Wednesday, March 23, 2011

GREAT NEWS!

If you look at the ChipIn widget next to the blog, you will see that I have been able to reduce the cost for me to finish my research by 1000 dollars!! Now at 1500, down from 2500! This is all because of the generosity of the donation of frequent flier miles by Jean, of Tina and Joe's generosity to house me in Colorado, of Chris' kind offer to house me in New Hampshire, and my Mom's constant support helping me to get to Colorado and New York, not to mention those that have donated to the ChipIn as well!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you that have offered support financially and emotionally. I am truly grateful. I still hope I can reach the goal so I can finish the book, but right now the ability to lower my cost to finish is keeping me blissfully in the presence of this great moment.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

INTRODUCTION #2

“I don’t know how you’re doing this, or how you are funding this, or what exactly you’re doing, but I gather you’re traveling to schools to write a book about them.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m visiting schools that are doing things differently. Some of them are radically different and others may just be altering the way the students learn or how they run their school. I’m really seeing all sorts.”

“Well what are you going to do about the price tag that comes with these types of schools?”

My dad. The constant devil’s advocate. This is actually a good thing. You know when he starts grilling you if you have the chops to back up what you’re deciding to do. His questioning will cause the weak to falter and the strong to grow stronger by making them confirm their idea or their belief.

An example is the time my brother held a big screen showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life” for our family during the holidays at the Wealthy Theatre where he worked. My dad leaned down the aisle and hollered to me referring to my guest, “So, Jeannie! What do you think you have a calling from the Lord to date everyone named Steve?!”

I glared down at him, really having nothing to say since, yes, this was the 4th Steve I had dated in a 10 year period. As I shot him those mortified daughter eyes, a head poked out from beside me. “Yes, but this time the Lord sent me.” That was Steve.
So, yes, I married this Steve.

Back to my dad’s Avalon where my bum was pleasantly warming on his heated seats on that 35 degree October morning.

“No, you’re right, some do come with a price tag. I’m also visiting progressive public and charter schools. You know though, even the private schools hold information that can be incorporated into any existing public system. Also, on the other hand, private works for some people, so I want to be sure to cover all of my bases.”

I began to bombard him with the stories of the democratic school I visited in Utah, sure to confirm again that no, this was not a school for the Democratic Party. My Rush Limbaugh listening father would have turned me off right then and there. I also began telling him about the opposite end of the spectrum and my visit to the Maharishi School.

“Well, Mike was in an open classroom at one point.”

If I could have fallen out of the car, I would have. What was this? My conservative parents put my eldest brother in an open school?!

“Yes, he was in 2nd or 3rd grade, I can’t quite remember. We had to pull him out because he didn’t do very well. It takes a special kid to be self disciplined. Most kids need structure. At least Mike did.”

Regardless of the fact that my dad was missing the point of the open classroom where the belief is that the kids will indeed direct themselves to learn what is needed after a time of detoxing from the public system, I was encouraged that the person that was the least likely to be open to progressive ideas or understand why I was doing this journey at all had actually been receptive to open classrooms! Slap my hand!

“I know other countries are so much more advanced than we are like Japan, and India and China.” Dad continued. “They churn out the engineers and scientists and I guess I don’t know, I’m just assuming here, but I think they are educated in a very structured environment.”

“Well, unfortunately I won’t get to include that. My original goal was for the book to be global, but when this really started happening, I realized that was impossible given my mommy and financial status. So, I’m sticking to this country for now. Maybe my future publisher will fund a sequel,” I joked.

“Who has your kids?”

“Steve and Mom split it up.”

“How can he take off work with a new job?”

“He only takes off 1 day a month. Most of the time I fly out on a Sunday, see a school Monday and then fly back that same night. They’re very short trips. Mom generously fills in when the trips are longer.”

Now I was on the mommy defense side. I wondered if people would think that I was shirking my responsibility as a mother by going on this journey, despite the fact that I was going on this journey in essence for them. I came to piece with myself when I was frank enough to realize that I end up spending four to six days away from home out of a 30 day month. This is what working parents spend away from their kids in just a weeks time minus the couple of hours they see their children before the chaos of bedtime begins.

I’ve stayed at home with my children for 3 1/2 years at this point and plan on doing so until I feel there is an educational system I can believe in in my area and when my kids are socially ready to leave the dependency of the nest, a very important aspect to their development. I guess I could be signing on for tenure here seeing as I am considering everything, even full time homeschooling. Regardless, I think 4-6 days per month out a nine month period is acceptable. And with Skype we have lots of fun every day talking and playing over cyberland.

“So aren’t there books out there already like this?”

“AHA! No!” I was excited now. “When I searched, I found only two - TWO - books that were a collection of information
about all the alternative educational theories out there. No one has ever done one narratively like I am where they visit actual schools and tell a story. This is my journey so it’s not just a dry informational book, well, I hope it won’t be. I even want the chapters to be short enough so that tired parents can get in 4 pages before bed. I just want to reach more people.”

“Sounds like you’re writing a book for the bathroom!”

I had to laugh. My dad is funny. Ask anyone.

“Yeah! Maybe I should call it The Bathroom Educational Reader.” I joked back.

“Or how about The Throne Book?”

“Good one, Dad.”

ONCE AGAIN

Once again, I am not finishing my social justice chapter in order to show you all the vast gamut of educational philosophies that I have had the immense opportunity to visit. Next stop: Phoenix.

Monday, March 14, 2011

CHAPTER 3 : SECTION 3

“I got a carrot/I got a yam/I got a green bean fresh, not from a can/Got a potato as you can probably see/I also got a pea/I got a pea/I got a pea/Why is everyone laughing at me?/So if you find a little pea on the floor after I leave/I think it probably belongs to me.”


Kight, the 6th and 7th graders Humanities teacher, was trying something new today. “Hey guys! This is going to be our new way to transition between things here in class. Verses having me shout out the time left to find your seats, I will just play this song. It’s 2 minutes long and so when you hear this song, you’ll know that you have to be in your seats by the time it’s over.”

Kight continued, “Alright, today I want to continue and build on the discussion we had during KIVA this morning about First Amendment Rights. What I’d like you to do is watch this You Tube video I found. Now before I play it I want you all to know that you are going to see some words in this video and they are derogatory words that are used to describe a group of people. Remember how we talked last week about the “N” word and how this is not a word that we use to talk about African Americans unless you are an African American and in that case, it is up to you. Well, it is the same for these words that you will hear today. There will be a “F” word and a “D” word that will be used to describe a gay person. These are not words that we use to describe anyone that is L, B, G, T, Q, or Lesbian, BiSexual, Gay, Transgender, Queer, unless of course you are L, B, G, T, Q where again, it’s up to you. There will also be a word to describe a woman that starts with a “W” and the same goes here. Alright.”

The You Tube video began. “God Bless the USA” played in the background while images of military funerals flashed on the screen juxtaposed with images of the protestors and the signs that are held at these funerals, which was where the words that Kight warned the children about came up. “Thank God for 9-11” said one. “God Hates Gays” was another.

A woman appeared, a spokesperson for the protestors and she began to explain that the deaths of all of the military men and women were because God was punishing our country for being too lenient on what they say is such a clear defamation of God by allowing gays in the military. They believe that all of the natural disasters and terrorism attacks were happening for this reason as well. 9-11, Katrina, you name it.

Then Kight stopped the video, “Ok. I know that was hard to watch for some of you, but this is what I want you all to do. I want you all to think about what this woman said and I want you to pretend you are her. I want you to get out your journals and I want you to write one sentence from this woman’s point of view.”

Comments came flying from around the room. These kids were obviously dismayed at this woman. After all, it is a social justice school.

“I know this is going to be hard for some of you who disagree with her, but if you can’t write from her perspective, how can you have a debate? You can’t go on and believe things just because I say it, or just because your parents say it. You need to develop your own ideas and part of that is imaging why she thinks the way that she does. There are students here at this school that may agree with her. To debate her, you have to see her side.”

“I was born knowing gay rights were civil rights,” said a boy.

“Well, that’s great that you know that, but I can tell you when I was in 6th grade there wasn’t one, not one other student that believed gay rights were civil rights.”

The children gathered in groups of 4 and discussed different ways to say what the You Tube funeral protestor was saying. Then they all went around and read aloud what they thought this woman was saying.

“Ok, why are we doing this?” Kight asked. “Here are some numbers for you. 1 in 10 people are gay. Out of this ten, two thirds will try to commit suicide. Half of these attempts will succeed. Let’s do the math.” She wrote a succession of numbers on the board. “You can bet that one student in your school right now will be successful in their suicide because they are gay. You guys have the ability to change this statistic. If you find out that someone is gay, they need your support and acceptance more than they need your ridicule whether you agree with their lifestyle of not. You may save someones life. So again, why do this? Well, it’s way harder to see this woman’s side. It’s easier to just say I hate you. That won’t get us anywhere. We need to attempt to see both sides of an issue to accurately discuss it.”

I’m sure I looked like a deer in headlights. Kight was amazing. She was so fluid at getting these children to think and examine an issue that they will surely come up against at some point, probably many points, in their lives, and it would start right in high school when teens tend to start to examine this aspect of themselves. Kight, who was openly gay, was able to get these kids to see both sides of an issue without causing fear or anguish within the kids, just by simply making them think.

The next section for the day was about the Underground Railroad. There was a chart on the board full of sticky notes under the title, “What I Know About the Underground Railroad” that the students had put on the day previous. Today there was a new chart titled, “Questions about The Underground Railroad.”

