Educational contradictions – a modular life?

Within two pages of this Weekend Australian, the glaring contradictions about the educational needs of children and adolescents were boldly declared. On page 3, the remote Cape York town of Coen has, under the leadership of one of Australia’s foremost Aboriginal leaders, Noel Pearson, adopted a 9 hour school day, to bring educational standards up to national levels and ensure cultural training including language. On page 5, Prince Edward, Federal and NSW Sport’s Ministers, Headmaster of an elite Sydney school, and parents, supported the necessity of the danger factor in the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, after a schoolboy died on a sole bushwalk as part of the program.

So, indigenous children are, ‘catching up’ by being constrained within the school boundaries for the best part of their life, while middle and upper class children are being taught that only “real experience, out of comfort zones, with risk, will equip and empower you for life”.

I can understand the dilemma on Cape York. Family dysfunction, alcohol use, child abuse, truancy, and community violence, is extraordinary. Noel Pearson, having become Australia’s most well-known Aboriginal lawyers after being brought up in Lutheran mission conditions, must see the answer for children in stable, disciplined institutional parameters. He has certainly had advice from some educational experts and cooperation from the Queensland Teachers union. This educational model is not only about the children, it is about re-engineering whole communities.

The irony is, that Cape York Aboriginal Communities were traditionally people of the vast landscape with vast expertise in flora, fauna, geology, within their own world-view. But experience of a life lived daily with very real risks were part of the traditional lifestyles.

Meanwhile, middle and upper class children who lead the way in mall surfing, whose parents built the malls, now find that a taste of dangerous wilderness after school hours is important for the ‘real’ world. For the elite side of Sydney, the ‘real’ world is the corporate boardroom and a tower of lawyers, or on the up side, breakthroughs in technological research, and then, on weekends, taking the most expensive pieces of boating technology onto Sydney Harbour for a ‘buzz’ or a leisurely lunch.

It seems that Noel Pearson would like Cape York Aboriginal Children to emulate elite Sydney-siders. His hope seems to be that they will be able to build and work within developmental infrastructures in trade, training and governance on Cape York. And maybe more than just a few will venture down to the big smoke and become industry leaders. I can’t blame his hope. In many ways I support it. I think it is necessary, even inevitable. However, I wish there was a way that community and educational designers were able to look at our society through a larger telescope, understand that much of this ‘sitting in boxes’ is harmful to a child’s development and the development of future society.

Both Coen and Sydney schools, should be moving away from the modular approach to education towards a more experiential, problem-solving approach. ‘Sitting in boxes’ is valuable for specific abstract learning functions such as reading, writing, mathematics, research and evaluation processes, and learning to use information technologies. Access to workshops are important for learning artistic and manufacturing methods. These are the tools of a modern social person. Yet, every hour in a ‘tool’ learning process should be supported by a couple of hours in an application in the community. Such applications should place the child and youth in a place of responsibility, especially of others. It should assist the child to communicate clearly with a range of community members from toddlers to the very aged, in a variety of settings, home, businesses, labouring, outdoor environments. It should assist the child to be able to move through all landscapes, natural and built, with ease and dignity. It should build awareness in the child of its limitations, the process of increasing capacity, and the nature of risk. It should allow the child self-guided exploration, rest, and free association with others.

The near future world is one of extreme risk. Coen school is right to want to educate children so that they are adaptable to the world that will place them at greatest risk. But the risk itself, will probably be multiplied if we continue to establish communities and educational processes that are modular. The risk can only be mitigated by children who are raised to be whole social and environmental beings, for in this, their knowledge is more acutely balanced, their ethics clearer and their ability to provide leadership stronger.

Flames beget flames

Imagine my surprise when I went to read details of an arson attack on the Baha’i Centre of Orlando, to find that there are a few angry people out there looking for any chance to have a dust up over religion. So, even though the Baha’is were taking the attack in stride, the online newspaper received angry responses to the news from people with a grudge against Christians who wanted to point the finger or perhaps just get some other stuff off their chest.

Arson is an extremely dangerous attack and has left behind many victims with physical and mental damage, even dead. The last Australian bushfires were an example of how destructive arson can be. Arsonists are more than a little mentally ill. They are among the most dangerous people to society. More dangerous than a gangland hitman or a man with a homicidal nature. Arsonists are one type of criminal who needs strong incarceration and therapy as it is almost impossible to keep such a person in society and away from the motivation for and the tools of destruction.

