Democratic Education

About N. Summerhill: Wikipedia

Video in Youtube: William Tyler Smith’s (Kiss Me Again, The Third Mind)documentary tells the story of A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School and their fight for survival against Tony Blair’s Labour government. A must see for anybody interested in education, progressive, alternative, and humanist ideas.

Another interesting video ‘Here and Now’

The Summerhilll School is still open. Take a look

The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak

I love this type of things!!!!!  I hope you enjoy it too, no matter if child or grown-up… maybe both!

Cheers,

Sonia

“He’s an actor, author, stand-up comedian, and screenwriter.  Now add a children’s book to his dossier. Novak’s The Book with No Pictures comes by its title honestly; the book is one filled with only words, in different fonts and colors and sizes. Funny, creative, and smart, the book, which forces the reader to say a slew of ridiculous words, is guaranteed to get a laugh out of any kid you know—just watch the trailer below, from one of Novak’s live readings, for proof.”

Continue reading here

Learning English and ‘coffee’…. or whatever you’d like to have at J&J’s Books and Coffee in Madrid

Check this nice place for language exchage and much more.  I’m giving you a link to the events site, I hope you like it.  Click

 

Check out their top-ten list of books if you’re thinking of starting reading something interesting soon. Click

Conflict, war, VOCABULARY on the news

Unfortunately war and conflict are common topics on the news and important issues to discuss.

I suggest you read the following opinion article about the Israel-Palestine conflict Click  (check my suggestions for vocab. learning at the bottom of this page)

You can also check some related vocaburary in quizlet.com (let me remind you this is a great tool for searching and learning specific vocabulary)

Now, for practise, you might leave a comment giving your opinion about the conflict or about war in general. You should then be using the new vocab. you aim to learn, right?

Cool!  Let’s do a bit reading and learning.

Cheers,

Sonia

 

Suggested interesting vocab. in bold:

“The Palestinian body count in Gaza has passed 1000, with more than 5000 wounded. Over 70 per cent of the casualties are civilians, including more than 200 children. Extended families have been wiped out. Children playing on a beach have been targeted and killed by Israeli gunboats. Over two thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed. According to an IDF spokesman, 120 one-tonne bombs landed in the Shaja’yya neighbourhood alone. Yet, with three Israeli civilians and 40 Israeli soldiers killed, Israeli leaders and their US allies insist on describing the carnage as a war of self–defence.

They also say that the Israeli army wages war with moral integrity. It doesn’t target civilians. It never intends to kill them. It even warns Gazans when an attack is coming so they can get out of harm’s way.

The ‘unintentional’ killing of civilians is not illegal under international law. If civilians are not deliberately targeted, if they are killed in pursuit of a legitimate military objective and the number of deaths is ‘proportional’ to that objective, then civilian casualties are accounted for as ‘collateral damage’. However, as Neta Crawford argues inAccountability for Killing, it’s worth thinking more critically about the category of unintentional civilian deaths. Most civilian deaths in urban counterinsurgency warfare may be ‘unintentional’, but they are also predictable.

Gaza is a densely populated territory cordoned off by air, sea and land, from which no escape or exit is possible. The IDF is dropping bombs powerful enough to flatten eight-storey apartment buildings, sending large metal gates soaring through the air. Drones fire missiles into crowded areas, even targeting civilians attempting to flee. The Israeli military is pounding densely populated cities and refugee camps with shells from Merkava tanks and missiles from Apache helicopters, even areas the IDF has previously told civilians to escape to.

There is no safe place in Gaza. There is nowhere to go. And there is nothing unintentional let alone moral about civilians being killed when there is a 100 per cent probability that an assault on a refugee camp or a crowded neighbourhood or city street will result in mass civilian casualties. The distinction between the intended and the unintended has lost all sense here.

And what if the civilian casualties are not unintentional at all? The Israeli state is skilled at aligning itself with the interests and proclaimed values of the US. After 9/11, Ariel Sharon worked hard to equate the US fight against ‘Muslim terrorists’ in Afghanistan and Iraq with Israel’s struggle against Palestinians. But Israel’s war is different from America’s. Not because the US military is more moral, or more sensitive to the laws of war, but because the US operated with a different ideological fantasy. The US military went to liberate Iraqis and Afghans from regimes they wanted to be liberated from, or so we were told. Iraqi and Afghan civilians would embrace the US and its mission. Hearts and minds had to be won.