“Ok. We’re breaking into groups again.” Kight gave the students a number 1 through 3. “1’s you go with Betsy.” Betsy was the Humanities assistant to Kight. “2’s you go with me. And 3’s you go with Jeannie.”

What? Me?! Somebody spotted my fly on the wall self and shooed me down! I sat on the ground with my 4 commrades, Jordan, Diedra, Dennis and Saul.

“Ok, so what do we still want to know about the Underground Railroad?” I asked.

“Ummm... Were there slaves that weren’t black?” This was from Jordan, a very eloquent and well spoken 7th grader.

“Was there actually a railroad involved?” asked Diedra.

“Did other southerners help the slaves beside the Quakers?”

“What kind of food did the slaves eat?”

“Yeah, and like, what kind of games did they play?”

“Did the slaves ever get to retire?”

I was writing frantically.

The students were asked to return to their seats at the same time I realized I had spent almost all of my allotted time for two class visits in this one class. I couldn’t help myself! I was so enjoying class! Kight is an amazing teacher! Although, when I passed the classroom later in the day, I saw the second half of the class that I had missed. The kids were all decked out on the floor with books, the same book. “Elijah of Buxton,” a book about a young black child during the days of the Underground Railroad. The children were following along as a book on tape played in the background.

I was left with a feeling of empowerment, with a euphoric fuzz in my brain. Social Justice should not just be in a school here and there, it should be mandatory within every school’s curriculum, of that is was suddenly convinced.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Man Speaks

At the request of my husband, I have decided to stop fudging publish dates and just have my most recent entry come up first.

If you are a first time reader - just start at the beginning which ironically is the end in blog land....

Sunday, February 20, 2011

CHAPTER 3 - SECTION 2

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A FIRST DRAFT OF THIS PARTICULAR CHAPTER. PLEASE EXCUSE THE ROUGHNESS OF IT.



Paulo Freire Freedom School is focused on social justice and environmental sustainability. They believe young people learn when the information they are learning can be connected to their own environment, the world they live in, and the situations they encounter and care about on a day to day basis. They do not shy away from discussing the social issues facing the world, quite the contrary, they want these issues to be breached and grounded in hope. They encourage their students to not only think about matters in a realistic way, but to also think about solutions. Let’s face it, this is not an easy world to live in. Perhaps the hope for the future lies in the stimulation of our younger generation’s minds to tap into the possibilities of a society free from oppression.

Later when I arrived home I would be scanning my bookshelf for Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto and I would see printed on the binding of a bright red book: Freire The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I laughed at my ignorance to make the connection when I first found the Paulo Freire School! Of course a social justice school would name themselves after Paulo Freire! He spent his life working to educate the masses by teaching literacy to the poor so that those in poverty could have a voice making the world a less oppressive place.

Paulo Freire was born in Racife, Brazil in 1921 in a middle class economic family. Yet, Freire's family would begin to know poverty and hunger as the 1929 Great Depression of America reached into Brazil sending the Freire's on their own personal downward spiral. Paulo began to play in different circles, in the circles of the poor children of Brazil, and became aware at a very young age of the role of class as the poor children viewed him as not poor, but just as one that accidentally landed into their turf. (pedagogy of the oppressed pg 13)

Richard Shaull writes in his introduction for Pedagogy of the Oppressed a commentary of how this experience was pivotal in Freire’s life path:

"His sharing of the life of the poor also led him to the discovery of what he describes as the “culture of silence” of the dispossessed. He came to realize that their ignorance and lethargy were the direct product of the whole situation of economic, social and political domination... And it became clear to him that the whole educational system was one of the major instruments for the maintenance of this culture of silence."

Paulo Freire wrote that during his hunger he was not able to learn or think, the hunger so encapsulated his mind and body. He wasn’t “dumb” or “unteachable,” he was hungry. At 11 years old he made the commitment to fight against the plight of hunger. Amazingly, after his family lifted themselves out of poverty and Paulo received his law degree from the University of Racife, the dedication to the trials of his younger years did not leave but continued to fuel his life’s purpose.

Freire began to see the current system of what he called “neutral” education as the cause for students not analyzing or asking questions about the oppressive actions of history. This lack of dialogue in the classroom created, as mentioned about, what he called ‘a culture of silence’ where the people submerged under low socio-economic status never get out. He also saw the education system as being set up not to allow the poor to release themselves from the stranglehold that is poverty. If the poor never ask questions or can’t read and write, then those on high will always have a power over others.

He wanted to be instrumental in the creation of conscientização, a critical consciousness, where people question their social situation, question the actions of history, and reflect and commence in dialogue with fellow students and teachers. The greatest obstacle to full conscientização was literacy. In the end Freire believed if the poor could become literate, they could participate in conscientização and the entire social construction of reality could be examined and altered. That is majorly powerful stuff. Imagine a whole section of society -even today- and imagine the huge section in Brazil in the 1940’s and 50’s, sitting down and looking at their own poverty and looking at the reasons why their poverty existed; what is their history, what is their present, where is the future headed and dialoguing with others in the same situation to jam out ideas as to how this road can fork! The whole problem of deeming the norm as inevitable, feeling so helpless as the machine gears and jerks on, feeling like spectators to our own existence, and looking down at our children and realizing they too are inevitably stuck in the cycle, in the circle that has gone all wrong for so many. Pretty powerful stuff indeed.

Freire devised a philosophy of education called Popular Education; a social theory that empowers and challenges students to examine world views in order to pursue critical social change and to ignite dialogue in learning. And that is what he did. Freire saw to it that the poor of Brazil became literate citizens. In 1962, Freire was involved in a project to teach reading to 300 farm workers which was successfully completed in an amazing 45 days! This sensational accomplishment won him great notice, in both a positive way, and a negative way. The 1964 military coup changed the Brazilian government and Paulo Freire was jailed for 70 days before being exiled from the country.

Amazingly, he began working in Chile fighting illiteracy of the poor in that nation fronting the accomplishment of Chile to
become one of the top five countries in the world to lift itself from illiteracy! The amount of things this man has done is a longer biography than I can site here, but Paulo Freire’s effort to not only educate but change the way in which people were being educated about oppressive elements of society is such a staggering feat that the fact that his history is not taught along next to other greats in the world is a little disconcerting. I had never heard of this man in school. I found him on my own after college. Such a shame. I’m going to guess that many of you had no idea who he was either. Did you know he worked as a consultant for Harvard’s school of Education? Me neither.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

CHAPTER 3: SECTION 1

CHAPTER 3: THE REPRESSION OPPRESSION EXPRESS


I drove down Highway 10 from Phoenix to Tucson on an oddly cloudy Arizona October morning. My coffee was steaming in the drink holder of my friend Michelle Dill’s car and from my Ipod Jeff Buckley was telling me he can’t help from looking outside for a guarantee. I realized I was more screwed up than normal with the time zone switch. Arizona, I thought, was 2 hours behind eastern standard time. On the plane I was informed that Arizona does not participate in daylight savings time and is therefore 3 hours behind eastern standard time half of the year and then 2 hours behind the other half of the year. Who knew? Maybe McCain really IS a maverick!

I must concede and say I was wrong about the desert. The plant life is bizarrely wonderful and abundant and even amazingly colorful although very different from my hometown of Michigan. This place wasn’t just a bunch of sand and cactus plants after all! Desert wildflowers and crazy, wiry, scraggly plants with branches like long gnarled witches fingers were rather enthralling. Most of the plants seem to have some sort of thorn or needle as well. Others looked like zig zags on steroids. Anything to stay alive.

I was enjoying the desert landscape. This stretch of the highway had plants along the side of the road that were so wiry, so corkscrewed with that electric shock look they reminded me of 1970’s green afros mixed in with some 1980’s mall rat hair; boofy, big, fuzzy. But of course desert plants have to be survivors, unlike my lush Michigan foliage which drips of moisture. Sometimes survivors look a little mangled.

I admittedly began to notice the lack of roadkill. I know, an odd thing to detect, but in Michigan, it’s well, everywhere in almost every season; deer, raccoon, opossum, skunks, squirrels. Sorry for the visualization. Not being versed in desert knowhow, I figured that some of the desert creatures are better to meet in their post life instead of during their alive and well stage where my ankles could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had to admit I was looking forward to seeing a gila monster or maybe a scorpion the size of a small beaver.


********************************************

“Clap if you can hear me. Clap twice if you can hear me. Clap three times if you can hear me.”

It was 8:30am. KIVA was beginning.

The school day begins with a 15 minute gathering of all the students. The kids all gathered around, some casually on the floor, some crashed out on pillows in the corners. JoAnn, the co-founder of the school, opened up the forum after a greeting of all the students.

“Good morning everyone. Did everyone enjoy the long weekend?”

Nods of approval, grunts of positivity.

“Before we get into our morning discussion, Jade*** has an announcement about her Learning Lab. Jade?”

Jade stood up and explained to the rest of the class that she was researching Henna, a flowering plant that is used to dye the skin and give somewhat of a temporary tattoo of traditionally beautiful spiraling patterns that adorn the hands, feet or arms. She had permission slips to hand out to any student that wanted to get Henna.

