Dear Prime Minister Gillard,

Currently you have taken away parents’ and kids’ choice of a secular education by violating our secular constitution and funding the establishment of Christianity in schools.

Preachers preach, teachers teach.
If Chaplains are not there to preach/proselytise or convert (as they themselves have admitted in the past.. see: here for how they defined it and recent comments by the head of one of the organisations that hire almost all Chaplains in Victoria): then why are they religious?
If they are not there (or qualified) to counsel kids then why are they boasting about saving lives and saving suicidal kids?

Would you hire on the cheap?
If a lack of qualified counsellors is the problem: then I suggest you fund more of them. Would you advocate funding Chaplains with a first aid course to fill a gap in brain surgeon skills? Absolutely not. Would you fund Chaplains that know how to turn on a laptop if you found the NBN’s technical staff hiring was a bit hard to find? No. So why risk it with our children.

Religion less and less relevant to more and more people
At a time when church attendance is as low as it has ever been and dropping, when “No Religion” is the fastest growing category and when protecting secular institutions is of paramount importance for a society based concepts of not only on freedom of religion but freedom of religion: why on Earth are you trying to buy votes from religious fundamentalists like the Australian Christian Lobby.

Vocal religious lobby groups protecting their taxpayer handouts
I’m sure your inbox is under assault from a lobbying effort by Scripture Union Qld Chaplains that you for some strange reason decided to give another $222m to in the last budget.

Money wasted
I’d point out that the money could have been spent on many more useful things, like qualified counsellors or more teachers in public schools for instance. Or just general increase in public education funding (as a large chunk of the money for chaplains is going to fund proselytising in private religious schools for some reason.. making it yet another drain on the public purse to fund private education)..

No ability to opt out
You have given parents no opportunity to opt out and the NSCP Chaplains are proselytising by stealth in a number of documented cases (most recently on the 730 report). If there have not been widespread complaints: it is likely because (as I found) complaints go missing (e.g. the official NSCP complaint inbox lost one of mine and Scripture Union Qld didn’t bother answering a question about a predatory chaplain that they had hired who appeared to be grooming a child).

Ban chaplains from schools
This program needs to stop. You need to listen to the people saying the program is not suitable for our schools and not let their voices be drowned out by religious lobby groups who already send their kids to private religious schools.
Let the schools spend the money on real counsellors and real staff not these missionaries in schools with a promise to spread the word of Jesus as far as possible.

Please restore our schools to their secular former selves
If people want religious education then they have that option. Where does a parent go if they want an education that does not include the risk of religious indoctrination.
You have followed Howard’s lead and taken away secular free public education for many to replace it with on-site proselytising/amateur counsellor filled schools.

It is a horrible thing to have done, particularly given the dire funding situation for public health and I hope you will come to your senses.

regards,
Nathan Lee

Note: if you would like to donate to the High Court challenge underway you can do so via here or here.

Funnily enough though I have something that clarifies what this organisation means by “evangelise”.

But we aren’t preaching

We’ve had the promise made that ”We are not there to preach to them, we are just there to teach them and give them facts”. I’ve talked to religious people and their definition of “fact” is rather different from normal requirements for proof. e.g. I was discussing with an SRE scripture teacher only last week and he was talking of the “historic fact of Jesus calming a lake”. That’s why they are a poor choice for religious education because speaking with such certainties is indoctrination, not education.

But on with the trip down memory lane to when Access Ministries was CCES and a peek at their core values.

Core values – conversion..  I mean.. evangelising.. Yes. Evangelising!

Access Minstries have a core values page up today which has the following:

ACCESS ministries affirms:
its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ
that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism—a calling of people to repentance and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice

Access Ministries statement of belief today

But if, via the magical powers that be I take a look back in time to when the organisation was called CCES, here’s that same couple of bits from 2001 at least:

The CCES affirms its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The CCES affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism – a calling of people to repentance (conversion) and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice.

CCES's clear definition.

What’s the difference?

I’ll use my nerd skills and show you the complete two bits of text via a “diff” tool and a bit of ugly purple underlining. I’ve added a couple of full stops and changed a dash in order to eliminate the noise, but these are their texts.

Pretty much identical.. Oh, except they edited out a crucial word clarifying what "evangelising" means.

There’s a few changes in how they worded it, an apostrophe change, “her/his” vs “his or her” (I guess couldn’t have women being mentioned first?) and the name change of the organisation.

Oh I almost forgot: there’s the word “conversion” in brackets in the sentence about what evangelism is in order to clarify what this means if people don’t know what the word “evangelise” means. As an aside I love it when religious people throw in stuff in brackets in their texts, like Qur’an 4:34 where by men are informed they can beat their wives which some people realised was bad and inserted (lightly)  as in “(lightly) beat them”.

So when we hear religious types defending the program as being “evangelising rather than proselytising” we now know they mean EXACTLY the same thing: converting souls.. Access Ministries clarified that for us before they did a quick editing job on their core values.

Somewhere between 2001 and today we either had a redefinition of a core value of an organisation or else someone thought it was better if they had another word they could fall back on that meant the same thing, but which was defined on the website with absolute clarity.

Well Access Ministries: we’re on to your stupid word games, thanks for more evidence you’re out to convert all the kids you can like all the other monopoly Christian chaplaincy groups elsewhere in the country. This NSCP program has to stop and secular education needs to be restored.

Here’s some things the recent funding expansion could have been spent on that don’t violate parental right to a free, secular education in our public schools.

Qualified (Real) School Counsellors

Apparently the reason we need chaplains is because we don’t have enough counsellors to go round. Well, in 2010, across Australia, there were 6,743 government schools and as far as I can see from the salary figures for Australian school counsellors that would get us 3083 school counsellors or 2658 senior counsellors.
Let me do the division: that would be around 1 new counsellor to every 2 schools. Just the new counsellors alone would be a 1 to 751 ratio. If you look at the figures for 2008 ratios they’re:

• ACT 1: 850 (1 Assistant Manager, 5 Senior Counsellors, 45 FTE positions for School Counsellors)
• NSW 1 : 1,050 (678 Counsellors 113 DGOs 1 PEOs ie 1 per region across the state)
• NT: 1:2500 when all positions are full  (19 School Counsellors, 2 Senior. School Psychologists, 8 School Psychologists – however, rarely are all positions filled)
• Qld: 1:1,300 in secondary schools (about 350 combined GO and SGO positions)
• SA: 1:3779 for GO,  1:1944 for ECP (GO – 43.4 FTE in the field in 2008, with 3.1 FTE in specialist positions. ECP – 8.9 FTE in the field)
• Tas: 1 :1,800 (36 school psychologists, 8 senior school psychologists)
• WA: 1:1200 to 1:2000
• VIC: no data.