Israel’s war in Gaza is not about winning Palestinian hearts and minds. Israel does not claim to be protecting or liberating Gazans from an oppressive regime. Rather, the IDF’s tactics recall the logic of the British and American fire bombing of German and Japanese cities during the Second World War: target the civilian population. Make them pay an unbearable price. Then they will turn against their own regime.

When Israel attacks hospitals in Gaza, when it wipes out extended families, when it mows down children running on a beach, it is engaged in a premeditated act. The war is an extension of the collective punishment unleashed on West Bank Palestinians after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in June. Is it proportionate? Compare it with the way the Israeli police searched for and held accountable the three Israeli Jews who burned a Palestinian teenager alive in revenge. Imagine the IDF rampaging through the towns of those Israeli perpetrators, holding entire communities responsible for what they did, demolishing their family homes.

Or imagine if Hamas were able to aim its rockets. Imagine it targeting the home of a high-ranking officer in the IDF, killing his wife and children, nieces and nephews, along with the family next door. Imagine these casualties being described as ‘collateral damage’ for which Hamas bore no legal or moral responsibility.

The IDF’s bombardment of Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals, indiscriminately pummelling the people of Gaza into the ground, deserves to be called what it is: a war crime.

Learning from current news

Take a chance to learn new vocabulary and grammar in use by reading about and/or listening to current news in English, either international news or Spanish news.

My suggestion:  why not see what the international media says about a specific piece of news you’ve just heard of or read about today? Use google search, for instance.

 Also, you may want to check some of these links:

EL PAÍS in English, The Guardian, SpanishNews.com, THE TELEGRAPH, The Olive Press , Euroweekly News

Online tv

Videos

 

I sometimes link or write about interesting news, check those posts tagged “press”

Can Spanish people speak English?

You surely have an opinion based on your personal experience but … there is much more to it …take a look at the following press cutting: here.  You may want to leave a comment as well.

Cheers,

Sonia

The beneficts of bilingualism

Interesting article about bilingualism published on the NY Times:

 

Avaaz – The World in Action

Reading and comprehension practice for people committed to justice and human rights in this world of ours….

The Avaaz community campaigns in 15 languages signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing “offline” protests and events.

USE THE ENGLISH AVAAZ PAGE for an interesting way of practising your English, and most important of all: a way of being informed about real problems and solutions for all of us. You may also decide to join this community and take action by signing in and spreading the message.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/index.php

Reading and critical thinking. Topic: life and society

“In Washington DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After about four minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About four minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At six minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At ten minutes, a three-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At forty-five minutes: The musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About twenty gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After one hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theatre in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:  In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
If so, do we stop to appreciate it?  Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:  If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…
How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?”

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myq8upzJDJc

Happy Christmas 2011

Dear learners:

This pic is my way of wishing you a happy Christmas this year. I think the cartoon is funny…, but I’d apologise if someone felt offended or thought it’s just stupid.

Now…. let me use this space to try to express how I’ve been feeling this year  about to end.  Well… I still believe life is great and that  a bit of good sense of humour helps facing difficulties.    I’m a cheerful… yeah, I think so… a cheerful person, and a cheerful teacher of English. When I started learning English myself I never thought I would end up teaching! I thought it was something only native speakers could do… but…here I am… trying to teach English in Spain, in a  state run language school.  Unfortunately, recently imposed cuts on funding have left many teachers like me without a job this year; which at th same time means that  many students are going to find overworked teachers trying to do their best but not always being able to offer a high level of quality. At the moment,  I’m waiting and hoping to get a call from the Ministry of Education of Madrid, saying I have my job back….  Although this situation may seem something personal, it is not; there are more than 2000 teachers going through the same ordeal. Last August, during our summer break, Madrid’s regional government decided to introduce cuts on funding affecting public education  at all levels (even at primary and secondary levels). For more than ten years private schools  have been favoured by getting publicly owned land for building cheaply and, this year, parents will be getting tax exemptions if they take their children to private schools.  You can find more information about this issue in some previous posts I’ve written linking news and reports from different sources ; I also recommend you have a look at some posts about the relevance of Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas ‘Official Language Schools’ in Spain and in Madrid.

Our polititians are terribly  wrong when they forget that education and health are basic pillars of society and treat them in such ways. It’s appaling to see them sell their souls to a system based on finantial and political corruption favouring just a few.

Having said probably too much…, I just want to finish by wishing you all the best of luck and pleasant surprises in 2012.  Let’s always hope for the best! and… do not forget to have fun!

Cheers,

Sonia