San Diego County in California is home to not only one of the largest military installations in the world, but also the second-largest Iraqi population in the US. In autumn 2002, the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice began an outreach campaign to high school students to encourage them to question the US government's planned attack on Iraq.
Why the focus on high school students? The Vietnam War taught the Pentagon that conscription had limited effectiveness and could seriously…
I reviewed this book with the help of a group of 11-14-year-old girls and a sense of trepidation: how well would this group of children take to playing games that involved no competition or eventual winner?
The tag games worked very well, the girls enjoying the time to run and chase. The games that involved the girls putting themselves at risk of capture to help out others (Help-me Tag, Clam-Free Tag) helped highlight the girls who were easily willing to take the risk for friends and…
Though they echo with the longings of the educated and wistful NGO worker, and are reminiscent of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 19th century “The Pen is mightier than the sword” speech, the title of this article represents the heartfelt wish of the Afghan refugee Jamila Abassy.
Jamila has just opened her second primary school in the Pakistan refugee camp where Hamid Karzais [leader of Afghanistans provisional council] - father was captured and killed by the Taliban in 1999.
Jamila,…
Roland Meighan is an acknowledged “educational heretic” for his view that mass compulsory schooling is an obsolete and counter-productive learning system which should be scrapped as soon as possible. His latest book, Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum challenges the very essence of the education system today. It is a devastating critique-and rightly so.
Caroline Austin: In your latest book, Natural Learning, you quote Mark Twain, who “never allowed…