So you can see that those numbers are all blown out of the water (in a good way) if the money had gone to that. Of course the money could go toward the Northern Territory’s problem with hiring staff or to address the states with most urgent need. Or, hell, it could just go to paying the existing ones better pay so more staff are easily found and retained. For a government supposedly concerned about mental health it would surely make sense to hire qualified counsellors with that money rather than preachers who are only really there for a small percentage of the kids who are genuinely religious enough to need to talk to a religious ear.. and even then: only for certain types of advice (e.g. “I think I like my best friend in a sexual way” might not go down too well with an evangelist who thinks gays are sinful or unnatural).

Teachers

Despite Access Ministries actively trying to turn kids against teachers and toward Chaplains via propaganda teachers are the lifeblood of the school and are the real educators.

Teacher ratios in public schools are a problem thanks to the decade or so of the Liberal government under Howard systematically dismantling public education in favour of private education. You remember that right? Back when Abbott was just a RU486 hoarding health minister who couldn’t separate his faith from his ministerial responsibility.

Anyhow, $222m of wasted chaplaincy money could pay for 2220 teachers on a pretty healthy old $100k a year. Or let’s say we pay for a bunch of teachers on $70k, that would get public schools an extra 3,171 teachers.

As of 2010′s ABS figures there are 183,725 teachers.

So we could give them all a $1200 bonus for putting up with the less than desirable funding arrangement that neglects them in favour of funding for extra indoor swimming pools for private schools.

Renewable Energy for Schools

I’ve talked in the past about my view that government buildings should all have solar installations on the roof.

Divided amongst all the schools you could prepare a “renewable energy for schools” programme which would be a lump sum payment of $33k to purchase solar panels for the rooftops of the new school halls. This would help in many ways: it would reduce the electricity bill.

Solar panels could be on school halls

According to Origin energy’s FAQ a 1.5kW system starts at $4k. So let’s say $1k worth of extra cost. So every school could be a 9-10kW solar installation.

So that’s 6743x10kW = 67430kW = 6.7 MW distributed power station. Sure the real yield would be lower that that and you only generate for X hours per day.. But it’s a definite start toward freeing us from fossil fuel dependency.

School Gardens

Instead of learning the “historic fact” from a Christian Chaplain about how all of mankind was forever cursed and kicked out of the garden of Eden each school could get a $33k grant toward creating and maintaining a school garden. The garden could be used to encourage healthy eating or used as an ongoing fund raising device. The added advantage would be education going home via the kids as to what is actually in season, leading to better choices at the super market. With $33K you’d be able to do some serious gardening.

Simply planting some trees might also be a good use of the funding which would offset some of the emissions for heating/cooling the school.

Meals

The money could be used to supply a free apple or orange to every kid in the public school system every day for 20 weeks.

Apples for the students instead! No stories about snakes and gardens needed.

Or perhaps a decent sized fruit salad for half that time.

That’d surely help with the obesity rates and encourage healthy eating.

Books or Technology

Public schools, having to make do with giving away 2/3 of the federal funding to private schools, are lagging behind in adoption of technology like smart boards and computing facilities.  Schools could have $95 worth of extra spend per student on books or technology. So for every 10 students you could fund a laptop. So that’s two extra computers for every classroom. For a small school of 200 students that would be a computer lab. For every 50 students you could have a brand new smart board put into a classroom.

For the price of funding one god fearing chaplain at a school (at $20k of tax dollars) you could give an entire classroom of 20 kids a set of laptops for the year.

If you wanted to splash cash around you could pay a commercial IT consultant, Engineer or Scientist to come in once a week at consulting rates for 20-30 weeks to teach kids about technology rather than bronze age mythology. Which type of inspiration is likely to lead to a career that isn’t complete nonsense and sponging off Govt public schools violating our (supposed to be) secular education system?

Could hire a bunch of roaming consultants to educate the teachers in the technology they have as I know first hand just how little assistance teachers are given. Hell, I was the school technology expert all the way through my schooling from about year 3 onwards (I used to get called up from class in primary school by the high-school teachers to go help fix the clunky Microbee network). Although that was a useful life skill, I now do that with enterprise integration architecture problems.

Disadvantaged students

There are lots of kids in financial, emotional, physical or other disadvantage. I don’t have figures for these, but I guess I’ve touched on the special schools funding.

Let’s assume we can assist students via hiring people at $25/hour (minimum wage is lower, but let’s not be cheap with our chappy cash bonanza). That would pay for 1,184,000 days of paid helper time. So spread over the schools that would be 175 extra days per school, or 35 extra working weeks of hiring someone to come in. So spread that over a few part time people and you’ve got yourself a magic amount of extra assistance with reading, writing etc.

To give you the background: many public schools rely on volunteers currently. Now wouldn’t it be great to pay those people? If we paid $18-20/hour we’d get even more time out of people. Those people would not be there to convert by stealth, preach about nonsense (or in one instance at least of a chaplain grooming children).. No, they’re there to help without preaching.

This would also be a benefit to give people a good part time source of income, particularly mothers/fathers who have their kids at the school and who aren’t working elsewhere.

What else?

What else could the money have gone to that’s school/education related?

Here’s his blog on the matter. He assures his readers that:

The allegations gaining the media coverage are that Chaplains in schools are proselytising. That’s a word you don’t hear very often and it means to try to convert somebody to a religious faith or political doctrine. I can assure our school community that I have never had feedback regarding our Chaplain proselytising.

Perhaps, like any properly performed proselytisation they simply aren’t aware of it and trust that the education department, like when they were at school, is secular and has proper checks and balances in place to prevent it. That clearly isn’t the case if a recent Radio national program on it (transcript here) is anything to go by.

The principal goes on to say:

I am a strong advocate for Chaplaincy and just as strong in my belief that Chaplains must not proselytise or make any judgements about other people’s religious beliefs.

I’m sure he is, he’s had chaplains at the last school and now at this one. Could it be that he is a pathway for Access Ministries into schools? Who needs Chaplains to do the spreading the word if the principals are doing it for Access Ministries?

Regardless, I’ve given him feedback (on the 18th) on an example of proselytising via a comment on his blog (that’s still awaiting moderation on the 21st). How did I find the information? I just looked at a couple of the school newsletters. How many other such things go on without making it into the newsletter?

My reply:

So there’s no proselytising huh? I can straight away show you that there has been religious promotion (in addition to hiring a chaplain):
How about the visit to the school from a Christian Radio station mentioned in the newsletter (1/4/11). Was that organised by the chaplain’s study group member by any chance? Were parents made aware that an evangelical Christian radio station would be coming into the grounds and would be bribing kids with handouts to spread the word of the lord?

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Following an invitation from one of our Year 6 students, Iris Kennedy, 89.9 LightFM came to visit our school on Wednesday morning before school.
There was great excitement as they handed out free ‘Up and Go’ drinks, bags of fresh fruit, single serves of preserved fruit and stickers. Well done Iris and 89.9 LightFM.”