Arson is so critical, that to denounce someone or some group as an arsonist, is something that must not be done with ambivalence or bravado. Arson must be investigated until the arsonist be separated from the world, and the world is safe. Frivolous responses to arson prohibits a real awareness of the community to be alert for those activities in another that might provide a clue to the true arsonist.

Hold your heart in one hand, and your tongue with the other.

WHAT’S BIG IN AUSTRALIA THIS WEEK?

1. Refugees, People Smugglers, and Illegal Immigrants. By boat or plane, by fair or foul means, hundreds of people from around the world, especially those stressed nations to our north, Sri Lank, Afghanistan, Iraq, but even India, Eastern Europe and Africa – are trying to get to the top of the long queue of refugees and migrants applying to Australia. We should welcome everyone coming to Australia as one of us, but that strictures should apply for three reasons:
a) noone should prevent another more worthy from being here per force of their audaciousness;
b) corrupt and criminal elements must be guarded against but I suspect most of these come by ordinary means ie plane;
c) Even at the maximum population growth rate that Australia could handle, it is a small amount compared to the great numbers of refugees and would-be migrants, so a disciplined entry is absolutely important. Australia’s immigration policy should represent one prong on a policy fork that helps the whole world deal with the massive social changes it is undergoing.

2. Human Rights legislation. A report looking at possible legislation has divided the national view. It seems expert opinion is leaning to the ‘against’ argument. What has come to the fore is the essential need for a robust democratic process, policy to advance the disadvantaged, separation of government and judicial powers, clear law-making and equality under those laws, and strong anti-corruption processes. Indeed, what are our rights: to clean air, clean water, nutrition, shelter, and to have control of our own lives within the society. There are also society’s rights: to make rules, everyone to contribute, society to advance. At the interface of these rights are social principles that laws should either support or not interfere: unfettered intercultural interaction, elimination of prejudice, equality of men and women, education of all from infancy, allowing unfettered investigation of truth, compatibility between science and religion, economic justice, and community justice and peace.

3. Climate Change. A big 4 experts in the field of climate change have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to have any accuracy in predicting the 30 – 40 year climate change scenario, not to worry about inundation of coastline for the next hundred years, and that it will take 50 years to get to a CO2 stabilising level with the most pro-active energy change measures. They suggest piping 100,000 tons of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to create cooling of the poles, and they have designed the technology to do, along with very modest cost (11 billion per year). I like the sheer geekiness of this solution but I worry about any solution that send out a message, “Keep being destructive, uncaring, greedy, some scientists have your back.” We don’t really know what we’re up against. We need to be increasingly more considerate, and more adaptable, to get through the next 500 – 1000 years. Highly likely that over that time we will actually be entering another ice age. Should we stop it happening by early artificial cooling of the planet?

35 Million Australians by 2050

I’m feeling vindicated this week. 18 years after responding to the National Population Council report to PM Bob Hawke,¹ that Australia should create strategies to be home to 50 million people by the middle of this century, PM Kevin Rudd has enjoined on us the lesser goal of 35 million. It is an important message from government that is now officially warning us that Australian society is on the threshold of marked social change. Due to global changes there is no other mechanism for mitigating the external stressors that will increasingly be applied to Australia’s borders and economy. I still think it is a conservative message, an easing in for the Australian electorate, and will be adjusted upward every decade.

The issues identified in that report are still the ones we have to deal with as a nation, as population booms, we are just so much further down the track of ageing population, skewed economies, stagnating culture, environmental destruction.

Building Australia’s population is not a question of the impact within the national borders, but of the global changes that will inevitably swamp an unprepared continent.

It is no doubt that the population and the national policy of the future will need to be greatly more disciplined than today. Disciplined in such a way that, corruption is strongly dealt with, human dignity is vitally preserved, and the environment is conserved, even improved.

Like the effects of climate change, increased population call for local communities and local government that is peacable and adaptable.