Learning Lab is a very unique aspect of the Paulo Freire Freedom School of Tucson Arizona. Learning lab is an independent project where the student can choose any subject that they are interested in. Under the guidance of a supervisor, the student develops their project during a specific time slot set aside two times a week during the regular class schedule. In an educational climate that is feeling the pressure to take away classes that are not the standard math, history, english and science, this was an innovative way for this public school to encourage students to research an area they have an affinity for or who may be gifted in areas other than the ones the government tests have expressed are important, High five Paulo.

Paulo Freire is a public school that opened its doors in 2005 to twenty two students. By the end of that year, they doubled that. They have a complete open door policy and will only turn away a student if the capacity of their building is reached, after which time they would conduct a lottery for all of the applicants. Of course at that time they would hope to find new facilities so that all children could have the opportunity to be a part of their school.

“Does anyone else have any announcements?” asked JoAnn.

“Well, this weekend, there was a whole mess on my street.” The voice of Damien in the back. “I guess some guy beat up his girlfriend and we had the cops there and then there were some shootings too.”

Despite the horrible nature of Damien’s announcement, I found his candidness refreshing and an example of the comfort that he felt amongst his peers and the school. Many studies are being conducted these days of the stress that kids are under and how they are having trouble knowing what to do with all of the pain and anguish they witness or hear about. By giving him a chance to express what was clearly bothersome enough to bring up 2 days later was to me an almost therapeutic outburst.

I found the encouragement of solutions a very striking difference from what our children, even us as adults, are bombarded with day after day. Mainstream media irresponsibly reports the negative, which in turn is making us a culture of scared patriots which just can not work in a world that is increasingly global. If you can hop a plane to Mumbi or teleconference Höfuðborgarsvæði, then we as a society need to rise above fear that is at times blown out of proportion.

Yet, I guess I can’t blame the media. They wouldn’t report devastation over devastation if everyone was like, “Oh, not this again, this is awful, I’m not watching this tripe!” But the TV stations get their ratings and they basically report what we tell them is interesting to us.

Who knows who should be the bigger person in this case. Should we the viewers turn off the talking heads or should the talking heads do a horror movie-esque spin and start telling us the amazing things that happen every day. I don’t know, but someone should make a move. That’s what you have to do to get to first base - in baseball, in the bedroom, or in change.

JoAnn expressed her empathy for what he had been through and moved on to her next point. “What I’d like to discuss for KIVA today is about the Supreme Court. We have had a historical event on our Supreme Court. This is the first time in history that we have three women on the highest court in our nation. As I was thinking about this, I was trying to name all of the other Justices - does anyone know how many Justices there are on the Supreme Court?”

“12!”

“7”

“9!”

“Yes, that’s right, 9. Now I was trying to name them all and I could only come up with 8. Can anyone here name a Justice
of the Supreme Court?”

After a small period of silence and girl raised her hand. “Judge Judy?”

JoAnn did not miss a beat. “No, Judge Judy is not on the Supreme Court. She is a judge though.” She calmly went on to explain how one gets on the Judge Judy court show on television and not once did she ridicule the girls answer or make her feel silly for thinking a TV personality was a Supreme Court Justice. She took the opportunity to discuss it and explain what the difference was.

Once all the Justices had been named, JoAnn went on with her morning thought.

“The Supreme Court is going to be deciding some major cases these days and I would like to discuss one of those cases. This one is about the First Amendment. There has been a group of people that have been protesting at the funerals of not only openly gay people, but also gay military servicemen and women that have died in action, as well as service men and women who in actuality were not gay. The defense that the protestors are using is that they are protected under the First Amendment right of free speech. What does everyone think about this? Do these people have the right to protest and hold up anti-gay signs at someone’s funeral?”

Hands flew up. Let me introduce the Paulo Freire students.

“My cousin died in the war, and while we didn’t have protestors there, when I think about it and I think of how my aunt and uncle were grieving, I can’t imagine them having to deal with that kind of thing at the same time.”

“Um, well, couldn’t it be an issue of disturbing the peace?”

“I understand that, like, they may be protected under the first amendment, but, like, I think it is an abuse of this right.”

“I’m sorry, but that is just disturbing that people would protest at someone’s funeral, no matter what they think about their life. It’s just not right.”

“You know, while I think it’s disgusting and immoral, I have to say that they are probably protected by the first amendment.”

Kight, one of the Paulo Freire staff also chimed in. “We should also think about the fact that these people have been protesting at the funerals of gay people long before they ever protested at the funeral of the military men and women, but that the media finally became interested in it after the fact.”

The children continued. “What about gay people’s rights? Aren’t these people infringing on gay’s rights to free speech, I mean, they came out as gay, right? That was their right without having to get abused by others for it.”

“Yeah, like people have the right to say what they want to say, like these funeral people, but people have a right to be gay too.”

These are 11, 12 and 13 year old kids.

Friday, February 18, 2011

SIDE NOTE 2

As in Chapter 1, I am choosing to not finish posting the entire chapter of Chapter 2 so that more people can get a greater taste of my journey.

Today, I present, The Social Justice School - Paulo Freire Freedom School.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

CHAPTER 2 : SECTION 4

Transcendental Meditation is the star of an entire educational program developed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called Consciousness Based Education. Don’t be scared off by the term “Consciousness-Based.” This term “consciousness” has gotten a bad wrap since the 1980‘s. People that spoke of consciousness were written off immediately as mary-jane smoking hippies, wild haired dissenters, or wigged out beatniks when in reality this couldn’t be further from the actual truth. Consciousness is actually simply defined as, the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself. That’s it. The ability to be aware. That’s right Reagan. (It's ok, Reagan and I share the same birthday, we poke fun at each other all the time - it's an Aquarian thing)

What Consciousness Based education does brain wise is, again, activate the TOTAL brain functioning centers verses activating certain areas of the brain at different, separate times. Studies have found that students that use Consciousness-Based education are “more committed academically, more alert, more healthy and balanced, more self-actualized, [and] more mature in moral judgement...” (www.cbeprograms.org) Ok, that’s great! But why, I asked? Extensive research has been done to answer this very question. We discussed the research into meditation, and there is even more research that has been done on CBE. The load is remarkably impressive siting over 600 studies conducted by 200 universities in 30 countries.
Let’s go on a mini brain tour. Start your axons.

First let us start with the infant brain. The infant’s main areas of brain development are the sensory and motor areas. These sensory and motor areas are the first to mature in our little babies’ brains and this happens within the first two years of life. What has been discovered is that when infants are “raised in enriched environments that allow for a full range of sensory, motor and social activity” three major developments occurred. First, their brains weight increases a whooping 10% in just 60 days.

Second, synapses of the nerves in the cortex of the brain, which is the thin outer layer of the brain where much of this electrical nerve activity takes place. were estimated at a 20% increase (Enriched and Impoverished Environments: Effects on Brain and Behavior. New York: Sprzinger-Verlag, 1987.) (Annual Reviews of Psychology 49: 72-111. 1998.)

Third, cells in the frontal area of the cortex grow more than 30 times their length at birth in these two years. 30 times! So much for just being a maconium shooting jello blob in your arms.
 The next thing to occur in our brain’s journey is the development of the language centers. This is completed by 8 years of age.

Now these are daunting tasks that we adults tend to take for granted. Yet, believe it or not, an equally important aspect of brain development occurs even after all of the previous mentioned functions take place. After 10 years of age what’s called the integrative systems of the brain primarily develop, the systems that use both sides of the brain at the same time. This last until around the age of 17 years. Now here is this little tidbit of information. After 17, well, that’s it folks. Our brains are what they are; at least in the physical sense. That old adage “You can’t teach a dog new tricks” to explain why we don’t want to get off our butt and go to the local stained glass class may be more truth than laziness.

Ok, so we have this:
Infant: sensory/motor skills
2-8 years: language skills
10-17 years: integrative brain development
17-on: giant flat-line folks. Hear the humbling beep.

One can deduce this integration development in a young child should be tapped into as much as possible for higher brain development as a whole. Better functioning brain produces more young, intelligent people which produces better contributing adults, which promotes more positivity in life in general. How to, Dr. Jeannie? Through studies it appears that children taught in the Consciousness Based education model activate these integrative functioning centers of the brain, by, yes, meditating. So, in one sense it is rather humbling to know that the development of the brain goes stagnant after 17 years old, but it is encouraging that we can optimize the functioning of the brains of our children so that they will be better people than us.

Neuroimaging studies (PET and FMRI) have shown that doing a task specifically does not develop the brain’s ability to integrate as a whole. This is why Consciousness Based educators believe that the reason education is so ineffective today is because the system is limiting the brain’s functioning during the most critical times by continually focusing the brain on mastering just specific sections of knowledge that only activate certain areas of the brain thus not aiding in developing integrative centers. Ashely Deans goes a step further explaining that not only does the current system not integrate the entire brain, but that it stresses the brain by promoting such an information based curriculum educating of our youth as if filling an empty container instead of working to increase the ability our children’s brain to retain information. (pg 16-17) We all know what stress overload can do to an adult system and to think that we would knowingly do so to a developing child is, well, it gives me goose bumps, and not the good kind. Anxiety, depression, heart disease, and high blood pressure are key diseases that are known to be caused by stress. Dean goes on to explain that stress and poor blood flow to the brain produces “functional holes,” (pg 20) which obviously gives a child trouble learning. (Don’t get me started on the horrendous diet most children eat, the vast amounts of inactivity in favor of TV and video game stimulation, the continual display of accepted violent images day after day also aiding in our children’s lack luster abilities.)