I suppose the stickers were not promoting religion at all huh? And I suppose the student didn’t at all get the idea from sessions with the Chaplain?
Yes, well done 89.9 LightFM: you got an opportunity to preach to all students without parents choosing to opt in.

So how was this announced? Surely it would be made clear that this is a religious group going to be coming in to school grounds.

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Next Monday / Wednesday morning one of Melbourne‘s FM radio stations would like to visit our
school. 89.9 LightFM will be here to hand out stickers and prizes and also do a “live cross” to the school during the breakfast program. They have chosen our school as one of our students emailed them and invited them to come.

No mention of their religious nature so that parents can make an informed decision. No permission slip to participate I’d guess?
So anyhow, that’s just one example of proselytising by stealth that happens when a clear separation isn’t kept between church and the secular education our public system is meant to provide. That’s the problem with having a Chaplain in the first place: there’s no effective way to opt out even if you want to.

So just how many other such things go on. Little visits from church affiliated groups. Courses that are snuck in without mention of their true content? Any of the Hillsong programs by chance (that was reported on the radio as having occurred at other schools)?

I know access ministries runs a course for principals: have you attended that by any chance?

And how exactly do you support the parents who have not opted in to receive Christian Chaplaincy? Or is it automatic opt in and you need to specifically opt out of receiving contact with the Chaplain?

What was the process by which you decided to hire the chaplain in the first place? Was it as thoroughly communicated and considered as the visit from the Christian radio station or one or two vocal Christians? Did you survey the religious makeup of the community? Consider the minority religions?

I’d urge you to reject any future funding and ask for more counsellor time instead. Take the lead from the teachers union and widespread public backlash.

Perhaps a review of the materials the Chaplain is handing out might be in order too. Some material is coming to light that appears to actively try to discourage kids from seeking out help from teachers and only go to chaplains.

The materials I referred to are ones that Mike Stuchbery has brought to light on his blog.

You’ll have to forgive my scepticism that kids (under the instruction of a Chaplain) are entirely self motivated to invite an easy listening evangelical Christian radio station to the school. I guess they were handing out stuff while they sang the message of Jesus to the entire school which is something that the Chaplain has to pretend he isn’t there to do.

Here’s the tweet by the principal, so I’m pretty sure he would have realised the radio was a religious one right?

I suppose a Christian Radio station brought into the school by stealth isn't proselytising?

I wonder whether a Muslim radio station would have been advertised in the newsletter without mentioning the religious affiliation and giving parents a chance to opt in or out (and let’s be clear: people should never have to opt out with religion in public schools, that should be assumed and explicit opt in required for anything).
Proselytising by stealth is what it is called and it has no place in public secular education.

Ban the chaplains and give parents back the secular education they expect.

Not only are these skygod worshipping quacks completely untrained and unqualified to counsel children (which is a separate matter and not to be confused with this particular “Chappy” and SU Qld’s response to that): they are almost exclusively all employed by one organisation: Scripture Union and almost exclusively Christian (98% or so).

Oh yes, let this guy empart his wisdom to our children on causes of floods

This organisation has the following mission:

Aims:
As a worldwide organisation working with the churches, SU aims:

* to make God’s Good News known to children, young people and families

to encourage people of all ages to meet God daily through the Bible and prayer,so that they may:

* come to personal faith in our Lord Jesus Christ
* grow in Christian maturity, and
* become both committed church members and servants of a world in need.

Now what sort of organisation is SU Qld then in addition to being a blatantly evangelical mob who are leaching off hundreds of millions of tax dollars?

Example of spreading the word..

Well, they’re the type that doesn’t care too much if it employs child predators it seems. Apparently if they’re a Scripture Union Chaplain trying to seduce a 12 year old boy over msn it’ll do what Churches have always done with child predators: wait a while for the fuss to die down and shuffle them on to the next place. You know how it works: if you are truly sorry and ask Jesus for forgiveness then it’s ok right?

From the articles we learn about Chappy Jocelyn Hook:

The female chaplain of Golden Beach State School has today been removed from her job over her suggestive online chats with a 12-year-old boy.

Jocelyn Hook’s employer, Scripture Union Queensland, announced this afternoon that the married mother of three would not be allowed to work at any school “for the time being”.

Ok, so it’s “for the time being” then huh? What exactly did she do pray tell? *cough*

The move followed revelations by the Daily about the chaplain’s behaviour, in which the father of the boy said he was disgusted that Mrs Hook had kept job despite the SU ruling she had behaved inappropriately.

“We have decided to remove Jocelyn Hook from school chaplaincy duties,” SU chief executive Tim Mander said.

“The recent publicity and the publication of her name, her photo and the name of her school has made her chaplaincy role untenable at this time.”

Again the “at this time” type comment. Hmm.. Smacks of EVERY COVER UP the various churches have carried out over the years!

It's ok, "after a time" you can shift them on to somewhere else.

So what about the father who discovered this dodgy behaviour:

The father of the boy, now 13, said his son eventually became uncomfortable with some of Mrs Hook’s online comments, contained in dozens of logs between September 21 and December 30 last year, only to be told: “Trust me, I’m the chaplain.”

and

The father is disgusted over Scripture Union’s contention that Mrs Hook’s behaviour was improper but not predatory and, as such, less worrying.

“I do wonder if this would be brushed off with such a limp wristed answer if the chaplain had been male and he’d been talking to my 12 year old daughter,” he said.

The MSN Conversations of Chappy Joce
And the dodgy MSN conversations, so you be the judge of whether this was a text book case of grooming, or as SU Qld asserts:”The investigation found that although the chaplain’s behaviour was inappropriate, her behaviour was not predatory in nature”.
I currently teach Primary Ethics to kids aged 10-12 and no way on Earth would I (or any other sane adult) be:

• chatting with 12 year old students over msn without parental approval and a damned good reason to do so (I can’t really think of any)
• discussing “hickeys” and then inviting over for a swim
• inviting other people’s kids over for a swim (full stop!) and then offering rewards

These chats read like something directly out of the course all Primary Ethics teachers have to do on “Shining the light on Child abuse” except the scenario is not the dodgy uncle, but a dodgy Chaplain.

You take a look..

Excerpts of MSN exchanges last year between Golden Beach State School chaplain Jocelyn Hook and the then 12-year-old boy.

Mrs Hook’s user name is “Chappy Joce” or “Joce”.

September 28 (messages relate to a date the boy went on)

(2.50pm) Chappy Joce: So… got pash rash!

(2.50pm: BOY: wut?

(2.50pm) BOY: u got a pash rash?

(2.51pm) Chappy Joce: No you do

(2.51pm) BOY: no i dont

(2.51pm) Chappy Joce: Sure I bet u do.

