http://fora.tv/2007/09/27/Minimally_Invasive_Education_through_Social_Play

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

more on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_Invasive_Education
http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html

Little is known conclusively about what causes brain cancer in children, but research studies are consistently finding links to prebirth pesticide exposure.

A new study finds that children who live in homes where their parents use pesticides are twice as likely to develop brain cancer versus those that live in residences in which no pesticides are used. Herbicide use appeared to cause a particularly elevated risk for a certain type of cancer.

It is well established that many pesticides cause cancer in animals.

This study highlights a new and compelling reason to avoid or limit pesticide use and take necessary precautions during exposure. It also adds to a growing body of research that finds that pesticide exposure — especially with farm life and pesticide use — might be contributing significantly to this deadly disease.

Brain cancer is the second most common cancer in children, yet why it develops is not clear. Genetics plays a role in some cases, but researchers believe those not due to associated genes are related to environmental factors and exposures.

The authors explain that “parental exposures may act before the child�s conception, during gestation, or after birth to increase the risk of cancer.” Exposures at each time period may trigger different changes that lead to cancers, such as genetic mutations or changes in gene expression or hormone and immune function.

The study evaluated more than 800 fathers and more than 500 mothers that lived in residential areas in four Atlantic Coast states (Florida, New Jersey, New York (excluding New York City) and Pennsylvania). Researchers match and compare every person that is “exposed” to an “unexposed” person of the same age and status. In this case, more than 400 fathers and 250 mothers of exposed children were included. 

Researchers assessed — through telephone interviews with the mothers — parental exposure to insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides at home and at work beginning two years prior to their child’s birth.

Brain cancer cases in children under 10 years old, diagnosed between 1993 and 1997, were included in the study. The children had participated in the original Atlantic Coast childhood brain cancer study. Their illnesses represented a range of cancers, including astrocytomas and primitive neuroectodermal tumours (PNET). Astrocytomas was associated with herbicide use in this study.

The risk of childhood brain cancer was significantly lower for fathers who washed immediately after the pesticide exposure or wore protective clothing versus those who never or only sometimes took precautions.

The parents assessed in this study were generally in contact with the pesticides through residential exposure, including lawn and garden care.

from Environmental News Network

Written by Joey Coverson April 28, 2008
 ï¿½ 2008

The White Bird of Peace Fled Far Away

Fires of war burn
Everywhere in the world
The White Bird of Peace
Has fled far away
Why torture the mothers
By taking their sons to the land of death?
Why have mothers, who gave love and care,
Been made to cry by torturing their sons to death?
Pearl-like little brothers
Now we little ones are lost
The world beautiful once
Disappeared before us
Love and kindness
Fled away
In human hearts and minds,
Hatred and a desire for revenge arose
Please allow us to be;
Please allow us little ones to be
By doing wrong things again,
Do not destroy the world
That once was beautiful

Malushika Sandeepani Perera
Grade 6

Give Us Protection

Who do we belong to? who do we belong to?
Who do we belong to? who do we belong to?
Kindly find for us documents,
If there are any documents,
Showing in which land we were born
Where is my mother?
Where is my father?
Where is my friend?
Why alone
Am I now?

We do not have our parent’s love
Please give us protection
If you do,
May merits shower on you
Until your death

Nalaka
Grade 3

Such a Mountain of Sorrow

In the middle of the night yesterday,
I saw my father in a dream
Keeping my head on his lap,
Slowly he stroking my head

Opening my eyes, I looked around,
But alas, it was only a dream
I felt so sad
I sobbed and wept

Ghosts came one night
And took away my father,
And he was never seen again,
Says my mother often

Such a mountain of fire
Should not fall on anyone
Let no one in the world
Lose their father

Let us all get together
Let us also tell our big people
To be united
Let us protect our right to life

W. Chula Vimukthini Perera
Grade 6

Separation of a Father

Though the Asela moon had risen that night,
Though the Amawaka moon peeped through at times,
On a night little stars felt fear,
The world was consumed in a dark sin

Though the moon did not visit my house,
The joy did fill the house
Placing a fire barrel on my chest,
A hangman took that joy in his hand

The only comfort I had in the world
Why did you enemies take my heavenly joy?
The service done to the country is not little
Why such raw sorrow given to a family with children?

