to try to
understand each other as we do with our child in seeking to initiate
conversation. We make what may seem to them to be strange
sounds and they respond and we know as they, that communication
is not impossible between us.
It is only as we get older and expect everyone to
communicate using our language that we forget how we learned
and communicate with each other using only facial expression and
body language. Even today as I smile at a young child, he
responses back and I marvel at the fact that neither of us know
each other language but I know we communicated something
7
8
Christ, New Testament http://biblehub.com/matthew/18-20.htm
Durant W. “The Lessons of History”p.69,1968
13 Preparing the child for the global village
together. You can have a room full of mothers and one baby cries
and the mother knows that it is her child crying. How is that
possible!
But you may ask, if everyone was happy during that special
Roman time, why did it not continue? You either grow up capable
of communicating beyond language barriers or trying to have
everyone speak your language. The Romans in doing the latter by
insisting that everyone speak their language like a teacher today
insisting that only her language be spoken in her class on
communication. Miscommunication will occur and if not
corrected, misunderstandings will follow as noted in this quote;
The challenge of communication isn't to never
miscommunicate, it's to cut down the time between the
interaction and the realization that the communication
didn't get through. Because the sooner we know we're not
connecting, the sooner we can fix it.9
We so easily forget that Christ spoke but was heard in
many languages because he mentions thoughts that were common
to all of us.
The child from birth is able to learn any language that has
ever been created on this earth. It is we in the teaching of our ways
of communicating that perhaps unknowingly expect him to
understand the thoughts of the Creator solely through our way of
expressing ourselves.
As I look back on my grade one teacher in a classroom of
French students in which I was the only one who knew English, I
could not understand as I do now, why she had difficulty in
communicating to me as I had assumed coming from a bilingual
family that as long as we tried to find common terms that could be
labelled using different words, we could be able to communicate.
9
Seth Godin,May 10, 2013
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/05/miscommunication.html
14
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Hence a second self-assessment that is wise to learn and
not forget at this early age of not quite being one, is
communication is possible regardless of the means used to do it.
However there are times when communication is not the
point of the interaction which bring me to the third aspect of the
Trinity, the act of creating which we see today in our fascination
with new technology which began with our child’s wonderment
over a toy, an animal or the change in his universe each day. This
we see in the Islamic Culture in the study of the “Will” of the
Creator as we note the following from its history;
“From ancient history till the sixteenth century, the Near
East was leading the world in technological innovation and
advance. This is not to minimize the importance of Chinese
civilization and its great contributions to the world; but
what we want to point out is that the overall contribution of
the Near East to human progress in general until the
sixteenth century, surpasses anything that was achieved
anywhere else in the world.” 10
While Europe was pondering the Spirit and the ability to
share thoughts among ourselves through Creator’s enlightenment
as a better way to live together, the Middle East was shifting its
focus to what has been created that can be used to improve it. This
lack of attention to the gift of Creation can perhaps be explained by
my Christmas holidays as a child.
We drove from Montreal to Kingston and then waited days
before the event. When it arrived, we spent the morning being
patient for all the relatives to be present so that we could sort
through the mountain of presents. It was not until the afternoon of
that day that I got a chance to play with my present and start to
appreciate what was bought just for me.
10
Ahmad Yousef al-Hassan Gabarin History of Science and Technology in
Islam http://www.history-science-technology.com/articles/articles%207
15 Preparing the child for the global village
As a child, there are no strings attached to the gift except to
at least take the time to appreciate it before rejecting it as it may be
useful to you in making your life more meaningful. It is through
the sciences of knowing it and the capability to manipulate through
mathematics that makes it interesting in the wonder of what the
technology can be created through it.
Even a child not yet one, marvels at objects that move as if
by some magic they are coming to life. But it is also startled when
it crashes into things or causes unexpected harm as if it knows that
this was not the intent of the toymaker.
Yet here we are today building technology that can destroy
and wipe out our fellow man as if “Allah” the toymaker intended it
by giving us the resources to make it so. Or have we negated the
giver in assuming the gift is now mine to do with as I please!
In summary, three points you can never teach a child if he
uses his gift properly; the Spirit is reserved for only you and not
for others, the Creator thinks only the way you perceive existence
as you keep your thought to yourself and His Will is the same as
yours in assuming the right to destroy what He has cherished the
most about creation – our humanity. Like a toy misunderstood is
often abused, a child not knowing what is to be humane make
these mistakes every day.
Does Koestler’s book “The Ghost within the Machine” at
the start of his chapter the “Gift of the Magi” illustrate why this
happens by what the illiterate shop keeper expects of his gift?
“There was once an illiterate shopkeeper in an Arab bazaar,
called Ali who not being very good at doing sums, was always
cheated by his customers – instead of cheating them as it should
be, So he prayed every night to Allah for the present of an
abacus – that venerable contraption for adding and subtracting
by pushing beads along wires. But some malicious djin
forwarded his prayers to the wrong branch of the heavenly Mail
Order Department, and so one morning, arriving at the bazaar,
Ali found his stall transformed into a multi-story, steel-framed
16
Preparing the child to live within a global village
building, housing the latest I.B.M. computer with instrumental
panels covering all the walls, with thousands of fluorescent
oscillators, dials, magic eyes, et cetera; and an instruction book
of several hundred pages – which , being illiterate, he could not
read. However, after days of useless fiddling with this or that
dial, he flew in to a rage and started kicking a shiny, delicate
panel, The shock disturbed one of the machine’s millions of
electronic circuits, and after a while Ali discovered to his delight,
that if he kicked that panel, say three times and afterwards five
times, one of the dials showed the figure eight! He thanked Allah
for having sent him such a pretty abacus, and continued to use
the machine to add and subtract happily unaware that it was
capable of deriving instein’s equation in a iffy, or predicting
the orbits and stars of years ahead…We ourselves are Ali’s
descendants…The unsolicited gift is the human brain…from a
point of view of his immediate needs, the explosive growth of
the neocortex overshot the mark by a time factor of astronomical
magnitude.11
Is the purpose of education like the shopkeeper, to outsmart
one’s neighbor rather than be outwitted by him or be wiser in
learning how to live in a humane way within the global village
with the Creator?
If we intend to make earth a heaven, one would assume the
latter. But if we do not learn how to be human in striving to be
perfect as if we are the Creator, we will try the former. In so doing,
like the shopkeeper lose our relationship with the Spirit that wishes
the best for mankind. In our deviousness, miscommunicate to hide
our intentions while losing our faith in a thoughtful Creator that
desires for us to understand each other. Lastly, become hopeless
about God’s Will in not enjoying what we have but what we are
without. Perhaps it is because we so want to be gods, we lose our
sense and love of our humanity. I see it often in children and
students who seek to be smart rather than wise. They often pass
tests but fail self-assessments.
Knowledge unshared, is quickly lossed.
11
Koestler “The Ghost within the Machine” 1976,p.297
17 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 2 – “My child is human”
As the mind of a one year old explores infinity, he
discovers how he is limited by his scientific knowledge and its
practical application. He cannot walk until he first learns how to
crawl. He cannot crawl until he can move his body. He wants to
move his body because his view is limited from where he is
placed. He knows there is more to the picture that he is seeing if
only he could see it from a different perspective. This chapter
examines the relationship between reflection and acts related to
reflection – the Chinese culture, acts that increase reflection on
self– English culture and acts that decrease it – French culture
To better understand this human duality, let us look at
Confucius, his “I Ching”12 (book of Change”) and its influence on
the Chinese view of our humanity. From his studies on change in a
land in change (China meaning flower), he saw two forces
constantly at play in every child; the “Yang” the desire to reflect
on that which is beautiful and to act in a meaningful way through
the use of one’s body “Ying”.
I do not pretend that every child of one is beautiful but I do
see in each parent eyes that they can see the soul within the child
that makes him/her beautiful to them. I can also note that in death,
the yang is missing as the soul somehow has left the body.
In between life and death is the aliveness of the body due to
the soul as the child’s qualitative awareness practically
overwhelms the body in not accepting that its feebleness in body is
no excuse for he/she not being able to reflect and somehow
contribute to life. It is only a matter of learning to do the practical
learning exercises to be able to express one’s being that one can
put meaning into one’s life.
In the case of China, it was in observing the conditions
under which such human impressions were possible as those who
made the “Yang” their body and the “Ying” their soul, pursued the
12
Wilhelm Baynes “The I Ching”Princeton Press, N.Y. 990
18
Preparing the child to live within a global village
inhumanity in assuming themselves to be the Creator whom
everyone must serve. They perceived reflection as coming from
weaker minds as their actions brought them wealth, a supposed
stronger “Ying” to deal with the physical world and yet also a
weaker “Yang” to excuse their immorality.
China’s history is marked by two significant events; the
building of the great wall and the conversion to communism. The
building of the great wall was to prevent the immorality of the
invaders from entering their domain. But the “Ying” of the
landlords in becoming so wealthy at the expense of the peasants
revealed a corruption from within which made it difficult for each
person to celebrate their “Yang”.
While Communism’s intent was to restore the balance by
the state being more reflective of the welfare of the people, they
did not see in the spoiling of the child, by assigning positions
based on family ties rather than ability that the same would result
in having a few corrupt officials share the wealth at the expense of
the people. The only difference was in knowing that their “Ying”
was weak but the exploitation of the “Yang”, the goodness of the
people was practically endless.
In education as in parenting, you expect your classroom as
well as you home to be exempt from those who cannot seem to act
in a humane manner towards their fellow person. But this does not
give you the right to impose further restrictions so as to make your
life easier to manage at their expense. Giving endless learning
exercises to do when the child has already learned how to do it,
dulls the “Yang” in the child.
Likewise giving too few learning exercises as you dwell
too long on your presentation as do people who believes that they
have so much to say as their perception of their “Yang” is so great,
prevents the “Ying” in each child to be developed so that they can
one day express their own “Yang”.
As the child of one advances in their second year, they like
19 Preparing the child for the global village
to try what you just taught them or how else will they improve?
But this does not happen unless one is willing to reflect on
one’s actions and find ways to do it better. In Thomas Aquinas
dissertation on “Being and Becoming”13, he struggled over
whether we should spend all our time in being good as a parent
expecting their one year old to sit there and be still and be quiet or
become an explorers and learn from one’s actions as does the child
in roaming around the house and expanding his universe.
When you study the history of Britain from an island to a
global empire, you find a culture that did not limits its reflection to
the immediate world within its shores. It global empire became the
source of its wealth through trade with other nations.
But the Commonwealth of Nations did not happen
overnight and it erred often and did missteps before it got it right
just like a child beginning to walk within his second year of life. It
tried through colonialism to help the child stand by himself but
often forgot to withdraw when the colony or child could stand
alone.
Mastering learning exercises takes patience as learned by a
one year old in mastering walking and if you rush, you will likely
fail as did the colonies under Britain in poorly supported
settlements. But its success lay in learning when to gradually
withdraw support when the colony, like the child, was no longer in
need of it.
They, England in reflecting as to when to act would have
one of their Authors – Shakespeare14 write the following;
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
13
14
Augustine 2008 http://www.iep.utm.edu/augustin/
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/there-tide-affairs-men
20
Preparing the child to live within a global village
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Why are we waiting until a child reaches kindergarten or
grade one before embarking on learning exercises when a child in
his second year can master any language in the world, perform
experience and observe reactions, relate to a wide diversity of
people, strive to be fit and can learn to draw? Just because we were
never offered the opportunity, does not mean that our children
should be deprived!
Britain became the only acceptable administrators in the
world because they started a private educational system that gave
them a head start above their competition. They retained it as long
as other countries did not pursue it with their educational system.
They even started technical schools to keep their edge over their
competitors.
Colonialism ended when the cultures from the other
countries embraced education at an earlier age and began to ask
why we need British administrators when the people at home are
just as well educated and have a better knowledge of our customs.
They also lost their edge on trade when the Dutch were willing to
speak and trade in the culture of the land they visited versus
forcing other countries to trade in English.
Hence, the way we act that advances what we want to learn
as the child begins to use common skills, should not exclude skills
that the parent is unfamiliar. It is not in the past world that the
child will be living but the world we presently are.
As principal of a school who wanted to put computers in
the classroom, I felt that the later elementary and junior high would
make the best use of them. I was told by the kindergarten teacher
that their children wanted them in their classroom. I am learning
that my grandchildren can activate a screen as early as one year old
as they are fascinated as to how the screen changes as they touch it.
21 Preparing the child for the global village
But is there such a thing as overreacting as we see our child
becoming two and overdoing his behavior because at first, we gave
it so much praise? What makes us realize that we overdid it?
In contrast to the British, who increased their ability to
reflect by bold acts of exploration, we find the French under
Descartes15 in prison with nowhere to go except his mind. He
began to doubt if our thoughts should at times be questioned if they
are reasonable when other solutions may work better. This is
observed in every child of this age as they question their idea to
crawl when walking works much better.
We might not even assume as a parent or teacher that there
may be another way of doing a learning exercise until a new way
of reasoning by a student as illustrated in this exercise;
A teacher asked the students to add the numbers from one to five
hundred. Most of us would simply begin by adding 1+2+3….
and arrive at a solution in about an hour or two.
One child did it in two minutes by using a simpler way. Find the
average of the numbers and multiply by the number of items in
the list. Further the average is just the sum of the first plus the
last number in the list, since all of the numbers differs by the
same amount.
So, the average is (1+500)/2 and there are 500 number is the list,
so the sum is
(500/2)* 500 + 500 = 125,500. [I use * to mean multiply.}
The new reasoning movement that questioned preconceived
ideas of how things should be done took hold in France because
the elite within society that were so called educated assumed, like
the teacher who gave the counting exercise that the people were
fortunate to have such scholars among them and should not
question the way things should be learned.
The revolution in France questioned such logic in noting
how “ galité, Liberté and Fraternité”16 (equality, liberty and
15
16
J Skirry - 2008 http://www.iep.utm.edu/descarte/
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/
22
Preparing the child to live within a global village
fraternity) was allowing the person to improve his ability to reflect
and thereby his actions within society. Such ability to do so does
not rest solely with the elite of society or those who have learned
in a certain way and have no intention of changing their ways to
accommodate a new generation that may have a better solution.
As Antoinette without serious reflection that the masses
could improve the way they think, said as the people were starving
in the streets “Let them eat cake” as they the people have not the
intelligence, the “Noblesse oblige” culture to know the difference.
She did not ask for a new solution, she simply assumed that they
were incapable of finding one.
Equality does not imply sameness. It means that though we
are different in intelligence and capabilities, our worth to the
overall passive and active dynamic intelligence is no less equal to
another person. It is because we do not see the genius in the
moment by not including the environment or context in our
questioning, we can easily fall under the delusion that our quick
ability to do learning exercises put us ahead of the class.
When this happens among students and especially teachers
who think themselves on a higher level than anyone else, I often
quote the story of the carpenter and Einstein.
Einstein asked his carpenter to build him two doors; one for
himself and another for his dog. The carpenter said “It
would probably be wiser to build one and have a flap in it.”
At that instance, who was the genius? Without the liberty
to find better solutions as we all have weaknesses when confronted
by our environment, the child who is good at doing exercises
assumes that he is ready for life as long as he stays in school. It
reminds me of the athlete on our football team who did well in
practice but was useless when the game arrived.
It is not that we should not test student on their
preparedness but if they cannot admit that each one on the team
23 Preparing the child for the global village
has their strengths which bring forth the need for fraternity, they
simply will not become useful within an environment that will
always ask more of oneself that is in self to give.
This chapter finds self-wisdom in admitting that the body
(Ying) is weak but the soul (Yang) is strong. It is by reflecting on
the way we should act that we can act in a human way.
This does not imply that we should not be bold in acting as
we limit our reflections by standing still. We know that if you want
to get a complete picture that will aid you in better understanding
as to what is going on, you cannot do so without some effort on
your part to change the view. This usually occurs when you
become bored with the view, but for many, they complain that the
view is not changing rather than move and in so doing, change
their perspective.
Lastly, do not assume that the skill that you are learning is
the only way to do something as you reflect on your prior
reflection to ways it can be done better especially as new theory
proves to better in practice.
But if you are without an environment to challenge your
reflections, it is likely that you will not feel real in doing them like
the story of the emperor who has no clothes. You may think
yourself dressed to impress everyone but in fact be naked to actual
reality. Perhaps that is why France is so popular for fashion as it
makes us think if we are properly dressed for this environment. Or
is time not relevant to our consciousness as note in this quote;
“ a clock that is stopped
Is absolutely right twice a day
But in not being linked to reality
You never know when that is”
What sound reasonable may not be reasonable in practice.
24
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 3 “My child the explorer”
In this chapter, we will begin by looking at the micro
environment as the child ventures outside his immediate milieu
and yet stays close to home – Amazon culture. We will then take a
macro perspective in noting how activities outside one’s immediate
milieu affect the micro in which one is living – Egyptian culture.
Lastly, is the ecological approach as we start to learn the
interconnectedness between the micro and macro world– First
Nation culture. In so doing, we will study how the child who is
now two, starts to test the knowledge and skills that he has so far
learned.
In reflecting on the pieces that the child of two has now
gathered together, he can now be tested as to who is daddy, where
he sleeps, eats, plays and a host of other activities which now make
up his world. He can now be putting each one of these pieces in a
home puzzle to show his environmental awareness and we could
give an award to the child in the daycare that does it in the shortest
time or should we?
I thought I knew the purpose of a test was to get the highest
mark in doing the above test, until I studied in a millennium book
about a Xavante tribe in the Amazon jungle who perhaps
exemplified what a test should be in their log race17.
They have a log race every year in which two logs are
chosen for the race and one is usually lighter than the other.
As they depart, the lighter one moves ahead but people fall
back to support the heavier one. As the heavier gains over
the lighter one, some come to the rescue of the lighter one.
In the end and throughout the race, one does not know who
will win and many times it is a draw which is for them the
best possible outcome.
17
Mayburry-Lewis D. “Millenium”, Penguin Group, N.Y., 1992
25 Preparing the child for the global village
We see test as a way of discriminating one child from
another. As the results of our tests, few rejoice and most become
depressed as your classmate becomes your competitor in who can
remember the most of what has been taught and do the set of
learning exercises. This has its place in psychological testing like a
doctor testing your body to discover where you having difficulty,
but should a class be tested in this way?
The answer is “Yes” if we have sub ective assessment after
the test on our own inquiries, class discussions and group projects
as we need to recognize the abilities of each person which can
often be missed within a micro-test. A tribal culture can often
suppress or overlook the potential of its members by limiting the
parameters of the tests. I am sure those within the race who had
poor athletic ability did not do so well and yet may have other
talents which the tribe could use.
But the answer is “No” when sub ective assessment is not
being done in our schools as well as inquiries, class discussion and
group projects. The test overly limits the ability of each child as to
the micro management of the teacher to the discipline. No teacher
can so teach a subject as to touch upon the interest of each student.
But in having subjective assessments from a flow of new students
each year, they improve each year in not being so narrow in the
way they cover their subject.
This is the danger of the micro perspective when tribes
refuse to have the outside world interfere with the way they have
seen their world for centuries. Children will always see more than
we do as they spiral from the outside inwardly while we as
teachers, try to summarise what we believe is most important and
building on it from an inward to outward direction.
This is why the first tests at the start of the year should be
very specific as to ground the student to the environment or
discipline that is under study. But this does not mean that the
second one should be the same as the child needs to relate to the
new information with what he has already learned.
26
Preparing the child to live within a global village
For this macro perspective we turn to the Egyptians
changing the course of the Nile as we read John A. Wilson18 in his
book The Culture of Ancient Egypt titled his first Chapter “Out of
The Mud” of which his first paragraph reads;
“The fruitful green valley of the Nile was not there
in distant geological ages.”
If a test is to be made for a child of two turning to three it
must be macro as well as micro so as to explain the information
that also comes from the world beyond one’s immediate
circumstances. More so today in so many homes where both
parents leave the house for work and the child is put in daycare.
In asking what is happening outside the home, the child can
now explain activities within the home that have little relationship
to being home. But like the Egyptian mason and other forms of
work, many of the constructions and duties within the home are
merely extensions of a house. Hence in starting with one’s
immediate environment, it becomes easier to grasp the outside
world as an extension of the home but on a greater scale.
Hence the family still remained a focal point of daily life
among the Egyptians as we read;
The people of ancient Egypt highly valued family life. They
treasured children and regarded them as a great blessing.
As children grow, you need to expand your house. You
need buildings that can hold a larger population. Every culture
experienced this but in making the Nile fertile and thereby
increasing the source of food, Egypt learned to do it on a grand
scale.
Teachers will complain that their classes are too large, but I
have found how difficult it is to teach a class that is too small. How
do you teach numbers past five today when there are only four
18
Wilson, John A. “The Culture of Ancient gypt”, Univ. Chicago press, 9
27 Preparing the child for the global village
people in a family? How does a child learn about distance, size or
depth when everything is at their fingertips, cut in small sizes and
limited to a crib or confined spaces? Should not the next test
involve greater quantities which require more knowledge and skills
of a larger environment?
As simple as this question is and sensible to any child from
two going on three, I find tests through the grades not being linked
to one another. They are instead compartmentalised into various
boxes like a home with many rooms.
Small may be beautiful but sometimes unrealistic when
you at times are living in a world with far greater complexity that
is found in your little box. You need to count beyond your ten
fingers. You need to learn how to feed more than just your
immediate family as observed in a daycare. You need to
experience a world that is greater than your home and learn to live
within it as your home will not be where you will be spending your
entire existence.
This is not to say that people do not try to make their office
their home or their classroom their second home as did Egypt in its
pyramid structure to last an eternity. It only means that after a day
in daycare, a child want to come home to a place less complex than
where he has been.
But if we test the child only at the home level, the child
fails to comprehend the way information in one draw relates to the
other. I may not be allowed to enter your home without your
permission, but the place at work is common space. One would
expect a classroom to build on what the child is learning through
the year to show the links between them instead being totally
packed away in some filing cabinet. Egypt had the luxury of being
a country undisturbed by other countries as it increasingly enlarged
its home, but sooner or later it had to come to terms that it was not
the only house on the block as we note the causes of its decline in
its failure to grasp the interdependence within nature.
28
Preparing the child to live within a global village
In these words of a National Geography biography19;
Ruling an empire also required a larger army, and the Egyptians
increasingly were forced to rely upon foreigners, mercenaries,
and even captured enemy soldiers to fill out their ranks. The cost
of maintaining that military might also was a major expense for
Egypt to bear, even in peacetime. Kuhrt notes that foreign
soldiers recruited from the army were rewarded with farms
which were to be passed down to their descendants, as long as
they also agreed to serve in the ranks. That influx led to more
intensive cultivation of gypt’s fertile soil, which put strain upon
its productivity.
Macro perspective does not mean “bigger” but “broader” as
Egypt flourished with a broader and beneficial irrigation for all and
fell under pharaohs more concerned about the size of their wealth
and image than the people by whose efforts they inherited it. Our
children when they are three years old, may be impressed by our
size but when they grow older and reach our height, they are more
impressed by how broad is our vision about life.