September 29

(10.00am) Chappy Joce: wondered if you were hiding any hickeys

(10.00am) BOY: what?

(10.01am) Chappy Joce: bet u dont know what a hickey is hey… must be gettin old

(10.01am) BOY: i dont kno what a hickey is at all.

(10.02am) BOY: do i want to kno what they are?

(10.02am) Chappy Joce: love bit

(10.02am) Chappy Joce: you know… big read sucky mark on your neck?

(10.46am) Chappy Joce: wanna come over for a swim today?

(10.46am) BOY: umm… not really.

(10.47am) Chappy Joce: fine then!

(10:48am) Chappy Joce: i will let you use my pink laptop and msn

(10.48am) BOY:…

(10.48am) Chappy Joce: if you can’t bear to be away from melissa for that long

(11.27am) BOY: i dont wanna swim, so mum says i hav to stay home

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: just that chattin with melissa is more important! oh well u r a big boy and can take care of yourself

(11.28am) BOY: lmao (laughing my ar.. off)

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: behave… no dancing naked on web cam

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: hehe

(11.28am) BOY: i dont hav a webcam..i dont like them

December 30

(7.49pm) BOY: ? ill have a look thru the list of games on wikipedia

(7.49pm) Joce: crash of the titans

(7.49pm) BOY: ah yeah

(7.50pm) Joce: spank u… i mean thank you

(8.23pm) BOY: mums about to go to ur place now

(8:23pm) Joce: ok thx i better put some clothes on then lol

(8.24pm) BOY: lmao dnn2k (did not need to know)

(8:24 PM) Joce: dnn2k huh

(8:24 PM) BOY: do not need to know

Hrm..

Do you see the similarities?

(image from here)

I think he even looks like Mr Squiggle don’t you think? Bit of blue rinse and a crazy tall hat..

Who the hell is Mr Squiggle?

Mr Squiggle was a character on a television show who had a pencil for a nose and would drop in from outer space in a rickety rocket to complete squiggles that kids sent in. On the odd occasion he’d do a double squiggle and change his mind (“Changed my mind! Changed my mind Miss Jane!”). To this day I wonder what kind of crazy genius you have to be to come up with not one but two drawings from some squiggles.. Surely a miracle from the man from the moon I say!

Mr Squiggle.. Man from the moon.

He had some (generally grumpy) cohorts: Gus the grumpy snail with a flowerpot for a shell, or was it a house..? Or a TV..?
Blackboard who coined the “Oh huuurrryy UP!” and “Hmph.. Double hmph”.

Bill the steamshovel would pop in puffing away.

Bill the Steam Shovel.

Squiggle and Ms Jane would swap merry banter with blackboard holding up the bits of paper. His rocket was also impatient, though didn’t talk.

Here’s some other random snippets of shows from over the years out there on the intertubes (or youtubes as it may be):

The old intro:

One I remember more:

Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane kids. RIP Mr Norman Hetherington, I’m sure it would be hard to find a person who grew up in Australia in the last 50 years that doesn’t know about Mr Squiggle.

Ceiling cat approves of the non scripture option.

But now we have the hope of a more structured approach to learning (something other than taking the vent off the air-con ducting): the NSW trial of an “ethics course” alternative to scripture. Or as I like to refer to it “the long overdue first death nail in the coffin of religious indoctrination in public schools”.

What happens currently in Scripture

Well, I’ve outlined a some of my thoughts in an earlier post: Letter to Dept. of Education about Scripture. But basically scripture is an unfiltered vomiting of religious garbage in government funded, supposedly secular schools. While mostly offering a Christian denomination (picked by the head master/mistress), some offer a choice to parents.

The people presenting this have somewhere between zero and some training, not usually qualified teachers or even particularly well read people (beyond their own book of religion). I guess the lord is guiding them through their poorly controlled, poorly planned and poorly executed classes.

Parents have to write a letter if they want to avoid inflicting it on their children and the only non religious option (in our government secular schools I remind you) is to have kids sitting around doing nothing (I believe they are now at least supervised.. so no stress testing the tensile strength of aircon ducting attachments these days).

In the actual classes (which, if you’re Jewish and go to one particular school I heard about from teachers:kids have to paydonate sufficient amounts to be allowed in.. scumbags!) children are made to:

• say prayers or go through rituals of the religion,
• state they believe in God/Jesus etc and
• presented teachings of the religion as absolute fact
• fed all manner of information while the teachers hover around and try to keep order (because this routine is exactly the same as the previous session kids are bored shitless).

Kids naturally see the gaping holes in what’s been said and are only given childish answers in response. Teachers are unable to assure children that there’s no basis for the beliefs and it’s all reliant on having faith despite no evidence.

The results so far..

Best case scenario they just switch off, worst: they go home with the belief that someone is constantly watching them and has a long list of things they’re quite likely to be tortured in fire for all eternity. BUT they’re assured there’s a way out of that: just ask Jesus for forgiveness and believe in him.

Note: Kids at young ages still believe the Easter bunny is real, so when a grown up makes arguments from authority in a place of learning, they tend to believe them.

A little something I hacked up from a wallpaper from Sydney Anglicans. Jesus deserved bunny ears and the atheists deserved backup.

Hell, I almost went away thinking that if I just had enough faith I could walk on water (like the idiotic story we were told).

Other kids go away worried they’re going to hell if they don’t get baptised with magic water or punished for merely thinking something heretical.

Do kids get an ethical basis for dealing with strange situations? No, absolute morals (what little they teach) are always going to fall over in the grey areas. In amongst the good stuff (which is found outside the religions from earlier philosophers) there are damaging concepts and absurdities that contradict everything the kids are taught outside that hour or two.

I’ll concede something to the current approach: it does teach some kids a very important lesson: that religion is boring as hell, its followers often a little weird and that religion doesn’t make much sense.

So what happened on the 20th of April 2010?

A secular (despite the religious sounding name) mob from the St James Ethics Centre (and Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of NSW) have developed an actual curriculum (unlike the “show up with a bible and wing it” that seems the norm) for discussing ethics and it had its first run through in front of kids.

This article gives an idea of the way the class would have operated:

Associate Professor Philip Cam, of the University of NSW, developed the curriculum and conducted the training workshop. Cam is an expert in philosophical and ethical inquiry for children, and recently co-authored guidelines on incorporating ethical behaviour for the draft national curriculum.

The two-day workshop was run in classroom mode, replicating the methods to be used when it is introduced to classrooms this week. Volunteers were seated in a circle and needed to have possession of the speaker’s ball before commenting. ”No put-downs” was also part of the rules.

Cam stressed that it was not the role of the volunteer ”teacher” to ethically instruct the children, but rather explore ethical ideas and facilitate a discussion among members of the class. Good listening, an awareness of when to intervene, and a light touch would be necessary.