You shot and killed me before my time
Why did you destroy my bird’s cage?
The services I had done were not considered
I was sent out of the world abruptly

I now live sadly in heaven
Why was I not allowed to live?
I cannot understand why people are so cruel
When will I meet you again, my son?

Though I am separated from my son’s world,
I see my golden little son in dreams
If peace descend on a future date,
I will willingly be born in my country again

If reborn one day, let us unite
And spread peace with kind feelings in the mind
Let us not separate again
The tragedy that fell on us should not fall on others

Buddhika Gayani Ranaweera
Grade 12

Is My Son Also Sleeping under the Mara Tree?

My little son,
I can wait
Till I am tired, seated at the doorstep of the house
Inside the lonely mind,
Kiri kokku (white storks) are crying
Come back home again,
My little son
It is to erase the tears of the leaking roof
Of the wattle and daub home from which the son flew
Who there, anne (Oh, my goodness), told my son
To break mahamera (heaven’s) walls?

In the midst of fires,
The irony I do not feel in the world
Of the milk pot that moved in the river
Is my son also sleeping
Under the mara tree?

Warm tears fill both my eyes
Now, son, who am I to feed
The warm rice cooked on the three cooking stones?
Come, even in a dream,
And wave your hand
I still have more tears in my eyes
To shed

W. P. Ruwani Wanniarrhchi
Grade 10

Tearful Poems of a Mother

The day your were conceived in my womb as my first
A thousand flowers bloomed in my mind, my son
The first day your milk-mixed eyes saw the world
In my mind the Poson full moon appeared

When with childish smiles you were walking in front of
the house
And in my warmth you curdled and dived into the dream
world,
There was no one so fortunate as myself on the earth
Hundreds and thousands of times my mind murmured in
joy

My son grew in intelligence and good habits
Who did not see my golden son’s value?
Though not rough and hard, you, my son, appeared a
hero
Who then didn’t see my son’s value?

As the Asala moon was rising, murderers entered my
home
Despite thousands of pleas to the heart, away they
took my son
Hearing the fire of the gun’s barrel, my mind went far
away
To which world was my golden son taken away?

W. M. Gayathri Priyakari Gunasekara
Grade 12

Let Us Make Peace Reign Every Day

May calm and cool as then spread on all areas
The virtues overflow of Buddha the father who is
commemorated
The moon which had absorbed these rays is appearing
Today is the Asela full moon Poya Day

With two nelum flowers in both hands,
Disciplining the heart and concentrating the mind of
dhamma (doctrine),
The virtuous monk went forward to the Lord
A van came suddenly and stopped far away

A group of people took away the monk at once
The sweet smell of the dhamma that was spread left
that moment
Colossal rains fell immediately, surprisingly
The noise of lighting was heard from all sides

The monk was taken to his death
The body of the monk was found by the roadside
The people who did this do they have hearts?
The voice expressing the monk’s fear of death is heard
even now at the roadside

In a world of thick darkness full of sorrow and
difficulties,
Let us make peace reign every day
Let us live without fighting and killing
Let us protect the right to life every day

Ohshani Nilushika Mendis
Grade 10

Introduction by Basil Fernando

Asian Human Rights Commission | Tel: +(852)-2698-6339
Unit D,7 Floor,16 Argyle Street,| Fax:
+(852)-2698-6367
Mongkok Commercial Centre, | E-mail: ahrchk@ahrchk.org
Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR | Web: www.ahrchk.net



A Suitable Message for Children’s Day, Nov. 20, 2001

November 20 is Universal Children’s Day. Generally, it is a day where there is an outpouring of rhetoric. This may be a way of covering up commissions and omissions against children throughout the year. The rights of most children in the world is not part of this discussion, however. The children who can afford to have comfortable lives and dream of butterflies and golden fairies have their rights observed anyway whether there is any discussion about children’s rights or not. How about the scavenger’s child in the Indian caste ghetto though who may be dreaming about shit all night as that is what she or he sees their parents carry all day? How about those who experience hunger and also see the hunger of their sisters,
brothers and parents? How about the children whose father or mother is extrajudicially executed? Do they also dream of butterflies and golden fairies?