In contrast, we have the First Nation people of North
America very much concerned about the ecology and in looking up
the origin of the word, one can understand why,
Ecology (from Greek: οίκος, oikos, "household"; and
λόγος, logos,"knowledge The term ecology or oekologie
was coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel
Household knowledge in the way micro and macro
perspective interact with each other was the home of these people
and is more and more reflected in our youth as we mention the
term environment. I did not in my youth encounter this term, but
became very much aware of it in going back to the beaches and
lakes that I used to swim in as a child. I will now have to explain to
my two year old grandchild, that will be turning three, that he
19
http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/26/why-did-ancient-egyptdecline/
29 Preparing the child for the global village
cannot go swimming in the lake because I and others never
connected the dots between an overly productive economy and
acid rain within our lakes.
Like the canary in a coal mine, the First Nation people are
raising alarm bells as to the way we are adapting to the North
American continent by the health of the animals that still roam the
lands. For two thousand years, the land was healthy as noted by the
reproduction of diverse animals and the sustainability of the first
nation people.
Yet within the last two hundred years, since the start of
immigration from Europe, neither the health nor the sustainability
of many species can be now predicted. Even our renewable
resources like clean water and forestry, at the rate they are being
used, puts in doubt the continued increase in population growth.
As Pogo on Earth Day 1971 states
“We have met the enemy and he is us”20
We are starting to learn what the native
people knew for thousands of years, that
you take from nature what you need and
not in amounts that will not allow it to
rejuvenate itself.
This is the nature of exams which
come at the end of the year which ask us
to examine what we remembered and
what new skills did we learn that we should be retaining as we
review all that we learned. Like Pogo in the cartoon looking upon
all the garbage, what do we need to retain from all the data that we
accumulated?
I once had a class of students who literally dreaded exam
day. I told them that they could cheat by bringing in a piece of
paper that was one inch by one inch in the exam room with any
20
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/Pogo__Earth_Day_1971_poster.jpg
30
Preparing the child to live within a global village
information they wanted on it. All students did exceptionally well
on the exam after they had discussed what would be important
enough to put on that small piece of paper. None ever used that
small piece of paper when they actually wrote the exam.
On being known to them, they were relearning an
experience that they began between the age of two to three in
saying “No” to all the information that they accumulate everyday
as not really being important to their life. Their “garbage collector”
needs to be emptied but does it retain only what we say is
worthwhile or also things that are of interest to them?
For if it is only “garbage in and garbage out”, why bother
to listen in the first place? This brings me to the Starfish story by
City Year21; (- adapted from the Star Thrower by Loren C. Eiseley)
A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands
of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she
came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back
into the ocean. ..
She had been doing this for some time when a man approached
her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this
beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make
a difference!”
The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few
moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled
it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the
man and replied,
“Well, I made a difference to that one!”
If we stop at the test and do not consider what else
we learnt that was of interest to us, we begin to wonder if the
computer is a better student than we in its ability to retrieve
information. Is there something missing in the way that we are
presently teaching if this is so?
21
— Adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren C. Eiseley
http://www.cityyear.org/CityYear/6_About_City_Year/Culture/Founding_Storie
s/Starfish_Story.aspx
31 Preparing the child for the global village
What is missing that will make it work?
All schools cover objective testing from pre-kindergarten to
doctorial level as they build on teacher presentations and learning
exercises within each year that the child is at school. In fact, there
is a growing tendency that too much of this is done at the expense
of not developing the interest of the child.
The result is a sense of not wanting to be tested like not
wanting broccoli because one had too much. I do not advocate this
as when a child is too immersed solely in what he wants to do, you
need some objective testing to note what also is needed to be fully
rounded in one’s education.
I will spend a little time in the next chapters discussing
teacher presentation, learning exercises and objective tests because
this is already available to parents and teachers to the point
cutbacks should be made to allow for more subjective evaluation.
But I will assume that this is still being done in our schools as I
develop the interest of the child in more “indepth” inquiries, class
discussions, group projects and ongoing self-assessment.
Schools no doubt want the children to do inquiries, have
classroom discussion, group projects and subjective selfassessments as to their own progress in developing their
capabilities. The problem to date is the prior preparation from age
three to age seven when this manner of thought reflection is
starting to be developed and the missing key component of how to
do subjective self-assessment at various grade levels due to a lack
of diverse cultural thinking within our schools.
As Ford said to his customers as we enter the twentieth
century
“You can have any car you want as long it is black”
In contrast, we are now entering the twenty first century
asking not only for a name but a self that is identifiable.
32
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 4 – “My metamorphic child”
I have noticed in my grandchildren that by the time they
reach age three, they want me to take them to the toy store so that
they can choose their present as they zero in to what they want to
interact. They will literally transform an inanimate object into
something meaningful to them.
This chapter is about developing metaphors as noted by
Robert Misery (Gordon Commission 2013)22 in assessing
capability not ability. In making inquiries about things that interest
us, we find ourselves looking for words or phrases that best
express what it is that we want to say as we seek to explain our
curiosity towards a phenomenon. It requires imagination as we
often do not see the full phenomenon and sometimes persuasion as
to what we do see can change. Finding the right word through
hindsight assesses that aspect of our capability as the child says
“That is what I wanted to say”.
Cultures that exemplify this are the Incas whose curiosity
in finding better ways to do things united a continent. A second
one was the German culture who in the use of their imagination
managed to piece together phenomena that at first seemed
disconnected while the Dutch disproved many assumed
connections that in fact could be changed for the better by altering
phenomenal relationships.
The Inca people were able to share their imagination with
their neighbors even though they spoke a different languages
through reflection on problems that they both wanted to solve. As
an example, would you want to travel up your mountain in Peru to
a distant lake to fetch your water each day or dig an irrigation
system that would bring your water to you?
Their motto according to Garcelia de la Vega23 in his book
22
23
http://www.gordoncommission.org/
Garcelia de la Vega, “The Incas”, Avon Library, N.Y. 96
33 Preparing the child for the global village
“The Incas” was “Do no Harm”. Do not force a person to do
something as you do it, as they will be more blinded by fear if they
do it than by the joy of discovering how better it is to do this way.
So why did the Inca culture collapse. Perhaps it is found in
the words of an often quoted quatrain about Spanish invasion24
And so, your honor, the Governor
Please understand the deal.
They send you forth as a buyer,
Instead you butcher and kill.
The Spanish did not share the same imagination of the
Incas for their gold. They imagined what they could be if they
possessed it rather than what can be made in the use of it.
The same is happening in our schools in the matters of
homework which our teachers and students are now questioning as
it requires little imagination to do if it just another learning
exercise but real imagination if it is giving in the form of an
inquiry. It is like showing a child how to use “lego” and stepping
back to see what they can do with it or giving him specific
direction as to how to build the next toy and subsequent ones.
By not fostering imagination, we are likely to repeat a task
over and over again without ever wondering if it can be done with
less effort and if something automated can unconsciously do it for
us. In a world that we live in today that has become so automated,
the old form of homework as repeated learning exercise seems out
of place where we expect the child to be more creative with the
tools now at his disposal.
Instead of dreading the next day after homework has been
assigned because so many prefer not to do it, as a teacher recently
said to me “ Kids today will not do any homework outside of
school”. We should be curious to learn what the student has done
with his imagination in looking for alternative solution.
24
Ibid,p.367
34
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Every child, in time, is not content with one toy as
imagination grows with more toys. For this study of multiple
phenomena, we now turn to the Germans in Kepler’s study of
astronomy. He did his homework on the subject and began to
explain why the planets appear as they do as he was able to
imagine where they were when they did not appear. But this
homework took more than a couple of days to complete. As you
increase the variables, you increase the combinations and
permutations as to what is and is not imaginable.
Just because in your imagination you can see two
phenomena together, it does not means that they should be
together. When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, he
did not imply that letters go together because one can type them in
that manner. He left it to our imagination to make words that made
sense to us. Somewhat like playing the game “scrabble” and
accepting words that do exist.
How this is possible is best explained by Kant in his
Critique of Reason25 in that we are all wearing glasses of space and
time which allows us to voyage through time and space to fixate
when we saw the word and in what context it was being used. This
does not however explain why one word can have different
meanings which can be the cause of so many misinterpretations of
what was said.
For this, we turn to Einstein and his relativity perspective.
to our space and our time variation . Which phenomena we choose
to further study as we start to make inquiries about it can be
interpreted differently depending from which position that one is
seeing it. Hence in making homework different for each person in
allowing the student to see it from different perspective, we get a
broader understanding as to what we are studying.
It is in what Einstein later stated about science, that our
25
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, trans. J.
M. D. Meiklejohn PennsylvaniaState University.
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/kant/critique-pure-reason6x9.pdf
35 Preparing the child for the global village
certainty rests in what we know today. With further knowledge, it
may change. But we are at least assured by the recurrence of the
phenomenon that the sun will shine again tomorrow.
A second assessment on the wisdom from imaginary
hindsight as the first was from the Inca in learning what one wishes
to inquire may be possible, is observing how something can
change over time and space and tells us more about what it is as it
interacts with other phenomena. For it is upon reflection on the
reaction that we can begin to imagine what actually happened.
This motional imaginary hindsight of many variables, the
Germans call the apprentice program. If an object behaves exactly
as you predict it, one can say that you comprehend its phenomenal
behavior. However if it does not, there is more to study and you
remain an apprentice.
However, just because some phenomena consistently
behave in the same manner under certain conditions, does not
mean that if the conditions change, they will continue to do so.
Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” 26or "Four and a Half Years of Struggle
against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice." as he would have liked to
call it, does not mean that being placed in the same position, one
can also lie, take advantage of stupidity and the cowardice of
others as did Hitler rise to fame.
When we say that this is the homework that I want you to
do and I want you to do it in this way, are we not mistaking
learning exercise for homework and in the absence of any further
inquiry, not wanting the student to think any differently as it would
upset our preferred way of seeing things? Some conditions are in
need of change but without a better solution or the right to make
inquiries, real change will not occur and we will likely be doing
homework in ways that no one including the teacher prefers to do.
What is often overlooked is how long phenomena have
been studied as each new generation is born to solve problems that
26
Adolf Hitler http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/
36
Preparing the child to live within a global village
in our times could not be resolved, but further study adds new
pieces to the puzzle that allows this generation new clues to the
possible ways it can be solved.
In some cases as we begin our study of the Dutch, no one
has the answer but in combining our work, an answer can be
found. “With the alignment of the stars” or “Having one’s ducks in
a row” what seemed impossible or absurd to try, is now possible
by adding more “what if” to the phenomenal study from other
people.
Germany’s defeat which seems now to be rectified in a
united Europe is what can be achieved by making allies versus
enemies of one’s neighbor. Some tasks may indeed be impossible
for one person to do as we see children of this age ask for help in
moving an object to get what they want. But this practice of
sharing an assignment is often forbidden in many of our schools as
we do not want the student to copy the same answer and not do his
homework. However in imposing these limitations are we not
restricting a child’s interest by limiting the problems that only he
can solve and at a level that anyone can do within the class?
This was not the case of the landlords of the Dutch people
who moved back the sea to claim the land while some lease
holders kept assuming that they could charge exorbitant price for
land in knowing from their hindsight that these people individually
had nowhere to go. They overlooked man’s possible alternative
solutions when combining “what if” hindsight together.
It reminds me of the story of two teachers who had the task
of securing funds for the school by means of supplying food for a
baseball game. One teacher took pains to find ways to secure the
most funds for the school by assigning students their task to aid in
achieving the goal. But no matter what he did, he never
outperformed the other class with the same assignment. Finally he
asked the other teacher what magic he was using to constantly
outperform him. He replied “I let the students figure it out; they
always come up with more ideas than I do.”
37 Preparing the child for the global village
This is not to imply that all alternative imaginary hindsight
are in further hindsight a wise idea. The Dutch slave trade though
marginally profitable, created inhuman situations, done outside its
own neighborhood. It did not hit home until much later where it
was eventually abandoned. Many more practices like child labor,
environmental degradation and sweat shops are being questioned
through global news and the internet as these practices are more
easily seen within our global village.
Another practice is the “what if” statement where you
speculate on possibilities but never actually commit but make
someone else do the same as you rely on greed to support your
aim. The tulip fiasco27 was a case in point where the price went so
high on speculation that when it came to pay, no one could afford
it and the market collapsed.
In some instances, excuses are given by using hindsight as
a reason why it could not be done. Like the song to children “There
is a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” where the husband explains why
the task is undoable.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza,
There's a hole.
Then fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Then fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.
With what should I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza,
With what should I fix it, dear Liza, with what?
With a straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With a straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, with a straw.
But the straw is too long, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The straw is too long, dear Liza, too long.
Then cut it dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Then cut it dear Henry, dear Henry, cut it!
With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, dear Liza,
With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, with what?
27
Andrew Beattie http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes2.asp
38
Preparing the child to live within a global village
With an ax, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With an ax, dear Henry, an ax.
But the ax is too dull, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The ax is too dull, dear Liza, too dull.
Then, sharpen it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Then sharpen it dear Henry, dear Henry, sharpen it!
With what should I sharpen it, dear Liza, dear Liza,
With what should I sharpen, dear Liza, with what?
With a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, a stone.
But the stone is too dry, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The stone is too dry, dear Liza, too dry.
Then wet it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Then wet it dear Henry, dear Henry, wet it.
With what should I wet it, dear Liza, dear Liza,
With what should I wet it, dear Liza, with what?
With water, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With water, dear Henry, dear Henry, with water.
But how shall I get it?, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how shall I get it?, dear Liza, with what?
In the bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
In the bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, in the bucket!
But there's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
There's a hole.
Without subjective student assessments on insight through
classroom discussion, the child often can make imaginary excuses
as to why he cannot do his homework while failing to learn what
can be done if more input is gained through other sources and with
people who have the capability to do part of the task.
As long as we keep homework solely as a one person job, it
will have to remain simple for everyone to do it and leave
unexplained as to why it is so important to have friends. If a child
of age four going on five can begin to grasp the need for friendship
why can’t we!
39 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 5 – “My friendly child?”
What “evidential reasoning” as noted by Joanna Gorin
(Gordon Commission 2013) is being assessed by children as they
increase their capability to converse by listening to the world
around them? Are pre-kindergarten, age four to five able to
converse with their parents and siblings and does that bring loyalty
between them? Do they reinforce the friendship by being
responsible in seeing the way that their parents honor their duties
in trying to take care of them? Do they develop a sense of shared
reality through a consensus of living together?
The cultures that have helped me better understand these
relationships are the following; Japan’s concept of loyalty as
talking to each other each day develops bonding relationships,
Spanish on honor in being responsible for others as parents, month
after month, support each other, and Koreans on realty checks, in
which one consults with others as to how they see their day and
form together a consensus in living within the same space.
Any loyalty28 begins in the sharing of a common activity
which parents do in talking each day to each other. You know
through your inquiries that your knowledge is only partial and with
the input from a friend, you can learn more. As an example, Mary
saw something yesterday that she found interesting to do (inquiry)
and now cannot wait to tell her friend to reflect upon the friend’s
reasoning on it.
The Japanese people shared many insights in living on an
island together and established strong ties between each other in
being able to read each other’s minds. This loyalty is built on
evidential reasoning through shared filtered experience of life to
affirm reflection that are sensible from those which on first
inspection can often make no sense.
28
Hugh Cortazzi
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2012/01/18/commentary/loyalty-alone-isnot-enough/
40
Preparing the child to live within a global village
The drawback as Japan has learned, is the often
overreliance of certain friends that think exactly as you do to
distort what you are seeing. Japan in limiting itself only to
Japanese, as they assumed that only one from their island would
understand them, they became an island unto themselves and
started to describe the rest of the world solely from their
perspective and found themselves in time becoming out of touch
with reality, as well as dull people in having heard nearly all that
can be said about their island.
The Meiji period (明治時代 Meiji-jidai?)29, also known as
the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September
1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the
Empire of Japan during which Japanese society moved from being
an isolated feudalism to its modern form.The Meiji reform was in
direct realisation that the existing local dynamics was becoming
stale due to a lack of foreign input.
In like manner, if we limit our child’s interaction only to
the culture that we know, we also restrict the work that he will be
able to do in his future while living within a global village. Quebec
found it wise for every child to learn French while living in its
province but the wise parent made sure that their child also learned
other languages as Quebec cannot exist as an island unto itself.
In Montreal where I grew up, I was fortunate to be in a
neighborhood of a wide diversity cultures and now as I look back,
I begin to question those privileged children who went to separate
schools to learn only one cultural way to view their world. I now
see how underprivileged they were in trying to make friends in a
workplace that is becoming increasingly global minded. Japan in
stepping on to a world stage to take on world concerns has now
insightfully realized the increased friendship that has resulted.
The sharing of tasks does broaden our friendship beyond
the ones that we personally like as noted on a Spanish tombstone
29
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/japan/f/What-Was-the-Meiji-Restoration.htm
41 Preparing the child for the global village
as to friends he made by accepting his responsibilities?
When he was born, he cried
And all around him laughed
But he so lived his life that when he died
He laughed and all around him cried.
Duty is first observed in the home by the way the child is
supported by the parents in time spent with the child and away
from the child to support his upbringing. This does not mean for
the child to become El-Cid as he imagines himself defender of the
world. I know how much I enjoyed superman comics. Children
like to be the hero in the story. By the inspired sacrifices made for
him in providing shelter and going to work to put food on the table,
the child likes to be noble in doing his part.
A more common example is the task assigned to children in
pairs at the pre-kindergarten age as they attend daycare. The child
unless a twin at this age reminds the parent that they are no longer
a baby and can do things but know alone they may not be capable
of completing a task. They can begin to take on responsibilities in
a daycare because their friend, who is also assigned the task, will
be with them when they do it.
What they begin to learn within their daycare is with whom
they can do it and noting by the evidence of other people of their
age that are presently doing it, that they also should be able to
complete it when it is their turn. There is honor in completion and
new friendships with those who help you do it.
We create Don Quixote among us in contrast to El-Cid
when we try to do things which we are, in reality, incapable of
doing. My granddaughter wanted to go on the higher slides
because she had done so well on the lower ones. I had to intervene
by telling her to wait a year because she did not as yet see the
dangers involved in playing at that higher level. But I know in her
mind, she did imagine how much she could have impressed me if
she could even be more of a friend by trying. This is why a
supervisor is so important at this age.
42
Preparing the child to live within a global village
However, sometimes the supervision can to be too harsh
like a Spanish inquisition30, our work can be too demanding and it
can often reflect in demanding too much of our children which we
forget in becoming wrapped up in our own responsibilities. Instead
of making friends, we lose them as a consequence of demanding
too much of them and especially those most close to us, our
children.
A second error is in asking someone to do a task because
we share common beliefs even though the task requires different
capabilities as parents sometimes expect their children to follow in
their footsteps. As an example, the admiral of the Spanish Amada
though a very religious man was practically incompetent for the
position and in so doing, was unable to bring much insight when
confronted by Drake’s very able seamanship.
Cultures repeat this mistake time and again by
presupposing that anyone not of their culture should not be placed
in any position of authority at work. Those who only seek to learn
within the framework of their ways of doing things fear a loss of
control over one who can do things that they cannot do as well as
them. Children who say “He can’t play with us because he is not
like us, should be reprimanded” but often I see parents stating the
same thing and it is the child in puzzlement asking “why!”
By assigning duty to those most capable as did Ferdinand
and Isabella in discovering the America, even seeking those
outside the Spanish culture, demonstrated what could be achieved
when the task and not the favoritism determine who should be
assigned.
By crossing the cultural barrier by making friends outside
its own country, it awoke European countries that were navel
gazing on themselves. So does daycare in the child making friends
that are not his siblings or the child next door.
30
http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/westeurope/spaninqui.html
43 Preparing the child for the global village
But with these newfound friends from another continent as
Spain was to learn, a new reality emerges as we cannot totally see
our world from one’s perspective. The child undergoes the same
experience in observing how you make friends in being placed in
the same boat which you cannot call home.
This is perhaps why a third form of insightful relationship
needs to be considered that of consensus about present reality. You
may within your close relationships and even your workmates
form insights as to what is reality but in excluding those not part of
this group, you leave yourself open to unexpected change.
Korean history’s progress is about seeking a kibun 31(a
calm soul mood) from consensus. Like the child who prefers to
play with boys or girls in having the same interests, an initial calm
is established in recognizing common things to talk about which
one is familiar like “trucks” and “dolls”. Later comes the building
of an economy through capitalism with countries that favor
individual effort versus securing benefits for all through socialism
with countries concerned about public welfare. This is quite
evident as we look at Korean History32;
Among the many invaders have been ancient Chinese kingdoms,
Qidans (Khitans), Mongols, Japanese, and Manchus. In the 20th
century, Korea was colonized by Japan and in the Post-WWII
era was caught in the middle of conflicts between the United
States, the Soviet Union, and China over the expansion of
Communism in the Cold War Era – an era which still lingers in
the as yet unresolved division between North and South Korea.
In some cases invaders have left their mark, and even ushered in
periods of positive cultural exchange, in other cases, only
devastation was left in their wake. Despite these challenging
circumstances, Koreans have managed to maintain a unique
cultural identity that marks them as hardy survivors. Today,
South Korea has among the most “wired” societies in terms of
Internet access and has a dynamic economy that grew by leaps
31
http://euyeomuyeo.tumblr.com/post/23533885082/gi-boon-or-kibun-is-animportant-factor
32
http://people.cohums.ohiostate.edu/bender4/eall131/EAHReadings/module02/m02korean.html
44
Preparing the child to live within a global village
and bounds throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. South Korea
has also been a leader in economic recovery after the Asian
economic crisis of 1997. North Korea is poised to undergo
changes within the next decades that will in part determine the
stability of East Asia and the northern Pacific Rim. In short, the
Korean peninsula, always integral to the dynamics of regional
power and politics, will continue to play an important role on the
world stage.
In focusing on what we agree makes up reality, we can
establish peace among us even though we may prefer certain
aspects of reality over another. It is in not accepting thought as
being dynamic that we see Korea is still a divided country, one
wishing to be in control of the other.
There are times in classroom discussion when the facilitator
needs to prevail as the child needs to learn to make friends with the
opposite sex or views different than one’s own and having
daycares and schools which allow this to happen, provides learning
experiences which are more in line with reality.
A view often not shared by conquerors as you look at
Korean history from the invader’s point of view, none in time was
able to sustain their view of the present on the people of Korea.
This is not to say that the present can be more than it is. For in
foresight, not insight we now turn our attention to those cultures
who believed with cooperation, we can certainly improve our
present circumstances as we ask “In foresight, what could be
accomplished if we took a team approach?” Or as Hawkeye stated
in a MASH episode where both sides were going nowhere in the
settlement of the north/south war while people continue to die and
nothing was being resolved, we can lose sight of our future by
being overly locked in to our present preferred perspectives.
The drawback in a classroom discussion is always
expecting the other person to speak first while not committing
oneself so as to benefit from what is being said while not putting
any effort on one’s part. This changes in the next chapter as we go
beyond presentation, learning exercises, tests, inquiries and class
45 Preparing the child for the global village
discussions to also include group project as noted in The Little Red
Hen story33 summarised below;
In the tale, The Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat, and
asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it.