We’ve revealed the fairly simple, on the surface answer as to how to get the brain to use more of its integrative function by tapping into our 4th state of consciousness with the practice of Transcendental Meditation. We’ve already gone over the numerous studies done on the effectiveness of TM. So far it appears to me that not incorporating this into every single school system is, can I be bold enough to say, criminal. The forth definition in Webster’s states 'criminal' means “shameful; disgraceful.”
Yep, that fits.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

CHAPTER 2 : SECTION 3

“How are your kids enjoying the Nature Explore Playground?” Tere asked.

“So far so good! My daughter is a really intense and solitary person and takes time to warm up to a new situation, but my son is the absolute opposite and will run and join any play group no matter how far it is from me and not even bat an eye. It’s so funny they are so different, but they can always make each other laugh.”

“Well, they are in good hands with Fatima and Pasha. And your mom is there, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

We had convened in Tere’s office and I had to ask the question that has been plaguing me since I began researching the school.

“So, I have to ask you about uniforms. When I first heard that you require uniforms I thought, ‘Oh, how can you take away a child’s expression of their self through their clothes’ but the more I thought about the fashion race, I wondered if maybe it really is a good idea. What is your reason for uniforms?”

“Ah, yes. Uniforms.” Tere stated with confidence. “There are two reasons that we do uniforms here. It is a quiet form of discipline. Even the staff is required to dress in such a manner in suits or dresses. We want to convey that what we are doing here is serious business. When they get home they can dress in whatever they chose, but here we want our children to know that play time is later. We are here to learn. Secondly, you are right, it takes away the fashion race and the stress that puts on the students. As a parent who had daughter here, it was always such an immense relief to not have to worry about what everyone else was wearing or spending the vast amounts of money on clothes to fit in. It reduces stress within an entire family.”

I had to admit, she was making a lot of sense. The uniforms didn’t seem all that difficult to wear. The younger girls wore yellow jumper dresses while the older girls wore skirts and a polo shirt. The young boys wore khaki pants and a polo shirt. The older boys wore khaki pants and a white shirt with a tie.

“My husband just started with a new company.” I began, “He has been compelled to wear a shirt and tie to work even though he doesn’t have to. It started with watching Mad Men and me saying that I’d like the “man in the suit” fashion to come back, and then he even admitted it gave him a different feel while he was working.”

“Yes, it does. That is the feeling we want the students to have here, a feeling of greater purpose. As for the reduction of stress that the uniform offers, the other thing we do here to reduce the stress among the students is separate by gender. This just creates harmony. You will see here at Maharishi that we do not have cliques based on what you wear, groups certain girls or boys fit in like some other schools. That stress is diminished here and creates zero competition in our classrooms. You’ve been in school, you’ve seen it, boys and girls being distracted trying to prove something to the opposite sex. Now, this year we have a few coed classes due to our high numbers of students.”

“Are you seeing if that is having any affect on the studies?”

“No, but that’s a good question. It is still too new to see what difference it makes.” Tere laughed. She too was light-hearted in her conversation. Clealy she was very together and good at her business, but she was very real in her explanations of the Maharishi School.

Tere continued, “Now we may be different in some aspects of our school, but we still are accredited with the state. Some private schools are not. We follow state requirements here. We are a college preparatory school. To be a college preparatory school 80% of your student body must be accepted to college. We here at Maharishi have a 100% acceptance rate.”

I’m pretty sure my jaw made a Tom and Jerry thud. The national average of high school students that go straight onto college is 33.28%! (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_001.asp) The crazy long answer to this question of how many students go to college can be found here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_high_school_graduates_go_to_college_2008-2009.

Tere was clearly extremely proud of this fact, and she should be!

“Why do you think this is?!” I asked stunned. “Do you think this is because of the Transcendental Meditation.” I had done extensive reading on the brain research associated with meditation.

“Absolutely. I am sure it has everything to do with that. But I also think that it is the uniforms, I also think it is the single gender, I think all parts of Maharishi makes a whole.”

“So, is this why the state doesn’t care that you have meditation in your curriculum?”

“That’s right. We have proven ourselves, clearly, in the requirements of the state, so we are allowed some flexibility in our curriculum.”

At Maharishi the students in 7th-12th grades participate in 20 minutes of Transcendental Meditation before classes begin and then for 20 minutes at the end of their day. It is a requirement of the school, not an optional gathering. Ages 5-9 are not required to sit in this fashion with their eyes closed. The school believes children are not yet ready for that type of discipline being in such a physical place in their bodies. What 5-9 year olds do instead is what they call The Word Of Wisdom. The children are given a word, each child has a different word, and it is their word, it is not spoken aloud. At that point the children walk around, but in silence. This is getting the children ready for the learning of TM. It is never really spoken or dictated to the children as to what the kids do with their word, it is up to them. It is just a practice in discipline and a quieting.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is globally recognized as bringing Transcendental Meditation to the world fifty years ago. Meditation has become the keystone to the Maharishi School’s curriculum because of the scientifically proven success in stress reduction and improvement of brain functioning that is associated with Transcendental Meditation. The studies conducted on TM are so numerous I felt like I had just eaten some 1970’s mushrooms after scanning them all. Let me attempt the impossible task for putting 200-300 studies conducted into a nice Michael Bolton-esque, easy listening paragraph.

Groups of meditators were studied along side of a control group of non meditators and this is just some of what was found.

On the issue of the IQ of University Students the Mean IQ score of meditators was 121 over the non meditators at 116.

After 3 months of Transcendental Meditation, systolic, the top number, and diastolic, the bottom number, blood pressure was reduced significantly by 10mmHg.

High cholesterol also lessened significantly by 30 mg/100ml.

Meditators showed lessened hospital stays by, get this, almost 80% and less overall medical expenses by a reduction of 60% from norms. Meditators ages 40 and older also had an 80% reduction in outpatient visits.

Meditators smoked and drank alcohol less.

Transcendental Meditation reduced anxiety better than any other technique or psychotherapy.

After four months meditators had decreased insomnia.

Those suffering from post traumatic stress troubles showed very significant reductions in depression.

TM practictioners had increased job satisfaction, improved job performance, and younger biological age.

Now if that isn’t impressive enough, listen to what happens when a group of meditators get together:

When 7,000 experts (1% of the population) in meditation convened, a significant decrease in fatalities due to international terrorism occurred from what is normally measured.
When 1% of a cities population became instructed in Transcendental Meditation during the 1970’s the crime rate for the whole city went down.

Alright you say, but why, what is it about TM that can alter so much of the chemistry of a human body and even the chemistry of a town? So how possibly can meditating two times a day cause these students to excel so extravagantly above the national average? The answer I found is surprisingly simple: Transcendental Meditation opens the brain. Images taken of the brain during TM show blood flow widely distributed across the entire cortex! Why this is so cool is that our brains do not work like this very often. Different spots of our brain have been proven to fire when we are doing certain things, for example, talking. This will fire a different area of my brain than sitting and remembering something in my past, or perhaps telling someone a story. I will fire a different area of my brain when I’m artistic verses when I am making a list. But this integration of both halves of the cortex, where blood flows over an entire space is, well, very rare.

Quantum scientists have even studied Transcendental Meditation and have given it it’s own place on the totem of our consciousness. Science tells us we have seven known states of consciousness. In 1970, Dr. Robert Keith Wallace of Harvard was the first to publish his findings of TM as a 4th state of consciousness. The first stage, waking, the second stage, dreaming, and the third stage, sleep are all the common known states of consciousness. A fourth state of consciousness occurs during Transcendental Meditation. Dr. Wallace found that while in meditation there is an increase in what is called “medium-frequency alpha brain-wave activity,” which gives the meditator the same physiological benefits of deep rest. (Deans, Ashely, A Record of Excellence pg 34)

Ashley Deans, the previous director of the Maharishi School, explains that the deprivation of the fourth state of consciousness has been found to be just as detrimental on the brain as being deprived of our third state of consciousness, sleep, resulting in only partial brain development because of the constant stress of its absence. (pg 35) He goes on to say that students that routinely nurture this 4th state receive such a high level of brain functioning that they appear to far exceed from other students. (pg 39)

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

CHAPTER 2 : SECTION 2

CHAPTER 2 CONT....


I suppose the first question to answer here is who exactly is The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? Many fans of the music group, The Beatles, will remember photos of John, Paul, George and Ringo decked out in the finest late 1960’s classic hippie garb around a tiny man donning a long beard and white robe at some point between Revolver and Abbey Road. At least that was my knowledge of him.

Turns out he did more than listen to George learn the sitar. He is credited with bringing ancient Indian texts to a modern world, and who enveloped the modern scientific culture to encourage studies of the ancient wisdom of Vedic masters with our current knowledge of science and medicine.

I will attempt to introduce you to the little man in the white robe that ended up changing the world. The actual dates and specifics are hard to clarify seeing as when one enters into ascetics they tend to renounce family ties. I found different birth dates and even different names scattered through the mighty internet, so I decided to choose my now close comrade in writing this book, Wikipedia.com.