In Sri Lanka too, discussion about child rights is a good field in which much rhetoric is sown. The children of the disappeared, of dead soldiers orrebels, of refugees, of malnourished children, of plantation workers, hardly get any mention. Inaddition to this neglect, there is also the talk of government ministers and bureaucrats about the responsibility of families to realise the rights of their children, thus, washing the hands of the State from their responsibilities for the nation’s children. What families though do the refugees and others
mentioned above have to rely on? How do the children of unemployed parents guarantee their children’s rights? Even those who are employed, how many have a salary that can provide them more than their minimum survival requirements? The simple question then
arises: Are children’s rights only affluent children’s rights?
 

To avoid mere rhetoric, it may be better to let children themselves speak, not prepared speeches to suit the occasion, but an outpouring of the heart which expresses their real experiences. We reproduce here translations by Basil Fernando of seven poems from a collection of 83 Singhalese poems of children from Grades 3 to 12 from the anthology Kadulu Mathakayen Obbata, or Beyond the Memory of Tears. The collection is a selection from a large number of poems sent to the poetry competition that is held to commemorate disappearances in Sri Lanka, an annual event organised by Kalape Api and the Asian Human
Rights Commission (AHRC) on Oct. 27 at the Monument for the Disappeared at Raddoluwa Junction in Seeduwa. These poems were written for the occasion in 2000.

Poems show children in a different light. They see dreams about their lost father; they keep the memory of the monk who was killed; they try to understand the feelings of the mother whose child was killed; they speak of their pearl-like little bothers who are no more. The loss of their little worlds is a common theme. However, these children are compassionate unlike the political leaders of the country. When these children speak, their words are opposed to hatred and a desire for revenge. They are perplexed by violence and ask why such cruelty is taking place. They do not ask for the moon, but they do want the moonlight of the Poya Day; they want respect for human life.

These beautiful poems come from children who carry a lot of pain in their hearts, but they carry their pain with compassionate hearts. One poem ends with the lines “I still have more tears in my eyes / To shed.” This year let us not have a lot of speeches on Children’s Day. Let us listen to these pearl-like poems.
 

Indian culture is fascinating in many ways. Agriculture and hierarchy seem to have developed on Indian plateaus thousands of years ago. Thus, the complexity of sought out solutions to civilise and cultivate nature, i.e. to oppress and control, are not the prerogatives of the �superior� killers who have colonised the world as they spread from Europe like a virus, spreading havoc in colonised lands, and kidnapping people and animals as slaves, exporting them to the �New World�. Oppression and extermination are at the basis of agriculture where some people give themselves the right to exploit and accumulate all living and non-living, space and time, tangible and the intangible as resources.

However, compared to present-day political and educational position, the Indian understanding of the place of humans in nature, culture, or the divine space is too complex to even try to touch here. Much of the understanding of what it means to be human in religious, secular or scientific texts, such as literacy, the invention of symbolic capital, accumulation of material capital and resources (e.g. food and agriculture) have been recorded in ancient India, Egypt, Maya, or Mesopotamia long before the era of Christ. Children’s literature and hence the didactic method that assumes that a child is to be �filled with the right kind of knowledge� and moulded according to a specific moral form has � contrary to the European conceited claims to having �invented children’s literature some 200 years ago� � already existed India and Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, for example, the Pancatantra, a collection of fables that were meant to raise a diligent, wise, and just prince to rule over the rest of the people. So, abuse has been invented long before the Greeks. And so was sexual extravagance and other civilised matters (Kamasutra, the horny gods and fertile goddesses have all existed before the orgies of the “Great Founding Greeks”, the fathers of the much prided western civilisation).