But no animal will volunteer to help her.
At each further stage (harvest, threshing, milling the wheat
into flour, and baking the flour into bread), the hen again
asks for help from the other animals, but again she gets no
assistance.
Finally, the hen has completed her task, and asks who will
help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous nonparticipants eagerly volunteer. However, she declines their
help, stating that no one aided her in the preparation work,
and eats it with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else.
The next time the Little Red Hen found some grains of
wheat, the lamb planted it in the rich, brown soil, the cat
watered it carefully every day, and the pig harvested the
wheat when it had grown tall and strong. When the dough
was baked, together the animals made hot chocolate and ate
the fresh, warm bread. It was delicious!
The animals lived happily ever after, cooperating and
helping every day.
But for this change to happen from one person doing all the
work to the sharing of the workload, we need also to learn to assess
ourselves in alternative ways as the present may only ask some of
us to work today but the future will include all of us as the child
begins to asks “What are we doing tomorrow?” as today limits my
reflections as to what I can do now. Do I also plan today for what I
will be doing tomorrow?
33
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Red_Hen
46
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 6 – “My child, the planner?”
We at present use alternative assessment on 1 percent of
students with severe cognitive deficits. We label them as disabled
and yet they would probably excel in group work because they so
easily accept that within a group, we are all handicapped by the
task and people in whom we have to work. It is only as we are able
to see them for their strengths and not their weaknesses in times of
crises where every man counts irregardless of inabilities that we
begin to question why we should ever exclude them from the
group. Lastly is the expectation of the work to be done being
reasonable for all involved in the project.
This chapter looks at three cultures that, with foresight,
advanced themselves beyond the handicaps of what any man could
do. The Plato’s Greek Republic34 reflected on the division of labor
within a democracy. The Slavic people understood how
cooperation, at times, must supersede democracy as the benefit for
all must take precedence over individual preference. The Poles
questioned both in reflecting on labor laws that are fair for
everyone.
A child of this age is starting to plan “what if”, rather than
actually doing something, is nevertheless a worthwhile group
exercise in thinking before acting. This is noted in the actual
impact of Greek Law on future societies35;
The most widely-known Greek judicial system is that of 4th
century classical Athens, traditionally associated with the birth
of democracy. It was primarily the abstract philosophical
ideas surrounding law and justice that had the greatest impact
on later societies, not the practical aspects of the legal system
itself.
By kindergarten as the child goes from five to six, the child
34
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Republic_(Plato)
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16109944/ancient-law-bodleian-law-librarythe-laws-of-ancient-mediterranean
35
47 Preparing the child for the global village
through alternative assessment of “What if” in groups, is beginning
to form a Republic in his mind, in observing a division of labor. By
the way he assigns different objects representing different people
to a task, in the use fictional characters like “Luke Skywalker”.
This is possible with another partner within his class with
the assistance of a teacher because the child has already done
inquiries as noted in chapter four in being able to have hindsight
over improved reflections and insightful discussions in chapter five
on shared thoughts. Having a partner to do group work on a project
with democratic principles at play in its completion, is the start of
the child developing this foresight.
“Bullying” or what the Greeks called “Piracy” can only
exist in places where democracy is denied and one person takes
full command of another in telling them what to do. Teachers take
full command of a class in presentation, learning exercises and test
because of their authority and experience as a teacher. A student
believes that they can do the same by a show of force. In a
partnership project assignment both parties must agree at what they
will be doing for the project to have any success in its completion
and one trying to bully the other, prevents its completion by the
unwillingness of the other to imagine such a scenario.
What is noticed from its beginnings is the sharing of duties
based on each other’s capability and the lack of progress if either
partner starts to bully the other in doing it. Worse is the criticism
on incompetency which only makes the other do less work.
Hence in being democratic, in agreeing to a plan, the
project moves forward up to a point where at times cooperation is
needed to do the tasks that need to be done which no one by
themselves, can or is willing to do. Like for an example, clean up.
Or in Greeks present case, the taxing of those who can afford it to
clean up the deficit, though everyone should contribute as much as
they can afford.
No matter how you divide up a task, there will be tasks that
can only get done by everyone taking their share of duties that no
48
Preparing the child to live within a global village
one wants to do but all know are necessary for the task to be
completed. This is noted in the home in the sharing of household
chores as the child five turning six reflects on doing his part, and at
school, when each must do or bring something so as to reap the
rewards. This is noted by the story of “The Little Red Hen”, as
reflection alone on the sharing of the final product will not by itself
get the job done.
At some point within kindergarten, the child becomes
serious about his play as it becomes work. This becomes obvious
as the next series of inquiries and class discussion that should lead
into large group projects where more reflective foresight is needed
to adjust to more participants and the larger task.
Nowhere is this more so as we begin to study the Slavic
people36;
Past historians gave the early Slavs a dove like reputation, when
compared to the warlike reputation of their neighbors. This
mostly undeserved reputation may be due to the Slavs practice in
the Balkans of setting up agricultural settlements around fortified
cities while often leaving the cities unmolested. The Slavs did
contributed more to agriculture innovation then to the arts of
war. Their use of crop rotation and the mould-board plow
allowed for greater production in tuff soil. The mould-board
plow according to Medieval Life & the Hundred Years War, by
James F Dunnigan and Albert A Nofi, allowed the early Slavs to
become efficient farmers. “This elaborate metal and wood device
was developed by Slavic tribes and spread west from the 6th
century on. Its design allowed six or more oxen to pull a plow
and break up virgin ground, or the heavy, clay laden soils typical
of northern Europe. As an example of the impact of this new
plow, consider the huge population growth that occurred after its
introduction.” History has proven over and over again, an
increase in food production allows for an increase in population
and a larger population can be converted to military force. One
ancient writer noted that if the vast number of Slav tribes ever
36
“The Arrival of the Ancient Slavs” http://www.ancientmilitary.com/ancientslavs.htm
49 Preparing the child for the global village
united no nation could resist them. However, while the early
Slavs aren’t known for military innovation they were generally
equivalent to their tribal neighbors in this regard. Whatever edge
they may have lacked in military innovation and organization
they made up for with the disruptive raids and the sheer brute
force of overwhelming numbers that their advanced agricultural
allowed them to support. In fact their agricultural nature,
combined with their self-sufficient lifestyle, meant that when
they took over areas they were there to stay. In fact their
decentralized nature made them extremely difficult to defeat, as
they had no great king to bribe or defeat in battle.
You do not have leaders when you do larger group project
involving four to six people as each person needs to make their
own alternative assessment to determine how they can contribute.
This at times means the doing of minor tasks which just need to be
done and more difficult tasks which few within the group can
complete. It is thus easier to let the children reflect as to who
should do what, rather then interfere and not let them learn how to
cooperate with each other.
Group learning as noted in the Prosvita (enlighten)
relationship society in Ukraine – a History37
“It encouraged the development of a close harmonious
relationship between the intelligentsia and the peasantry”
Everyone is a genius but not at the same time or moment as
in foresight of a plan, you need input from diverse people to make
it work. In working together on a specific project like the creation
of a farm, you need someone; who knows the land, with
knowledge of machinery to turn it over, able to protect it against
outside attack, harvest it and turn it into food. With a group of
people this is viable but by oneself, likely impossible.
But this is not to say that at times the grouping may be at
fault when it becomes too large. The Pan Slavic movement never
took hold due in part to the abuse that can occur when in the
37
Sultebly, Oresp “Ukraine – a history”, Toronto Univ. Press, 1994, p.325
50
Preparing the child to live within a global village
service of a large organization. One’s task can become so limited
and repetitive as to question one’s sanity in doing it. The beauty of
smaller groups like smaller companies is the opportunity to be
more multitasked. The child in the larger group of four to six is
doing less tasks and less on things he does not want to do than
when in partnership in the last project but still diverse to make it
interesting to do.
However large organizations still exists as noted by the
formation of the Soviet Union and we need ways to keep them in
check so as not to create positions that overtask and underpay the
worker 38.
“Twenty-five years ago next Wednesday -- 31 August 1980 -unemployed Polish electrician Lech Walesa struck a major blow
to Soviet communism when, after leading a strike at the Lenin
Shipyard in Gdansk, he announced the official birth of the
Solidarity independent trade union. Solidarity went on to play a
central role in the demise of communism across the Soviet bloc,
changing forever the course of history in Europe.”
The ultimate of every teacher is by the end of the year is to
have the entire class work together in solidarity on a project. I
often see it just before Christmas in plays put on for parents when
the children are not ready and never at the end of the year when
they should be and the project decided by them.
Like the workers at the shipyard who in foresight knew that
if they did not support their fellow workers, they in the end would
also suffer, they pledge their allegiance to a fair wage and benefit
package. Unhappy workers make for a poor producing plant.
You can have excellent prepared presentations, learning
exercises specifically directed at the level of learning of each child
with test that is clearly stated and cover what one just studied with
a concerned teacher as to learning the identity each child, and still
38
Jeffrey Donovan August 24, 2005
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1060898.html
51 Preparing the child for the global village
have a dysfunctional classroom because there is no group learning
happening in the doing of projects. This becomes quite clear as the
year progresses in the lacking of planning in many students which
becomes worse at higher grades in the disorganization of the child
to coordinate with others if neglected.
Solidarity did not happen all at once. It began like it does in
a classroom with partnerships being made among classmates where
a task needs to be done and together they try to complete it.
Greater tasks are assigned and more in working together finds
ways to get it done by combining their foresight. Lastly we have
the classroom assignment which if the prior two are done properly,
becomes the ultimate learning lesson for the class.
When it fails and a strike becomes the end result as noted
by the shipyard, it may be because management or the teacher
assumes a one on one position with the student with assignments
planned by the teacher as to what the child must be doing.
Nowhere is the thought that some task can be better done with two
students rather than one and everywhere the students sense a
degree of unfairness as to how each child is being treated in
demanding too much, too little or the favoring of one child over
another.
This can escalate when children are being segregated
according to cognitive ability as test reveal ability and not
capability. When applying the rule “divide and conquer” in
promoting and rewarding those who do well in tests, one unites
those who do poorly, who are then likely to resist further tests that
make them look inferior to the rest of the class.
With a divided class into have and have-nots as measured
by you, they become united but not with you but instead against
you. One cannot see the trees because you have only a forest
perspective; a perspective that works at the beginning of the year
but not at the end. For the “if” poem by Kipling is for the
students.39
39
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
52
Preparing the child to live within a global village
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
'Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
At the start of formal education grade 1 or end of the informal
kindergarten, the “Me” starts to take center stage.
53 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 7 – “The “Me” child”
In your first day of grade one, you may find a teacher
asking you to tell something about yourself. It is often the first
question in an interview for a position and you have your formal
educational years to prepare for that question. But as of grade one,
it is probably more a question in your mind as the wise child
answers “I am here to find out” as he begins to learn how to do
subjective psycho-educational assessment on himself.
Three cultures that have dwelled on what we retain from
what we have been taught and experiences about ourselves are; the
Jewish culture, in keeping a diary to what one has done, we
discover traces of our own identity, the Taoist notes our personal
reaction in contrast to someone else in similar circumstances, and
the Sufi culture in not being so quick to judge oneself as the pieces
of our lives are not all revealed within our first experiences. This is
grade one, not the day before you die.
In the Jewish culture, we begin with the story of Adam and
Eve40 with an evaluation of self as to who we are – human in the
capability to create from whom we are and not being able to create
out of Nothing which is the Creator. Nor can we try to be
somebody that is not in ourselves to be as noted by the Cain and
Abel story41, as Cain was jealous of Abel.
To ask a grade one child what they want to become without
inquiries, class discussions and projects is like dividing by zero for
they have nothing in their past testament to trace or recognize their
identity. In having nothing to compare, they may believe that they
can do anything and so make their first mistake and by trying to
compare themselves to others, commit their second error.
The first error is partly our fault because we do not expect
subjective assessment to take place in our schools. We instead do
40
41
http://www.bible-history.com/old-testament/adam-and-eve.html
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+4&version=NIV
54
Preparing the child to live within a global village
objective evaluations and often cause the second error to happen
by the child saying “I am ten points higher than you in my test” so
I must be better than you.
Qualitative assessment is the enjoyment of what we did do
in that it had meaning to us which you cannot compare using any
quantitative measurement. You can say that I found this in my
discovery and interesting points in my discussion helped the group.
You can also learn from others in what they experienced as to
better grasp your own. But you cannot let the teacher do it for you
as she/he would have to be you.
The Exodus from Egypt as noted in the Old Testament42 is
a prime example of not wanting to be enslaved by what another
person who wants you to be different than who you are. In like
manner, the parent knows that their children will have some of
their characteristics but will grow up different from them. Without
this self-assessment, many a child has walked in their parents
footsteps to only later discover that they were not their own.
It is not wrong to try many different roles as the child does
group projects, but it is important to note those that suit you from
those which more reveal your weaknesses than your strengths.
Part of self-assessment is recognizing what you cannot do at
present and the work that you need to do if you want to get any
better in doing it.
In some instances, the group may want you to do
something that is not in you to do, as in the story of Joseph and his
jealous brothers43 when they sold their younger brother into
slavery. If grouping means that you must hide your talents to be
accepted, how can you be yourself within this group?
Just because someone or many may react in a certain way
to a situation does not imply that you must do the same.
42
43
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+37&version=GW
55 Preparing the child for the global village
The Taoist44 tell us that you need to learn which conditions
are suitable for self by the reaction that you have which can be
often different than others as noted by your inquiries.
“Taoism has provided an alternative to the Confucian tradition in
China. The two traditions have coexisted in the country, region
and generally within the same individual.”
We as teachers go directly against this tendency by
assigning the same homework to each student and expecting the
same reflecting reaction in doing it. Hence there are general
conditions that affect all of us as explained in the “I Ching” and the
area assigned to make inquiries, but there are personal signs which
make up one’s own Tao, as the student selects what is of interest to
him within this study. An example is one’s fitness, health or diet
for oneself. Knowing by reflection what one’s body can eat,
exercise or be restricted in food intake is what makes one’s study
on diet a personal virtuous study.
“Development of virtue is one's chief task. The Three Jewels to
be sought are compassion, moderation and humility”45
Compassion comes in the realization that we have not been
built in the same way and should not impose on what we prefer to
study. You cannot assess yourself in someone’s shadow.
Moderation comes from knowing your pace. If you read too
fast, you comprehend very little as when doing your assignment
too quickly. If you take forever to do your assignment, you may
forget the purpose or interest that you may have had in doing it.
Humility is always the best path to follow in the
undertaking of any task as you will not be treated as a fool if you
decline a task beyond your ability to comprehend it but certainly
will be embarrassed if you chose it anyway as it shows in your
incapability of really knowing yourself.
44
45
http://www.thedivineheart.com/a_look_at_the_history_of_taoism_.htm
http://history.cultural-china.com/en/166History5094.html
56
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Hence by your own questions and not that of the teacher
you follow the maxim;
“One should plan in advance and consider carefully each
action before making it.”46
Unlike a learning exercise given by a teacher, it is for the
student to assess what further practice is needed to become
proficient in it. If you do not believe that children can do this, ask
yourself how a baby ever learned to walk.
However at this stage, it is the capability to reflect on one’s
own based on the reflections of others. People who try solely to
follow the advice of others can never be one with the Tao47 as they
never come to terms with themselves.
In 2003, I happened to come across a few verses of the Tao
Te Ching. The concepts were difficult to grasp at first.
Eventually, with the guidance of some Chinese elders, I
came to a solid foundation of understanding, then
approached it slowly and carefully. I had put so much hope
in finding a system of beliefs in the past, that I was scared
of hurriedly aligning myself with the first one that bared a
passing resemblance to my own.
But like this person at twenty six who suddenly discovers
how life seems easier now that one is allowed at times to be
oneself, one cannot so plan the world in knowing what that self
will be. You may know from past reactions which path are more
suited to you. But there is still more to learn and if, like so many
children, you avoid trying again due to past failures, you may not
truly come to know what your present-day capabilities are.
It is here in the third assesment by the child as they begin to
complete grade one, I note how the Sufi culture responses too such
unfounded fear.
46
47
http://godquest.org/taoism.htm
http://equivocality.com/2007/07/13/becoming-one-with-the-tao/
57 Preparing the child for the global village
“Deep in the sea there are riches beyond your imagination.
But if you seek safety, that is at the shore. – Saadi of
Shiraz48
We assume that he is referring to physical existence and
that we do not want our children wandering too far from home,
when in fact he is referring to the reflecting mind of the child
which left restricted by unfounded fears, does not let the self grow
and enjoy one’s own progress. One should not let prior
assessments impede the richness that can be one’s life in fully
developing oneself.
The less you reflect on life, the more you come away with
fewer pieces to better understand it and yourself within it. Like the
story of four blind men in a dessert which has often been used to
understand the South Asian cultures.
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day
the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village
today."
T
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even
though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it
48
Saadi of Shiraz http://www.thesufi.com/Sufi_quotes_and_poetry.htm
58
Preparing the child to live within a global village
anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone
touched the elephant.
"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his
leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the
tail.
Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who
touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the
ear of the elephant.
It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly
of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk
of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them
insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting
agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped
and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot
agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what
he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained
to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is
telling it differently because each one of you touched the
different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all
those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy
that they were all right.
The beast of course is ourselves and the blind men are our
assessments which in limiting them, we do not get a full picture as
to who we are. This is why this assessment must be done each year
that we are in school, as we piece together who we are before we
enter the global village. As we read about South Asian history49,
we ponder the many cultures in which we will be in contact.
49
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/History_of_Southeas
t_Asia.html
59 Preparing the child for the global village
The history of Southeast Asia has been characterized as
interaction between regional players and foreign powers. Though
11 countries currently make up the region, the history of each
country is intertwined with all the others. For instance, the Malay
empires of Srivijaya and Malacca covered modern day
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore while the Burmese, Thai,
and Khmer peoples governed much of Indochina. At the same
time, opportunities and threats from the east and the west shaped
the direction of Southeast Asia. The history of the countries
within the region only started to develop independently of each
other after European colonialization was at full steam between
the 17th and the 20th century.
Parents and schools may wish to restrict these contacts but
we would be wise to take the advice of Kahlil Gibran on Children50
in allowing them to dream and not try to colonialize them.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
50
Kahlil Gibran “Children” http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html
60
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 8 – “My dreaming child”
This chapter evaluates self-dreams from the point of view
of attitude – Australian culture, values – Canadian culture and
future opportunities – American culture. The child looks forward
to what can happen because he is only beginning to sense his
potential in a new world with seemingly endless possibilities.
The Australian story constantly reminds me of what can be
accomplished if you take a positive attitude towards yourself. A
grade two student or child of seven turning eight as a whole future
before him. Should we fill his cups solely with where he has failed
or should we leave room in his reflections about man’s success less
he not be caught in our past by what we could not do but by
reflection which has giving us a better future?
Australia was founded by so called criminals that were
landed in Botany Bay51 as a way emptying England of its non-law
abiding citizens. But they were welcome in Australia due to a lack
of workers to develop the country.
This is provided that they developed a positive attitude and
did not spend their time dwelling on the past as the country was
characterised as the land of the “smile and broken bottle”52.
Whether they did wrong or wrong was done to them; a smile went
a long way in starting something new on the right step. To those
who could not forget the past either out of anger as to what had
been done to them or remorse to what they had become, the bottle
never quite healed the pain and many were smashed in their
inability to lose their negative attitude.
Attitudes can change and the sooner we catch them at the
lower grades, the easier can be the process as they must start from
within and not with those who have witnessed you under
circumstances that did not reveal your best attributes. Australians
51
52
http://www.nla.gov.au/australiana/australian-history-selected-websites
Clark, Manning “A short History of Australia”, Mentor book Toronto 963
61 Preparing the child for the global village
developed their country away from their persecutors as we by our
schooling provide fertile ground from which to plant anew.
They did so by not only having a positive attitude towards
themselves but also to their “mate”. A future where one was
negative towards all one’s fellow man was no future to
contemplate. They noted how people thought of them in their past,
hindered rather than helped the progress of their land. How could
one be one’s “mate” if they saw only the faults and constantly
dwelled on the imperfections!
We do the same in our schools by sometimes overly
dwelling on the mistakes of the test and on ways to improve one’s
imperfection as we assign more learning exercises to correct it.
Teacher supervisors who are quick to point out the faults in
presentation in seeking to orient the child, the assigned level for
learning exercises and clarification in testing, do the same when
they neglect to look at what the child is doing right or where his
interests lie from what the child learned, or the impact of the
teaching on pursuing the subject further on their own.
When you limit your activities to presentations, learning
exercises and tests, you lower the esteem of the child. Australia, a
nation was not truly recognized by the world until World War II53
“During the Second World War, Australian forces made a
significant contribution to the Allied victory in Europe, Asia and
the Pacific. The generation that fought in the war and survived
came out of it with a sense of pride in Australia’s capabilities.”
But in having a positive attitude, we need to distinguish
“pipe” dream from dreams that have intrinsic value in them54.
“The story of the goldfields pipeline and the personal, political
rivalry, corruption and trial by media that almost tore apart
Australia at the moment of its birth.”
53
http://wwwh.australia.com/about/culture-history/history.aspx
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/digitallearning/constructingaustralia/pipedreams/synop
sis.htm
54
62
Preparing the child to live within a global village
The Canadian multicultural society was put together by
many cultures who did not want to see their values eroded by the
pursuit of desires that proved meaningless over time. They saw
their future as a multivalued one which in its diversity would be
more sustainable.
They did not see Britain as country that prevented the
fulfilment of their happiness but one that came to their aid to
support their common values. They formed a constitution based on
valuing each other’s cultures55.
The dream of a national railway56 was a prime example of
linking all provinces together for the benefit of each one’s future.
Province after province joined confederation because it was
assured that their values would be respected within the
confederation and Canada would prosper by having this diversity.
Even within its parliament, it had had two houses57; one to
listen to immediate demands of its people and the other nonelected senate to weigh if such immediate demands served the best
values of the future of its people. If the proposal bill contravenes
what is a Canadian value, the bill required further consideration
and it was returned to the commons to be redrafted.
Even within the commons, a party was formed called “The
Bloc” whose sole duty was to protect the rights of Quebecers
within the federation. If their interest were being ignored, they
made it clear that separation would occur if the tenets, by which
the nation has been founded, were being disrespected.
Student self-evaluations by the second year and into the
second term of school will be each different as they place values
on what they perceive is of interest to them. We need to honor
those values as they speaks to each student’s personality.
55
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Canada
http://www.mccordmuseum.qc.ca/scripts/explore.php?elementid=4__true&tabl
eid=11&contentlong
57
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Canada
56
63 Preparing the child for the global village
But as global education teachers, should we be limiting
them as they may not fall within the prime culture of the school?
Teachers need to respect broader values as the students define their
own personality.
When bill 101 in Quebec58 was passed to secure that
French values would always prevail such that all children not born
English within the province, must attend French school, it was the
French parent who insisted that their children spend more time
learning nglish as they saw their children’s future handicapped by
the learning of only one culture.