He was born Mahesh Prasad Varma on January 12, 1914 in Pounalulla, India into the Kayastha caste in British India. He was not called the honorary term Maharishi until 1960 after he was an assistant to Brahmananda Saraawati, the leader of Jyotir Math, a sacred city within the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Maharishi stayed with Saraawati until 1953 and in 1955 began to introduce the Transcendental Meditation technique, or TM, to the world amongst some controversy. Seems one teacher told him to share this with the world while another one forbade it. (NAMES?) Regardless, he began to tour the globe to reveal the wisdom of the Vedic texts to the world in 1958. The interest inTM was global and expansive becoming fully welcomed in a time of social and cultural upheaval. This man hands down, changed the modern world. In 1970 he started the TM-Sid hi program to promote education of Transcendental Meditation and Yogic Flying. In 1992 followers of the Marharishi even started their own political party, The Natural Law Party. In 2000, he started the Global Country of World Peace, his vision of a country with no borders and no leaders. To say the Vedic teachings really took off is a bit of an understatement. He passed away on February 5, 2008 at the age of 94 -- we think seeing as again, dates and ages are sketchy. Who knows he could be having a scone with Elvis somewhere in a tortilla as we speak. (Wikipedia 2010 - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

The figure himself is rather controversial. As with any one in the media, he became blanketed by public accusations, judgements and stories that bounce off anything that celebrities touch. Regardless of what the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did or did not do doesn’t matter in relation to the volume of ancient wisdom he brought to the world and will not be my purpose in this chapter. As my father once wisely told me, if I ever want to know about something I should go to the people that live it and ask them about it. He said there was no reason to go to the anti- literature which just seeks out negativity and doesn’t live the teachings anyway. Could it be that at 33 I have learned to listen to my father? He’ll love that.

After dropping off mom and babes to terrorize the pranayama of Rukmapura Hotel, I drove again through the streets of the Vedic City outside of Fairfield, Iowa to the grounds of the Maharishi School. I drove around to the furthest end of the campus of the Maharishi University of Management to the school and parked my minivan. In my heart of hearts I wished that I saw people exit The Hall of Bliss in flowing white see-through gowns, flowers in their hair, grape vines twined about their crowns, maybe some skipping would be nice. Yet what emerged were teachers in suits and business casual, students in uniforms, some with parents, some conversing with other students all heading up a small incline from this domed building towards the main school building surrounded by large mature trees. Oh, and later on I learned it was actually the Field house anyway. Whoops. I too trudged up the hill to the school noticing that each tree had a plaque revealing the tree species as well as a fun fact. I stopped to gander:

Pin Oak
Easy ID: The bristle-tipped lobes are deeply cut reaching almost to leaf mid vein. The small round acorn is often striped and has a shallow cup.
Fun Fact: The tough short branchlets of this tree were once used as pins to fasten timbers together.

Aha! Who knew? Now I can go build that small rustic house I’ve always wanted to. Thank you Maharishi!

As I neared the entrance I was greeted with the sign “Maharishi School” with an impressive list of achievements underneath: “State Champions: Drama, Golf, History, Science and Engineering, Tennis, Math, Track, Odyssey of the Mind, Poetry and Writing, Photography and Art, National Merit Scholars, Destination Imagination.” Imagine trying to fit all of that on a bumper sticker.

I was equally impressed as I rounded the sidewalk to the entrance and saw a group of young boys setting out flags, not just the American flag, or the Iowa state flag but flags from around the world. I would later learn that the flags represented all of the countries that children were from at this school. This attention to the globe was echoed as I entered through the doors and saw a row of clocks hanging from the large horizontal beam showing times from various countries from around the world.

“You’re not lost, right?”

“Actually, I am.” I had not heard from the head of the school, Richard Beall, confirming my visit and was nervous that I would be turned away after 8 hrs of driving and 2 days of overly fatigued children wreaking havoc on the Rukmapura Park Hotel in the Maharishi Vedic City. He had stated visitors were welcomed and to set up a time, but then went on vacation. So, here I was hoping I wouldn’t get a ruler on the hand for not following protocol.

“Well, Richard has not been around for a few days, but come with me, let’s see what we can do.” I liked her already. She was warm, she was laid back, she was Fran Clark.

Everyone that greeted me was full of genuine smiles and warm hand shakes. At that moment that I realized that I had not felt quite so comfortable with strangers in a long time. These days it seems when I meet someone new, smiles tend to be put on, the voice is raised 2 decibels too high to show how terribly friendly we really are, conversation feels dreadfully forced with clear relief when one says, “Well, I better move along!” This was not the case here. Familiarity was present that was calming to me instantly.

I spieled out my monologue as to why I was there visiting. How I was a mother of two looking for an education alternative for my kids and how I was hoping to compile my journey into a book for other parents who were also interested, how the public school system was not doing anything for the youth today.

Fran smiled, “Well, they churn out a lot of product!”

On the way to the administrator, Tere Cutler’s, office we bumped into Tere who told me that she would have time to see me in the afternoon and to feel free to bring my kids back with me. I informed her they were three and one. “Yes, bring them back! They can play in our Nature Explore playground we just installed!”

“Would you like to see the Nature Explore playground?” Fran asked.

“Absolutely.”

So Fran and I headed outside.

“This Nature Explore Playground is new to our school. It is a really amazing hands on way for our preschoolers and kindergarteners to play in the outside world.”

Check out the specs on this playground. The Nature Explore Playground was established in conjunction with the Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation. This playground is complete with a Treasure Cove, where the children can use shells, acorns, pine cones and other objects of nature to build and design with. Sparkling Springs is the messy area where digging and sloshing with sand and water is encouraged. Included in this area is a rain barrel to teach the children about the recycling possibilities of water. They have a Tree House Theatre surrounded by butterfly gardens. The Playful Prairie is part earth slide, part swings and part wood chips for playing. Star Quest is an area of log steps and tree stumps and wooden balance beams. If this isn’t impressive enough they have also included a Hummingbird Cottage, an eco-playhouse that is surrounded with edible plants and flowers that attract, yes, hummingbirds. While I was visiting the strawberries had been picked and munched to the end and the pumpkins were just coming into their flourishing. In a shaded area of the playground was what they called The Woodlands where a shade garden grows. My kids were going to be in wee heaven when they return with me.

“This is incredible!” I exclaimed. I would have loved to see this concept be incorporated into some of the giant playgrounds I have seen.

“Oh, the kids love it here. It really is a blessing for us to have this. You’ll see when you come back with your kids. You won’t get them to leave!” Fran laughed.

We walked together pass the sounds of laughter and gleeful squealing to the and into the preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Briefly Fran showed me all the different corners the children have within their classrooms - the nap area, the library area, the global area with pictures of people from all over the world.

I looked up as we were leaving and saw the sign: “The Nature of Life is To Grow and Order is Present Everywhere.” Fran followed my gaze.

“We believe that children need order and guidance to make sense of the world. Montessori for example as I understand it, lets the children just go. We don’t do that here. Children need our supervision.” I would soon learn that Montessori has a lot more thought behind it than just letting them go, but I understood the point she was trying to make.

I needed to return to gather my children for our afternoon visit and Fran also needed to attend to her own duties. We cut our brief tour short and said our goodbyes.

“So, you’ll come back and bring your kids?” Fran asked.

“Oh, yes, we’ll be back. I’m so excited to see the rest of the school.”

“Oh, it’s amazing here. I’ve lived here now for 30 years and I would never leave. It’s is such a great community! Are you
staying for the ArtWalk this weekend? It is the end all and be all of the town every first Friday of the month! Affairs are made and broken!” She laughed heartedly.

“No, we have to get back tomorrow, but I will bring my husband back with me for that! So far, I have really enjoyed the town, really felt quite comfortable here.”

“Well, people get a little iffy when they know they are coming to the Transcendental Meditation Town, but we’re normal people. We don’t walk around with our eyes half closed or anything.” That wonderful laugh again.

“Oh, I wasn’t nervous about a meditation town. My husband and I have taken yoga together for 8 years and he meditates every morning to get prepared for the corporate world. I don’t meditate though, I make breakfast.” My turn for an attempt at being funny.

“Oh!” She chuckled, “Well, that’s your dharma! You know, dharma? Your important duty in this world? There is nothing more important than a mother’s dharma, don’t ever forget that! Those babies are your meditation. We all do what we can in whatever phase of life we are in.”

If I could have cried, I may have, but I was still smiling at Fran, my new favorite Fairfieldian. The stay at home mom tends to be a fairly unrecognized profession, especially in the case of those mothers that do it so well. Your clothes magically appear each week, the food somehow remains in the fridge although you are sure you are eating each day, the dishes somehow get back in the cupboard while the lights stay on and the house stays warm and the children go from 8lbs to 30lbs. I’m always up for a praising of the mother, or father now-a-days, that makes the world go round. Literally.

I waved my good byes, my jitters now turned to jubilation.

Monday, February 14, 2011

CHAPTER 2 : SECTION 1

Chapter 2 - Hippie Guru Meets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker


We rolled down Jasmine to 170th enjoying the strange dichotomy of farm houses and Indian Vedic structures all surrounded by expansive fields of corn and soybean mono-crops. Fairfield Iowa seemed an unlikely place for me to find a school called The Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment let alone an entire town movement towards ancient eastern spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation, yet here I was surrounded by the typical American farm land and the atypical placement of various domed structures. We were on our way to the Rukmapura Park Hotel. If I was going to Fairfield, Iowa I would not be Best Western-ing it, oh no. I wanted to see a Brahmasthan for myself.


Pulling into the parking lot of the hotel and stepping out onto the gravel parking lot one could not help but notice the silence of the country. Birds twittered can I say almost zen like without sounding too cliche? The grand and expansive Rukmapura Hotel stood stately in front of us: our home for the next 3 days. The lobby, the Brahmasthan where all things lead to and come from, the open central point, was dim and absolutely quiet. Being used to the muzak or the lobby television blaring the local news in most hotels, it was an erie relief.