1. NPC, 1991, Population Issues and Australia’s Future, AGPS, Canberra

We are all criminals

I was moved by the article by Rabbi Mark S. Diamond of The Board of Rabbis of Southern California, describing the event he attended in support of the seven Baha’i leaders held in Evin prison in Iran. In a world full of abuses against human dignity, the incarceration of generous, moral, service-orientated leaders is a flashlight on tyrannical acts. There is no room in these incarcerations, for any argument of crime. Rabbi Diamond titles his article, “We are all Baha’is” and in like manner I say, “We are all prisoners.  If these seven should be in prison, all Iranians should be in prison, maybe all of us across the world.

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Birth of the Bab

Today is the commemoration of the Birth of the Bab, a co-founder of the Baha’i Faith. He was named Mírzá ‘Alí-Muhammad and born in 1819, in Shiraz, Fars, Iran. The Bab, along with Baha’u’llah the other founder, is considered by Baha’is to be a manifestation of God.

This is an astounding claim and deserves some proof. Baha’is are people who agree that the Bab and Baha’u’llah have requited every necessary test of their character, their life, their teachings, and their abilities. Now that they have passed beyond the reach of direct meeting, the seeker can still read in depth, their history and their teachings. Here is an extensive library.

However, today, I want to tell some less well-known stories. The following is my own summary of a couple of stories told to a relative descendant of the Bab, Mírzá Habíbu’lláh Afnán, about the Bab as a child.

When the Bab was 5 years old, his father, the honored Áqá Mírzá Muhammad-Ridá, went  to a school run by a Shaykh who had a strict entry interview. He described to the Shayhk that the child astonishes people by raising His hands to the threshold of the One God, and recites prayers; wakes in the middle of the night and stands to offer His obligatory prayers, in themidst of which He weeps, is sad, or happy, or immersed in rapture, or preoccupied with the imaginary world.

His father went on to tell that one night they were sleeping in the bathhouse of the Poultry Bazaar quarter, when the child suddenly rose and stated, that the roof of another bathhouse, which was for women, has just caved in, and five women and one child have been [killed] under the rubble.’ When they asked him not to say such things and go back to sleep, he asserted, ‘It is as I said.’ Not long after that we heard a tumult of voices saying that the bathhouse was wrecked and a number of women were under the rubble. Later it was determined that five women and a child had been killed.

Another time the child reported having a dream in which “a large balance was suspended in mid-air in a vast space. Successor and descendant of Muhammed, Imám Ja‘far Sádiq was seated on one of the plates, and, because of His weight, that plate was resting on the ground while the other plate was suspended in the air. An invisible person lifted Me and placed Me on the empty plate. My plate was now heavier than the other, and I came to the ground and the first dish rose into the air.”

So many instances like this were being observed that the family invited an astrologer to check him for jinn or fairies. The astrologer wrote a protective charm and prayer but when he left the child tore up the talismans, the writings he had left, and the sheet of instructions he had given [us], and tossed them out, saying to me, ‘In the words of the mystic: You make a great show of assistance, but I am that assistance.’

The father then asked the Shayhk to take on His education and training. The Shaykh and teachers were astonished by the stories and it was decided that the child would be brought to the school.

On the promised morning, the child arrived followed by a servant carrying a small [copper-tray] filled with sweets and a student’s version of the Qur’án. The Shaykh, several of the students who had reached the age of maturity, and the principal of the school were thoroughly enthralled in watching Him. He came in, greeted everyone, and sat before the Shaykh. Soon after, the childs uncle, Hájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí, arrived as well and sat next to the Shaykh. After the exchange of formal pleasantries, the Shaykh took the Qur’án from the tray of sweetmeats, opened it, and said to the young pupil, “Come Áqá, read.” The child smiled and said, “As you please.” As was customary, the Shaykh told Him to read, “He is the Deliverer, the All-Knowing.” He remained silent. The Shaykh repeated the verse, but the child kept his silence. The Shaykh persisted. The child (the Báb) asked, “Who is ‘He’. Can you explain?” The Shaykh responded, “‘He’ is God. You are still a child, and what concern of Yours is the meaning of ‘He’?” The pupil responded, “I am the Deliverer, the All-Knowing!” The Shaykh was deeply enraged and picked up his stick and said to Him, “Do not utter such things here!” The child commenced reading, and His maternal uncle smiled and ordered certain arrangements and then left.