Should we as teachers be labelling children as coming from
one culture and grouping the same cultures together as if parents
decide on the culture of the school and not the quality of teaching
that takes place inside it? How can the teacher promote
multiculturalism in their classroom while the school board is
promoting the segregation of schools according to cultural
preference of the parents!
If parents like to diversify their meals, as we get huge
turnouts at our multicultural events where each culture is
represented as well their favorite foods, why can we not accept that
within the children’s assessment of themselves. We may find
diverse values which come from other cultures. Could it be by the
absence of self-evaluation on inquiries, class discussions and group
projects, we simply haven’t noticed?
In being raised in one culture as a teacher, we sometimes
get a response of confusion. I recall my first day of schooling in
grade one in a French classroom coming from an English
background with a French teacher wondering what to do with me.
We need also to educate our teachers and what better way is there
than have the students reveal their own values in their selfassessment.
Inherent in the American dream is the freedom to make
58
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language
64
Preparing the child to live within a global village
something for oneself, as no one culture can achieve that aim by
itself. Even if one chose to be somebody within that culture, you
would still need to deal with other cultures. Perhaps the Americans
understood what Kahlil Gibran states on children’s dream, in
allowing every child the right to pursue their own happiness as
stated in their declaration of independence59.
“We hold these truths to be self‐evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
They came from England where space was at a premium.
They came from Ireland after a disastrous potato plight. They came
from countries where freedom was denied into a land where it was
guaranteed in their constitution.
They have shown us what can be accomplished when we
do not let our past dominate our future when circumstance change
that favor rather than prevent our self-development. The dramatic
change in fortunes from people from the old country to the new,
challenges to the very core the many prejudices of those who
believed within the old country that these people would never
make anything of themselves under present circumstances and
definitely without the culture in which they were born.
A child completing grade two after beginning to experience
the values of others in a multicultural classroom is starting in his
self-assessment to broaden his own as he looks to his future and
does not want to see that only his values will prevail. It would be
saying to the child “ xpect mashed potatoes and beef the rest of
your life because this is the diet of an Irish person”. It would
promote a saying which is simply not true “There are only two
types of people in the world; Irish and those who want to be Irish”.
59
http://billofrightsinstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/12/DelarationofIndependence.pdf
65 Preparing the child for the global village
The American success lies not in the “melting pot” in
ignoring all cultures or trying to mold them into a new one but in
not assuming that in one culture one could find all possible truths
about one’s future. By providing the freedom within their
constitution for each person to make their own destiny, they open
the opportunity of what could be gained in learning from each
culture that would prevent future wars between us.
The United Nations aims60 are a direct result of that kind of
reflection as it presently struggles to come to agreements while its
nation still lack a proper global education within its schools.
UNESCO goals61 are to promote the public education for all
children throughout the globe but not as yet a global education to
appreciate what each nation can add to the education of our
children who will certainly be interacting within it.
The newly released Gordon Commission Report(April
2013) is now questioning if this is actually happening in their own
schools as they look for a new way of assessing the child that can
assess his capabilities not just his ability and have the child
develop more of his critical thinking. This book complements that
work by providing cultures at each level that can be used as criteria
to do that subjective assessment.
But then it goes farther in noting how reflection upon one’s
future possibilities rest also with the way we think when we do act
as the child begins to learn the difference between reflecting on
what somebody said and acting on it the way one can.
As the United Nations is discovering, talking about a
problem is upon reflection, understanding it. Finding a solution
requires a whole different mindset, as each person must learn their
role in what they can do to live in harmony with each other. This
requires a study of cultures which focused on their actions.
60
http://www.un.org/events/action2/goals.html
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/world-conference-on-ecce/goals-andobjectives/
61
66
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Part 2 Active Consciousness
By the time a
child reaches grade
three, the active side
of our mind begins
to play a more
significant role in
our thinking as we
start to no longer
expect our Creator,
parents or guardians
do everything for us which we may have forgotten as adults as
noted in this quote by Red Skelton in the Reader’s Digest
“A man was drowning and a ship passed by to rescue
Him. The man was grateful, but refused the help
Because God would save him. A short time later, a
Helicopter arrived to pull him out of the water. Again
He refused on the grounds that he was a true believer
In God, and God would not abandon him. He soon
Drowned and went to meet his Maker. His first
Question to the Creator was “Why did you let me
Drown?”. God answered “I sent a ship and an
helicopter, what more did you want?”
Let the child do his own inquiries and only aid when asked.
Make sure that everyone is participating in the discussion and do
not allow someone to dominate it including the teacher. It is the
child and not the adult who is responsible for the project and only
the child can complete his own self-evaluation. It is in this way
that the child not only further develops his ability to reflect but also
develops his capabilities to act as he learns to become a giver and
not just a taker.
67 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 9 – “My self-active child”
We know through attendance, learning exercises completed
and tests what the child is doing when told. What this chapter and
subsequent ones want to know, is what the child is doing when not
being told. What does he initiate as noted by the Swedish culture?
What makes him rational in his actions – Catholic culture? What
merit was found in doing it - the Singapore culture?
In passive alive consciousness, we spoke about the Spirit in
the way we are touched by the Creator, in this chapter we begin to
see the “Loki” in all of us in describing our own initiative as we
become more conscious of our soul. We begin to look at what type
of actions can make us feel better about ourselves in our personal
participation in the learning process.
Hence we are shifting from how the world affects us to the
way we in some way affect it. Sweden seems to exemplify this as
we read of what is said about the country today62.
Modern Sweden maintains a worldwide reputation
for its progressive social welfare policies, which were the
outcome of a steady evolution toward democratic
government that began in the early nineteenth century. As
Swedes are quick to point out, such policies were also the
result of the country's strong industrial achievement and its
sustained economic prosperity in this century. At the same
time, Sweden has carefully maintained the pristine beauty
of its stunning natural environment - it holds the only
extensive wilderness area left in Europe, and the waters of
Stockholm remain clean and clear enough for fishing and
even a downtown swim. As we move toward the twentyfirst century, Sweden seems to offer--as it has offered for
decades--an irresistible picture of where the rest of the
world would like to be.
62
http://www.geographia.com/sweden/history.html
68
Preparing the child to live within a global village
In school, we expect the teacher to become industrious in
completing the curriculum guidelines through the year, but where
is such a question asked to the student. In three different schools I
had asked the teachers to let the students put a mark on their work
as to effort from “A” to “F”. Some teachers were doubtful that the
students would be honest about it. But they did comply and the
results raised many unanswered questions. Like why so many
students are putting “c” or “d” as to effort while achieving “80” or
“90” in the sub ect?
A child could have answered that they were not challenged
by the subject but now with their own inquiries, class discussion on
said inquiries and group projects added on to teacher presentations,
learning exercises and tests, could they give such an answer?
Especially by grade three when they have had two years of formal
education, one would expect a more industrious student in what
they are capable of producing.
It becomes a case of what the Swedes would say of how
much one is expecting others to do it for you and how much one is
expected to do it oneself. It is what teachers complain about in
their class as they feel that the students expect them to entertain
them but take no responsibility for their own input.
Or is it a lack of appreciation by the student of what is
being done in that they, the student have so little input into the
process? The question of self-assessment at this grade level is not
“What effort did you put in each sub ect?” but “What more could
you have accomplished if you put in more?”
In so doing, in expecting more of each student, a second
question will eventually be asked in “How much more is
reasonable for the student?” Did the Vikings have to travel to
distant shores and raid their neighbors to bring home food in order
to survive? Do we as teachers set the goals of productivity too high
for our students or too low such that the students do not even try?
If the students had a say, would they be more reasonable
69 Preparing the child for the global village
and would we proceed through grade three so as to be able to start
reasoning with them?
An interesting phenomenon emerged from the dark ages
where expectation became completely irrational for each person.
Kings were still deemed as Gods as able to solve all of mankind
problems. Soldiers were invincible in expecting to win every battle
and peasants through an endless source of labor would be able
through taxes to support the kingdom while doctors were supposed
to cure everybody.
Through a creation of sanctuaries; a place that one could
say what was on one’s mind and not be condemned for not
achieving someone’s expectation, reason was added to
expectations and scholars were able to advise people as to what in
today’s knowledge, what can be reasonably expected of them.
It was said of these monasteries63;
“Monasteries were important contributors to the
surrounding community. They were centres of intellectual
progression and education. They welcomed aspiring priests
to come study and learn, allowing them even to challenge
doctrine in dialogue with superiors”
These places became sanctuaries throughout Europe
preferring an attachment to the community than a hermit’s life
secluded from society64 . What was said between a priest and his
parishioner was kept confidential as should a student’s personal
assessment of his capabilities with his teacher.
It is the student and not the teacher that should be giving
the permission to disclose the reasons why he is producing at the
rate that he is. Noting through the years how what is reasonable for
grade one may not be for grade three as the teacher often explains
the difference between becoming reasonable in what is achievable
63
64
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastery
ap world history p.218
70
Preparing the child to live within a global village
as oppose to rational in making excuses or predicting what one is
capable of doing.
What shocks me in the absence of this self-assessment, is
the Crusading approach of teachers and sometimes parents who do
not communicate with their child, of what they are expected to
accomplish. They the teacher may be rational to themselves but
totally irrational for the child. In their zeal to succeed, as their
reputation is on the line, they assume with faith alone that it will be
done and blame the child for their lack of faith in their own talent.
The purpose of self-assessment at this point is to build the
reasonable performance of a child, not question if the child can be
reasonable. When my father returned from war and asked me to do
certain things which in his mind seemed reasonable as he had to
invade Normandy and overtake a German division, I often said in
my mind “Are you crazy?”. When we consider the expectation in
performance as an adult and what a child can do, there are reasons
why we hire a teacher who is more proficient being reasonable of
what a child can do at this age
Self-assessment is also to question the reasonableness of
the teacher. We do not like what the church did, in banning or
threatening to excommunicate Galileo because he uncovered
findings which may have challenged what was then known on the
subject. I am sure that my father would think me crazy as I now, as
an adult, I set goals for myself, which within his generation, would
seem impossible to accomplish but as Isaac Newton said "If I have
seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."65
Hence as the child begins to assess his performance, he
needs to know to have initiative to do so and become reasonable
into what he can do and as we learn next, develop merit in taking
on tasks that he can do. For the next question at this level is to
assess one’s merit in showing that you are capable, by tasks that
you have already accepted and done well. This is how esteem is
65
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShouldersOfGiants
71 Preparing the child for the global village
built in becoming capable to deal with problems rather than finding
reasons why one is so unproductive and useless.
As I read what Singapore did in difficult times66?
With independence came bleak, if not precarious economic
prospects. According to Barbara Leitch Lepoer, the editor of
Singapore: A Country Study ( 989): “Separation from Malaysia
meant the loss of Singapore’s economic hinterland, and
Indonesia’s policy of military confrontation directed at
Singapore and Malaysia had dried up the “entrepot” from that
direction.” According to the same book, Singapore also faced the
loss of 20 percent of its obs with the announcement of Britain’s
departure from the island’s bases in 968.
One would think that Singapore would be devastated by the
loss but it is located at the centre of activities in lower Asia where
opportunities abound to those who are willing to take advantage of
them. It will always require facing new obstacles but that is part of
the challenge in making the job worthy of doing.
This meritocracy is still present as Pravin Prakash67 says;
Meritocracy, an essential and integral part of
Singapore’s political and social culture, has of late seen debate
over its continued relevance here.
In December, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong argued
that while it was important to calibrate fundamental
machinations of the system of meritocracy, there was no better
option. “If we’re not going on merit, what are (we) going to look
at?” he asked.
More recently, Acting Minister for Culture, Community
and Youth Lawrence Wong acknowledged that Singapore’s
system of meritocracy could be improved to ensure it benefits all
segments of society. And academic Donald Low last month
argued for, among other things, “trickle-up meritocracy”, which
66
http://www.guidemesingapore.com/relocation/introduction/brief-history-ofsingapore
67
Pravin Prakash feb15th,2013 http://www.todayonline.com/authors/pravinprakash-0
72
Preparing the child to live within a global village
seeks to limit the rise of inequality by equalising not just
opportunities, but also resources at the start for those with less.
By the time we come to an end of the year in grade three,
student should be able to think of many classroom projects which
we could be done if resources became scarce which is often the
case at this time. After all is said about the self-active child, the
most important lesson still to be learned is the way civilization
advances by learning to do more with less.
Not less with more, as Genghis Khan 68exploited the
capabilities of others like one on drugs who needed a bigger fix
each time he became high and addicted others to do the same
practices. There is no greater elixir than having power over people
except one needs more people to continue sustain the high. Like a
Ponzi scheme, at some point you run out of people as did Genghis
Khan as your so called “self-initiative” pro ects are exposed as
nothing more than having others do all the work, while you reap all
the benefits.
In modern day interpretation, we find it in people who,
either through pressure or choice, believe that you are theirs to
control and do whatever they believe necessary to do, as your merit
is solely based on your pleasing them. One would think that by the
end of the year, each child should be rewarded for merit in what
they did accomplish by themselves and beyond what was asked for
in the curriculum.
When that credit goes to the teacher in being so hard
driven as to put “The fear in God “ in the students if they fail to
meet his expectations, one can only imagine the damage that this
person has caused in the child not willing to further his studies. If
the child has no freedom to learn, in not being allowed to pursue
his own inclination, how can that child continue to learn without
feeling a slave to the system?
I chose the poem on the next page on the Slave Auction to
68
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1996/12/genghis-khan/edwards-text
73 Preparing the child for the global village
remind us how precious freedom is to a child.
The Slave Auction
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825–1911
The sale began—young girls were there,
Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.
And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gazed on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.
And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.
Ye who have laid your loved to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose loved are rudely torn away.
Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.
Source: American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (The Library of America,
1993)
74
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 10 –“My freedom child”
This chapter, as the child of nine enters grade four, is about
freedom from suppression in not being allowed to mature–the
African American culture, from racism in preventing mature
action– the South AFrican culture and from censorship in having
mature thoughts of one’s own – Burmese culture. If we all want
our children to comprehend what they read, how can we do this
without also letting them mature both in actions and thought?
For that answer, we turn to the slave trade from Africa to
American shores. Is an employee more valuable because they can
think on their own or because they do what they are told without
questioning what they are doing? The slave master would want us
to believe the latter because he believes that he could do more with
a very obedient servant over one that asked too many questions.
But history proves him wrong as the United States
abolished the slave trade and the Gordon commission is today
questioning if the objective assessment of a teacher ‘s presentation,
learning exercises and test is sufficient to develop critical thinking
in a child. If a child does not have the opportunity to apply what he
has learned through inquiry, class discussion, and projects, where
is he supposed to develop this critical comprehension?
What is the difference between traditional slavery and a
student voluntarily becoming a slave to the system, simply by
doing what they have been told to do69. Having done so, we then
hear the student complain that the school is not relevant to him and
teachers wish that their students were not so apathetic towards their
education70.
If an African American can become president, he did more
than follow instructions. He used his freedom to develop his full
69
Postman, N. & Weingartner, C. Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1969
70
http://www.edutopia.org/emotional-engagement-education-part-one
75 Preparing the child for the global village
potential and a teacher respected that child’s freedom to make
those inquiries. Do our children of grade four do the same today?
A child, who says “I only do what I am told to do in
school”, becomes a slave of the system and all the suppression that
goes with it. In doing so, they have great difficulty in making
choices because they know so little of themselves.
You see this with children who struggle to pick a book
while the child who reads for their own pleasure, cannot wait to
come back to the store to choose another book. Such a child, who
does more than what they have been assigned as they pursue their
own interest, cannot be chained to the system as they have tasted
their freedom in doing so.
The underground railway was available to those who made
inquiries and dared to discuss with others their right to pursue their
own dreams. They appreciated their freedom when it came while
those still enslaved took a while to grasp what it means to be free.
When I encountered a child embarrassed to enter grade
five, I asked a colleague to find out why. I was astonished to learn
that she did not want to attend school because she could not read.
She was finally making the connection between the freedom that
comes with being educated and the restriction that she was putting
on herself by not taking the time to learn. I wonder if anyone
asked, at the lower grades, did she understand what she read.
Or should the question upon entering grade four been in her
assessment “What are you doing with your free time in improving
your own education?” We did send a tutor to the home and she
eventually did return to school but it made me wonder how much
we knowingly or unconsciously restrict a child’s choices. This I
discovered when I had a grant to increase reading in the school and
some teachers wanted to choose the books for them rather than
letting the children make their own choices.
Freedom is about asking “What are you reading” and not
“Let me tell you, what you should be reading” - that is under
76
Preparing the child to live within a global village
learning exercises and not inquiries. This is because you want the
child to enjoy the freedom to read on his own so that in discussion
you get his thoughts and not yours and you are not perceived as
being apathetic in assuming that the child could not do so on his
own.
We can prevent the development of freedom by being too
helpful. The South African foreigners came to this land to do what
they believed the natives could not do; make it prosperous71. It was
a case of we who know best should govern those who know the
least.
This is the case in most schools at the start of any school
year or else, why should students spend the time listening and
following the instructions of teachers? But somewhere within the
year there must be a transition through inquiries, class discussions,
projects and self-assessment, unless we do not care if anything we
have said as teacher, is ever being understood by the student.
My critique of the South African white immigrant is not in
what they did accomplish for the South African people. No more
is it for a parent in trying to raise their child. There is a time within
active dynamics where the parent shows us how to adapt to life,
which is necessary if we are to proceed from apprentice to
competent worker.
Where the apartheid skews the dynamics, is never
accepting the worker as an apprentice but rather a child who could
never develop the skills to someday take over the farm or
corporation. Mandela’s72 refusal to work without being heard
sparked a rallying cry among the people because he stood up
against a political system, as did the United States against Britain,
in not being willing to pay taxes or give of one’s labor without
representation in the government of one’s country.
The difference between United States and South Africa was
71
72
http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/history.htm
http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography
77 Preparing the child for the global village
that the masters were established within their own backyard. The
South African had no prior unpleasant experience with them and
the foreigner had indeed improved the use of their resources. But
did that give the parent a right to say “You must always follow my
directions, as I will always be your master in all that you do?”
One should respect one’s elders for the wisdom they have
gained in making their life meaningful. But can one give them that
respect when they restrict the means by which one also can make
one’s life more fulfilling? It may be smart to corner the market so
that one’s descendants get the best paying jobs, but is it wise to
assume that any race has a better gene pool than another!
In Mandela’s speech on “shifting sands”, he criticized the
liberal party for limiting democracy to “Suitable voters” because
when you start discriminating, where does it end? In a family, one
cannot have peace in favoring consistently one child over another
and neither can a society that does the same thing through its
educational segregation practices.
The crises, the strikes and the threats by both sides
subsided when Mandela and De Klerk finally had a conversation
where both parties started to listen to each other and form a plan
that recognized both contributions to the betterment of their nation.
It was not what each side totally wanted but it included rather than
excluded either party.
It is to Mandela’s credit that he did not see a solution with
the exclusion of the white people, even though they were the cause
of the disruption. He took what they had done and continue to do
to South African’s benefit, as part of the deal which made it a
success.
Such is the situation of a grade four student who needs to
learn what civilization has accomplished while adding their own
input as to what is left unfulfilled today. If we but teach about the
past without having projects for today, are we not mimicking the
white South African in not expecting our youth of today to have
any input in changing it!
78
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Just because the school system took on a military format in
order to teach the masses, does it mean that our children must be
military minded in order to function in modern day society as we
try to censor or severely limit their actions? There are times within
a year that we should pay attention to the teacher but are there not
also times, particularly towards the end of the year, when we, the
teacher, should be listening to our students?
When Burma gained its independence in 1948, was the
military coup the only option for a country used to being ruled by
others? I ask the question because I have observed how a baby
likes to be wrapped up tightly after birth as it had just emerged
from the womb where it was tightly kept. The same can be said of
a child who has been micro-programmed for every minute of the
day and suddenly is asked what he wants to do and does not know,
whereby the parent says “See, he like to be told what to do and
feels awkward when set free to do something on his own.”
This awkwardness moment of inexperience is self-learning.
It is what Aung San Suu Kyi would call “meta” in her book the
Voice of hope73 and what we today are beginning to recognize in
our school as metacognition – the child’s own actions towards their
own maturity.
When you deprive the child by refusing or severely limiting
their capability to think for themselves, you create a Burma
situation which has become one of the longest running civil wars
that remains unresolved. The country through this solely
militaristic approach of its culture above anyone else has become
one of the least developed nations in the world.
What was so painfully obvious to Aung San Suu Kyi and
not to the general ruling Burma, is that the people will not mature
to the modern world and become independent if you continue to
insist that all things must be done your way to prevent anarchy
from happening. All you are doing is trying to secure a permanent
73
Alan Clements, 1997://www.amazon.com/Voice-Hope-Conversations-AlanClements/dp/1583228454
79 Preparing the child for the global village
place for yourself by keeping the circumstances as they are. We are
the gardeners of our children, not its jailers. Ours is not a
permanent position.
“Mudita” which means appreciative joy at the success and
good fortune of others is mentioned at length in the Voice of Hope
by Kyi because if you are only concerned about your own success
who will want to participate in a dynamics where you are always
the guaranteed winner? Seeing on how others benefit within a
dynamics increases the participation as the people lend their
support to Kyi in the way she wants the society to be democratic.
Unfortunately as is the case of Burma, old habits are often
used to confirm existing ones as we note about Burma history74
“Although Burma was at times divided into independent states,
a series of monarchs attempted to establish their absolute rule,
with varying degrees of success. Eventually, an expansionist
British Government took advantage of Burma's political
instability. After three Anglo-Burmese wars over a period of 60
years, the British completed their colonization of the country in
1886, Burma was immediately annexed as a province of British
India, and the British began to permeate the ancient Burmese
culture with foreign elements. Burmese customs were often
weakened by the imposition of British traditions.”
Burma in being told what to do, is like a person visiting
your own house and telling you how to manage it and wondering
why you cannot keep your own house in order. It is only through
the freedom to make your own house as it is for the child to make
their own assessments, that the students learns what to retain and
what to throw out as it is they that need to adapt to changing times
within their own milieu.
The Burma generals, in confining Kyi to her own home,
only reinforced that as she became active and adaptive to what was
changing around her, while the generals, in limiting actions around
them, became more and more non-adaptive to change. Somewhat
74
http://www.cfob.org/HistoryofBurma/historyOfBurma.shtml
80
Preparing the child to live within a global village
like a school who keeps the same curriculum and textbooks year
after year because one does not have to change one’s instructions
and years of preparations. In doing so these people are unaware
how out of date are one’s instructions through such censorship.
This brings us to the question of adaptability as the child
within a non-changing system starts to question his reason to
become adaptive. This story on the web “How To Use The Power
Of Adaptability To Build A Magnificent Life”75 explains why.
When it came to any kind of foot race at school I was always
last. The facts were that I was never built for speed.
However, when I took up soccer as my chosen sport I soon
discovered that to be fast was not necessarily a skill I needed to
have in order to succeed in this sport.
By simply developing good ball handling skills and learning how
to swerve while avoiding other players, it wasn’t long before I
was one of the top goal scorers for my team.
This later led me to play for a representative squad that won its
competition.