All this is to invite people to share the burden of culture and responsibility and to leave the freedom to the young to make their own sense of culture, cowardice, politics, social mischief, the values and the sins of music and dance. So, for me, approaching dance from an �unschooling� position entails taking into the account the complexity of the meaning and allowing the child to experience dance from a position of choice, as an active participant in the dialogue between humans, nature, and the divine and between children, history, and the future. All these dimensions altercate and harmonise synchronising harmony and revolutions in all of their contradictory emploi.

In my observation, the dragging of miserable, tired, and bored child-girls in ridiculous and actually obscene tutus to classes in �prestigious� ballet for the sake of �prestige� alone reveals some hidden perverse cultural agenda. It is completely different when a child chooses a sport or an art (be it ballet or walking in the woods) in order to actively participate in the construction and extraction of meaning, a precarious balance in the exchange between freewill that seeks to fly off into the future and the weight of ancestral past, of tradition.

In the summer of 2004, Liouba and I attended a performance of Indian Dance and met Mamata Niyogi-Nakra, the founder of Kala Bharati dance school in Montreal. Ljuba and her friend Mila, both 5 years old at the time, were mesmerised by the delicate movements and the presence of centuries of experience in the slightest of gestures. Mamata informed us of the arrival in August of Srikanth N, a dancer from India. Ljuba wanted to know what the dance meant and how the movements were executed. She began re-enacting what she had seen at the performance and so I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to organise a meeting space between Montrealers and an artist from the East.

Srikanth and Mamata kindly agreed to offer a special 8 weeks seminar for homsechoolers (everyone was welcome, but the sessions were held on weekdays) with a sliding scale so that everyone could afford to attend. I expected to be greeted by a crowd of enthusiasts, since, how often do Quebecers get an opportunity to meet and learn from an artist living in a far away land, who was kind enough to accept their terms and reality? Usually �locals� encounter �immigrants� and create a space and pressure of expectation for the newcomers to prove flexibility and adaptability to local norms, which generally entails, at least, a symbolic renunciation of the self and the values or culture of the overseas. Immigrants and locals, both, play the game in which everyone pretends that the abandoned past of the immigrant is inferior and that the promises of the new �homeland� are politically, correctly superior, but of course we never really need to say it aloud. Here was an opportunity to meet with India on an equal basis and an opportunity to snatch a glimpse of the thousands of years of Indian civilisation presented in Srikanth’s generosity and dance.

Yet, and in spite of the sliding scale and the volunteer nature of agreed recompensation, few Canadians attended. Some said they had to do maths. Others didn’t bother to show up. Out of all the home-schoolers, Tallulah, Trixie Dumont’s daughter participated and two other families with day-care aged children. Still and regardless, Mamata and Srikanth agreed to carry out the workshop at Mamata’s home studio. So, those who made the time enjoyed the intimacy of a small group where parents and children danced together and learnt to express Indian meaning in dance: Mina � almost 3, Ljuba and Sasha � 5 �, Iliusha, Sasha’s little brother, 3 years of age, and Tallulah � 7.

The children showed great enthusiasm and never wanted to miss sessions. Ljuba even agreed to biking uphill for hours to make it to the workshops. Parents were welcome to participate, and so Eden and baby Darian joined Mina, Trixie and little Augie joined Tallulah, Lena and Artem alternated when brought Sasha and Iliusha to the dance and my Sasha and I never wanted to miss once to join our dear little girl in this activity that opened a door to a whole different world of meaning, music, narrative, and dance.

Layla AbdelRahim, October 2006

At the end of the seminar, together with Srikanth, the group gave a presentation at the Kala Bharati school.

The film was shot on a camera, still, it gives a taste of movement in Indian space.

And always with fond memories of Srikanth and Mamata.

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means — except by getting off his back.

