Research, please forgive us. Our relationship with you is clearly dysfunctional. We proclaim to the world how much we care about you, yet we fail to treat you with the respect you deserve. We value you conditionally, listening only when you tell us what we want to hear. We sneak behind your back even while basking in the glow of your reputation. If you don’t leave us, it must be because you’re blind – maybe even double-blind – to our faults.

Alfie Kohn, 2006 “Abusing Research: The Study of Homework and Other Examples”

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BBC journalist Christine Jeavans is giving up plastic for the whole of August. She will not be buying or accepting anything which contains plastic or is packaged in plastic.

Before the challenge, Jeavans collected a month’s worth of my plastic waste, which amounted to 603 items! England alone throws away 58 billion items - 1.5 million tonnes - of household plastic packaging a year, according to the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) and it’s growing annually by 2-5%.

Plastic waste

Jeavans writes that the “Durable, versatile, lightweight, hygienic, cheap and strong: synthetic plastic is arguably one of the most useful inventions of the last century… It is essential in medical equipment, technology and thousands of devices which have increased our standard of living…. But those very same attributes of durability and cheapness make plastic one of the most pervasive forms of waste on the planet.”

Keep up with her blog here.

I wonder why, I wonder why,

I wonder why I wonder;

I wonder why, I wonder why

I wonder why I wonder!

~Richard Feynman

When I was a child I loved being read to, but I never really read alone. I only ever remember reading Dr. Seuss books, because I knew them by heart. In grade four I went to a new school. I wore large red glasses to match my enormous, irregular handwriting. During our weekly creative writing classes, I made elaborately decorated hand bound books. Sometimes I attempt a title, but never more; the pages were always blank.

One day, in grade four, the school took us to a traveling exhibition at the Arts Center, its theme was The Wizard of Oz, which, coincidently, was my most beloved story in my entire nine-year-old world. At the gift shop (exhibitions always end with a gift shop) I spied a book I’d never seen, it documented the making of the Oz stage and film productions, and contained an illustrated history of the author. After noticing how intently I was eyeing the book, my teacher offered, without hesitation, to buy it for me as a gift, with the condition that I read it—and by read it she meant the words. Excitedly I gave my word, and I’ve had the book ever since. One day I hope to read it.

Yinxing Township Central Primary School,

Safe for the first time

Singing from the playground

fills an empty Beichuan sky,

The hardened troops

cheer like schoolboys

This one is alive!

In their white helmets

and bloodied orange

they work without delay,

to reach the voice of a woman

they heard on Saturday.

It’s coming from the birds

says a man wiping dirt from his eyes,

It happened during school time

It’s only the birds! he cries.

1

1

The Saddest King

by Christopher Wormell

102

Once there was a country where the people were always happy. They would smile and laugh when the sun shone down, when it poured with rain and even when the snow fell and their teeth were chattering. Nothing ever made them sad or cross.

But this is the story of a small boy who breaks the law. He cries! He is taken straight to the King who, it is said, is the happiest person in the land. Can the boy convince the King that it’s all right to be sad sometimes?

This billboard was displayed all over Milan for fashion week.

Here is a very moving interview with Caro (English)

Here is another (Italian)

This billboard features Isabelle Caro, a 27-year old French woman with anorexia. She weighs just 31 kilos and has suffered from anorexia since she was 13.

–

Caro says,

I’ve hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance. I want to recover because I love life and the riches of the universe. I want to show young people how dangerous this illness is.

The 30,000 - 40,000 people with anorexia in France are mostly women

PLEASE KEEP READING …

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It does not fortify my soul in the least to know that after I die all unmarried men will still be bachelors, that 37 will still be a prime number, that the stars will continue to shine, and that forever I will have been just what I am now. Away with these fake immortalities! They mean nothing to the heart. Better to say with Bertrand Russell: “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.**

**Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, New York: Quill, 1983.

EXCELLENCE AS A GUIDE TO EDUCATIONAL CONVERSATION

by Nel Noddings Stanford University

When people use the slogan, “All children can learn,” what exactly do they mean? Many probably mean that children of all minority and oppressed groups can learn as well as those of the privileged and dominant classes. Used this way, the slogan is a reminder to treat all students with respect and to promote their growth equally…

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