A merchant who was a student then, later related, I was twelve years old at that time, and on that day Siyyid-iBáb came and sat between me and another boy. The Báb kneeled, in a refined way. His head was bowed over the student Qur’án, but He did not read a word, so I asked, “Why are You not reading the lesson [aloud] like the other children?” He made no reply; however, two other lads sitting near us were heard reading poems from Háfiz aloud, and they came to this verse:

From Heaven’s heights the birdsong calls to you
in sorrow that you’re trapped in walls of clay.

He turned quickly to me and said, “That is your answer.”

Later, the Shaykh was one day discussing a complex scientific topic with the older students when he postponed the discussion to do more study on the topic. Suddenly the young Bab who had been listening raised His blessed head and with sound reasoning, irrefutable proof, and scientific evidence, propounded the answer they sought and removed all complexities. They were wonder-struck and amazed. Full of amazement, the Shaykh asked him where He had gained this knowledge. The pupil smiled and offered this couplet from Háfiz:

Should the Holy Spirit’s grace again assist,
Others too will do what Christ has done.

Years later the Bab’s Uncle was discussing the claim of the Báb with his younger brother, who was asking why he had departed from our ancestral religion and follow our Nephew!” The eminent, martyred-uncle responded, “You should know well that God Most High has fulfilled the proof before me. After what I saw with my own eyes in His childhood and what I know with complete confidence about him since His adulthood, there is no room for doubt for anyone, especially for me.”

He then continued: “Have you forgotten our journey to the shrine in the mountains south of Shiraz, when He was a child aged nine years old? There was a group of us, and He came along as well. When we arrived, being completely exhausted, we performed our ablutions, offered our late afternoon and the evening obligatory prayers, paid our homage of visitation, ate dinner, and went to bed. It was not long after, at midnight, that I awoke and noticed that He was not in bed. Deeply perturbed, I was overtaken with anxiety that perhaps He had fallen from the mountain. Finally, after searching extensively, I heard a voice raised in the obligatory prayer and prayers of glorification to the Lord, coming from the lower extremities [of the mountain]. When I followed the melody of that chant, I found the Child, standing alone and in private, in consummate rapture voicing prayers and supplications to the One Who transcends all mention, on the deserted mountainside and at that late hour of the night. My beloved brother, I ask: After observing such things, is there any room for doubt? With a knowledge born of certainty, with truth that stands most manifest, and with my own unimpeachable observations, it is thoroughly evident that the Promised One whom we had anticipated has now appeared after twelve hundred and sixty years. The proof has been completed.”

Memories of an unsupervised childhood I

This memory was dredged up by the Free-Range-Kids blog.

When I was 10 years old and light as a feather, I could leap out of the top of a 50 foot conifer and just grab a passing branch which will spring down with my weight, then let myself fall to the next, until back to earth. My cousin and I could play this game for ages. Of course getting up to the top can only be done the hard way. But such exhiliration, such feeling of power, such adventure. Parent supervision, safety harness? Who, what?

I stopped climbing trees in my 30′s after a somersault from 20 feet while picking mangoes. It was a close call and my desire to live to see my children raised, and maybe just live another day, has kept me out of trees since.

When my sons were toddlers I taught them not to try to climb over the fence in my suburban yard. Maybe I made them more sensible. I was glad, although also a bit nervous, that when they were 15 years plus they would go with friends to a big tree overhanging a lake and jump in the lake from 20 – 30 feet.

Don’t pay alcohol tax

The argument that Margaret Hamilton (W/E Australian 17-18 Oct 2009) uses to support alcohol tax is that a reduction in sales should ensure. She argues that this is the most effective mechanism to induce reduction of consumption, and that reduction of consumption at all levels of usage helps overall healthy levels of consumption. By the same token, if moderate drinkers, cease drinking at all, the great deline in consumption will push the price of alcohol to a level unaffordable by most heavy users, thus limiting their consumption.  So my advice – don’t buy alcohol, don’t pay the tax, and put life back into your community.

A Pschyzoid Newspaper

The Australian Newspaper allows one of its regular columnists to run a long-standing anti-environmental campaign against Cape York, a remote part of Australia, while supporting enviuronmental management of the suburbs and the cities (Professional section p7 W/E 17-18 Oct 2009). On one hand the Australian supports the good work of environmental scientists in the suburbs but rails against same environmental scientists if they should dare to ensure the sustainability of vast tracts of wilderness. To the Australian, environmentalism is okay as long as it is kept strictly and literally within the confines of your backyard, but not if it has anything to say about how we will sustain the planet with a population of 10 billion people for the next 100, let alone next 1,000 years.

