Usually I try to skip past American stuff when googling for education-related dramas, but this is too choice to ignore:
LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. – A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school with 25 rounds, authorities said Thursday. No one was injured.The military is investigating the incident that damaged Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School shortly after 11 p.m.
Police were called when a custodian who was the only person in the school at the time heard what sounded like someone running across the roof.
The pilot of the single-seat jet was supposed to fire at a target on the ground 3-1/2 miles away from school, said Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard. He does not know what happened that led to the school getting shot up.
''The National Guard takes this situation very seriously,'' said Lt. Col. Roberta Niedt, a spokeswoman.
School board President Mike Dupuis said he's mindful that a firing range is nearby.''Being so close to the range, that's always in the back of our minds. It is very scary." AP
Indeed. Now that's what I call attacking education.
Often when schools get attacked – fire being the popular weapon of choice – it turns out that the miscreant went there, but did not enjoy it and got angry about something. Could this be the story here?
Hated school. Joined Air National Guard. Took revenge.
Probably not.
UPDATE: Daryl Cobranchi calls it ONE MORE REASON TO HOMESCHOOL.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a load of old politicised garbage …
Astana. November 5. KAZINFORM. 5-9 November Turkey Minister of National Education Hussein Chelik will visit the Republic of Kazakhstan, our correspondent has been told in the press service of the Education Ministry of Kazakhstan.In the course of the visit it is planned to sign the Agreement on cooperation and in the sphere of education between the ministries of the two states. In Astana the Turkish Minister will visit some educational institutions, such as the Kazakh-Turkish High School, Kazakh Gymnasium # 38 and the Gumilyev Eurasian National University.
Besides, in Turkistan the guest will study the activity of the International Kazakh-Turkish University named after Yassavi.
… and I'm sure that a lot of it is just that. This could, of course, just be a taxpayer funded holiday for a bunch of parasites. At best it is an accurately recycled government press release.
However, we live in a world where the cooperation being suggested here is now a lot easier for actual people, as opposed to politicians, to do for real and to make good use of. So if there are people at both ends of this deal who want this stuff to work, then it might. I wish them luck. And if the politicians are merely trying to get the process of them not interrupting organised, then well done them too.
From a book by Andrew Yule about Steven Spielberg:
An early introduction to his goal of filmmaking in Hollywood came courtesy of Universal Studio's guided tour. Originated by the company's founder 'Uncte' Carl Laemmle in the 1920s, the tours had just been reinstated following two years of extensive updating; Spielberg bought his ticket during a summer vacation in Canoga Park spent with cousins.
Hiding behind soundstages after the tour bus had departed, the seventeen-year-old wandered the studio for several hours. This was his home, he decided, this was where he belonged. Some crazy kind of osmosis would take-care of the details. As luck would have it, director John Ford was in a rare expansive mood when he found himself confronted with the intruder. While showing off his collection of Western prints to the choked up, profusely sweating youngster – who could scarcely believe his luck - the crusty veteran had two pearls of wisdom to impart. 'When you understand what makes a great Western painting, you'll be a great Western director' came first. Next: 'Never spend your own money to make a movie.' His final words: 'Now get the hell out of here.'
Before he did, Spielberg also met Chuck Silvers, a senior editor on the lot, who listened sympathetically to his tales of amateur moviemakmg. A pass was handed out for the next day so Spielberg could return without having to pay, and so he could bring along a few of his 8mm shorts. After viewing his work and offering a few words of encouragement. Silvers explained that he didn't have the authority to write any more passes. He wished him good luck, and told him to stick with his moviemaking. That was enough for Spielberg.
Next day, and for the rest of me Summer, wearing a suit and swinging a briefcase that contained a sandwich and a few candy bars, he breezily walked past the guards and gave a friendly wave. The hope was that he would pass master for 'some mogul's kid'. It worked. Disappointingly, it was the only thing that did. Despite virtually squatting in offices on the lot, no one among the writers, editors and dubbers to whom he spoke showed any interest in what he had to offer. Their indifference sent Spielberg back to Phoenix more determined than ever to produce something that would change their minds.
Borrowing $400 from his father, he produced and directed 140-minute science-fiction movie, Firelight, a tale of hostile UFOs. Employing mainly student actors from Arizona State University, it had aliens harassing the Earth's scientists, running circles round the National Guard, and stealing an entire city to reassemble it on their own planet. It was great fun to shoot at weekends, with Spielberg using all his powers of persuasion to have the local airport shut down a runway for one scene, a hospital to throw open its emergency room for another. Sister Nancy found herself enrolled in the venture, playing a kid reaching up in her backyard toward the mysterious light in me sky. 'Steve had me looking directly at the sun,' she, recalls. '"Quit squinting!" he'd yell.