Leo Tolstoy in What Then Must We Do?

Tolstoy’s observation exposes the ultimate goal of school curriculum and of the argument that I constantly hear as to why my child needs to be �socialised� in �school�: so that she learns to accept this equestrian social model as natural, even as benign. The hypocrisy of the whole �compassion� and �humanist� rhetoric is blatant: for, in order to really alleviate pain and misery, riders have to get off the backs they are riding and, in a mad fit of sincerity, reappraise their needs, fears, and views of the world. Riders and mules must deschool themselves, unlearn the tactics that drown the conscience and suffocate the freedom of being. To deschool oneself is the only way to learn how to love in the sense of seeking harmony, de-learning how to �love� in the sense of possessing, killing or consuming the �object� of �love�.

Needless to say, people who are interested in deschooling are a tiny minority even among home-schoolers who, for the most part, home-educate their children in order to give their progeny more chances in the �horse-riding� race. Deschooling is considered dangerous and blasphemous, and rightly so, for, imagine if those ridden refused their roles as asses and the riders refused to lie about the virtues of horsemanship. The sadistic equestrian order that glorifies gluttony would cease to exist and people and beasts would have a taste of happiness here on earth!

This is why I found the unSchooling Opression conference such a surprising and inspiring event, particularly that it was in an academic setting, and academia, as we know, is the priesthood preserving order and meaning, mostly acting as the main apologist for the system, even when pretending to criticize it (see the above quote from Tolstoy).

The conference was organised by the Deschooling Society of the University of Ottawa at the beginning of November:

unschoolingoppression.wordpress.com

It was free and open to all who were interested in deschooling themselves. For the most part, I have discovered that people neither feel capable nor see the need of learning anything more than what they already �know� and most new information is used to prove some previous point or decision in terms of life direction. The Leo Tolstoys, i.e. those who value each moment where they could learn to see new perspectives with no limits on age, are truly singular. And here we found ourselves surrounded by people from all walks of life who have the courage to revise their knowledge and thus themselves.

We attended �en tribu�, and even if Liouba couldn’t follow everything in English, she felt relaxed and at home to know that these were the people who supported learners of all ages, races, genders, and whatever other constrictions that we call categories. She tried to listen, read her books, worked on her journal, did her ballet stretches, made friends with children and adults and never complained once during the intensive three days that we attended.

The first speaker to launch the conference was David Noble. He talked about how people with power and in position of authority lie.

Of course there was nothing new in this for me. I always knew that people lied: some did it in order to enjoy the ride, others did it in order to evade having to give a piggy-back-ride. If it weren’t for lies, how else could we have billions of people support the rich charlatans, giving their lives and money in exchange for honest crap and sincere poison? How else can politicians claim with a straight face that they represent �people’s� interests, when the people whose interests they protect happen to be themselves and their very close kin, and even then, they fight bitterly among themselves, sometimes to the point of conspiracy and murder. Of course when someone in a position of power over someone else presents the situation as benevolent, the person lies. Those who participate in this because they believe it is inevitable, also lie, including to themselves. Marketing, bureaucracy, politics are mediated, established, argued, and practised ultimately through lies.

David Noble, however, presented a practical, �anthropological� aspect of the mechanisms by which liars and bullies hide under the guise of respectability, rules, grammar, and laws. His speech was addressed at the middle-ass, the intellectual and the academic, summoning the middle-ass to quit playing the game. It is interesting that often people assume that when someone calls people to embrace a humble lifestyle with less things, cede power, renounce privileges, it is taken for granted that it is the poor who are called to accept their miserable lot. The current notion that took me some time to understand in the �West� is that those who have power and money deserve it and that it is criminal to expect them to renounce their social, material, or symbolic capital. What is praised in literature, art, academia, spiritual teachings, is that the poor should practice self abnegation and servitude, renouncing their rights. David Noble called for those in a position of privilege to renounce their symbolic capital, accumulated through outright lying.