He warned against buying into the discussion, as that could change the dynamic in the room and students would be listening for the ”right” answer.

”It is about dealing with kids making reasoned judgements, the business of thought. And learning to be reasonable with people you disagree with, not attacking them, and providing reasons as to why you disagree,” Cam says.

Now unlike this snooty moral high ground ethics course I don’t have a “no put down” rule on my blog (and I can hold my own balls when I want to talk on it). Perhaps that’s because instead of doing this ethics course I was twiddling my thumbs in the library.

I’ll happily call (and rationally defend calling it) what the churches have offered largely a useless pile of shit. It was when I went through school and teachers I’ve talked to think it is the same today.

Compare their offering which is person turns up, reads some fairy-tales which are presented as fact. If ethics even comes up (which is a bit if with all the time taken talking fairy-tales and praying to sky-gods): Kids are not encouraged to develop their own ethics if they step outside the drone’s interpretation of what their book says.

Gods views: Strangely indistinguishable from your own.

It’s certainly not a case of religious instructor indoctrinator avoiding buying into the discussion or avoiding changing the dynamic of the room: that’s exactly why they’re there to imprint young minds before they learn to question things too hard.

Why the churches are shit scared of this Ethics course

Churches love scripture in public schools, it gives them a very young, largely gullible audience on which to peddle their wares and slow their flock’s decline (if the census reports are anything to go by religion is dying). Without it they immediately lose access to imprint the idea that god exists from 2/3rds of the population and I suspect they realise that means a massive increase in the “no religion” group.

Given their revenue stream (e.g. necessary to keep the pope in gold bling, bullet proof cars and castles) often depends on poor saps believing that God wants them to give up X percent of their income to these paedophile harbouring rich beyond belief scumbags (ok, I’m picking on the catholic church here): they’re worried they won’t make quite as much tax free money to further promote their religion. Plus it’s pretty cost effective going after kids in schools.

If kids actually discuss ethics in a matter of fact way amongst their piers they’ll learn a bunch of things hopefully:

• ethics and morals are created by people (even kids!)
• there are many different ways of justifying different behaviours (equality, self interest etc)
• exploring ideas yourself is much more satisfying than hearing religious books regurgitated
• the act of considering all of the above gives you a framework to handle new situations

These lessons make it quite tough for religious indoctrination. A healthy scepticism in kids? Worst nightmare for religious “teachers”.

Realising this the religious leaders are lobbying hard behind the scenes because if they lose this they’ll lose the “by default” crowd and be left with the same lot they already have for sunday school. People will also get to see that the world will not implode: in fact perhaps less people will be seeking the comfort that religion often gives in a world torn apart by religion. Just imagine! If kids have a well developed sense of morality on which to test run their decisions against: perhaps crime/anti-social behaviour etc might fall.

Religious leaders want right to censor/restrict the course

What really gets me mad about recent articles is that these religious leaders demand rights to censor/vet the secular ethics course. I don’t recall the Catholic church allowing Muslims to dictate what they teach kids. Or perhaps a bit on Xenu from our friendly scientologists would go well with the zombie Jesus story?

Uniting the causes..

Where’s my say as a secularist/humanist/atheist in their dealings?

For a start I’d rewrite some bits in the interests of harmony (and if you’re going to tell a crazy story, at least put some time travel in it!):

Lost and Heros did it to make things a bit more crazy.

Back on track: So basically they want to keep their stranglehold over access to children and want to remove the choice. One particular knob end (Fred Nile.. that’s not a put down for him really if you have been following his trail of fail over the years.. homophobic, sexist, racist etc voids his right to be described politely) type reckons he was given assurances the course would only be offered to those who have already opted out! Why would one set of kids get the offer and not another?

Fred Nile: WTF! How about we only let religious stuff be taught to those enrolled in sunday school? Or those who can recite the bible from memory perhaps (to prove they are actually Christian already)

Fred Nile and other religious leaders involved in this “not in MY school’s religious time” whinge: what you’re advocating there raises some ethical questions. Or perhaps you need to ask the St James ethical centre what “ethics” means?

Firstly you’ve brokered some sort of back room deal to suit your own completely out of whack morals to the exclusion of others and then you aren’t in any way giving concession to non Christians.  Secondly where’s the fairness in your model: you provide one viewpoint, so do the other religions therefore it’s natural that you can expect a secular one. To be honest your version of ethics hasn’t worked out too well in the past and present so perhaps you should keep your gob shut.

What is next (in the ethics course)

Here’s the list of topics for the course. Notice no need for fairy-tales and prayers (although perhaps the ethics of lying to children like that might come up):

• Getting started
• Fairness
• Lying
• Ethical principles
• Graffiti
• The use and abuse of animals
• Interfering with nature
• Virtues and vices
• Children’s rights
• The good life

I like to think I base my ethical framework on fairness (the good old “fair go” policy). It seems to me to be an important part of empathising if you can put yourself in other shoes and consider whether you’d like it. This idea has been around far before any of the bunch in scripture scrawled it down. It’s an intuitive concept. I’m glad it’s topic number two, because consideration of it is important across any situation. Sure they might get that from the bible (in amongst the praying, outsourcing to scape goat, loving enemies, praising men willing to sacrifice their children etc) but it certainly isn’t necessary to read the bible to get this. Any number of philosophers or earlier now dead religions had this message. There’s also a cost associated to almost any action, which is something worth considering.

There’s a section on lying, I guess if religious leaders want their material in there it can go under there as a case study in lying. Could also do the topical “religious scandal of the day” where kids discuss whatever the latest stupid Muslim Cleric or Idiot Christian pope has said and to what degree of poor ethical base it comes from.

I’d be interested in knowing where “the good life” discussions would go with a group of kids and the children’s rights would also be interesting. The Church leaders complaining about this course obviously don’t understand that with freedom of religion (essential for them to stay employed) there’s also freedom FROM religion. “No religion” is an equally supported stance under our constitution.

Really, the whole thing is damned interesting I really wish this programme had kicked off a hundred years ago. Never mind, that’s what late night discussions at the pub or BBQ are for I guess, but this is one thing that kids starting early would be great for society.

* Well, we sent a guy called Arron up into the vent as he was most keen. I believe someone blabbed later which cemented the non scripture group as agents of the devil and untrustworthy. Although I do recall something about our off the street local churchie scripture teacher being later embroiled in some sort of child abuse accusation (something which I actually was pretty upset hearing that the accusation was floating around as he seemed like a nice man, albeit spouting rubbish.. anyhow.. Note: I have no idea what happened, could have been baseless or just a rumour or the guy could be in jail now, I dunno..) Yes, we in the unsupervised non scripture group were the untrustworthy ones of course because we were bored and locked in a tiny room with nothing to do.

The letter: Re: Scripture should not be taught in Government schools.