Although it was shot silent, Spielberg had a sound strip applied to Firelight. There was a sense of considerable pride when his father hired the local cinema (Worid Premiere! March 24, 8 pm!) and the movie was shown for one heady night only in Scottsdale. It recovered its cost and came out, on a box-office gross of $500, with a clear $100 profit. Spielberg regards it as a tragedy of sorts that most of the film was promptly lost the day after the premiere in the family's move to Saratoga, a suburb of San Jose. So he should, for what remains contains lighting effects of space ships hovering and swooping that would not have looked out of place in many a Monogram or Ed Wood epid, even a Roger Corman programmer (scratch that; Spielberg's effects were too good, and in colour.
Someone called "Kate" has just added an interesting comment to this posting here, which I mention (a) because it is an interesting comment which y'all might want to read but would probably otherwise miss, and (b) because Kate supplies a link to her own blog, which looks very interesting and very fun.
Gratuitous picture there of someone whom Kate hasn't married yet.
Today I visited a primary school, in the company of the man who runs the London bit of Volunteer Reading Help. I am fixed up to help a couple of children with their reading etc., two afternoons a week, for about half an hour each.
For the time being I will refer to this place as Paradise Primary, because frankly, that is how it struck me. Maybe that pseudonym will change, but my guess is that it won't need to. (Maybe there will be times when it is a bit ironic.) The place has a website, and is crammed with photogenic stuff, the most photogenic things of all being, of course, the children. But for reasons I need not elaborate on, there will be no link to the website, and certainly and absolutely no photos. Quite apart from anything else, I have just signed a Confidentiality Agreement. Suffice it to say that I am looking forward to doing this very much, and am already sure that it will massively improve my understanding of the realities of education in London, which is, educationally, one of the most fascinating places in the world, what with all the different cultures and ethnic groups that are here represented.
Acronyms abound in education, much as they do in Tom Clancy novels. (CINCLANT, SACEUR, DEFCON, etc.) So, for instance, today, they gave me an information sheet about Paradise Primary which listed the Head Teacher, the School Secretary, and something called the SENCO. The School Secretary guards the front door of Paradise Primary and the person I will check in and out with every time I visit. And the SENCO is, approximately, and assuming that I heard it right and am remembering it right, the Special Educational Needs Coordinator.
Already, I am learning.
A recent Islamabad news item:
Pakistan's Education Minister Lt Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi has said that a few of the Madarssahs or religious schools situated near the country's border were involved in terrorist activities.According to Dawn, Qazi who accompanied the outgoing US ambassador Nancy Powell to a community school in Nirola said that the government was keeping a close watch on the activities of seminaries suspected of being involved in terrorist activities and was contemplating serious action against them.
He further added that the government was seriously trying to streamline the madarssahs into a compact system and had even entered into collaboration with the Wafaqul Madaris in this regard.
"Streamlining of madaris is going on at a good pace and the ministry in collaboration with Wafaqul Madaris is taking every possible measure for timely Madarssah reforms," the report quoted him as saying. (ANI)
As I wonder what I'm going to add to that, I'm watching a BBC4 TV show about Who Runs America (scroll down to the final one), and an FBI terrorist chaser is being interrogated about his work by a bloke from the BBC. Yesterday there was a Presidential Election in which the War on Terrorism was the number one issue.
It may be that all this effort will eventually come to be thought of as a huge overreaction to what was actually a quite minor problem. But that will only happen if there are no more major terrorist successes, and personally I'd settle for that. The FBI guy is talking about this War being "won". But if that happens, it will be because, one day, people realise that hey, we aren't thinking about that Terrorism thing any more. He won't get a big parade. He'll just find his department downgraded, and if he is personally felt to have done well, he will simply find himself assigned to other duties.
Meanwhile, for the time being, the interest that the rest of us have in the nature of Islamic education is going to be about more than just how they teach things like the 3Rs.
At school, I was a bad flute player, and for some stupid reason I found myself entered into a school music competition, playing a piece that was technically beyond me. Come the competition, I sloped despondently onto the platform, noted with relief that the large hall in which all this was happening was almost empty, and in a state of resignation began to play. To my amazement, I got it all right. Note perfect. That hideous passage that I had never once got right when practising went perfectly. Twice. Amazing.
Then the bad news. The bastards decided that I should repeat my performance in the school concert. For the school concert they cherry picked the music competitions, getting the best of the prize winners to reprise their various triumphs. A reasonable procedure. Trouble was, they decided to include my unrepeatable fluke in this showcase event.
I wish that I had point blank refused to play in that concert. Instead I buckled, and played, and duly messed the piece up, this time in front of five hundred schoolboys.
