Tag Archives: education

Lessons from the Amish

Part of having a little office/studio space in an old squat means that I have to clock working hours on the actual building. Thankfully hammering, scraping, or painting are all tasks that allow me the mental freedom to listen to my favorite podcasts all day long.. stopping for the occasional watermelon break.

Today’s audio gem which I strongly recommend comes from On Point, with Tom Ashbrooke. Always a great program, the most recent episode focuses on the Amish population of the United States. It features an author who spent many years living next door to Amish, getting to know them and becoming good friends. He did extensive research about different Amish communities and provides some really eye opening information about them… what I would label as both positive and negative details.

One particular detail that opened my eyes was the fact that Amish communities, especially some of the most conservative ones, have seen population BOOMS in the last decade… more than doubling their numbers!
– Imagine that… living in the US, while all these non-amishpeople, media, objects, not too far from your home.. and yet.. a whole community not only staying out of much of it.. but actually growing!

Beyond that he presents important lessons that the amish could offer the rest of the world.. including: buying and selling local. He talks about their tremendous skill and capacity for farming, and the great tradition of selling locally, to communities down the street. Now of course he talks about issues of education and patriarchy which present some troubling realities… but overall I was very impressed with what he learned about the Amish.

bm216 My Mother’s Tradition of Rebellion and Challenge

My mother went to school at a time in Portugal where you weren’t supposed to question or challenge a very sexist, classist, and politically repressive nation. Yet throughout her education she took on one challenge after another, making it her tradition to fight against the rules and the limits placed upon her. This podcast is about that experience, in her own words, as we sat in our living room in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, last week.

We discuss:
– Girls and School
– Access to schools
– Private and Public schools during the dictatorship
– Class and privledge
– Getting to school
– Gender inequality
– Challenging the norms
– University in Coimbra
– Secret activism against the fascist state
– Pamphlets
– Access to power
– Corruption

 

bm209 Olympic Boycotts and China’s Role in Darfur

Using a wide range of strategies, human rights activists around the world are calling on China to stop funding the genocide in Darfur. Their most important tool- the Olympic Games in 2008. While some experts and activists call for a boycott in the tradition of boycotting olympics to make a political statement, others are proposing different strategies.

My Guest is Jonathan Zimmerman, Director of the History of Education Program, Steinhardt School of Education, NYU.
(you can read some of his op-eds on China and Darfur, here and here)

We Discuss:
-China’s role in Darfur
-Resources and the need for resources
-Historical olympic boycotts
-Leading public figures who won’t take a stand against China
-Beyond Boycott

In the second part of the program you hear excerpts from a press conference launching the Olympic Dream for Darfur campaign. Audio includes Mia Farrow, Eric Reeves and Jill Savitt

bm206 Debt Relief Lies and the G8

They call it debt relief, but it is not as simple as it sounds. As the elite club of G8 nations meets and the people protest outside, more plans are being laid out to squeeze developing nations in ways that are rarely reported about in the mainstream. My guest on this podcast is Ceri Dingle of Worldwrite, an education charity that challenges stereotypes and lies on issues like debt relief.

We talk about:
– What Worldwrite does
– How it views the G8
– Debt relief and what happens to countries that “get it”
– Live 8, Bono, and the real result of such campaigns
– Difference between development aid from western countries and China
– The prospect of new and worse conditions for debt relief
– The Film: Damned by Debt Relief
– A Debt Relief Quiz to see if you can spot the truth
– What should be done with the G8 summit

Also my recommendation, watch G8-TV for video directly from the streets

 

Rotting American Image

During one of my very fun nights out on the town in Berlin my two new friends offerred to show me their favorite night spots. And as we walked town the now typical hipster street, we ran into a big crowd of people gathered around one guy who was struggling to be heard, telling some story like a tour guide.

“Oh this is so funny. Have you ever heard about these pub crawl just for Americans?”. my friend asked. Of course I had not. So she went on “Yeah they have this guide who brings alcohol in this backpack dispenser and everyone gets little shot glasses and it advertized for Americans to come get really drunk and maybe get laid.”

As I listened to these words I was already noticing all these details, looking at the obscenely loud crowd of college age kids in front of me. We walked around them like you walk by the scene of an accident. We joked about maybe trying to fit in and observe them up close. The joke didn’t last long and we got out of there in a hurry.

Hours later we hopped into a tram to get to the next destination. It was a typical Berlin tram on a wednesday night, not too full, lots of people sitting and the odd conversation here and there. Suddenly, as the next stop approached, there came this overwhelming sound of people. As if a stadium had let out after a championship game, there was a crowd outside and it was chanting and singing and yelling. And as the doors opened, they packed into the tram with a resounding roar, banging on the walls and stumbling over people in their seats.

YOu could hear the accents, you could hear their words, it was very painfully obvious that the American pub crawl crowd had invaded the tram. When they weren’t shouting conversation to their friends, they were busy leaning over passengers.. repeatedly apologizing for being drunk and for George Bush. I’ll never forget the look in the middle aged German couples faces, the look of disgust and pity, as college kid after college kid apologized for George Bush or even.. being American.

After two never ending stops, they piled out. The silence was deafening. Those who remained on the tram, I’m not exaggerating, gave a collective sigh and everyone looked at each other with this knowing look. To me it said “my god that was horrible.”

These events replayed in my head all evening. The college kids, the pubcrawl, the local people on the tram, the unbelievably loud communication, and of course.. the repeated apologies for what their country has done.

Say what you want about George Bush or even Congress, but these encounters remind me that there is something deeper going on. It is hard to break down what it is all about, but I definitely look to how people are being educated in the US, especially in college. To me college is the new high school, except that now you pay big money for you kids to basically attend a glorified high school with fewer rules.

Then you come back to the whole American image abroad thing. It is in shambles. And It won’t be cured by this congress or a new president. It will take a revolution in American culture that looks highly unlikely any time soon.

Fear of Losing Estonian-ness

As part of being in Berlin this week I attended a lovely hacker conference-party by the name of PH-Neutral. Perhaps the best part of this get together was that I met two very fun new friends, K and F. (maybe they dont want their names used, who knows)

K recognized me from the talk I gave at the congress back in December, she gave me a big smile and told me how much she enjoyed my talk. Turns out K is Estonian but has moved her life to Berlin. She and her boyfriend took me out on the town last night, exposing me to some of the nightspots where other revolutionaries gather. And throughout the evening we discussed education, culture, the internets, and much more.

One very interesting thing I learned from K about what is going on in Estonia, was about how fearful Estonians are that their culture will disappear. With only around 1 million citizens, she explained that the very common political and social discussion is about how things like culture, language, and especially music, must be preserved and passed on. This is, of course, while Estonia also has a very significant Russian minority that has lived in the country for several decades. The conflict she pointed out was that Russia being so huge and right next door, is seen as a force that could erode Estonian culture… and as an extension of that.. there becomes a struggle between the Estonians and the Russians in Estonia regarding language, culture, and from what Ive read – rights.

So then comes the very typical discussion that you here in various countries… the classic question of how minority groups should interact with the so-called national majority.

K and I agreed that neither of us supports the forcing of anyone to be anything. But I understood that the average citizen in Estonia doesn’t share our opinion. Instead it sounds like typical rhetoric about how minority groups must do this and that in order to be good citizens and get “intigrated”. Still it is hard to compare what happens in Estonia to say.. the US or even Germany. Small place. Few people. Unique situation.