All because I had learned to be adaptable.
You cannot become adaptable unless you are free, hence
the reason for this chapter. But in becoming free, it remains to each
one of us to become adaptable – the subject of the next chapter.
75
http://www.motivationalmemo.com/how-to-use-the-power-of-adaptability-tobuild-a-magnificent-life/
81 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 11 – “My adaptive child”
In this chapter as the student of grade four enters grade five
we deal with space fluctuation – Inuit culture, time management Mayan culture and energy proficiency – Aztec culture. We neither
control space, time or energy flow but in learning to adapt, we
have been able to turn the night into day, extend our time beyond
the thinking of today and learned to do more with less of our
energy. This is noted in the ten year old turning to be eleven in the
extended bedtime, the anticipation of deadlines to come and the
fascination with new technology to get them done.
Among the Inuit76 people who live practically six months
in the darkness with few hours where the light of the day shines
and then the reverse in the summertime, you would think that this
would bother them. But as we study them, we can but note how
they are consumed by the activities during both times such that
they rarely take the time to think about it.
Such in many ways is the nature of an eleven year old
going through grade five. He is starting to note that he can spend a
longer period of time on any one subject as his interest extends
outside of the classroom in wanting to do further homework on
certain activities. It can be in sports, scientific experimentation,
reading, puzzles, social clubs and a host of other activities which
for many of us, we ask “When does that child sleep?”.
We cannot expect schools to cater to all these extremes but
with the support of parents, many of these activities are
encouraged after school as the bedtimes of the child are being
extended while the night sleep are shortened. Like the north, you
neither go to sleep because the sun sets earlier nor arise only at
sunrise.
I cannot explain why one of my children could draw for
hours, another become so fascinated by role playing while my
76
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/polar/inuit_culture.html
82
Preparing the child to live within a global village
daughter seemed to be always creating things but this is the way
they chose to work in their life and become adaptive to it. I could
not explain to you why a people would chose such a dark and at
times such illuminating place to live but as I gaze at the Aurora
Borealis, I can at least understand why it would be foolish to sleep
during such a marvelous spectacle of lights.
I recall my mother saying to others “Don’t give it to
Paul, he will certainly break it”, when I was very young. It was
only when I reached the age of eleven did I hear my mother say
“Give it to Paul, he can fix practically anything.” In looking back, I
now realize that the space I was most comfortable in was in fixing
things or trying to understand how things intertwine together. I
still, today, like doing puzzles and I am presently piecing together
why there needs to be so many cultures within our global village.
Hence the first subjective assessment of a student of this
age after review of inquiries, classroom discussions and projects is
that of space in which activities that the child is doing without
being told. What type of space is he occupying in the doing of his
activities so that he feels at home?
It is the recognition that whereas you or I may not be
inclined to live in this space, this student is and it shines some light
on to his own personality and future careers. It eliminates many
careers where he would not be able to work within an environment
where he does not feel comfortable.
The downside as any parent has observed, is the lack of
sleep in being consumed by a video game or activities that seem to
consume all of his time to the point that time seems no longer to
matter. I recall my mother reminding me to eat as does my wife
today when I am consumed with a problem that I can seem to
resolve. Day turns into night without my notice and people come to
me saying “Where have you been”.
Such is now the case of the Inuit people who are now part
of the global village who may not want to share their world with
83 Preparing the child for the global village
the rest of us but need to accept that their world can no longer be
independent from us as the global climate is directly changing their
world. They need to adapt to these changes lest they completely
lose their sense of timing.
In the recognition of time, comes the awareness of
deadlines which the Maya people being agricultural people, took
very seriously. Planting and harvesting of crops is a serious
business if you do not want to starve during the winter times. The
calendars of the Mayan77 people extended as far as today in
predicting when to sow, lay bare and cultivate the land.
Even the timing, as who was to do what at certain times on
their production wheel ensured that all tasks would be done on
time. Each person knew their time limit and often made great
sacrifices so as to complete tasks on time. They easily saw how
their own lack of time consideration would grind to a halt, the
entire production with dire consequence to the population.
The same can be said of the timing of what needs to be
taught within the grade five curriculum within a school year. The
expectation of self after grade one should be quite accelerated by
grade five, as the student does their second assessment as to a pace
that they are capable of doing something like making inquiries,
making a point in a discussion and completing one’s task in a
larger group assignment.
At this age, prodding by parents is not as effective as it was
at the earlier ages and the teacher does not have the time to redo all
past learning assignments where the child was absent or not paying
attention. But the child is aware through time self-assessment of
becoming more of a self-learner such to make up that time as I did
when I went from French to English schooling and failed at first in
spelling as I was not familiar with the words but passed spelling by
the time I completed the year. You quickly learn that it does not
take as much time as in the past to complete learning exercises.
77
by Ryan Johnson and Cristen Conger http://www.howstuffworks.com/mayancalendar.htm
84
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Time, like space, can be overcome by our capability to
absorb more in less time as we become more familiar with the
activity. A child in grade one can barely read a sentence in my
time, but today many come to school reading paragraphs, as they
start to learn at an earlier age. Likewise in my case, I only started
reading comic books and passages of the bible in my earlier
grades, but managed to complete a classic comic before finishing
grade six. In a short time, I became ready for grade seven as time is
relative to your level of your self-capability to learn.
But as the Mayan population began to spread out which
required more relative learning as the time to plant and cultivated
began to vary and people tried to use the old measurement of time
the Maya78 empire collapsed as we read;
“Clues to this collapse can be found at Copán, a Maya site
in western Honduras. Copán was once a Classic Maya royal
center, the largest site in the southeastern part of the Maya
area. Covering about 29 acres, it was built on the banks of
the Copán River on an artificial terrace made of close to a
million cubic feet of dirt. Over time, people spread out
from the central core and built homes in outlying areas that
had formerly been used for crops. Copán's nobles built
smaller, rival complexes on sites that were increasingly
further from the core.”
Population keeps on growing and it became evident that
you or your next generation could not stay in the same location nor
be fixed on the same calendar at harvest time, as well as weather
varying as you go in any direction. You could still base yourself on
a common calendar as we do today on Greenwich time in the hour
that we are in relation to a set point on our globe, but make
adjustments to our own location and all activities that need to be
done.
In similar fashion, we have a set curriculum that all grade
78
Annenberg Foundation 2013
http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/mayans.html
85 Preparing the child for the global village
fives must complete, but without any self-assessment by the
student through the prior grades, it becomes practically impossible
to judge where a child is in their timing. Objective testing does
help in determine the actual level that a child is at so as not to
overwhelm the child in learning assignments that they cannot do
but the rate of learning is in most cases not known as the child has
no past self-subjective assessment on themselves.
The time wheel of activities can become overwhelming as
the child reaches the end of the year if adjustments are not made by
the student as to what he needs to accelerate. This brings us to the
question of energy output with technology.
A culture that was proficient in the use of technology was
the Aztec culture79 as we read;
“The advances demonstrated in Aztec technology are so
remarkable that they are still looked upon adoringly to this
day. Just a few of the Aztec accomplishments have been
the development of mathematics, the canoe, the highly
specialized Aztec calendar, and remarkably helpful forms
of medicine.
Let us suppose you add a wheel to the existing wheel as a
way of adjusting for time difference; you just saved yourself a
huge number of calculations. In similar manner, spreadsheets and
word processors have both reduced the frustrations in children in
endless corrections of their work as well as extending what they
can now calculate and write in more detail.
A canoe in today’s technology is like the use of a mouse in
controlling the flow of information on your screen. As long as the
child has control over the mouse, they can learn to pace themselves
as to the review of information that they are processing. They can
also note how quickly they can review it as they become more
familiar with its content. It is in that form of self-assessment that
the child can reduce his state of anxiety as he experiences more
79
http://www.aztec-indians.com/aztec-technology.html
86
Preparing the child to live within a global village
and more, the influx of information within our world.
There are however, limits as to what we can do even
though we can be caught up in trying to advance ourselves by
becoming fitter and eating the correct diets. You can as we learn
today over exercise and actually harm the body80.
LONDON: Too much exercise may damage your heart, doctors
have warned, suggesting that rather than adding years to their
lives, fitness freaks could be working themselves into an early
grave. Experts warn that exercising intensely for more than an
hour or two can damage the heart, causing its tissue to stretch,
tear and scar and raising the odds of dangerous changes in heart
rhythm.
"A routine of moderate physical activity will add life to your
years, as well as years to your life. In contrast, running too fast,
too far and for too many years may speed one's progress towards
the finish line of life," doctors said. In the study published in
journal Heart, the United States cardiologists James O'Keefe and
Carl Lavie also advise that those who want to exercise at full pelt
should limit themselves to 30 to 50 minutes a day.
In asking why we do this to ourselves by trying to become
overly adaptive and pushing ourselves to the extreme fitness, we
may find our answer in the question “a sacrifice for who?”81;
For the Aztecs, human sacrifices fulfilled multiple purposes,
both at the religious and socio-political level. They considered
themselves the “elected” people, the people of the Sun who had
been chosen by the gods to feed them and were responsible for
the continuity of the world. On the other hand, when the
Mexican became the most powerful group in Mesoamerica,
human sacrifices acquired the added value of political
propaganda.
80
Fiona Macrae 29 November 2012http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article2240711/Take-bit-easier-gym-Too-exercise-wear-heart.html
81
Nicoletta Maestri http://archaeology.about.com/od/Aztec-Religion/a/AztecSacrifice.htm
87 Preparing the child for the global village
It is not enough that our school scores the highest in the
district by overly accenting the academics and limiting inquiry…as
subjective self-assessment would certainly question this insanity,
but we need students to champion our cause by showing in
sacrifice how they can push themselves beyond their limits to
prove how far we will go to become the best.
Or is it trying to be over accepted by others as Psychology
today writes about the narcissistic people82;
People who fit the mental health profession's criteria for
a diagnosis of have a number of characteristics that create
significant difficulties in their everyday lives. The new
psychiatric manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, will require that people with this disorder
must exhibit a range of behaviors that includes excessive
attention-getting, needing others to confirm their identities,
wanting excessively to please others, being unable to empathize
with others, and having little interest in close relationships,
feelings entitled to special treatment. This is hardly a set of
desirable qualities, and people with this disorder can struggle in
their everyday lives, especially if they have the "vulnerable"
form of narcissism based on an underlying low sense of selfesteem.
It is we in our subjective self-assessment that must live
with ourselves. If you cannot find happiness in becoming who you
are, how can you expect others to accept who you are? In trying to
take on roles that are not you because you want the other person to
be pleased with you as you want to become the most adaptive
person, you inevitably discover how you cannot live with yourself.
Self-assessment is partly about becoming normal in
learning to set limits as to what one is comfortable in doing and
that which makes one uncomfortable. No one likes a person who
cannot be themselves because we cannot as people who accept
who we are, identify with this person.
82
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. January 24, 2012 http://www.psychology
today.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201201/the-healthy-side-narcissism
88
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 12 – “My normal child”
In this chapter, we will explore what is normal in
performing roles that are very familiar to us – the Haiti Culture,
roles that suit us - the Gypsy culture and roles in which we feel we
could live – the aboriginal culture. If we do respect our own
normalcy, we could become abnormal. In so doing, discover how
we cannot live with ourselves.
As we read the story of Haiti83, we discover the gentleness
within us which shapes our character as opposed to the anger in
our persecutors which makes them lose a sense of who they are. It
is as if we are born into a world that is not of our making but at this
stage, we need to choose which acts will we be taking that will
reveal who we are or cast us in the shadows of those we would
rather not be.
The story of Haiti is unique. It is a country whose population
was created by the kidnapping and enslavement of hundreds of
thousands of Africans by Spain and France in the 17th and 18th
centuries. The descendants of these slaves are the people of Haiti
today—there has been virtually no voluntary immigration. It is a
land of great misery and poverty, populated by people of
amazing strength and spirit, a spirit that inspires and astounds
those who have experienced their gentle nature.
The first thing we say to an emotionally disturbed teenager
is to calm down. Rediscover the gentleness which is your nature. –
Act as you normally would act.
This usually comes at the cross over years of eleven turning
twelve when the child begins to feel no longer a child with puberty
coming on and the need to feel comfortable as to who he is
becoming.
The explanation of this gentleness as I understand the Haiti
83
http://www.fordhaitianorphanage.org/history/history.html
89 Preparing the child for the global village
culture is found in “vodu84”. The “vo” meaning “introspection”
and the “du” is into the unknown. If you act forcefully towards
someone, you produce a negative reaction or “bad” voodoo which
if continued can turn you into a zombie as you become totally
insensitive in what you are doing and the person in who did show
some feelings gradually loses those attachments to you.
Whereas if you are gentle, the reaction is positive or
“good’ voodoo flows from it. In showing a gentle kindness it is
often reciprocated by those who are also introspective and are
willing to risk having interaction with you.
If you were to review your assessment of your actions over
the past five years after the teacher did her overall presentation,
learning exercises and tests and you recalled your inquiries, class
discussions and small group projects, you should by now be
capable to distinguish paths worth further pursuing that are gentle
in their calling versus those either forced upon you or chosen
forcefully by you in anger to prove a point not worth making.
What Haiti culture would call spirits, we today call
psychological impact of people on the normalcy of one’s
personality as the child of this age is beginning to assess people
that have had an influence on his choices for his future. As my son
said to me as he reviewed his own education about what he would
like to see change about the educational system of today;
“We are faced with so many choices today but where do we
in school get the opportunity to choose what is right for us”
Why Haiti suffers so much can well be because the place in
which it presently exists may not be the place where many can find
normalcy because the place overly limits what one can be. As we
diversify and open new pathways, this rage within humanity is
dissipating but kept in those who see no career path for themselves.
84
On being with KristaTippett http://www.onbeing.org/program/livingvodou/particulars/2078
90
Preparing the child to live within a global village
This remaining in place despite the abnormality it causes
in oneself was never the Gypsy culture85. Everywhere they went,
they took on different roles to learn what they could be under new
conditions. They noted how in staying in one place, you limit the
possibilities of what you can become as you look at their history.
“They seem to have arrived in the Middle ast about 000 AD,
some going on into North Africa and others on into Europe.
They were an intelligent people, used to living on their wits, who
found it easy to impress the uneducated locals by giving
themselves unwarranted titles and assuming the importance to go
with them. Hence they arrived in Europe as Lords, Dukes,
Counts and Earls of Little Egypt, demanding and receiving help
and support from those in authority. Claiming that they had been
ejected from their homeland, 'Little Egypt', by the wicked
Saracens, or that they were on a pilgrimage, gained them succor
from no less than the Pope himself, who demanded that they be
given safe passage in the countries over which he had sway. So
they were able to travel in relative safety, and could expect food
and lodging from religious houses, as the rich of the time felt
that it would assist their standing in the eyes of the church if they
supported pilgrims. Having been on a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land was the ultimate status symbol, but supporting those who
had been on one, or were taking part in one was the next best
thing. So with their quick wits and silver tongues they were soon
under the protection of Kings throughout Europe.”
Their appeal was in asking the people if they had done their
own pilgrimage in having settled too quickly and not fully
explored the full spatial dynamics of their milieu. Do we take the
first opportunity that comes our way or do we explore other
opportunities? Do we stay too long in one place when other
opportunities can make better use of our talents?
These are the questions a grade six student should be
asking himself as they begin to assess the next three years at some
junior high. In making inquiries and visiting junior high, having
85
Stacy Redbones Nov.11, 2012
http://parrotsgrl.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/gypsy-history/
91 Preparing the child for the global village
class discussions as to what interest them and group projects about
their own expectations in attending these schools, the student
develops a broader perspective of what he can become which was
limited by the basic education in the elementary grades.
However do we cause abnormalities in the student of this
age by forcing them to make a decision as to where to go when
they are at this stage still exploring their options? We have only to
look at our history to note what carnage it caused by force
settlement versus what Europe has become in people travelling
outside their national borders86.
“In the 20th century, persecution reached its height in Nazi
Germany where about a quarter of a million were exterminated
in concentration camps. Wherever the Nazi authorities came
across them, they were bent on wiping them out. After the
Second World War, the Communist authorities of Eastern
Europe tried to integrate them into their system as factory labor,
and, although this was totally against the Gypsy ways, succeeded
to some degree in eliminating their full-time nomadic life style.
There was great reluctance to grant recognition to the Gypsies as
an ethnic group, and only in parts of the former Yugoslavia were
they treated as a recognized minority group. In western Europe,
the nomad life continued to some extent, but their way of life led
to continuous clashes with a structure set up to manage life in
settled communities”
Unsaid is perhaps the unity that now prevails in Europe
through free trade which they promoted through visiting and
speaking about what other lands could offer the people. They
succeeded through conversation what the Nazi did not achieve
through force, a willingness among the people of Europe to talk to
each other despite their cultural differences.
However, in making “not settling” a permanent issue
within their culture, they never stayed long enough to become
attached. It is only when you spend longer on a topic as will be the
case in Junior high that you begin to experience its greater depth
86
http://www.scottishgypsies.co.uk/early2.html
92
Preparing the child to live within a global village
and later ponder in one’s future more courses in it.
The aboriginals of Australia took a different approach in
committing themselves to the outback of Australia which resulted
in a dreamtime as we all become attached to the field that we are
studying and this becomes our outback as we dream of acts to do
within it87;
“The Dreaming is the foundation of Indigenous culture and
spiritual beliefs. The ancestral Dreaming spirits, who could
change their form into animals, people or any physical feature,
travelled across the country shaping the natural environment and
establishing religious and moral systems for Indigenous
Australians. They also created the natural environment, and the
humans and animal species that populated the land.
When their work was complete, the spirits transformed
themselves into hills and other physical features, leaving
evidence of their presence in the natural environment, where
they still remain a powerful spiritual force for Indigenous
Australians.
The Dreaming is not just an integral part of the Indigenous
history and culture of Western Australia’s Golden Outback, it’s
also an important source of information for day-to-day survival.
Dreaming stories map out the location of water, places to gather
food, campsites and significant landscape features, while also
linking distant tribes to other Indigenous communities.”
Each of us has our outback and as I sit and listen to
people’s stories of their life in any milieu or field of study, I hear
this story retold but it is not the Creator putting meaning on things
but people in the telling their story.
In the final review of the elementary grades as the child
turns twelve, some commitment is necessary or else the child feels
abnormal in not making any decisions. He cannot, like the tourist
guide would like us to believe, become a tourist all his life, like
87
http://www.australiasgoldenoutback.com/outback-australia-touristdestinations/Outback_history_and_culture/Indigenous_history_and_culture
93 Preparing the child for the global village
this ad suggests88;
Today in Australia, the Outback can be seen and visit by people
of all ages departing from almost all major cities in Australia.
You can see it by train, by plane, by four wheel drive, by touring
buses with air conditioned, you name it. There are plenty of tour
operators today offering the most incredible tours the best parts
of the Outback. Of course you can do by yourself in a car
travelling by some sealed roads in the Outback.
Worse, is being forced to become a tourist within one’s
own community as so many junior highs have existed within the
same building and within even high school sharing the same space.
Where is progress being made in not letting the outside affect
one’s surroundings with the exception of intramural sports and the
internet?
Do we not need to make our dreamtime within this reality
and not one of our past lest we create the saber tooth curriculum!89
Dr. Peddiwell begins his seminar by discussing "the first great
educational theorist", New-Fist-Hammer-Maker. While watching
the children of the tribe, New-Fist wondered, “’If I could only
get these children to do the things that will give more and better
food, shelter, clothing and security, I would be helping this tribe
to have a better life. When the children became grown, they
would have more meat to eat, more skins to keep them warm,
better caves in which to sleep, and less danger from the striped
death with the curving teeth that walks these trails by night...
Having set up an educational goal, New-Fist proceeded to
construct a curriculum for teaching that goal. ‘What things must
we tribesmen know how to do in order to live with full bellies,
warm backs, and minds free from fear?’… To answer this
question, he ran various activities over in his mind. ‘We have to
catch fish with our bare hands in the pool far up the creek
beyond that big bend, we have to catch fish with our bare hands
in the pool right at the bend. We have to catch them in the same
way in the pool just this side of the bend. And so we catch them
88
89
http://www.portaloceania.com/au-tourism-outback-ing.htm
Dr. Peddiwell Abner J. http://sabertooth-curriculum.wikispaces.com/
94
Preparing the child to live within a global village
in the next pool and the next and the next. Always we catch them
with our bare hands.’ Thus New-Fist discovered the first subject
of the first curriculum – fish-grabbing-with-the-bare-hands.”
‘Also we club the little woolly horses, we club them along the
bank of the creek where they come down to drink. We club them
in the thickets where they lie down to sleep. We club them in the
upland meadow where they graze. Wherever we find them we
club them.’ So wooly-horse-clubbing was seen to be the second
main sub ect in the curriculum. ‘And finally, we drive away the
saber-tooth tigers with fire, we drive them from our trail with
burning branches. We wave firebrands to drive them from our
drinking hole. Always we have to drive them away, and always
we drive them with fire.’ Thus was discovered the third sub ect –
saber-tooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire.” The tribe benefited from the
teaching, because the educational curriculum was relevant to
making a better lifestyle for the future..
Relevance and making a better lifestyle for the tribe... those were
the goals of the educational system. Everything was great... "The
tribe prospered and was happy in the possession of adequate
meat, skins, and security. It is to be supposed that all would have
gone well forever with this good educational system if
conditions of life in that community had remained forever the
same. But conditions changed, and life which had once been so
safe and happy in the cave realm valley became insecure and
disturbing.” The conservative members of the tribe thought it
was blasphemy to alter the teachings of the core subjects.
According to them, that was what people should know, and
anyone who disagrees was labeled radical and should keep their
mouth shut.”
Is not the definition of insanity “Doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different solution”! When
communities argue to keep their Junior high within their own
milieu because next door is different than us, should that not be the
reason that they do intermingle as inter family marriage fail!
95 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 13 –“My progressive teenager”
This chapter looks at how a junior high student begins to
compare assessments visa-vis other communities in his area as he
starts to go to school outside his own milieu. This motion outside
of one’s place of the grade seven student is very similar to the
Polynesian cultures as they travel to different islands for new
enlightenments about their world. We then move on to grade eight
to the age of puberty and comparisons of what we have the same
though we progress differently as the Vietnamese customs is about
what stays the same as we progress. Lastly, we reach grade nine
and the start of common sense in the student in knowing, like the
Brazilian people, you cannot be all things to all people but you
should become the best at what you can do.
Every student by the age of twelve going on to thirteen
knows that he comes from a community, an island somewhere in
the world, as have the Polynesian people. But encountering fellow
students from different communities either through the internet,
television or simply learning about them, makes the student ponder
the relevancy of his own community.
After a teacher does presentations and learning exercises on
geography, science resources, math and social studies that make up
a community, a simple comparison of communities can be done
through inquiries, class discussions and projects as well as
assessment as to what they would need to change to live in an
other community. This can blossom as the year progresses to other
areas as the fundamentals are being learned and applied by the
students.