No one was at the front desk, they all go home at 5pm. How lovely European, I thought. I remembered being in Florence Italy when I was 19 years old and missing Michalangelo’s Statue of David because the Italians decided to close early that day. Seems as though my Vedic hosts thought the same way. Good for them. The line, “You Americans know no pleasure” from the book Eat Pray Love ran through my mind. Perhaps the Italians missed Fairfield on their latest visit.

An envelope awaited on the front desk with “Voller” printed on the outside and a single key on the inside. Not a card, a key. How homey. Of course if there was any peace to be had at the Rukmapura Hotel it was about to end. Enter in my two children.

The Brahmasthan with its fountain in the center became a favorite streaking circle for my kids. The two queen beds were appointed the trampolines in which my daughter would jump with a thud of non-three-year old proportions. The squeals, no screeches, of my son at the jubilation of being out of the car after 8 hours was matched by my daughter to create a chorus likened to dying bats. And it lasted for three days. I could only hope the other guests were well versed in their om’s.

******************************************
We dropped off the ridiculous number of bags one brings while traveling with two small children and hungrily headed into town. If I was going to be in the Vedic City, by Brahman, I was going to eat some Indian food.

“Will the kids eat Indian food?” asked my mother.

“They’ve had samosas.” I said. “Plus, I’ve put anything and everything on their plate since they were 6 months old, so why not?”

My mother always up for an adventure said, “Ok!”

We drove down Highway 1 passing giant grain mills that interestingly neighbored a Vedic office building and turned onto Broadway into the heart of Fairfield Iowa. Stores and shops skittered past: Every Body’s Whole Foods, Thymely Solutions and Natural Remedies, The Quantum Mechanic Then we saw India Cafe, boasting its lunch buffet. The restaurant had a no frills facade with plain red letters on a white background. With children and Indian, let me tell you there is nothing better than a buffet.

“Places like this always have the best foods.” I said.

My mom laughed, “That is so true!”

We parked right next to Central Park, a small but beautiful park right in the center of the city. We entered the restaurant and were greeted by a bulletin board of city announcements.

** SUSTAINABILITY POST CAFO MEETING (CAFO meaning Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation for those on the down low of foodie knowledge)
** VEDIC LITERATURE READING - THURSDAY NIGHTS AT THE LIBRARY
**INTERNATIONAL WOMAN’S CONFERENCE - INDIGINOUS GRANDMOTHER’S CALL TO WOMEN OF THE WORLD

Ah! Did I reach my Nirvana? In Iowa? Oh those gods are tricky. I snatched a plate and began to pile it high with rice, korma, golbi, riata and tandoori such and suchs. Both of my children happily ate the smorgasborg with the tumeric stained fingers to prove it. Children tend to be a nuisance to the term dining, but my children are quite versed in eating out by now with their traveling mother that they are blessed little masticators. (Sounds like I just called my kids dinosaurs.)

The townspeople that frequented the cafe were a wonderful combination of white pony tailed men with kind, intense eyes, mixed with casual families, and groups of warm hearted friends that cooed over my very cute son. All in all the people felt mellow, intelligent and well, honestly, aware.

On my way out another bulletin board notice caught my eye.
3 BEDROOM, 2 BATH HOUSE FOR RENT - 790.
Hmmmm.....

Sunday, February 13, 2011

SIDE NOTE:

I have decided to not publish more of the first chapter at the democratic school - Sego Lily. To give people more of a taste of all the places I have gone so that they can see what it is I'm doing and lend their support to my process so that I can continue research to finish the book, I have decided to post Chapter 2: Section 1 tomorrow on the Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment. Keep Watch! What do you all feel about this change?

Saturday, February 12, 2011

CHAPTER 1: SECTION 4

Once JC was complete, and by complete that meant that the JC members were fairly board with it after an hour, then Theresa put me under her wing and took up where Rebecca left of on the tour. Theresa had moved to Salt Lake from the Berkley area where she surprisingly could not find a school she liked. She also had a lovely accent which is always soothing for me to listen to. She was originally from South Africa.

“I was homeschooling my boys, “ she stated “and it worked well for awhile but after a time I felt like they needed more social interaction, so that’s when I began looking.”

We walked from the main room towards the back of the house stopping in each room. Our first stop was the PG-13 computer room, designated for older students that had a permission slip to play more of the violent computer games. Next we came to the PG room for computers. Next to these two rooms was a quiet room where anyone could go if they needed space. A sign hung on the door for the student that absolutely did not want to be interrupted. Today there were 4 students hanging out on the couch looking at something on a lap top.

We continued downstairs to the two rooms that could double as classrooms. Kids could gather their own group if they wanted a class on a subject, or a staff member could decide to present something and the children could come or not come, it was entirely up to them. This year the children that wanted to would be learning Japanese. Why? One of the students thought that would be fun, so the staff found a member in the community that agreed to teach the kids Japanese. No one was having class on the day I was there. A group was in one of the classrooms playing computer games.

“So you obviously don’t restrict media by any means?”

“No!” Theresa said with a great shake of her head. “My kids were Waldorf kids for a time and Waldorf is very adamant about no TV or computers before a certain age and even after that age then were restrictive. But honestly the structure was just so stifling. I watched Will go to school and he just lost his spark. The kids are so controlled all of the time. I mean, I used to be like that. I wanted to control everything from what they watched, to their food, to what they did. It was when I started raising them democratically that I felt better about my parenting. I mean, who am I to tell them what they need? I’m not in their bodies, I don’t feel what they feel. So we believe here that if the kids want to spend all their time playing video games on the computer or the X-Box, then they should do that. We truly believe that once a child gets whatever interest they have out of their system, they will naturally and gradually move on to something else. It’s just the nature of their curious minds. Like Alex, for example, he spent every day his first two weeks here on his computer. Today, he hasn’t even opened it. He needed to fulfill his interest and now he’s in the foam room.” Will was her older son and Alex was her younger son. “It’s so wonderful. I mean look at them run around. They are truly themselves.”

So while it appears true that children left to their own devices wouldn’t do any “learning” whatsoever and just sit about and socialize or transfix themselves to some form of media, the democratic educators not only accept this but also value this! The democratic schools believe that socialization is imperative to a child’s growth, so important that democratic schools do not separate by age, but allow and encourage the children to socialize and learn in mixed age groups. It is said this gives the children extreme social and emotional advantages verses just interacting with the same age group. (Jeff Collins, The Sudbury Model of Education).

A “Social IQ” as it is referred to by the Raymond H. Hartjen in his book Educational Futures has been found to be an essential element for career success even over SAT scores. The attributes that come along with being socially adept are high confidence, self-reliance and personal awareness. This socialization can take the form of play and fantasy in the younger ages, to chatting with other students in the preteen years to finding yourself mentoring young new students as you become an older teen. The mixed ages and freedom of socialization is said to be an important missing puzzle piece in the modern school setting. Our children are increasingly having less and less time or space to be in their child-like society where they need to make decisions, have conversations, or arguments without adult intervention. Adults tend to be the rulers, ring masters, and whip crackers of the circus that is childhood, sometimes out of the goodness of our own hearts and sometimes out of fear - fear of societal ills plastered on the tube, or perhaps fear of losing control over our children in our own mega-structured lives.

I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR in the early part of 2010 about a father who was so disillusioned with the state of organized sports for youth these days. He went on to tell a wonderful recollection he had as a youth of grabbing his skates and stick and running down to the local pond in winter to meet the neighborhood boys and girls for hours upon hours of hockey. He cherished this time where they as kids made the rules, decided what to do about violations to those rules, and fought out the disagreements amongst themselves without any adult near by. This was how they learned fair play, compromise, how to make comprises at their young ages. Now it seems, the writer went on to say, that the trend has moved towards school organized teams or local community sports where the adults pick the teams, coaches the children, punishes and rewards them and even supplies high class uniforms and gear that inevitably do not mean much to the children since they never had a say in the entire process anyway. Can you hear the conversation? “Johnny! Where is your hockey stick!?” “I don’t know MA!” Have you seen the movie Sandlot? Back in the day if one of the neighborhood kids lost the community baseball or puck it was devastating. The pond hockey kids were not only responsible for themselves but for the community as a whole. Life lessons were more tangible, more realistic. This is a great example of what democratic education enthusiasts believe all of childhood should be like, including their education.

We walked past the music room where one student was playing a guitar alone with the door shut. It was an wonderful array of drums, keyboards, guitars and other musical instruments. The students had to be certified in their demonstration for respect for the instruments, turning things off after use, and not bringing any liquids into the room. The boy looked thoroughly engrossed and did not even look up at me.

We continued to walk down the hall where we came upon the infamous foam room, a room littered with giant pieces of foam. The perfect place for children to literally bounce of the walls.

“In our new facility, we are going to have an entire padded room installed so the kids can just go crazy.” Theresa gladly reported. “Do you know about our new school. It is the first Net Zero certified building in the area and we have raised almost 2/3rd’s of our needed funds. It really is very exciting. We can have 40 or so students right now, but the new facilities will house 150 or 200 students. Ok, and so here is the kitchen.”

The kitchen was an expansive room that was half kitchen and half long tables, which turned out were not only places to eat but were also places to do art. The whole left half of the room was art land.