The Australian Newspaper nurtures an anti-environmental stance

This Weekend Australia (Oct17-18, 2009) showed how a reasonably fine newspaper can fail to produce deeply investigative pieces while relying on the broadsheet equivalent of sound bites.

Tony Koch continues his attack on environmental policy and environmental action on behalf of Noel Pearson, and now with newcomer, one of Australia’s prime capitalists, Peter Holmes-a-Court  in a piece in the Nation section, page 3. Tony Koch’ articles suggest the type of metro-centric, been-nowhere, done-nothing, know-nothing type of expertise that he regularly accuses of environmental aligned voters. Tony Koch no doubt knows that his approach is the approach of a propagandist, not an investigator.

Tony Koch dresses up his article against environmental concerns by exhibiting a potential cash crop in the form of the pongamia tree. He also portrays the capitalist Peter Homes a Court as not one of those metrocentric people, even a person caring for the indigenous community, and so he may be. However, Tony Koch fails as a journalist by failing to investigate why a major capitalist is interested in loosening environmental protection on Cape York, and failing to speak to the ever present environmentalists who live on Cape York, in Cairns, or up the road from his office.

But to the various issue of the development of Aboriginal communities. It is important that Aboriginal communities on Cape York, like all viable communities, are able to trade with the wide world. Meaningful occupation and a sense of control over one’s life, are foundations to a healthy life and community advancement. It is likely that agriculture, mining, and tourism, will form the bedrock for community trade on Cape York. The question of whether it will or not, will depend on scale, ownership, and management of primary industry, trade, and the fiscal rewards.

Large scale mining on Cape York has done little for the Aboriginal communities in their vicinity. In fact Weipa is considered by some to be a determinedly anti-aboriginal ethnocentric town. If we look at community research at every level and everywhere in the world suggests that more of the same on Cape York will lead to more money in the pockets of the top 1% capitalists in the world, and a widening wealth gap for those in Cape York aboriginal communities at the bottom 20%. Only such mining as can comply with strict environmental guidelines, hire and train many local aboriginal people, and recognise land ownership for aboriginal communities by direct partnerships or as leasors, can be considered to have long term sustainability.

Big capitalist are looking closely at Cape York for ‘water to agricultural’ prospects. Again, large broad acres cropping value for aboriginal communities depends on the same conditions as mining. Without the best adherence to watershed environmental guidelines, agriculture becomes nothing more than a short term ‘rape’ of the land.

So, at this point in writing I can hear clamours from agriculturalists, Aboriginal leaders, even miners, that, of course we want to look after the environment. But here is the rub. Miners are undeniably poor environmental carers and have rarely ever done anything that wasn’t because of a heavy stick of law supporting fines, law suits etc. Aboriginal people claim they have a long history of proper land management. Yet it is also obvious that without the assistance of modern environmental science and State and National infrastructure, remote Aboriginal communities cannot and at this point in time, are not, managing the environment. Currently the State government is not doing a very good job at managing Cape York environment from flora and fauna pests, but the solution to this is better environmental policy, not worse. Left exposed to the big capital players in Australia, Aboriginal communities will implode internally and allow Cape York to become an environmental wasteland.

I am sure that Cape York does not need complete environmental lock-out protection. Agriculture and even mining should be able to find a place on the Cape. One might hope that secondary and even, eventually tertiary industry will find a place on Cape York. The pressure of population in Australia and the world will create of population of 50,000 people on Cape York over the next 50 years. This expected population explosion will stress the environment and all public policy to its limits. The likelihood of major corruption developing around land usage will be very great. We know from the exploitation of other remote environments, that the destruction of environments essential for the sustainability of that region and even the globe, is modus operandus of agricultural and mining giants. All environmentalists know that sustaining the life of cities requires sustaining all global environments. City dwellers know they need to vote for the environment or they will surely perish. None of us, least of all city dwellers, can afford not to have an environmental interest in Cape York. We are right not to trust the words of Aboriginal leaders or big capitalists who offer to ‘protect’ the environment for us. To give up the clamour for State and national policy frameworks to guide every community in this country, is to give up our democratic rights. Only a coward would do that and only an opportunists would ask it.