To Whom it may concern,
As it has been a concern of mine for a long time now: I’d like to ask is there any reason why we are still allowing religious people into public schools for the purposes of promoting their religion? I would have thought this would have ceased a long time ago.

It must NOT be opt-out requiring permission from parents, it must be a special opt in with strict syllabus if it is allowed at all. Having it opt out (with no material/alternative instruction) makes it seem like the parent is skipping an important aspect of their education to let their kid run around doing nothing.

The Education Act

From the Education Act, Section 30 – “Secular instruction”
“In government schools, the education is to consist of strictly non-sectarian and secular instruction. The words secular instruction are to be taken to include general religious education as distinct from dogmatic or polemical theology.”

I’m not sure at what point this got missed when Christian scripture in public schools was deemed to be the default choice and a secular education required parents to object in writing. I would think parents can assume that there will be no default religious element whatsoever (or else they would have sent them to a religious school surely?). In the several schools I’ve got knowledge of it is expected that parents either fill in a form and in some cases provide written and/or face to face justification for their reasons for not wanting religious indoctrination.

Referring to Section 32 of the act:
“Children attending a religious education class are to be separated from other children at the school while the class is held.”
The language of this implies that they will be a minority, not the default choice with the “non scripture” group left to fend for themselves as it is currently. Currently the process is that those “opting out” are separated grudgingly from the religious class.

Content of Religious instruction

Assuming nothing substantial has changed in the religious types since I was growing up: it was nothing more than Christian indoctrination. A bit of investigation (discussion a teacher friend and several parents of infants/primary school age children) and the recent media attention reveals it has not changed. In particular parents are regularly upset at some of the messages (e.g. “You’ll go to hell for not believing in Jesus” or “I’m not baptised and I’m worried I’m going to hell”) they come home with. It appears that these concerns are not raised to the department level and are referred to the church bodies (sounds just like how allegations of child abuse are handled in the Catholic church), thus hiding the many instances of inappropriate messages delivered by (unqualified to teach) religious people.

There is also a school where Jewish religious people are demanding “donations” from children or else the kids are not allowed to return (several parents expressed concern over this.. with little action to immediately terminate any arrangement with those religious groups). This effectively turns our secular schools into a fund raising activity as well as an indoctrination opportunity.

Anti-discrimination policies violated by religious teachings

It appears to me to be a violation of the department’s policies to be allowing some of the teachings of religions which contain anti-gay, anti-other religions, anti-non believer content with a clear message that they will be tortured for eternity just for being themselves or thinking differently from a 1500, 2000 or 3000 year old set of stories.

One can find ample evidence that the reason we have to have a policy on homophobia is thanks to religious prejudices. Imagine the position of a child who is gay (or who has gay parents) sitting in on a lesson on what biblical sin is, or a child who does not believe in God and told that (contrary to our justice system) their punishment will be torture and hell fire. Or just any child presented with the Orwellian notion that they are under constant surveillance and constant evaluation of thoughts for “thought crime”.
That’s to say nothing of the incest, mass murder, slavery, genocide and other barbaric concepts contained within the bible making it unsuitable study material to be presented to young impressionable children as if it were fact or a source of good morals.

Church is the appropriate venue

It’s fairly obvious that if parents wish their children to be indoctrinated as Christians then they have an obvious avenue: Church. As Muslims: the Mosque. As Jews: the Synagogue. That scripture is opt-out (an option which only became available part way through my experiences) rather than opt-in (with no teaching time filling the gap) is particularly worrying. Parents are faced with having their children sitting idle or else in the company of people filling their heads with Christian mythology presented as facts. I can’t imagine other religions getting as easy a ride either (the recent outrage over Scientology in schools and certainly I haven’t heard of Islamic/Hindi content in scripture provided alongside Christianity in every school). I certainly haven’t heard of any attempts to introduce a humanist or ancient Greek philosophical moral lessons.

Of little educational value

When I was a child and subjected to the local “Churchies” attempting to convert us, there was no attempt whatsoever to take an impartial stand, consider other religions or provide reasonable answers to childishly simple questions. It was also never varied: always a Christian viewpoint presented as fact. It was merely an opportunity to force the kids to go through the motions of Christianity (making kids say prayers, recite verses etc).

Given the completely unsubstantiated claims made (that even I as a young child could see) it seems somewhat at odds with our secular, rational, fact based based curriculum.

The classes presented absurdities (“If only you had enough faith you could walk on water” which as a child I actually took as something plausible for a while) through to the most abhorrent immoral lessons imaginable (“A father prepared to slaughter his son for god was a noble thing”). They were there to make stone age arguments from authority and to instil a guilt at the “thought crime” of doubting the patently unbelievable stories presented as fact in a government school.

The strong message was that God absolutely exists, doubting that is a sin, accepting Jesus is the only way to heaven and that eternal torture awaits those who have heard of Christianity and rejected it. This is a very damaging concept to be polluting the minds of children with and unlike other material in the syllabus: absolutely no evidence to back it up. Might as well teach alchemy rather than chemistry, astrology rather than astronomy.

Qualifications of religious people to teach children

From the reports of the real teachers the educational abilities of the scripture “teachers” are often rather poor. Classroom behaviour is not maintained at any sort of acceptable level with the teachers having to step in to keep the peace (perhaps because the students realise the ridiculousness of the material presented).

There’s also absolutely no reason for religion to be taught by unqualified religious types (who as recent news stories have shown have a rather bad track record with respect to child molestation) rather than as a general topic on religion (not taught from the viewpoint of one within the religion). If a broad topic on religion is to be taught in school it MUST be from outside the religion and by those qualified to teach children. To allow anything else is pure religious indoctrination, not education. That teachers are currently unable to voice any opinion on religion even to console distressed students (“no, actually you aren’t evil because you don’t believe in Jesus”, “you shouldn’t worry about being constantly watched 24/7″ or perhaps later on “the pope is wrong on condoms and that position has increased the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa”) and the scripture “teachers” can say whatever they like.

Replace scripture with real education

I would urge you to immediately discontinue the teaching of scripture in all schools, to be replaced with a subject with a broad curriculum and taught by real teachers. A secular based course in philosophy and moral discussion would be far more beneficial to developing an awareness of right and wrong. This could be a part of the civics and citizenship subject to be introduced in coming years.

regards,
Nathan Lee

Medicate! Medicate!

Not that kids have anywhere to play these days that isn’t sanitised and wrapped in bubble wrap and supervised by helicopter parents (parents that hover constantly stopping their child from doing anything remotely dangerous or fun).

The struggles post disaster although heightened dramatically are but a big bang version of the daily problems faced ongoing in developed nations. Extreme disease, poverty, health issues, hunger, thirst and helplessness are a constant when you’re in that half of the world that live on less than $2 a day.