“The students don’t have a lunch time here. They bring their lunches and they are labeled and put in the refrigerator. It is up to the kids to decide when they are hungry and when they want to eat.”

So while there were no rules as to the time to eat lunch, the room abounded with the now familiar bright red signs siting that a certain item needed certification in order to be used. The microwave, the stove, washing dishes, everything had a list of rules and the students that proved they could master the guidelines of the kitchen had their names listed below.

Today Mia and Rachel were making homemade pretzels. Rachel supervised while Mia dipped braided clumps of dough into a baking soda and water solution that was boiling on the stove. Mia counted to herself while tipping the hand strainer from side to side along with her head as she counted the 30 seconds the dough was suppose to remain in the water.

“This is great!” I exclaimed. “I love to bake, but I have never made pretzels!”

“Yes, Mia wanted to make pretzels, so I found a recipe and we decided to do it!” Rachel was being modest. I had already read on the Sego Lily website that she was very passionate about baking.

“You should have had the apple pie we made last week.” Theresa gleamed. “We ended up forgetting to cover it though and it was full of ants in the morning.” She started to laugh. “Rachel and I ate it anyway, ants and all, just to show the kids they shouldn’t be afraid of a little extra protein!”

Theresa made me tea and after I paid my 50 cents for my pretzel we went upstairs. Everyone had to pay for baked goods and they were happy to do it. Money was needed to keep the baking going. No one complained about that lesson in goods and services, especially me.

I was then befriended by 12 year old Beth, her 10 year old sister, Ellen and 8 year old Ashely while I snacked on my oh, so soft, warm, and fresh from the oven pretzel and sipped my black tea. Beth, it turns out, has a love of dogs. She had a giant dog book laid out on the table and she was going through all of the dogs and telling anyone that would listen all about the breeds. She told me how she wanted to show dogs some day. Ellen, who was on the couch working on a spelling book, looked up to me and said, “What’s exhaust?”

“Exhaust is what comes out of the tail pipe of a car.” I said. “When you burn gasoline, it gets turned into exhaust.”

“Oh. Ok.” And she went back to her spelling.

I heard doors shut as James, done with vacuuming, decided to shut himself in the main room to “work on my French,” he said.

Beth was still discussing dogs with Ashely. “What about this dog?” Ashely asked.

“Oh, that is a Yorkshire Terrier. They need a lot of exercise but they’re not very protective.” I could see that Beth was following a little chart explaining the attributes of each dog. The chart had boxes that were blackened. The more blackened boxes, the greater was that trait in the dog.

“What does that one say?” Ashely asked.

“Oh, that’s friendliness,” answered Beth.

Ashely had clearly caught on to the meaning of the boxes, “Oh, so they are very friendly! What about this one, what does it say?

“That is nice to strangers.”

“Oh, they don’t like strangers?”

It became clear to me that Ashely could not yet read at 8 years old. Public schools would be having a fit. Specialists would have been called in, remedial studies would have ensued, but not here. They believe in the democratic model of education that Ashely will teach herself to read when it is the right time for her and only her. They believe that all children will learn to read just as all infants learn to talk and walk. Infants are surrounded by talking and walking and their brain automatically creates the desire in them to emulate this. The same is true for reading, writing, math or any other subject in a democratic school. If a child is surrounded by readers, they will learn to read. This happens at 4 years of age for some and 11 years of age for others. They do not believe it is up to adults to decide.

This may be a shock to those that are used to our current method of teaching core subjects earlier and earlier, especially reading and writing, but democratic educators believe this advanced and forced schooling is a detriment to the child. When a child is forced to read or forced to write when they are individually not ready to do so, then resentment for learning can set in. In the instance of reading many democratic children actually end up greatly enjoying reading which is said to be a direct result of them not being forced to read before they were ready. Children at democratic schools are said to have more positive feelings in general about all aspects of learning. We have exactly the opposite of “a love of learning” in the classroom today. By being forced and coerced into learning when, where and what someone else dictates, children may begin to resent learning in general and try to dodge anything that resembles it. So, no, no one here minded that Ashely was 8 and not reading. Beth and Ellen were happy to read the words to her, both seemingly knowing that she would catch on at some point.

Friday, February 11, 2011

CHAPTER 1: SECTION 3

“So great to meet you! We are so glad you could make it! I’m Rebecca. I’m the one you’ve been corresponding with!” I shook her outstretched hand which she then in turn put her opposite hand on top of mine like a miniature hand embrace. “This is Emily and this is Theresa, some of the other staff members. We’re just going through the lost and found box trying to figure out what goes to whom.”

In many ways I thought I could have easily just entered a child’s large birthday party. Children were streaking happily down the long hallway that lead from the front door to the back of the house while some children sat at the large table munching a snack, while others darted in and out of my view through the windows to the outside clearly on something with wheels.

Rebecca started me on a tour of Sego Lily. One might believe that in the democratic school model that it would be a free for all, but in each room I noticed a red sign posted by each door with titles such as: LEGO CERTIFICATION. MUSIC ROOM CERTIFICATION. FOAM ROOM CERTIFICATION. MICROWAVE CERTIFICATION. STOVE CERTIFICATION. TREE HOUSE CERTIFICATION. The first one Rebecca explained to me was the OUTDOOR CERTIFICATION.

“It’s a safety issue. We give the kids guidelines to go by to keep them safe. They have to prove that they have a working knowledge of the rules and then they get certified. We write their names on the paper here and we know and they know that they are safe to, say, go outside, for example. Some schools with acreage may not have such a system, but we are on a busy road that isn’t completely fenced, so this is an important aspect.”

“That’s really smart!”

“Well, in a school like this where the kids don’t have to be in a class or in a desk or in a certain room at any time, we need to be sure they will still be safe. And this gives them the control over what they can and can not do. So, as you can see from the guidelines here, if you’re over 12 you have free reign to go outside. If you are between 9 and 12 you can go outside anytime you want as long as you have a buddy that is over 12. Everyone under 12 must have a buddy to be outside. Then the 4 and 5 year olds are only allowed in a certain area outside.”

The other red sign rules are really common sense. In the Lego room the kids need to demonstrate that they can leave the legos in the room, lest they be lost, and share when appropriate. They do not force sharing, but allow children their need to be engrossed in what they want without having to share. Common sense here again. If a child has 4 sets of wheels and only need two, then obviously sharing is expected. Another Lego Rule is to respect the BRB or Tap Tap rule.

“What’s the Tap Tap rule?” I asked.

“Well, let’s say if Owen was building a house and he was hungry and wanted to get a snack he could Tap Tap his project. That would mean to everyone else that he would be right back and they couldn’t take apart his work. He could also put a BRB or Be Right Back Sign on it. But this is common sense too. If he’s gone over 10 minutes, he loses the right to his project and others can use the parts.”

Here’s that participatory democracy I had heard so much about! Democratic educators believe that decisions should be made by the people they affect . Most democratic schools will tell you that the children are more apt to follow the rules since, after all, they made them. As stated before, each week the students and staff attend the weekly school meeting where the running of the school is discussed and voted upon on every level. The weekly school meeting is also the place where the staff is voted in or out. Every year the students and staff vote on whether they would like a staff member to continue at the school. There is no union or tenure here. If you are doing a good job at mentoring, being available, or sharing specific skills you have to those that are interested, you will most likely stay. The vote will decide. Participatory democracy in action!

Ok, you say, kids are kids; so what happens when they don’t follow the red paper rules? If there are no teachers in front of the children at all times who is going to step in and finalize the argument? Another aspect of including students in participatory democracy is through peer justice. This sub group is created to deal with rule infractions in the manner of the court trial. The students and one staff member are elected or rotated into the judicial committee and are expected to answer to any complaint brought up to the committee. The innocent or guilty verdict is given as well as the sentence and this is all student driven. Democracy indeed. (Greenberg, Daniel; R-E-S-P-E-C-T: What Children Get in Democratic Schools - Mothering.com) This procedure is strictly based on the theory of judicial democracy: being innocent until proven guilty and being able to have a fair trial with a jury of your peers. They call it, The Judicial Committee, or JC.

The JC is in place to hold a trial for children that have disobeyed a rule and were not able to work it out amongst themselves. The child will either write up a complaint or in the case they can not write yet, they will have an older child write for them. They site who was involved, if there were witnesses, and the facts. The staff encourages the children to not use emotions when writing up the facts to the complaint. “Made me mad,” or “Hurt my feelings” is instead replaced with, “He kicked me” and “She called me a name,” to get the children into a more logical frame of thinking when it comes to peer justice.

The JC at the Sego Lily School is comprised of 5 students and a staff member which rotates on a daily basis so all students and staff get the opportunity to be involved. All children take a part in JC. Whether you are 5 or 18, you have a say and a vote. While I was talking legos with Rebecca, JC was about to start.

“Let’s finish the tour later,” said Rebecca excited. “This is JC. This is a very important part of our school, I want you to see this.” She opened the double glass french doors to reveal what could not be called anything except a family room complete with comfy chairs, couches, carpeted floors and an entertainment center at one end of the wall. The students were decked out casually waiting for JC to begin.

I made myself cozy on the floor with my notebook and with a thunk thunk of the gavel the trial began. (Ok, no, they did not have a gavel. Too much Night Court in the 1980‘s.) Theresa, the staff member for the day, opened the forum with, “Alright, everyone ready?” She began to read the first complaint of the day.