This was the case it seems by the Polynesian cultures as
Peter Marsh on the web comments on “Polynesian Pathways90”
“It seemed that many scientists due to the specialized nature of
their research were unable to see the forest for the trees with
regard to cultural connections between Polynesians and other
90
Peter Marsh http://www.polynesian-prehistory.com/
96
Preparing the child to live within a global village
societies around the world. Stepping back and examining the
bigger picture of human prehistory has led to some surprising
revelations.”
The revelation surprise is the extent of their travels. The
customs they practiced at home did not comply with where they
landed as we note new customs and new ways of doing things
which the grade seven experiences both within the teacher
presentations and learning exercises as well as the shared inquiries
and partnership in group projects.
Like the Polynesians who listened more to the person who
provided “Mana” - food for the soul in new information that they
had not heard, students at this level crave to make new inquiries
about customs and ways of doing things. The students like the
Polynesian people do not want to become like a “Mara” person –
one who starves the soul by having the same behavior each day.
Parents may think that by keeping our son to be a teenager
at home that we protect him from all the dangers that can exist in
this world while forgetting to notice how little he is changing his
ways by being with us and we with them. How much we grow
tired of them as they become the same as we are as they do the
same in having learned all our customs.
What we want to hear is what is happening outside our
milieu as each parent wants their children to become “Mana” and
not “Mara” to them. Even the Mennonites who tend to segregate
themselves from other communities, have conceded that it is better
for the child to see the world outside of his own and decide on his
own to come back than to try to keep him always in the community
not knowing what lies beyond it.
There are new things that a student must learn which may
not exists in one’s community but may be useful as to not fall
behind the times. There are also distractions which look new but
are lacking in value which all students begin to see as fads by
discussing the validity of their inquiries.
97 Preparing the child for the global village
This is seen in grade eight as the student makes different
inquiries about what persists through time. The Vietnamese culture
uses these tenets to guide us to determine what they are91;
“The Vietnamese value system is based on four basic tenets:
allegiance to the family, yearning for a good name, love of
learning, and respect for other people. These tenets are closely
interrelated.”
As the child enters the puberty years, there have been
definite changes to the family over the years. The question the
students are beginning to assess is “What type of family will they
have in their relationship with each other in regards to
allegiances?”
And yet we read92;
“It was during Kennedy’s presidency that the ‘Strategic Hamlet’
programme was introduced. This failed badly and almost
certainly drove a number of South Vietnamese peasants into
supporting the North Vietnamese communists. This forcible
moving of peasants into secure compounds was supported by
Diem and did a great deal to further the opposition to him in the
South. American television reporters relayed to the US public
that ‘Strategic Hamlet’ destroyed decades, if not hundreds, of
years of village life in the South and that the process might only
take half-a-day. Here was a super-power effectively
orchestrating the forced removal of peasants by the South
Vietnamese Army who were not asked if they wanted to move.
To those who knew about US involvement in Vietnam and were
opposed to it, ‘Strategic Hamlet’ provided them with an
excellent propaganda opportunity.
Kennedy was informed about the anger of the South Vietnamese
peasants and was shocked to learn that membership of the NLF
had increased, according to US Intelligence, by 300% in a two
year time span – the years when ‘Strategic Hamlet’ was in
operation.”
91
92
http://www.vietnam-culture.com/zones-6-1/Vietnamese-Culture-Values.aspx
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/kennedy_vietnam.htm
98
Preparing the child to live within a global village
When you break with the tenets that sustain your progress,
you do not go forward but backwards. Learning what not to change
is as important as what needs changing. Since that will vary in
each person as each family is different, you can only do this if you
have subjective self-assessments.
This applies even more as we view our own identity. Our
old name is the one given to us by our family and how our family
sees us as a person. In this junior high as we enter our second year,
we still have the same name but with new acquaintances, we
uncover new aspects of ourselves which requires the student to do
self-assessment in asking himself if this is whom he wants to
become.
The beauty of studying the past is observing how our
present education could allow us to do things that we could not
have done in the past. It also in doing so, makes us aware of how
better our lives could have been if we were more educated. It is
with this background that the student can begin to project the type
of education he will need for his future.
Lastly is the respect for others in not being able to know
everything and learning by our diverse interest how we sustain
ourselves. This we see in 1991 in Vietnam, as it establishes its own
independence, it sought out relationships with Asia and the West.93
“Vietnam established or reestablished diplomatic and economic
relations with most of Western Europe, and several Asian
countries.”
The Students also note in various partnerships through the
year, in observing by the end of the year, how each student could
not have done everything alone. This admittance is often noticed in
opposite sexes ready to admit that the other culture did help in
seeing the whole picture as we cannot move forwards with only
our vision of thing.
93
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam_since_1945
99 Preparing the child for the global village
By grade nine, all homework should be done in pairs as
inquiries our broader if done in twos, class discussions are more
thorough in having taking a broader manner of research, projects
are less uncompleted because the one or the other make up the
difference and assessment is more sensible as it is common sense
to note that one cannot be all things to all people.
Sensible as this may seems, our schools today still require
individual homework done by each students with the perfections
that it include all the qualities that is humanly capable of having
within it. The smart student will do it to the liking of the teacher as
this person will usually overlook their own faults in correcting it.
Those students, who do not possess these qualities, will know that
they will be getting a lower mark and in some cases will not
submit the assignment as they know that they cannot meet that
expectation.
Parents will complain as to why their child is doing so
well in their assignments in one class and failing in another, but
never pause to ask if the assignment should have been generated
by the teacher or if in partnership with an other student. Actually,
more assignments would be completed if it was the case. For if we
asked “Do you at your place of work do your assignments alone?”
few if any would answer “yes”.
Teachers may wonder “Where do you maintain the
standards if you do not correct the assignments?’ They are
maintained in the tests which every student needs to take prior to
inquiries. It is only common sense that a student needs to know his
abilities before undertaking inquiries, discussions and projects.
This is why I do not advocate only the inquiry method for trying to
appease all the people. We ignore the rubrics and find ourselves
with so called completed assignments that leave much to be
desired.
This pattern is quite evident as we note the common sense
history of the Brazilian people;
The Brazilian federalism origin in the republican Constitution of
100
Preparing the child to live within a global village
1891 was related to the idea of allowing greater decentralization
and autonomy for the regional elites, keeping together members
that could aspire to existence as independent political-territorial
units8. From that moment, the alternation between periods of
centralization and decentralization has been mentioned as a
historical trait of Brazilian federalism, consisting in a pendulum
movement that studies relate to authoritarian regimes or to
democratic order.94
Authority in educational context means the passing of a test
after teacher presentation and learning exercises which reveal that
the student has sufficient knowledge and skills to make an inquiry,
have a sensible discussion and capable to do some project with
someone based on what he now knows on the multiple subjects at
that grade level. The student is now capable of acting upon what he
has been taught.
At other times, Democracy in the use of the inquiry method
assumes that such preparation has been already made and each has
the right to decide by their interest, which topic they should be
allowed to pursue in greater depth. To continue practicing the
subject through more learning exercises becomes at this point, a
waste of time.
Any senior teacher will tell you of this pendulum swing as
“the return to the basics” when authority of the teacher is now in
vogue and “individual learning” when democracy prevails. We are
presently in the ‘Individual learning” part of the wave because we
have so over tested our children objectively in the erroneous belief
that if one test can improved my child’s standards and make him
pay more attention to the basics before embarking on application,
more learning exercises and test will make him even more
prepared.
But does the student lose his identity to relate to others in
94
Ciênc. saúde coletiva vol.14 no.3 Rio de Janeiro May/June 2009
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s141381232009000300016&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
101 Preparing the child for the global village
being consumed by a mark on a test as I read the true tale of a
student who asks “Am I over practicing?”95
Firstly, I am 14 years old and I have bought my piano this summer. I
don't have a teacher, but my father is a musician (not pianist) and has
thought me how to read and write music, and I do have perfect pitch. I
can now sight read simple things.
I have told people that I had been practicing up to 15 hours a day, and
they have told me that it is way too much. Now, the summer is sadly
over and I have 50 hours a week to practice when I am not at school
and I can practice 3 hours a week at school.I also found a few ways to
practice without a piano, so I always practice while listening to teacher
and doing other things…I don't do anything else. Sometimes I study
German but that's not much.
I had been only practicing to improve my technique, like Liszt did for 2
years, and tried to play things! I have composed to improve my musical
skills. I play them staccatto, or using pedal, using only sostenuto pedal
etc. by using as many different interpratational elements as I can. And I
thought it was boring and started playing real pieces.
I can now play Rachmaninoff's C# minor prelude… Am I a fast learner
or is it normal for one who practices 70 hours a week.
I have played Moonlight Sonata 1st and 2nd movements in front of a
concert pianist (He is a friend of my father). He told me (I don't know if
he's told me these to not hurt my feelings ) my interpretation of
Moonlight was concert level and my C# minor prelude is really good, I
was fast in the Cascading chords part, except the middle fast section
was not clear and I could not accentuate the right hand's theme.
I actually now think about playing the third movement. I have heard
that it was difficult, but I think that it is doable . I have opened up the
tutorial video of bbdhrggl and it said it was grade 10 and it meant ten
years of serious piano playing. Ten years? Come on, I don't even play
for ten months. But it also said level 8 for the C# minor prelude so I
didn't care about that…
Am I over practicing and should I stop practicing at this pace? How
long should I practice a day and how muractice? Thank you for reading
and sorry for my English. I'll be glad if you help.”
We can be so caught up with our own actions in seeking to
perfect them as to totally lose track of reality as we forget how to
become social. In excluding the other by thinking only of self lies
the tragedy of becoming an antisocial person.
95
http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=50074.0
102
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 14 –“My social teenager”
This chapter looks at the senior high with group
compassion at the grade ten level– the Argentine culture, group
resiliency at the grade eleven– the afghan culture and group
camaraderie of the grade twelve student – the Nubia culture.
One marked difference between junior high and high
school is the students travel in pairs in the former and in groups in
the latter. But if you teach including presentations, learning
exercises and tests but excluding inquiries…you leave out what
students can learn from each other.
Time and again we have observed how group selfassessment can override both parent and teacher influence at this
level. So why are we overlooking this part of the learning
dynamics in hidden curriculum?
The study of Argentine culture is that of generals and
political parties who are either together compassionate about
disciplines or the democratic process. You see it partially in those
high schools which begin the grade ten year with a discipline team
staff dedicated to impart a greater depth of each subject and a
student body as the year progresses questioning if they will be
allowed to make group inquiries as to what is being taught.
Teachers like the Argentina generals see the formation of
these parties as at a threat to their command of the classroom when
it can be so easily viewed as a support. You, the teacher should be
learning to work with them instead of trying to divide them by
giving them individual assignments and expecting them all to
complete them which is now facing oppositions by most students96.
To say as many generals have said in Argentina in
ustifying their action “I did what needed to be done” excludes
96
Akhila Mol http://www.preservearticles.com/201012301951/homeworkshould-be-abolished.html
103 Preparing the child for the global village
what others could have done and limits the broader contexts of
other experts. This we learned in Alberta when a teacher gave his
interpretation of the extermination of the Jews as never happening
and was not questioned for many years because further inquiries of
a democratic nature with class discussions, were linked to
homework assignment which the teacher marked based solely on
his opinion.
In contrast we have student unions in Quebec trying to
dictate to the government about student fees which is similar to the
tactics of how the leaders of Argentine labor movements did the
same in assuming that their demand should be met irregardless of
the economic consequences, as negotiation was not an option as
we further read97;
“Argentine workers have a long history of labor militancy and
according to James Petras, “general strikes are more common in
Argentina than in any country in the world.”
In the midst of this compassion by senior teachers to impart
what they know and students having a say in what is being taught,
is the “Tango” as both sides in learning to dance together, can
develop compassionate social learning at the grade ten level of
studies. Wither both sides are willing to accept this new
arrangement like Argentina, it is still up for debate.
The verdict is still out because teachers know so little about
group learning and so much about mass education. The students in
contrast, feel at home within the group while often lost by the
amount of material that needs to be covered in a very short period
of time.
We (meaning teachers and students) have not sorted out the
aspects of the curriculum guidelines which pertain to presentation,
learning exercises and tests from those guidelines that are best
learned by group inquiries, discussions, projects and self97
Interview with James Petras, International Socialist Review Issue 21, JanuaryFebruary 2002 http://www.isreview.org/issues/21/petras_interview.shtml
104
Preparing the child to live within a global village
assessment. We simply do not as yet know the steps in which we
can dance together.
I admire both the teacher and student resiliency to carry on
as the student enters grade eleven as both teacher and students see
themselves as part of a system in which they have so little control.
It reminds me of Adam Ritscher’s speech delivered to the Students
Against War teach-in in Duluth, Minnesota (USA) on the
Afghanistan people98.
“The story of Afghanistan is in so many ways a very tragic one.
Afghanistan is one of the most impoverished nations of the
world. It is one of the most war-torn, most ravaged, and most
beleaguered of nations. It is a nation that has been beset by
invasion, external pressure and internal upheaval since before the
time of Alexander the Great. Its people are a people who have
endured more than most of us can ever imagine. In fact, for
many Afghanis, all that has changed in the last one thousand
years are the weapons which have been used against so many of
them.”
There are no weapons in our high schools even though now
we are installing metal detectors at our entrances and the NRA is
suggested that we harm our teachers and police our schools to
protect ourselves from further attacks from a deranged person who
ironically may be so because he has not been taught as to how to
deal with groups.
Could it be in not being taught how to work in groups, even
the teachers often resist team teaching. It becomes part of the
hidden curriculum which, unsupervised and uneducated,
promulgates enemies like teachers and students who fail to follow
“our” way of thinking.
The theme that seems to be constantly repeated in Afghan
history is “If only my enemies could be eliminated, how peaceful
would be my life.” Does that mean we should eliminate all
98
Adam Ritscher http://www.afghangovernment.com/briefhistory.htm
105 Preparing the child for the global village
students from our schools accept only those that want to learn
individually from us or fire all teachers that cannot seemed to get
along with all the students and keep only those who can?
As the article concludes;
“What is the solution for Afghanistan? What will end the
suffering of its people? The most immediate thing would be for
the United States government to end its bombing, withdraw its
troops, and respect the Afghan people’s right to selfdetermination. And while this alone would not end all of the
bloodshed and the fighting, it would create a situation where the
workers and farmers of Afghanistan would be more able to cast
off the warlords and petty feudal tyrants, take control of their
destinies, and create a society that is based upon cooperation and
solidarity. Towards that end let us redouble our efforts to stop
the U.S. bombing, to stop the U.S. war on the people of
Afghanistan!”
Learning resiliency is accepting the fact that within a
group, you cannot always have things your way. Teachers and
students that make it through grade eleven have learned to give and
take as the student is willing to take a longer time to listen and do
what is asked of him while teachers are learning to tailor the
assignments more to the interest of the child within a system that
has no self-assessment mechanism to cage what that interest is.
Without self-inquiries on topics that the student wishes to
cover in more depth, you have no class discussions. Without class
discussions, you have no group initiative projects. In the absence
of all three, on what can the student do self-assessment? The
teacher may say that they have no time for these activities because
they must cover all the guidelines of the curriculum. But when you
look at those guidelines, many are better covered in the doing of
those activities.
This is senior high. Why are we still babying the student or
spoon feeding him? Could it be that we recognize with the lack of
camaraderie in the way that we teach and learn, we find ourselves
with no other choices!
106
Preparing the child to live within a global village
What is remarkable about the Nubian culture, as teacher
and students teach and learn at grade twelve, is the lack of class
distinction which is so important if group are to amicably work
together. We note of its history99;
"Throughout most of Nubia, archaeological remains of the
Ballana culture give the impression of a decentralized
agrarian society, poorer but more self-sufficient than the
society of Meroitic times. Although differences of wealth
are perceptible from family to family and from village to
village, there is no conspicuously differentiated middle
class...."
Their history can be traced back to the Stone age where
classification of labor was determined by the type of tool that one
could produce. Labor can be improved if one could create devices
that reduce the physical labor of doing something.
It should be obvious to any grade twelve student that one is
talented in different areas as becomes evident over three years of
group activities. One is by now sought out in recognition of what
one can do within a very short period of time because of one’s own
expertise in that area. So explain to me why a student upon
graduating in having completed all the required courses, is unable
to decide what he is going to do in his life. Could it be that group
inquiries, class discussions, practical group projects and self-group
assessment were not included in his schedule?
As we study the Nubian society further, there was a split
between the “A” group who took time to reflect on how to improve
the way things interact and “C” group who looked for land that
could best be cultivated with the use of one’s tools or talent. The
“A” were noted to make friends with their neighbor as they saw in
trade and in other services what could be gained with Egypt and
other countries while the “C” group moved to more fertile land to
practice their trades.
99
http://www.numibia.net/nubia/x-group.htm
107 Preparing the child for the global village
But as they separated from each other, they became weaker
not stronger and do we do the same by not trying to see how the
subjects intertwine together? Do we start to rely so much on
textbooks to give us an overview of a discipline that can be taught
anywhere to produce the highest number at the lowest cost, that the
teacher makes no attempt to see how they work together to explain
the world around us?
Without the inquiries… where is the links to one’s
community to explain why not one but all disciplines are needed to
graduate? How do we make the textbooks come alive if we do not
consider local politics, resources and health questions as they relate
together in promoting the welfare of the community?
Self-assessment on social involvement does not end upon
graduating from high school. It becomes more complicated as we
start to assess our roles in life. You cannot simply tell people what
to do because you know what needs to be done; you must be able
to also meet their needs. Nor can you just go do your thing and
expect someone to manage your affairs; you need to accept
supervision.
As we study the culture further we learn of a third “X”
group the Balana culture emerging which focused on the “souls” of
the community. We know this by their increase attachment to
funerals. We see this upon students graduating in both
congratulating in being able to master multiple disciplines as well
loss of friendships as they take different paths in life and the
community of that grade level is dissolved.
Or do we stand out from the crowd in pretending to be an
idealist who is supposed to be well educated in every grace except
in what can be achieved if mankind shared his knowledge and
skills and made an effort to create an ideal world. If we are the
former , you may want to read the poem by Edwin Arlington
Robinson on Richard Cory100
100
Edwin Arlington http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/
108
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
I ask my reader to read on because usually you need to
reach the age of thirty before you have such control over your
emotions that you are ready for life as sadly so many youth commit
suicide in believing that they are ideal and ready for life when
they are barely half way.
In studying the ideal in post-secondary , you will need far
more study on those before you who share in what you want to
accomplish as you are not alone nor supported only by one person,
who may at times doubt what you wish to achieve (chapter 15)
Nor is your design for your world truly viable without some
mastery of certain skills and greater understanding of the dynamics
of your field of study and some post-doctoral case studies as to its
possible application (chapter 16). Your own conclusions should
come after these chapters and not before them.
Ideas are what we share, not what we are as a person.
109 Preparing the child for the global village
Chapter 15 – “My teenager as an idealist”
This chapter deals with post-secondary education. The
years of college where we protest that there must be a better way
of doing things – Swiss culture. The next years of University
where we take a step back to study the bigger picture and our place
within it – Buddhist culture and the last years of university where
students begin to make new allies in their chosen field – Thailand
culture.
As a student reaches the age of nineteen, there is idealism
within him of how the world can be improved from what it
presently is. He takes specific courses in that area where he can
make the most difference. This process usually begins in protest as
to what for self is no longer acceptable.
Prime examples of protest are the Swiss101. They protested
against barbarianism, Roman rule and church corruption. You do
not, as terrorists would like us to believe, destroy things to make
something better. You take them apart and find ways to improve
them like a properly functioning Swiss watch. You do not become
lawless in protest against rules that were supposed to establish
order but are causing unrest, you take the time to negotiate new
rules that both parties can agree to as Swiss became excellent third
party conciliators. You do not join in the share of corruption in
seeking to justify it because others are doing it and you cannot
afford to live at your current salary. You learn higher skills and
knowledge, which brings in a better pay and makes you less in
protest against yourself in knowing that you can do more if only
you can take some time to assess yourself to be of service to the
multi-groups of society.
When the Swiss gained their democracy, their protestation
ended. In other words, by putting the people in charge who were
doing the protest, they began to see that they who complain may
also if left in charge, find the answer, or at least understand how
101
Thurer, Georg “Free and Swiss” translated by Heller & Lang, Oswald Wolff,
London,1970
110
Preparing the child to live within a global village
complex is the actual problem.
Hence the question every student should be asking as they
enter college or trade school is “What irritates me most about my
present world?” Does an engine not running properly bother you?
Do you become upset that a house is built improperly and as Mike
Holmes says “Let’s do it right”. Does in ustice bother you? And so
on…
What the Swiss culture is saying very bluntly is that you
are not a baby anymore where crying will get you immediate help.
You are now old enough to do something about it except the
resolving of your issues will take time. Are you willing to give of
your time to discover viable solutions!
Nor should you take on issues that do not concern you as
you need to focus on issues that do and like the Swiss become
neutral to concerns which neither affect you and of which you are
not sufficiently knowledgeable to make a comment. This does not
mean that you ask no questions when money is deposited in your
bank and you are rewarded by concealing where it was derived.
When universities were completely funded by rich alumni
graduates, one did not question where the money was being used
having appreciated the education. Today such funding is mostly
public and many in not have attended, are beginning to question its
usage.
I know of one institution in particular whose director
though it wise to consult the industries using their graduates. When
the personnel managers came to evaluate their programs, they
suggested closing the institutions as the trades that they were
teaching were no longer in in use within the industry. Instead of
taking their advice, they reasoned among themselves as to the
intrinsic values in taking the courses and kept the school open for
their own benefit of having a job and certainly not to alleviate the
protest of their students.
111 Preparing the child for the global village
Some universities are now asking on their application for
students to put down the questions that they want answered in
coming to their university. This often takes the first year of studies
to learn the nature of the problem.
As the student enters his second and third year of
university, we turn now to the Buddhist culture in detaching
oneself from the wheel of what I call “irritation’ in noting what is
really bothering you from that which is only annoying you. If Mary
forgot to tell me about something she did which I found was
important to my activities that is annoying. But if Tom tells me
that he has the solution to my problem and I discover that he did
not know what he was talking that is more than annoying and I
begin to question why I ever asked him in the first place.
In reaching the second level of not being annoyed by
actually consulting with one who does know something about what
I wish to know, you can bring peace where once there was war as
noted in this encounter102;
“One of the most significant events in the history of Buddhism is
the chance encounter of the monk Nigrodha and the emperor
Ashoka Maurya. Ashoka, succeeding his father after a bloody
power struggle in 268 bc, found himself deeply disturbed by the
carnage he caused while suppressing a revolt in the land of the
Kalingas. Meeting Nigrodha convinced Emperor Ashoka to
devote himself to peace.”
An idealist looks for an amiable solution and often rejects
warfare as it often makes matters worse. By choosing a “middle
way” that is neither confrontational nor apathetic in its gesture, but
a theory worth considering in resolving certain issues, the student
begins to grasp the many forms that relationships can take in
matter and people and the possible actions within each one.
There is however such a thing as being so middle minded,
so knowledgeable about theories that have not been challenged by
102
Dr. C. George Boeree http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhahist.html
112
Preparing the child to live within a global village
further inquiries…that the student may become book wise but
useless in actual circumstances. It is not that the theory does not
have some validity, but not knowing when it can best be used,
makes one question its utility.