Water

The most urgent need after any widespread disaster would have to be availability of clean water. The massive infrastructure damage that follows earthquakes is no exception: pipes and dams rupture, sewage leaks, electricity is knocked out to pumping stations, transport routes disrupted etc. For tsunamis the contamination of drinking water is a major problem. War and plague situations the problem becomes competition for limited fresh water or crowding near water which results in disease outbreak. Michael Pritchard’s got a device to turn undrinkeable water drinkable:

As a side note to get an idea of the scale he’s talking with the filtration of virii see my earlier post: Zoom in! Enhance.. Enhance! Oh, look! There’s a carbon atom.

So the idea is instead of shipping the rather heavy, bulky and “single shot” bottles of water: ship these filtration packs. They can then turn thousands of litres into drinkable water and most importantly they can do it away from central distribution centres (which means less risk of people in close contact spreading disease and less need to make risky treks or relocation to camps). If it can make the Thames water + rabbit shit + pond sludge drinkable then it can be used by people to get drinking water from the flood waters or stagnant dams.

Health

Life threatening injuries require urgent medical assistance, which often involves delivering things like vaccinations, antibiotics and other medications. These are sometimes delivered by doctors, other times by semi-skilled healthcare volunteers and sometimes by completely untrained people.

Marc Koska looked at what happens in poorer nations with reuse of syringes in poorer nations and proposed a solution that doesn’t cost any more than the standard syringe out there in circulation today:

So to prevent a natural disaster (or simply being a poor nation) turning into a subsequent AIDS/HIV, Hepatitis or other blood borne outbreak after the dust has settled: any and all syringes sent into a disaster zone need to have this “fire once and break” mechanism.

Aside from the immediate/urgent injuries of the masses affected by the disaster there’s also the medium to longer term concerns. Many are instantly thrown below the poverty level as their possessions may have been lost, destroyed or left behind. Sight is perhaps one of the most important sensory tools we have as humans and Josh Silver has an amazing demonstration of cheap, easily adjustable liquid filled eye glasses which could restore clear vision to people. This is in addition to the worth of such a device in any developing nation as a means for increasing productivity and removing poor vision as a barrier to economic independence for many aging people.

Bill Clinton (an idol of mine for public speaking) talks about the core problem with many developing/poor nations: the need for healthcare systems.

He makes the interesting point that one of the biggest problems in nations without systems is that in an environment of chaos you have no guarantee that effort will result in certain outcomes. Everything becomes a struggle, absolutely everything. Take a developed nation: you know that making the effort to go to a doctor with a child for vaccination will almost always result in you walking away with a vaccinated child (or an appointment the next day if for some reason they couldn’t see you that day).

Bill’s talk is about creating a repeatable model for installing self maintaining healthcare systems in countries that will address the issue of incapacity in those nations which is starting to become the biggest hurdle to tackling various health problems.

Money
A huge need for any disaster recovery is via emergency relief funds flowing in quickly and to the right people. This is what I’d probably call top down aid. But taking a step either side of the disaster event (lead up or later stage recovery) and you have a need for funding at the bottom level in the developing world.

The individual need for economic growth beyond organic funding (e.g. you need a piece of equipment that you simply do not have the cash for but which will allow you to generate income). What will work is not charity necessarily as the old “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” states.

Jacqueline Novogratz proposes an alternative to straight out charity she calls “patient capital”:

So rebuilding and pre-building (preparing a nation to be strong and ready to cope with disasters) this is of great importance. Low income entrepreneurs need access to finance too. There are now a number of micro-finance or micro lending options out there.

Now I’ll stretch the mandate of this blog entry (I am the boss of it after all) a bit and attempt to link into post economic credit crisis (see here for my background on the credit crisis in pretty pictures and animations) consumer spending habits and how it could be a good thing for having money available for such disasters. Watch John Gerzema talk about value shifts in consumerism:

So the idea he was discussing was that we’d move away from mindless consumption (I hope it sticks!). People becoming more humble in their purchasing or indeed less likely to purchase unnecessary goods in the first place.

Tourism is trending towards trips that are a bit more low key (which would perhaps make less “touristy” places more likely destinations, perhaps helping to get tourism going in developing nations).

Consumers could also start to put pressure on companies to make ethical choices and be less exploitative/more inclusive of the 3rd world (e.g. stuff like the Fair Trade Association).

I could go on for pages and pages with extrapolations from this basic concept with respect to the 3rd world, but perhaps I’ll leave that for another time.

Education
Education can’t be quickly dropped from helicopter and stuck in a kids arm via some healthcare worker. BUT I strongly believe that the key to solving just about any of our problems (and dramatically lesson the impact of natural disasters) is via education.

Health problems, inescapable poverty, religion based persecution/superstition etc. can all be pushed out of the spotlight by giving people access to education. Access to good, secular education (yes, I do happen to think that teaching kids that “god did it” instead of real science is a rather horrible thing to do) can and does help people’s lives get better. Unfortunately the very worst of bible thumping misinformation (Dying from AIDS is preferable to using a condom type stuff) is getting pushed in massive amounts into the poor nations where lack of funding leaves a massive gap.

But I digress!

With education comes the ability to read and write. This means health pamphlets, coordination with government/aid workers etc. It means independent research/learning can take place (see the end for a great example!).

So in the pre-disaster situation: with education comes the opportunity to better your position in life (economically, intellectually etc). Women are often (always?) the last in a given society to access this basic mechanism for improvement. With that in mind, Michelle Obama’s plea for education (filmed last year) directed at girls is definitely worth a listen:

Education is one of those ways of “disaster proofing” (well.. strives toward disaster proofing at least). It replaces ignorance with knowledge, superstition with reason and prevents a whole sway of flow on consequences throughout society if people are uneducated, poor and with no possibility of escaping such a situation.

Like any good teacher, the ones servicing the eager young minds in developing nations will need materials. So to address that, from a technology standpoint: Richard Baraniuk talks about a system for sharing/open sourcing learning:

I don’t need to go into how beneficial free, shareable knowledge can be in boosting the education levels in any given country. A number of universities have opened up their course materials to anyone with an internet connection. Of course this does tend to be a bit inaccessible where internet is not available or computers are scarce so I guess he talks about community authored, publish on demand inexpensive books which could be extended to poorer nations with little access to the internet. This links in with the programs to bring laptops and internet to the developing nations, so access to content in the first place is definitely an important part of multi-pronged approach to educating the poor.

Mapping

Back to an immediate need in any disaster operation: The need for maps in terms of directing basic humanitarian functions through to use of GPS devices for efficient transport is critical.

There are programmes out there like Tracks 4 Africa who take the approach of handing out GPS mapping units to a community of volunteers and create an average of some fairly volatile paths.