The second speaker was John Taylor Gatto, whose speech is available here.

Liouba particularly enjoyed Justin’s workshop because of the practical aspect where everyone was invited to be a clown. Justin gave a brilliant presentation where he connected the philosophical, sociological and practical elements of schooling and the lack of movement and of schooling and the censorship of the

The last workshop we attended was by Naomi L., a courageous young woman who, during her attendance of a Zionist training camp in Israel, had the guts to venture across the frontier of war to understand what was going on. Her presentation consisted of slides, readings from her journal, and what was most important for me an eloquent introspective method in the process of deschooling oneself.

What struck me the most in these workshops and speeches was that true learning stems from compassion and empathy, emotions that include others in one’s experiential space, which ultimately makes it impossible for a person to lie, unless of course one develops a strategy of shutting this knowledge out, a common occurrence in conditions of mainstream schizophrenia.

It was rejuvenating to be among sane people for a change, people who lived according to what they preached.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the whole week.

Layla AbdelRahim, Montreal, November 2007

�What school does your child attend?� I am often asked.
�We are following child-led, self education,� I respond, always aware that this is an invitation to ranting and aggressive insistence that I �cannot do this�. But when one follows one’s conscience, aggressive ranting or not, one cannot lie. It is extremely rare that my interlocutors, most of whom had never met an unschooling family, would seize the opportunity to hear a rare position on learning such as mine. Instead, even the most polite and soft spoken instantly turn into aggressive monolocutors who try to convert me to mainstreamism because they assume that my decision stems from ignorance of the commonplace reasons for shutting children out of real life in prison-like schools. They slam me with the banal and ignorant argumentation that my child needs to be socialised in school, because that’s where she will learn how to deal with bullying (be bullied or become a bully herself), which they call �real life� and to cope with orders and coercion from �above�, which they also refer to as �real life� otherwise she won’t be able to �work�. The nicer kind offer themselves for examples:

�I could never home-school my kids,� they confess eagerly.
Here I begin to understand why Sasha supports the child-free cause: if people can’t be there for their kids, they better not have them, he says.

�I don’t get along with my daughter,� mothers often tell me. �School is good for her because she learns discipline, how to do homework and endless repetitions. What? No of course she doesn’t learn from doing meaningless tasks, but it’s important if she is to succeed in life.�
I see Sasha’s point on the child-free position even clearer now: �Of course, if you want her to succeed in doing meaningless work, then schooling is the best way to achieve this goal. Thank you, but we want our daughter to get a different sort of fulfilment from her work�.

Therefore, we decided to offer space for people who are not afraid to get along with other people, particularly their children. Otherwise, how can children learn to �socialise� if their own mothers can’t get along with them? Since these people have been to school, it is obvious that schooling has either failed them or on the contrary has succeeded in its hidden agenda to separate and alienate people. In this space, we welcome people who refuse the bullied and bullying, authoritative social model for themselves and for their children. This space is for people from all walks of life, who have the passion to always move towards the flickering truth of the stars, accepting darkness and light as an eternal play between knowledge, ignorance, passion and life.

It is our belief that true learning has no boundaries. It is not limited by age, race, or social categories. It comes from an inner desire to know oneself and the world. Harmony comes as a result of such knowledge, which cannot be taught, only sought. Teaching, on the other hand, is the subjugation of others to the �master’s� position and view of the world. Teaching involves the exercise of power of the �teacher’s� knowledge over the knowledge of others. It inevitably exercises power within a hierarchical model of social relations and alienates the pupil from her own knowledge. Teaching institutes dissonance.

We welcome you to this space. We value you as readers and hope that you will contribute to this project with relevant announcements, links, or your own experiences and expressions that will shed light on the mechanisms and the joys of learning of young and old.

All the information published here is available for personal growth or for citation in written or other projects. It is protected by copyrights. You are to ask the permission of the authors and will cite us properly if you are to use these pieces for your own purposes.

Welcome and enjoy!

Layla AbdelRahim, January 2007