Let me give you an example. In my teaching of
undergraduate teachers, I gave them the curriculum guidelines for
various grade levels, I then ask them to place these guidelines
within the dynamics of a schools year where the teacher and
student relationship as well as class interaction changes over the
year. Now instead of being annoyed by so many theories or ways
to teach, they began to see the need for so many as circumstances
change in the course of the year.
This brings us to the third aspect of Buddhism –
reincarnation as the student has begun his third year of university.
Now that you have familiarise yourself with the subject in your
first years, you can now undertake more complex concepts in the
second or third year which you could not even conceive in your
first year. This is known in the university argon as “prerequisites’
for higher learning courses.
You are literally reincarnate as you look at the same issues
in a new light and begin to see what maybe somebody wrote long
ago that now makes sense to you or something recently that now
has relevance. This is reinforced by inquiries… and sadly denied
by professors who believe that you have not the intelligence to
comprehend the way they do as they dwell on their lectures and
their research and not the feedback of their students. They are more
focused on “publish or perish” than the present reaction of students
to what they are researching and often do neither.
These professors need to take a lesson from the Buddhist
who went out to meet the public versus those who sought to avoid
humanity by hiding in ivory towers. The public greeted them with
open arms and supported those who succeeded in raising their
consciousness while we today question those who accept our
money and give us nothing in return.
113 Preparing the child for the global village
As the university student approaches graduation, he should
like the Thailand culture, seek out people whom he can now be of
service to as we read about Thailand during the Sukhothai
period103;
Thailand Sukhothai, meaning the ''Dawn of Happiness'' was the
first truly independent Thai Kingdom founded in 1238, by two
Thai chieftains, Khun Bang Klang Tao and Khun Pa Muang ,
this ending Khmer rule from Angkor Wat. In the early 1300s,
Sukhothai enjoyed rule over the Chao Phya River basin,
westward to the bay of Bengal and the entire Peninsula. A
kingdom that was short-lived but of immense cultural
importance in the nation’s history. Sukhothai period was the
most flourishing period of Thailand. It quickly expanded its
boundary of influence after independence. Sukhothai period was
considered to be a golden age of Thai culture. During that time
in the history, everybody could say that "There were fish in the
waters and rice in the fields".
…During this time Thai had strong friendship with neighboring
countries. It absorbed elements of various civilizations which
they came into contact. Thai maintained and advanced their
culture ties with China. The potters entered Thai artistry and
extensive trade was established with Cambodia and India.
After the death of Khun Pha Muang in 1279, Ramkhamhaeng
King, the third son of Si Inthrahit, ascended to the throne. Under
the Ramkhamhaeng King, Sukhothai had strong friendship with
neighboring China.
Between the caring for others as exemplified in the
Buddhist, there are friendships or a commitment to care for each
other. Two chieftains instead of fighting with each other as to who
should rule, chose to be friends. They set the tone of cooperation
rather than advisory within their nation and the nation as a whole
became more caring in noting that there was more to gain in
sharing and appreciating what the other had to offer than in trying
to find ways to restrict and prevent the other from marketing so as
to advance ones wares.
103
http://www.hellosiam.com/html/thailand/thailand-history.htm
114
Preparing the child to live within a global village
This friendship was further enhanced by seeking to make
friends with the surrounding countries which with such diversity
ensured prosperity for all. It reinforced the concept that active
friendships makes for a good economy as we note how little was
spent of wars and repairs afterwards.
It did this by absorbing or including the dynamics of other
cultures into its mix rather than trying to sustain its own dynamics
as the only aspects worth pursuing. A theme that is consistent
throughout history when nations grow as they accept to interact
with other cultures and shrink when they start to inner fight among
themselves and lose sight of their group ideal.
Where this clash occurs as noted on an episode on “Mash”
when Bj and Charles fight over who should get credit for a
surgery104, it sometimes require comedy or an awareness of the
absurd to make us aware of how many people are involved in
finding a solution.
This is the same absurdity we sometimes find in faculties
that are trying to justify their funds over another while limiting the
questions being asked and the funding that can be awarded to the
university. I see it in cultures asking the government for funding in
assuming that their culture is the only one to be taught in the
school and government saying “No” because they simply do not
have the funding to support every culture in the province.
More importantly, as we reach the masters, doctoral and
post-doctoral studies, you create poor designs for the real world in
trying to advertise that your product is better than the other while
lacking so many components and consideration in making it.
As Victor Papanek in the preface of his book “Design for
the real world105” writes;
104
Mash episode 183 – “Stars and Stripes” December 7th, 979
Victor Papanek http://playpen.icomtek.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind
_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/designvictor.pdf
105
115 Preparing the child for the global village
There are professions more harmful than industrial
design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one
profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people
to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in
order to impress others who don't care, is probably the phoniest
field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the
tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second.
Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously
designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and
mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans
to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people. Before (in
the 'good old days'), if a person liked killing people, he had to
become a general, purchase a coal-mine, or else study nuclear
physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a massproduction basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles
that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world
each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage
to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and
processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become
a dangerous breed. And the skills needed in these activities are
taught carefully to young people.”
By excluding subjective evaluation and any inquiries,
discussions or group projects for efficiency of design, are we
leaving something critical out of the learning process? Does the
Gordon Commission make a point; in discovering that this socalled objective testing by itself, though efficient, is not producing
the critical thinking that we expect from an educated student?
Could it be as we enter the post graduate years of overall
design, the paradigm itself of being so objective in our education
has become the problem in not leaving room for any subjective
assessment?
Can we take the soul out of learning and still have a design?
116
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Chapter 16 – “My designing adult”
This chapter looks at the post graduate years in envisioning
a better real design for our world at the master’s level – Iraq
culture, in noting traditions that should be kept within the design at
the doctorial level – Iranian culture and modern changes in
acceptance over past designs at the post-doctoral level – Turkish
culture.
At twenty four, you know enough about life to begin to
notice what is not working. You begin taking time off to “twink” –
(meaning make it shine more brightly). As you read how far back
Iraq’s history goes106, you would think that we got it right by now,
but in fact, we are still twinking.
Iraq, known in classical antiquity as Mesopotamia, was home to
the oldest civilizations in the world, with a cultural history of
over 10,000 years, hence its common epithet, the Cradle of
Civilization.
This “twinking” creates active visions as oppose to dreams
which come from reflection, like the city of Babylon which had
undergone many changes over the years as what we expected has
not been what we wanted. But at the master’s level we are learning
what within this field what enlightens us by trying new approaches
that seems to improve the way we do things.
In education, in my case, this translated into asking what
would happen to education if we included cultures within the
curriculum. Would we result in a Tower of Babel curriculum as we
try to incorporate subjectivity into a very objective education as we
further read into Iraq’s history107;
The first great nation to rise out of the fertile crescent was
Sumeria, this in about 4000 B.C. The Sumerians built irrigation
106
107
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq
http://www.indepthinfo.com/historycountry/iraq/
117 Preparing the child for the global village
canals, and also developed the first known form of writing,
known as cuneiform. But like all empires, the Sumerians would
pass from the scene. Subsequently, the region would spawn
empires or host them over the centuries. These included the
Chaldeans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, the Medes, Greeks
(Macedonian and Seleucid), Romans, Parthians, Arabs,
Mongols, Ottoman Turks, and the British. The reason so many
empires fought over the area was partly the region's agricultural
resources. In modern times oil has been a factor because Iraq
possesses huge reserves. But the main reason Iraq has been so
often fought over is that it lies in a conspicuous place on the
world map, in the middle of an invasion route that meets at the
crux of three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Would every parent expect their culture to be taught in the
school with every child speaking a different language or like all
structures, start with a very wide base and build smaller structures
upon it as we go to what is relevant to all as we start with creating
chapter one to what is mostly relevant to us, chapter sixteen, one’s
own design?
Secondly, how would we evaluate such a design as every
level contains different meaning unless we include subjective selfevaluation that can explain why the objective evaluation will be
different for each child? Just like in a building manual, you do not
expect all bolts to be the same nor the pieces to construct it.
It is in the way that we have been created differently. We
have different curiosities, diversity of views in class discussion and
selection of roles to play in group projects that like a “lego”
construction with many diverse parts. The design potential
becomes practically limitless. Or does It?
As the one who knows the land says to the American who
wants to make the wheels go faster to irrigate it.
“If you increase the flow, you will flood the lands”
There are reasons why certain traditions continue in
different part of our world and why they are religiously followed.
118
Preparing the child to live within a global village
This brings us to our doctoral studies as we turn to the Iranian
culture to evaluate the application of our designs as we note on the
Iranians by Foltz108;
“Foltz has emphasized the role of Iranians in the spread of
culture in world history, particularly in the domain of religions.
In particular, he sees the Silk Road as having arisen from the
travels of traders who were mostly of Iranian background”
To find out more of the major influences, we read in a very
Brief History of Iran and Iranian Religions109;
As you probably know, the religion in Iran has a very long
history, more than 10,000 years. Mithraism and Zoroastrianism
are two old Persian religions that influenced almost all religions.
Mithraism is about the slaying of the bull within us as it
will lead us to doing that which we know is wrong but we are “too
bullheaded” to admit it as we try to defy all cultural traditions
dealing with reflection and listen only to those who assert action. If
you eat and exercise, you will probably avoid many illnesses. But
if you continue to eat and over exercise, it does not follow that you
feel even better. In fact, you may even be worse in not taking time
to reflect on matters which gives your body time to rejuvenate.
Andrew Ho from Harvard in his most recent presentation in
San Francisco last month (April 2013) on the future of the Gordon
Commission warned of what he called the “Purpose Drift” where
even with the best of intention, in not considering the dynamics of
where something is being implemented, one can in overly
generalizing its usage, find oneself with unexpected results.
This response that we do the same exact steps without
factoring the people input, is like telling everyone to conform to
the same diet and exercise and expecting everyone to have the
108
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Foltz
http://iransnews.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/a-very-brief-history-of-iran-andiranian-religions/
109
119 Preparing the child for the global village
same results.
The second form of religiosity is Zoroastrianism that of
temptation as we struggle not to commit acts which are known to
be inhuman. We purposely refrain from acting as we assume that
reflection cannot lead us into temptation of committing the wrong
act. We make sure that we are well rested before taking on any
exercise and the exercise that we do accept to do are of the least
strenuous to us.
Muscles atrophy when not in use which makes us all
“couch potatoes” so called brilliant in reflection because we spend
so much time doing it. But often unable to execute any of our great
ideas as we say “Maybe it needs more thought” to camouflage our
poor fitness record.
But my purpose in writing this book is neither to criticize
those who are inactive by being to reflective nor overactive by
becoming so much of a doer, it is to educate the public in the lack
of both in making critical decisions, especially as the child of
today’s village is global.
Iran is correct in that we cannot make these decisions
unless the cultural factor is included in our education. Is it
however “Allah’s way” in reviewing how children develop their
consciousness that it be done solely within one culture? Do we
make better decisions by being and becoming multicultural
minded?
The original purpose of universities was to raise our
consciousness above the state so that this would not happen. But as
Plato once said “Who is guarding the guards?110” or in today’s
context “Have we forgot what we are guarding – our cultures?”
For a doctor to become a healer, he must examine the
whole patient, not just one aspect as this can lead to misdiagnosis.
110
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education
_plato_republic.html
120
Preparing the child to live within a global village
In the same manner, by Iran focusing solely on the “Will of Allah”
as it is God’s will that we do develop our own identity, they may
have touched upon the overall purpose of the design of Creation
but certainly not how to make it relative for me today.
For modern design, we need to look at Turkey and its
background111.
“Eastern and Western, Asian and European are intermingled in
the civilization or modern Turkey.”
And to the visions of Ataturk112
“In the following centuries when the Ottoman Empire
lost its momentum, Turkey entered a period of stagnation and
gradually a period of decline.
Against this challenge, the Turkish nation engaged in a
struggle to restore her territorial integrity and independence, to
repulse foreign aggressors, to create a new state, to disassociate
Turkey from the crumbling Ottoman dynasty, to eradicate an old
and decrepit order and to build a modern Turkey dedicated to
political, social and economic progress. This was the vision of
Ataturk, a general in the Ottoman army who had distinguished
himself in the defense of Çanakkale.”
What Ataturk had which most nation lack as do many
doctoral graduates who chose to overspecialize early in their
career, is a diverse heritage to better understand a modern design
that could embrace so many different perspectives. You cannot
expect your child to become a modern thinker while denying how
much new designs have come from the mixing of old ones in a
new way.
The identity of our children lies in the mixing as I created
this story on cultural design to illustrate where modern thinking is
heading.
111
112
http://www.gototurkey.co.uk/culture-arts/history-civilization/
http://www.turkeyexplorers.com/brief-history-of-turkey.html
121 Preparing the child for the global village
Our Heritage
At first there was only two cultures; those who contemplated on
life’s meaning and what was beautiful about our world which we
called women or white people and then there are those whose
task it was to do all the labor which we labelled as men or black
people.
Children came into being as colored people because they had
within them a mixture of light and darkness. They enjoyed
contemplating as well as the completion of a task though the
parents tried by their upbringing to keep them white or dark by
what they could or could not do. What they finally accepted as
each new generation eventually outnumbered them was a color
that could be light or dark and the segregation of those who were
not of true blood in not being the same pigment as them. Their
blue color of the light was different than a red view or a yellow
one and it was important that their children learn the difference.
But as nature would have it, these colors intermarried to form
new colors and affirm that we can indeed have more than one
way to perceive our life as we fully explore its dynamics. Hence
cultures enable us to understand these dynamics as we focus
together on a specific aspect but no person today can be labelled
as purely being from this culture unless they deliberately wish to
think solely from this point of perspective.
For with the intermarriage continuing, the multi-colored people
soon outnumbered the pure colored people and saw themselves
far more dynamic in their thoughts than those who preferred to
live solely within their own culture.
Like the Turkish people who revisited their Ottoman
culture once they saw what other countries were doing, we
appreciate a culture more in context with other cultures than we do
by itself in the absence to its contribution to the overall dynamics.
This I have observed from people who have travelled abroad and
returned home. While those who stay always at home make me
question if they actually know the full value of their culture.
Those who stay only with their own culture puzzle me as
122
Preparing the child to live within a global village
who would want to live in a neighborhood where everyone wears
the same clothes and all the houses are built alike. It is not within
our makeup to marry people who are closely related us so why
would we want to promulgate sameness!
My only answer as I watch the movie the “Matrix” is that
we would be easier to manage as we would be all alike. But I
cannot believe that this would suit our nature as I read this story of
the child who drew a picture with a white and black crayon.
“ A teacher in seeing a picture drawn by a
child only in black and white, immediately
reported it to the school counsellor. The
counsellor, having studied the implications
of drawing in these colours, had a meeting
with the parents. Then after finding no
apparent reason why the child drew in such
contrasting colours, asked the child. The
child responded “They were the only
crayons left in the box.”113
This brings us to the conclusion in asking where some
modern trends are heading in providing a full box of crayons for
our children in starting to seriously consider living within our
global village. There are not to coin a phrase “fifty colors of gray”.
There are an infinite amount of colors to those who seek to find
meaning in their life.
I have high hopes for those who are prepared as this
preparation comes to an end. I am very doubtful of those who
having not prepared, will discount culture and try making us
believe that life is in fact meaningless and everything in life
happens by accident. They will say “Education is a waste of time
because in a fully objective world, nothing has meaning”. If we
continue solely with objective testing, they may have a point.
113
Snyder, Benson R “The Hidden Curriculum”. MIT Press, London,1973
123 Preparing the child for the global village
Conclusion: “Dynamic thinking”
The moment the student starts living life instead of
preparing for it, he enters the world of dynamic thinking. If
education is only about remembering facts and mastering certain
skills, students are not ready for life. Dynamic thinking requires;
making inquiries so as to be relevant in your in your information,
the capability to discuss your findings with others, the capability to
work with others on projects and ask yourself are you doing your
best in making your contribution.
Many great educators have delved into it; like Jürgen
Habermas in action research and Ludwig Wittgenstein logic within
each phenomenon, Lawrence Kohlberg & Paul H. Hirst reaching
consensus, Harry Broudy’s knowledge of human nature, John
I.Goodlad’s non-grading approach, Ivan Illich’s words of
“deschooling” and Nel Nodding, care”, Simone Weil’s
“décréation” & Michael Apple “rights of the individual”, H. Rugg
“child centered” ,Bruner’s interpretive capacities and respect,Jane
Roland Martin’s gender difference, Clark Kerr’s importance of
new knowledge from the student,Neil Postmen “teaching can be a
subversive activity”,A.S.Neil, Carl Rogers and Joseph J. Schwab
mastery in the Gestalt ., Basil Bernstein & Israel Scheffler on
functioning for a particular context, not just knowledge about a
subject, Theodore R. Sizer “functional capability” and many
more114. But none connected to cultures nor at which grade level
one can do different forms of inquiries, classrooms discussions..
As a result until now in the publishing of this book, we
have had numerous affirmations of doing these activities within
our classroom with very positive reactions from students but no
sustain commitment in not seeing how they build on each other at
and through the grade levels. Like the focusing on a culture rather
than how together how they making us think more dynamically,
educators saw the importance of their contribution, while
overlooking the combine impact of their work.
114
Palmer Joy A, “Fifty Modern Thinkers on ducation” London,200
124
Preparing the child to live within a global village
It is in using many cultures which seem suited for different
grade levels that we can now better understand the student in being
and becoming dynamic in his thinking as he seeks to apply what he
has learned. This is provided that we included subjective
assessment within the learning process.
Dynamic implies that one is at times objective in
considering what needs to be learned and retained and at other
times subjective in what one choose to further learn as more
personally related to oneself. If you exclude the latter as the
Gordon commission uncovered, the student becomes lacking in
critical thinking.
If one excludes the former in making the school solely an
inquiry process, you find parents asking for a return to the basics
as students waste too much time reinventing the wheel. To be and
become dynamic, a student needs to learn how to listen (teacher
presentation, learning exercises and tests) and to speak (inquiry,
class discussion, group project and self-assessment).
To do both requires a time for social interaction within the
classroom. This you cannot have if you either exclude culture from
the classroom or perhaps unknowingly restrict conversation to the
culture that one is familiar. In restricting it, one finds education to
be solely about instructions which requires very little feedback by
the students and a bias evaluation towards those proficient in this
area. In inputting only one’s culture, it becomes hard not to
indoctrinate the student as the subject in conversation becomes
limited to how it has been interpreted by that culture.
Wither a person chooses certain cultures over others upon
graduating or entering life is dependent with which they choose to
associate. But a child in growing up as we have seen through these
chapters should not be solely committed to any one of them less he
or the teacher deliberately retard the growth in doing so and often
begin to fabricate cultural labels which next generation of children
in an new type of environment, they clearly do not have.
125 Preparing the child for the global village
As the story of heritage in the last chapter reveals, we are
not heading in the direction of becoming a one culture society
fighting over which one should be predominant. We are instead in
learning of many cultures, becoming more dynamic in our thinking
and perhaps better understanding Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata115
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace
there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all
persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to
others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their
story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to
the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and
bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than
yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep
interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real
possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of
trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many
persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of
heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither
be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and
disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering
the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in
sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are
a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you
have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no
doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to
be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy
confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a
beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
115
Max Ehrmann 1920 http://www.businessballs.com/desideratapoem.htm
126
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Cultural Bibliography
Aldred, Cyril “The gyptians”, Thames & Hudson, London, 98
Arberry, A.J. “Revelation and Reason in Islam”,Allen & Unwin, London, 9 7
Armstrong,K. “Ahistory of God”. Harper Row, N.Y., 99
Arvin,Harvey “Dreamkeepers”, Harper Row, N.Y., 993
Aquinas, Thomas “”The pocket Aquinas”, Washington Square Press,inc. New
York 1960
Ascherson, Neil “The struggles for Poland”, Random House, N.Y., 987
Bascon William R.& “Continuity and Change in African Culture, Phoenix
Herskovits Melville
Books, Chicago, 1959
Benedict, Ruth “Patterns of Culture”, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 93
Boas, Franz “The Mind of Primitive Man”,The Free Press, N.Y>, 973
Boorstin, Daniel J. “The Americans, National xperience” , Random House,
New York, 2010
Bronoski J. “The Ascent of Man”,BBC, London, 973
Cardinal, H. “The rebirth of Canada’s Indians”. Edmonton, AB: Hurtig
Publishers. 1977
Careless & Brown “Part one of The Canadians 867- 967”, Cage Publishing,
Toronto, 1980
Cassirer, rmst “An ssay on Man”, Bantam Books Toronto,1970
Clark, Manning “A short history of Australia”, Mentor Book,Toronto,1963,1969
Cole, Michael & Sheila “The development of Children”, Worth Publishing,
N.Y.,2001
Copleston, Frederick “A History of Philosophy” Vol. Descartes to Leibniz
Cox, Bruce “Cultural cology” readings on the Canadian Indians and skimos,
The Canadian Publishers, Toronto, 1973
De Chardin, Pierre Teillard “The Phenomenon of Man”, Fontana Books,
127 Preparing the child for the global village
N.Y.,1966
Diamont Stanley “Primitive Views of the World”, Columbia University Press,
New York, 1960
Douglas, Mary “Man in Africa”, Tavistock Publications, Toronton, 969
Kaberry, M.Phyllis
Durant , Will “The Story of Philosophy”, Washington Square Press, New
Youk,1967
Durant , Will & Ariel “The lessons of History”, Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 1968
Dunn, C.J. “ veryday Life in Traditional Japan” B.T. Batsford Ltd, Putnam’s
Sons, New York, 1969
liot, Alexander “The Horizon Concise History of Greece” American Heritage
Pub.Co., New York,1961
Garcelia de la Vega “The Incas”, Avon library Book, NewYork, 1961
Greenway, John “Down among the Wild Men”, Little Brown, Boston, 972
Kant, Immanuel “Kant Selections” ed. Theodore M.Greene, Charles Scribner’s
Sons, N.Y. 1957
Haley Alex “Roots” Dell pub., New York, 980
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich “Hegel Selections” ed. Jacob Loewenberg,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, N.Y. 9 7
Hesse. Herman “The Journey to the ast”, GranadaPublishing, N.Y., 979
Herskovits & Melville J. “Cultural Relativism”, Vintage Books, N.Y. 972
Holy Bible New International Version, Zondervan Publishers, Grand Rapids,
Micigan 1984
Horowitz, Irving L. “Masses in Latin America”, Oxford University Press, N.Y.