Case 1: Guy vs Dylan
Guy and Dylan each began to state their side of what happened. Guy charged that Dylan kicked him on the swing outside. Dylan countercharged that Guy had called him a name. The JC members confirmed the occurrences with the witnesses, who were also present at JC, that that is what occurred. After the confirmation from all parties involved that the facts were indeed correct, Theresa read the entire series of events out loud and Guy and Dylan and the JC members all got to vote on whether on the accuracy. Once everyone agreed to the charge, and the two boys pleaded guilty, it was time to lay down a sentence.

“Guy,” asked Trevor, the head of JC for the day and 13 years old, “Do you feel threatened by Dylan?”

“No, I don’t feel threatened.” answered Guy.

“Ok, that matters because if Guy still felt threatened then we would need to be sure our sentence made it so they weren’t in
the same room for a time.”

The ideas began spilling.

“I think they should both do two community service chores.”

“How about two random acts of kindness for each other?”

“Maybe they shouldn’t be able to go outside for a day or two?”

The JC members went back and forth trying to decide the right sentence. In the end the boys were sentenced to do extra community service chores.

“What’s a community service chore?” I asked

“Oh, we have chore chart,” explained Theresa.

“So the students clean the school?” I asked.

“Oh yes! We all are a part of keeping the school running; from the School Meeting each week that the children all have an
equal vote in, to the Judiciary Committee, to the cleanliness. We don’t ever want the kids to forget they are part of a community. The kids get points depending on the chore that they do. So each week the students and staff will look at the chart and they can see who has been doing their share of cleaning. If a student doesn’t have any points, that means they aren’t contributing, so a staff member or a student can give them a chore to do that day for no points to let them know that they are slacking. That person is the chore monitor and that rotates.”

Case 2 was next. Stan and Jason were sentenced to play a game together to renew their friendship over a misunderstood punching in the foam room where Jason meant to hit Stan with a piece of foam, lost it, and came in contact with his face. There was some debate on whether the game together was the proper punishment. Stan stated that he was still upset by the whole incident and was not sure he wanted to continue to be Jason’s friend. In this instance it is against the rules to force someone to be involved with another, therefore that would nix the game idea. I was astonished by the clear fact that the sentences are taken with great thought depending on the the children involved. The process is not taken lightly. Simply apologizing is not an option. An understanding exists that all actions have consequences.

As I sat and viewed case after case, I was astounded by the social maturity of the kids. A girl named Mia, a very level headed and well spoken girl, was present at each case to sight very objective views on the situation. She was able to take herself out of her emotional place and clearly see the point or purpose a solution to each side. A second example occurred when Theresa, the staff member had to ask Guy to stop rough housing.

Guy exclaimed, “It wasn’t me! It was Trevor!”

Trevor consented, “Yes, it was me.”

“Oh, sorry Guy,” Theresa said.

Guy, 7, started to laugh and said to Theresa, “Well, I usually am the problem.” This type of insight and self awareness at such a young age to me was refreshing. Opportunities like JC that teach the children presence of mind and responsibility for their choices and actions are surely a direct result.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

CHAPTER 1: SECTION 2

In a democratic school, all children are the sole drivers of their own educational bus. Learning is completely child directed without any sort of authoritarian figure dictating how the children spend their time, what they learn or when they choose to learn it. The children also decide how they are going to be evaluated since grades are not given in a democratic school. Whether it is a teacher at the front of a room, a principal at the head of the school, an administrative board somewhere far away from the actual school, or even the state and federal government, proponents of democratic education believe no one, in a true democracy, should take the responsibility or the right away from anyone wanting to learn what ever subject impassions them at whatever age it may present itself, no matter if that learner is 4 years old or 89. Honk Honk.

Democratic educators believe that if a child is driven of their own accord to something that interests them or to something they are excited about that they learn it much more joyfully and more quickly. After all, our first three years of life were spent learning the daunting tasks of walking with a very large head, making sense of a completely foreign language and learning to emulate it. Why possibly would children after four years of age be any different? They state that older children are in fact no different and it is the current public system that takes away their spark of discovery, their passion for exploration which is in turn replaced with resentment and loathing as their freedoms, their interests, and their time are squashed like a summer fruit fly in juice sucking bliss.

If this is the first time you have heard of this type of educational model, you are not alone. I was completely clueless that an entire spectrum of democratic schools, or Sudbury inspired as they are sometimes called, existed and have existed for some time. There are 200 democratic schools and programs in 29 countries providing a open space for learning for some 15,000 children. 85 of these schools are here in America.

As you read this you may feel that you have stumbled upon your own personal education ark or perhaps this may not be your cup of tea right off the bat, but just wait, lets get a little dirty. The reasoning behind this educational model is much deeper than it may appear on the surface. Ok, so what does this mean? Democracy this, democracy that. Roll up your sleeves were are going to try to make sense of this currently tarnished word “democracy.”

The early pioneers of democratic education began to ask why schools in our supposed democracy are decidedly undemocratic. Does this make any sense? The rights laid out for common citizens were not seen in the day to day life of students within school walls. Did the founding fathers lay out historical goals for a totally new society of free thinking, free moving citizens with a “P.S.” at the bottom stating, “Scratch the entire document above if you are between 4 and 18”?
Daniel Greenberg, co founder of the Sudbury School in Framingham Massachusetts, writes an amusing commentary on the Declaration of Independence in his article Toward an Ideal School: The Founding of Sudbury.


... what is the meaning of education in America?... The founding fathers, when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, included a sentence that Americans are all familiar with: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Nobody ever said that before. No country had ever been founded on those principles. The real giveaway that nobody had ever done it before is the phrase we hold these truths to be self evident.... The last thing on earth that was “self-evident” in 1776 was the idea that all men are created equal! Where in the world was this belief prevalent? Anywhere? And rights? Who had rights? Life? Life was all but worthless in those days, and all too close to worthless today in much of the world. Liberty? How many people enjoyed liberty back then?
And what did they mean by the Pursuit of Happiness? That’s an 18th century phrase that doesn’t mean what we take it to mean today. Happiness didn’t mean: “I’m having a good time,” or “let’s go out and party.” Happiness meant finding meaning in life. What they are saying was that every individual has a right to live his life, to be free, and to pursue a meaningful life....
To be sure, we have a way to go in order to fully realize these ideals in our everyday lives here in America. But these are the ideals for which this country was founded. And they imply, quite directly, that when we say that education is about realizing a person’s individual potential, what we are really saying is that every person has the right to live as the founding document of our nation intended. Anything called “education” should be furthering that goal of self-realization rather than some externally imposed goal.



These questions being asked in the 1960’s lead to the formation of group that called themselves The New Left. Again, this can not be mistaken for the term “Left” for the Democratic Party as it’s used to today. The New Left of the 1960‘s is a far cry from what “Left Wing” means today. They believed the founding fathers envisioned a participatory democracy as the goal for the governing of the new nation. This vision was believed to have been lost along the way and that we Americans, in effect, do not have a participatory democracy anymore. In a participatory democracy the citizens are intricately involved in the participation of governing in a communal and collaborative effort to run their towns and states. The concept of the New England town hall meeting is a perfect example of participatory democracy, which to their eyes, did not occur in modern times as it did in early founding years. The New Left saw our society becoming more authoritarian and less ruled by the people for the people. They state that since the early 1800’s we have turned into what they call a technocratic democracy where yes, we may elect those that lead us every 2 to 4 years, but that is the whole point. We elect people to rule us, a small elite group at that, in a very far off, institutionalized place distant from where we the people actually call home; where we live, work and raise our kids.

“When individuals are bound by limitations, expectations or rules they have no part in establishing, then they cannot be said to live in a democratic society,” states Ron Miller in his article What is Democratic Education. What we have now is a hierarchy within our government that we have all gotten so used to that we in essence have accepted it as inevitable. He goes on to say that we’ve accepted this way of governing so unquestioningly that we have organized our schools based on this type of hierarchy. (Toward Participatory Democracy - Free Voices #2.) They believed while we can still call our society a democracy, sort of, that’s a whole other topic, we can not call it the founding fathers’ democracy. The New Left decided to be an instrument in the reestablishment of participatory democracy.
Democratic schools are born where this commitment to participatory democracy and freedom was actualized and brought into the classroom. Congratulations you have a new baby philosophy!

These were the basic tenements of the democratic schools. First, as previously stated, the children are free in their day to pursue any interest, at any time, for any length of time, and in any depth they choose. A second dynamic is that the children also take a equal role in running the school. The rules that govern the school as well as the business of operation are all discussed and decided at a weekly school meeting where all staff and all students have one vote. The rules could be as simple as a littering rule and as complicated as approving budget requests. It is imperative in democracy that everyone, even the youngest of children, be included in decisions and be a witness to the process of their education. And here I was to see how this revolutionary and radical idea was enacted.

For some of you, this may be alluring enough to further investigate and so the question is, how do I get my hands on a little democracy? Most of these schools still fall under the “private” umbrella, but Israel can boast of 25 public democratic schools up and running, which is highly encouraging for the possibilities in our own shattered to bits system. When enrollment in the public school system has dipped from 80 percent to 73 percent in a short 14 years, alarm bells, sirens and vicious dogs barking should go off in our heads. And none of these warning sounds can be silenced by more money being thrown at them. Even jerky scented money at those dogs won’t help us now. I was intrigued enough. So off I went. For some reason, this all made me sweat.