Another community/volunteer approach is described in the “Making maps to fight disaster, build economies” by Lalitesh Katragadda at TEDIndia last year:

Communication

“Data is king” an old buddy of mine Rob once said and making sense of the massive amount of data that is produced during these disasters is far beyond anyone’s ability to sift through it all. So Erik Hersman’s TED Talk on reporting crisis via texting proposes a solution:

It’s a bit of a longer term goal, but a universal means of communication is important in any disaster situation. While I won’t claim that English is the panacea of communication the point is made by Jay Walker on the world’s English mania. It certainly seems like English is in many places in the world the possible “go between” language to unite many different nationalities.

In terms of lifting up the developed world the vast quantity and quality of materials available in English is undeniable, so ability to understand that is great.

Information Visualisation

Hans Rosling shows the best stats about the developing world you’ve ever seen (maybe you have seen it before in my previous post), particularly important to make the right policy decisions and to separate out the myth from that supportable by the data:

Having the right data analysis and visualisation tools is important for managing both the recovery from a disaster (the obvious problem being the collection of data to begin with. The wild variations over initial days of crisis of “estimated deaths” is but one example) and the prevention of the next event via generally improving the country’s situation to begin with.

Optimism for the future

I’ll end this rather lengthy post with some talks (or “grim inspiration” for the first one) on Optimism.

The first (a bit of a long one) by Robert “I’m not Mr optimism” Write is assuring us that history has an overall direction despite the apparent downs. From single cell organisms to today there is hope found in our evolution(s):

And I think a great example of how someone with nothing but a bit of ingenuity and some scraps of materials can do something quite impressive:

and his return to TED two years later a much more confident speaker (even throwing in some jokes..).

Which reinforces my earlier section on education and access to knowledge. William had access to a fairly hard won education. In his readings he came across one book that talked about the principles of wind electricity generation. This gave him the inspiration to dig up some pipes, an old bicycle dynamo and some other bits to make a windmill to power lights, radios and later irrigation pumps and the neighbours’ mobile phones.

If there’s a thing that people need particularly in a disaster situation or at the bottom of the economic rung: it’s optimism.

As William said in his speech: “Trust yourself and believe. Whatever happens don’t give up.”

Donations

All the best wishes for those doing good in Haiti and helping rebuild a destroyed country.

In terms of providing no bullshit assistance (without trying to convert people/spend it on bibles) I’d recommend Oxfam and the Red Cross, two great organisations that have helped millions over the years:

• Oxfam Australia’s Haiti donation page (or the US one for the yanks and UK one for the poms)
• Australian Red cross Haiti Quake appeal (or the US one, UK one)

In terms of some of the longer term goals I talked about, I think the tireless work of people like Fred Hollows is invaluable (restoring sight to people in the poorer nations). See The Fred hollows foundation to donate there. Again, another “let’s get maximum bang for buck” type organisation.

FOOTNOTE: As a (kinda) disclaimer I donate to the above charities as per any “ordinary bloke” off the street might, but have no financial/business or any other ties whatsoever. This blog is not funded by anyone other than myself.

Rekha : An inspiring little girl from India (image ABCNews.go.com)

In the past she had been working with her family to keep food on the table before a UNICEF sponsored program gave her an opportunity to get an education:

Like her father, she helped to support her family by rolling a type of cigarette called beedi. Then two years ago, a government non-profit program plucked her from a life of child labour to enrol her in special school.

Along with learning the standard classes, Rekha and dozens of other former child labourers were also taught leadership skills. The school, part of a UNICEF program, was free of charge so that families would not remove children from the program due to cost.

Nothing wrong with kids working a bit to help the family, learn some skills, earn some money, work ethics etc but getting stuck into harsh factory conditions (assuming that’s the case here) isn’t really teaching the kids anything other than misery and leaving them with no choices.

When I was little I got stuffed into spiderweb filled crawl spaces on weekends to lay electrical cable and hammer in cable clips (and the odd fingernail) onto electrical cables or digging trenches to earn my pocket money. Difference is that that was one day (perhaps rarely two days) a week rather than 12+ hours a day/7 days a week and I went to school monday to friday. That and as a spoilt westerner: my childhood version of “tough work” is nothing compared to what the kids in India or africa put up with.. As I’m sure my Father occasionally pointed out.

In Rekha’s case the work she was doing has been blasted for both the working conditions and the toxic nature of the substance they’re handling. A CNN article describes the problem:

Handling burley tobacco leaves without gloves, in unwashed clothes and rarely bathing, these children can absorb the same amount of nicotine in one day of harvesting that they would from smoking 50 cigarettes.

So a necessary part of any childhood, education is the key to avoid falling into an endless cycle of poverty or unhealthy work (including forcing the next generation and the next into child labour as well). This is because with education comes a much wider range of possible futures, as was the case with little  Rekha:

It was from these leadership classes that Rekha gained the strength to defy her family, her village and change her future. And with this decision, she inspired a chain reaction among her friends and throughout her village.

Good on her, I hope she inspires many others to refuse to be “promised”, bought, traded or sold. Back in India’s history books an old skinny guy named Ghandi had a pretty massive impact through quiet refusal to do things, so it’s not like her actions are without precedence.

I think the days of people treated as bargaining chips or livestock should fade into dim memories, documented and discarded from acceptable practice. Perhaps Rekha’s given the world a bit of a much needed nudge in that direction.

Nathan’s motorbike lessons – Gear

Feel free to rate, comment etc. I shot this one day on the road on my most recent tour of Europe and Morocco. See my youtube video and text/picture post on the first bit of that tour.
Nathan

That said, wikipedia has significant issues because it opens the doors to anyone to edit and because it lacks the required basic functionality needed to cope with different types of English e.g. Australian, British, Canadian, US etc). It also sucks because there’s no accountability and the place has its “elite” untouchable editors who can get away with things that would have other editors permanently banned. Britannica could do well to learn from those lessons and require real names and make sure the English is at least consistent.

Reading reading.. Oh, and so it has! Well done Britannica!

Would-be editors on the Britannica site will have to register using their real names and addresses before they are allowed to modify or write their own articles.

Fantastic. It already beats wikipedia because it cancels out a whole bunch of spooky secretive abrasive editors. That means at least there’s a hope in hell that people who are working with an agenda to promote a company, skew definitions or simply muddy an issue will be detected eventually.

I do have to agree on the comment about how wikipedia rises to the top entry on many search results (thanks to its technical policy of never rewarding source articles as far as marking links as “not to be considered” by search engines).

“If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia,” he said.”Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?”

I think wikipedia also benefits in web popularity from being the equivalent of the McDonalds of information: cheap, generally roughly good enough, cooked by a large staff of unskilled people and lots of people go there, even if it isn’t that good for you sometimes. Britannica’s more of a high class restaurant: expensive, more exclusive, but a limited menu prepared by gourmet chefs. So perhaps this new addition to their offering is like offering a buffet on the side.