1970
Koestler, Arthur “The Ghost in the Machine” Pan Books, London, 97
Kosambi, D.D. “Ancient India; A history of its Culture and Civilization”,
Meridian books, Ohio 1965
Kranzberg, Melvin “Technology and Culture, an Antology” New American
128
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Davenport, William Library, N.Y, 1972
Kyi, Aung San Suu “The Voice of Hope”,Hushion House, Toronto, 997
Levi-Straus, Claude “The Raw and the Cooked” and “From Honey to Ashes”
Introduction to Science of mythology Vol.1 & 2, Harper Torchbooks, New
York,1964, 1973
Mackey, S, “The Iranians” Dutton Books Peguin Group, New York, 992
Mario Pei “The Story of Language”. Mentor Books, N.Y.,1992
Maybury-Lewis “Millennium”, Penguin Group, N.Y. 992
Meyer, Carolyn & Callenkant “The Mystery of the Ancient Maya”, Charles
Margaret K. McElderry Book, Aheneum New.York. 1985
Montagu, M.F., Ashley “Culture Man’s Adaptive Dimension” Oxford
University Press, N.Y., 1974
Mighton, John The Myth of ability, House of Anansi Press Inc. Toronto,2007
Muller, Herbert J. “The Uses of the Past profiles of societies” Mento books,
Oxford UniversityPress, 1960
Pascal, Blaise “Pensées”Nelson, Éditeurs, edition Lutetia, Paris, 1946
Porch, Douglas “The conquest of the Sahara”,Knopf, 98
Ribeiro, Darcy “The Americas and Civilization”, .P. Dulton & Co.Inc.
N.Y.,1972
Russell, Betrand “Wisdom of the West”, Premier books, by Fwascett Worl
Library, N.Y., 1964
Samson, G.B. “Japan, a Short Cultural History”, Stanford University Press,
Stanford California, 1978
Scott, F. D. “Sweden – The Nation’s History, North Central Publishing
Co.,St.Paul, U.S., 1977
Shah, Idries “The Sufis”, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden city, New York,
1964
Shibert, Adrian “The Land and People of Spain” Harper Collin Publishers, New
York, 1992
129 Preparing the child for the global village
Snyder, Benson R. “The Hidden Curriculum”, Knorpf Inc.,N.Y.1971
Starr, Chester G. “ arly Man”, Oxford University Press, London, 973
Sultebly Oresp “Ukraine – a History”, Toronto Univ. Press,Toronto, 99
Thurer. Georg “Free & Swiss” translated by Heller & Lang, Oswald Wolff,
London, 1970
Toynbee, Arnold “A Study of History” Toronto University, American heritage
Press, N.Y., 1972
Vardey, Lucinda “God in All Worlds”,Random House, N.Y., 99
White, John M. “Ancient gypt, very day Life”,Peter Bedrick Books, N.Y.
1991
Wilhelm Baynes “I Ching” Princeton Press, new York, 990
Watkins, william Jon “The tracker”, Berkley Publishing Corporation, N.Y.,
1979
Wilson, John A. “The Culture of Ancient gypt”, University Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1951
Zaehner, R.C. “The Concise ncyclopedia of Living Faiths”, Beacon Press,
Boston, 1959
130
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Educational Bibliography
Ames, C. Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 84, 261-271. 1992.
Armstrong, Thomas Multiple Intelligences in the classroom , Association for
Supervision and Curriculum development Alexandriam Virginia, 2001
Andrews Jack & Lupart Judy, The Inclusive Classroom 2nd ed., Nelson
Thompson, Toronto, 2000
Ashman Adrian F. and. Conway Robert N.F, An introduction to cognitive
education : theory and applications, Routledge, London,1997
Ausubel, D. P. Reception learning and the rote-meaningful dimension. In E.
Stones (Ed.), Readings in educational psychology: Learning and teaching (pp.
193 206). London: Methuen. 1970.
Baker, J. M. & Zigmond, N. Are regular education classes equipped to
accommodate students with learning disabilities? Exceptional Children, p.56(6),
515-526. 1990.
Bandura, A. Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.1986
Ibid, A. Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. 1997.
Belmont, J. M. Cognitive strategies and strategic learning. American
Psychologist, 44(2), 142-148.1989
Benbow, C. P. Mathematically talented children: Can acceleration meet their
educational needs? In N. Colangelo & G. A. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted
education (pp. 154-165). Toronto: Allyn & Bacon.
1991.
Bender, W. N. Differentiating instruction for students with learning disabilities.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 2002.
Laura . Berk, Awakening Children’s Minds, Oxford University Press, New
York, 2001
Biklen, D. P. Redefining schools. In D. Biklen, D. Ferguson, & A. Ford (Eds.),
Schooling and disability (p. 1-24). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1989.
131 Preparing the child for the global village
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of
educational goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. Toronto: Longmans. 1956.
Borba,Michele, Building Moral Intelligence, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco,2001
Borkowski, J. G. Metacognitive theory: A framework for teaching literacy,
writing, and math skills. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 25(4), 253-257.1992
Borkowski, J. G. Metacognition: Theory or chapter heading? Learning and
Individual Differences, 8(4), 391-402.1996
Borkowski, J. G., Carr, M., Rellinger, E., & Pressley, M. Self-regulated
cognition: Interdependence of metacognition, attributions, and self-esteem. In B.
F. Jones, L. Idol, et al. (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking and cognitive instruction
(pp. 53 92). Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.1990
Borkowski, J.G., Carr, M.,& Maxwell, S.Motivational components of
underachievement.Developmental Psychology, 27 (1),1991
Borkowski, J. G., Day, J.D., Saenz, D., Dietmeyer, D., Estrada, T. M., &
Groteluschen, A. (n.d.). Expanding the boundaries of cognitive interventions. In
B. Wong (Ed.), Intervention research with students with learning disabilities.
New York: Springer-Verlag.1992
Borkowski, J. G., Estrada, T. M., Milstead, M., & Hale, C. A. General problemsolving skills: relations between metacognitive and strategic processing.
Learning Disability Quarterly, 12(1), 57-70,1989
Borkowski, J. G., Johnston, M. B., & Reid, M. K. . Metacognition, motivation,
and controlled performance. In S. J. Ceci (Ed.), Handbook of cognitive, social
and neuropsychological aspects of learning disabilities (Vol. 2; pp. 147 171).
Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1986
Borkowski, J. G., & Muthukrishna, N. Moving metacognition into the
classroom: “Working models” and effective strategy teaching. In M. Pressley,
K. R. Harris, & J. T. Guthrie (Eds.), Promoting academic literacy (pp. 477-501).
Toronto: Academic Press.1992
Bos, C. S., & Van Reusen, A. K. Academic interventions with learning disabled
students: A cognitive/metacognitive approach. In J. E. Obrzut & G. W. Hynd
(Ed.), Neuropsychological foundations of learning disabilities (pp. 659 683).
San Diego: Academic Press.1991
Bouffard Terese Cognitive psychology; Individual
development;metacognition;reading self-concept;sex differences, European
132
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Journal of Psychology of education, v13n1,p.61-74,Mar,1998
Broadfoot P, Assessment, Schools and Society, Mehuen & Co., ltd, N.Y.1979
Browne, D. B. Learning style and Native Americans. Canadian Journal of
Native Education, 17(1), 23-35. 1990
Bruner, J. S. The Relevance of Education, New York: Norton. In this book
Bruner applied his theories to infant development. 1971
Burns, R., , Self-concept development and education, Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, London, 1982
Butler, R., & Neuman, O. Effects of task and ego achievement goals on helpseeking behaviors and attitudes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 261–
271.1995
Byrd, H. B Understanding and serving American Indian children with special
needs. In B. A. Ford (Ed.), Multiple voices for ethnically diverse learners (pp.
43 51). Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children. 1997.
Cain, K. & Dweck, C.S. The development of children’s achievement motivation
patterns and conceptions of intelligence. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 41, 2552.1995
Calliou, S. Toward community: The community school model and the health of
sovereignty. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 20(1), 27-43.1993
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, edit by Richard E. Mayer,
Cambridge University Press, new York, 2005
Carr, E.G., Horner, R.H., Turnbull, A.P., Marquis, J., Magito-McLaughlin, D.,
McAtee, M.L., Smith, C.E., Anderson-Ryan, K., Ruef, M.B. & Doolabh, A. .
Positive behavior support for people with developmental disabilities: A research
synthesis. Monograph of the American Association on Mental Retardation.1999
Cardinal, H. The rebirth of Canada’s Indians. dmonton, AB: Hurtig
Publishers. 1977
Cashdan, A., Pumfrey, P.D. and Lunzer, E.A.: Children receiving remedial
Teaching in reading. Educational Research, 13: 98-105 1970.
Chrisjohn, R. D., & Peters, M.. The Right-brained Indian: Fact or fiction?
Canadian Journal of Native Education, 13(1), 62-72. 1986
Cole, Michael & Sheila, The Development of Children, 4th edition, Worth
Publishers, New York , 2001
133 Preparing the child for the global village
Coles Gerald (1987). The Learning Mystique: A Critical Look at "Learning
Disabilities". Accessed November 25, 2008
Corkill, A. Individual differences in metacognition. Learning and Individual
Differences. 8 (4), 276-280. 1996
Corno, L. The metacognitive control components of self-regulated learning.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 11, 333-346,1986
Corno, L., & Kanfer, R.. The role of volition in learning and performance.
Review of Research in Education 18, 301-341.1993
Corkhill M.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 33: 386–404.1996
Crandall V.C.,Crandall V.J. &Katkosky W. A children’s desirability
questionnaire, Journal of Consulting Psychology, 29,27-36,1965
Das, J. P. Some thoughts on two aspects of Vygotsky's work. Educational
Psychologist, 30 (2), 93-97 1995
Day, J. D., Borkowski, J. G., Dietmeyer, D. L., Howsepian, B. A., & Saenz, D.
.Possible selves and academic achievement. In L. T. Winegar and J. Valsiner
(Eds.),Children's development within social contexts: Metatheoretical,
theoretical and methodological issues Vol. 2 (pp. 181-201). Hillsdale, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1992
Deyhle, D., & Swisher, K.. Research in American Indian and Alaska Native
education: From assimilation to self-determination. Review of Research in
Education 22, 113-194. 1997
De Waal Bonobo Sex and Society The behavior of a close relative challenges
assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution, Scientific American,
vol 272, no 3, 1995
Dweck, Carol S. Motivational processes affecting learning. American
Psychologist.1986
Feldhusen, J. F., September/October). Full-time classes for gifted youth. The
Gifted Child Today, 10-13, 1991
Feuerstein, R. Instrumental enrichment. Baltimore: University Park Press. 1980
French Joyce N., Rhoder Carol Garland Pub., Teaching thinking skills : theory
and practice New York : 1992
Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. Inclusive schools movement and the radicalization of
134
Preparing the child to live within a global village
special education reform. Exceptional Children, 60(4), 294-309. 1994
Fuchs, E., & Havighurst, R. J. To live on this earth: American Indian education.
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. 1972
N.L. Gage N.L. , Can science contribute to the art of teaching? ... methods in
education and psychology. , Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1970
Gagné, R. M. Varieties of learning. In Conditions of Learning, second edition.
(Chapter 2, pp. 36-69). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1970.
Gibson, S., & Dembo, M. Teacher efficacy: A construct validation. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 76, 569-582.1984
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point, Little Brown & Company, New York,
2002
Glaser, R. The measurement of learning outcomes: Some questions. In E. Stones
(Ed.), Readings in educational psychology: Learning and teaching (pp. 449
454).. London: Methuen. 1970.
Graham and Perry Indexing transitional knowledge, developmental
psychology,779-788,1993
Guskey, T. R., & Passaro, P. D. Teacher efficacy: A study of construct
dimensions. American Educational Research Journal, 31(3), 627-643.1994
Hawthorn, H. B. A survey of the contemporary Indians of Canada: A report on
economic, political, educational needs and policies. Ottawa: Indian Affairs
Branch.1967
Henderson, E. S. An investigation of some outcomes of in-service training. Br.
J. In-Service Educ. 3 , pp. 4-16 1976
Henning-Stout, M. Responsive assessment: A new way of thinking about
learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 1994.
Hickey, D. T. 1997. Motivation and contemporary socio-constructivist
instructional perspectives. Educational Psychologist, 32, 175-193.
Hilgard, J.R.,. Personality and hypnosis. , Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.
1970
Howard-Rose & Rose, British Journal of Educational Psychology , 60, 142–
152,1994
135 Preparing the child for the global village
Jenkins H. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1971, 63
Jones, B. F., Palinscar, A. S., Ogle, D. S., & Carr, E. G. Strategic teaching and
learning: Cognitive instruction in the content areas. Alexandria, VA: North
Central Regional Educational Laboratory. 1987
Juliebo, M., Malicky, V. G., Norman, C. Metacognition of Young readers in an
early intervention programme. Journal of Research in Reading 21 (1), 24-35.
1998
King,R. An Action Inquiry into Day Release in Further Education. MPHIL.
University of Bath.1987
Keeler, M. L., & Swanson, H. L. Does strategy knowledge influence working
memory in children with mathematical disabilities? Journal of Learning
Disabilities, 34, 418-434. 2001
Keogh, B. K., & Weisner, T. An ecocultural perspective on risk and protective
factors in children’s development: Implications for learning disabilities.
Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 8(1), 3-10. 1993
Koens Lombaerts The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. An
Introduction to School Learning. ... Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1989
Kuhl, J. Volitional Mediators of Cognition-Behavior Consistency: Selfregulatory Processes and Action Versus State Orientation. In J. Kuhl and J.
Beckmann (eds.), Action Control: From Cognition to Behavior. Berlin:
Springer.1985
Kulik, J. A., & Kulik, C. C. Synthesis of research on effects of accelerated
instruction. Educational Leadership, 42(2), 84-89. 1984
Landine, J. et Stewart, J. Relationship Between Metacognition, Motivation,
Locus of Control, Self-Efficacy and Academic Achievement. Canadian Journal
of Counselling. 32(3), 200-211.1998
Laycock, Notetaking ,Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 1980b
Leont’ev, A. N. The problem of activity in Soviet psychology. In J. V. Wertsch
(Ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology (pp. 37–71). Armonk,
NY:Sharpe.1981
Levin, H. Proceedings from the Accelerated Learning Conference. San
Francisco: Stanford University. 1988.
Levin, H. M. Accelerated schools: The background. In C. Finnan, E. P. St. John,
J. McCarthy, & S. P. Slovacek (Eds.), Accelerated schools in action: Lessons
136
Preparing the child to live within a global village
from the field (pp. 3-23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 1996
Levine Mel A Mind at a Time, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2002
Ibid. Ready or not here life comes, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2005
Lewis, A., Wilson, S., & McLaughlin, T.F. A comparison of regular and special
education teachers practices for providing instruction. B.C. Journal of Special
Education, 17, 1993
Loranger Paul, Why Education is Failing in our Schools, Synlogic Publication,
Edmonton, 2005
Ibid, Teaching the Way it is Supposed to be Taught, 2009
Ibid, Governor, Sax, My name is Johny, 2010
Lupart J.,McKeough A. & Marina A,Teaching for transfer, Lawrence Falban
Ass.,N.J.1995
Lublinskaya, V.V.: The 'center of gravity' effect in vowel spectra and critical
distance 1970
Luria, R. R., and Yudovich, F. Speech and the Development of the Mental
Process of the Child. London: Stapes. McNeill, D. (1970).
Nelson Kemler, D. G. . Cognitive development meets discrimination learning
(book review). Contemporary Psychology, 41, 1109-1110).1996
Maybury David – Lewis Millennium, Penguin Books, New York, 1992
Mayer, RE Memory for algebra story problems. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 74, 199-216,1982
Matthew, N., & Kavanagh, B. Meeting our expectations: Considering a
framework for the assessment of First Nations schools. A discussion paper
prepared for the First Nations Schools Association. 1999
Ian McEwan's short novel, Black Dogs, amazon.com,1992
McFadden, Daniel & Ruud, Paul A,. Estimation by Simulation, The Review of
Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(4), pages 591-608, November,
1994
Melot, A.-M., & Houde, O. Categorization and theories of mind Journal of
Abnormal Psychology Vol 74(2) 1998.
137 Preparing the child for the global village
Metzger, Rich et al. Spatial and temporal memory, Journal of Educational
Psychology, 71, 440-442. 1980
Nolen, S. B. Reasons for studying: Motivational orientations and study
strategies. Cognition and Instruction, 5(4), 269-287.1988
Mighton, John The Myth of ability, House of Anansi Press Inc. Toronto,2007
Mithaug D. Your right, my obligation? Journal of the Association for Persons
with Severe Disabilities 23: 41-43.1998
Novak Joseph D.and Gowin D.Bob Learning How to Learn, Cambridge Univ.
Press, Cambridge, 2002
Oka, E. R., & Paris, S. C. Patterns of motivation and reading skills in
underachieving children. In S. Ceci (Ed.), Handbook of cognitive, social and
neurological aspects of learning disabilities. Hillsdale, NJ; Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates. 1987
Osborne, R. and Wittrock, M., The Generative Learning Model and its
Implications for Science Education. Studies in Science Education, 12, 1985.
O'sullivan, J. and Joy, R. If at first you don't succeed: Children's metacognition
about reading problems. Contemporary Educational Psychology 19 pp118-127,
1994
Palmer Joy A. Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education, Routledge, London and
New York, 2001
Paris, S. G., & Winograd, P. W How metacognition can promote academic
learning and instruction. In B.J. Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking
and cognitive instruction (pp.15–51). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.1990
Pajares F.Educational Psychology 25, 406--422 ,2000
Pajares, F. & Kranzler, J. Self-Efficacy beliefs and general mental ability in
mathematical problem solving. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20, 426443,1995
Perkins D.N. and Salomon G., Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational
Researcher 18 (1989) (1), pp. 6–95 1989
Posner MI, DiGirolamo G. Executive attention: conflict, target detection and
cognitive control. In Parasuraman R, editor. The attentive brain. Cambridge:
MIT Press; p. 401–23, 1998.
138
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Postman, N. & Weingartner, C. Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1969
Pugach M. C. A Deans' Grant initiative for the twenty-first century? Teaching
and Teacher Education, 24(3), 256-261,2001
Pressley, M., Borkowski, J. G., & O’Sullivan, J. Children’s metamemory and
the teaching of memory strategies. In D. L. Forrest-Pressley, G. E. MacKinnon,
& T. G. Waller (Eds.), Metacognition, cognition, and human performance (pp. 1
30). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. 1985
Ratey M.D. John J. A User’s Guide to the Brain, Pantheon books, New York,
2001
Reder Lynne M ed. Implicit memory and metacognition,Lawrence Earlbaum
Ass. N.J. 1996
Rodríguez, Carmen; Sawyer, Don (December 1992-January 1993), How Native
Canadians View Literacy: A Summary of Findings, Journal of Reading 36 (4):
Rohwer, William D. , Ammon, Paul R. Cramer, Phebe Understanding
intellectual development: Three approaches to theory and practice, Dryden Press
(Hinsdale, Ill.)1974
Rotter, J. B. Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of
reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80,1966
Salovey Peter and Sluyter David J.Emotional development and emotional
intelligence, Basic Books, New York, 1997
Silberman, C. E. (Ed.) The open classroom reader. New York: Random House,
1973
Siegler, R. S. Cognitive variability: A key to understanding cognitive
development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3(1), 1-5.1994
Sinkavich, F. J. —Performance and Metamemory: Do Students Know What
They Don't Know?, Instructional Psychology (22),. 1995, pp. 77-87.
Skinner B. F., About Behaviorism (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1974
Spekman, N. J., Herman, K. L., & Vogel, S. A. Risk and resilience in
individuals with learning disabilities: A challenge to the field. Learning
Disabilities Research & Practice, 8, 59-65, 1993
Stipek, D., & Gralinski, J. H. Children’s beliefs about intelligence and school
139 Preparing the child for the global village
performance. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 88, 397 – 407, 1996
Stones, E. Students' Attitudes to the size of teaching groups. Educational
Review, 21 (2) 1970
Swanson, P.N., & De La Paz, S. Teaching effective comprehension strategies to
students with learning and reading disabilities. Intervention in School and
Clinic, 33, 209-218. 1998
Tschannen-Moran Megan Hoy , Anita Woolfolk, and Hoy Wayne K., Teacher
Efficacy: Its Meaning and Measure. Review of educational research Summer,
Vol. 68, No. 2, pp. 202-248, 1998
Thorndike R.L. Educational measurement 2nd ed,,Washington D.C. American
Council on Education ,1971
Van Bockern, S., & Wenger, L. Our choice. Reclaiming Children and Youth ,on
the internet under Educational best practice or malpractice, Winter 1999
VanTassel-Baska, J. Comprehensive curriculum for gifted learners (2nd ed.).
Boston:Allyn and Bacon,1994.
Vaughn, S., Elbaum, B. E., & Schumm, J. S.. The effects of inclusion ... and
Resource Room Settings, J Spec Educ July 1998 vol. 32 no. 2 79-88, 1996
Vygotsky L.S. Mind in Society, the development of higher psychological
processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1970)
Waker Barbara J. Diagnostic Teaching of Reading, New York, 2000
Wehmeyer, M. L., & Palmer, S. B. Promoting the acquisition and development
of self-determination in young children with disabilities. Early Education and
Development, 11(4), 465-481.2000
Wehmeyer, M. L., Palmer, S. B., Agran, M., Mithaug,D. E., & Martin, J. E.
Promoting causal agency: The self-determined model of instruction. Exceptional
Children, 66, 439–453, 2000
Weinberg, R. A. Intelligence and IQ: Landmark issues and great debates.
American Psychologist, 44(2), 98-104. 1989
Wenden, A. L. Metacognitive knowledge and language learning. Applied
Linguistics, 19(4), 515-537. Great Britain: Prentice Hall.1998
Wigfield, A., ccles, J. S., & Rodriguez, D. The development of children’s
motivation in school contexts. In a. Iran-Nejad & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review
of research in education (Vol. 23). Washington, DC: American Educational
140
Preparing the child to live within a global village
Research Association.1998
Wigfield A.,Guthrie J.T., Tonks S., Perencevich K.C., Children’s Motivation for
Reading:Domain Specificity and Instructional Influences, University of
Maryland,1998
Wilgosh, L., & Mulcahy, R. Cognitive Educational Models of Assessment,
Programming and Instruction for Native Learners. Canadian Journal of Native
Education, 20 (1), 1993.
Whinnery, K.W., King, M., Evans, W.H., & Gable, R.A. Perceptions of students
with learning disabilities. Preventing School Failure, 40 (1), 5-9, 1995
WillHelm Richard (Chinese-German), Bayenes Cary F. (German-English) The I
Ching , Princeton University, 1950,
Wright, S. C. & Taylor, D. M. . Identity and the language of the classroom:
Investigating the impact of heritage versus second language instruction on
personal and collective self-esteem. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 241252,1995
Woolfolk, A. ., & Hoy, W. K. Prospective teachers’ sense of efficacy and
beliefs about control. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 81-91,1990
Ysseldyke, J. Reflections on a research career: Generalizations from 25 years of
research on assessment and instructional decision making. Exceptional Children,
67(3), 295-309.2001
Zigmond, N., & Baker, J. M.. Concluding comments: Current and future
practices in inclusive schooling. Journal of Special Education, 29(2), 245-250.
1995
Zigmond, N., & Baker, J. M. Inclusion of pupils with learning disabilities in
general education settings. In S. J. Paul, C. J. W. Meijer, & S. Hegarty (Eds.),
Inclusive education: A global agenda (pp. 98-114). New York: Routledge. 1997
Zimmerman, B. J. A social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(3), 329-339, 1989