It actually wasn't really compulsion, because I could have refused. It was very heavy influence, emotional blackmail, dishonest argument and a blatant obsession with their interests (filling the slots in their damned concert) and a blatant disregard for my interests. But it wasn't compulsion, pure and simple. I could, as I say, have just said no. What they might then have said to me, I don't know, but I do not think they would have tortured me, in the way that for other acts of misbehaviour or defiance they did torture us. It was, you might say, impure compulsion.
Because it was compulsion, but because it was impure, I learned two things from this episode rather than just the one. I learned that I thought that compulsion of children is wrong. But I also learned that, had I really been thinking clearly, I could have resisted the compulsion.
I learned that children should be free, and also that, if they really choose to be, they are free.
Whenever I expound my views on the wrongness of compelling children to do things that they really, really don't want to do, someone in the compulsion team says: I remember being made to do … physics, basketball, sculpture, flute playing, whatever. At first I thought it was stupid, but I'm glad I was made to do it. Allowed to make my own decisions, I would have been a less well educated and well prepared adult. I would have done nothing. Hurrah for compulsion.
I can offer no simple and smart put-down of this kind of argument. But I am about to start pursuing a career as some sort of teacher, and if I can (probably a foolish fantasy but there you go), I will resist compulsion as a teaching method.
I will persuade. I will advise, urge, try to convince, try to sell the culture in general and the relevant bit (such as reading or sums) in particular, with all the eloquence and charm that I can muster. But the final decision about what my pupils do will be theirs, not mine.
Easy to say. But I wanted to record this ambition before reality starts to pollute it. As so often, my most important reader is myself, later.
Here's an answer to the bullying problem:
UTSUNOMIYA – A 23-year-old unemployed man who murdered his former high school classmate has been arrested after he turned himself in, police said.Tsutomu Yoshihara, from Imaichi, Tochigi Prefecture, said the victim used to bully him at school …
That'll teach him.
Meanwhile, in Fiji, they are fretting about other kinds of violence, by teachers upon pupils:
Such punishment in schools, which are supposed to be custodians of values of peace and tolerance, can only lead to children growing up to become violent adults.
Supposed by whom? Plus, is the next bit actually true? In Britain the rules about teachers attacking pupils have tightened a lot recently, but the resulting adults are not noticeably less violent. More, if anything.
Why can't they just say what they surely think? – which is that adults hitting kids is horrid, and they ought to do a lot less of it.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the students of the Punjab University are showing the world what they are made of:
THE recent clash between students of the Social Work Department (SWD) at the Punjab University (PU) and Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) activists has raised the question of security for students and teachers, especially females, living on campus. Unfortunately, the PU administration, consisting of retired army personnel and higher authorities including the PU Chancellor, who is also the Punjab governor, and other federal high ups are quiet on the issue.The incident took place last Tuesday when some students from the Space Science Department (SSD), allegedly involved and backed by IJT, beat up students of the SWD. The SWD chairman saved the students by hiding them inside the library. The incident is a result of the IJT’s attempt to control all PU departments, which is not liked by the majority of the SWD faculty. That is why some 'students' also misbehaved with some teachers, leading to tension in the Academic Staff Association.
Sounds like a Tom Sharpe novel.
This, meanwhile, turned out to be less exciting than the headline.
PROPOSALS to build 10 all-weather floodlit pitches has divided a community because of yobs.Residents attended a meeting on Friday about the plans to build the astroturf pitches near Whitchurch High School in Cardiff.
The school would have use of them before 4pm and they would then be available for community use and for the capital’s five-a-side football league in the evening.
Some residents on neighbouring Clos Treoda and Glan y Nant terrace worry that the pitches will be a magnet for loud youths causing trouble at night and cause car parking chaos.
But many think these facilities are what is needed to keep youngsters out of trouble.
I think that many have a point. Gathering young people together to do something improving to them, no matter how improving it is, is not a complete answer to society's problems if, after a couple of hours of improving them, you then spit them out in a great gang onto the streets, at nine o'clock at night.
More educationa related violence news, from Israel, South Africa, Wales (again – the real thing this time), and of course the USA (most of that is USA stuff).
Have a nice week.
More on the safety ligitation threat in today's Telegraph:
Teachers should abandon school trips because of the danger of being sued in the event of an accident, a union has warned.A new test of the "educational validity" of trips should be introduced to cut down on unnecessary risks, said the NASUWT.
Last month, education watchdog Ofsted said too many schools did not take children on outdoor activities because they feared they would be sued if there was an accident.
Canoeing, field work trips, rock climbing and other pursuits help pupils develop their physical and social skills, according to the Ofsted report.
But Chris Keates, the union's general secretary, said society had become "increasingly litigious" and no longer understood the idea of a genuine accident.
That last bit sounds about right. But of course, being a union, all they can do is refuse to do whatever it is. No positive suggestion is being offered here. Still, they are at least flagging up the problem.
