No doubt, other people have been following with alarm the recent events in the UK where it seems that when a man gets anywhere near a small child he is in some way suspected of being a pedophile.
This reminds me of the Feminist battle cry of the the 1960s that declared often in an underhand way that every man was a potential rapist!
I read in The Observer, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the UK, that some schools have banned parents from attending a Sports Day celebration to watch an egg and spoon race, a time when parents dutifully attend the school to see the prowess of their kids and marvel at how they have matured physically and how well they have integrated with their peers.
Now it seems that some parents were actually banned from attending their kids' sports day because they might possibly be potential pedophiles!!
Has the world gone barking mad? When has the time come when parents cannot visit their own kids in a school where they are probably paying hefty fees? One school in Birmingham called King Edward IV (not a million miles from where I am currently teaching, University of Birmingham) has actually introduced a fingerprinting system so that the kids can get their lunch? Eh? What is going on?
As the writer of the article, Henry Porter states, "Much will be lost, but that is to be expected given the mood of fear and suspicion that has taken root in our schools over the last decade and is doing so much damage to relations between adults and children, and to the children themselves, who are growing up in a surveillance society."
What are we telling our kids about men in general? The underlying subliminal message that we are sending to our kids is that men cannot be trusted, that they will abuse you and that that little of any positive value can come from male association.
This is extremely sad as I read another report recently (possibly in the same newspaper) that kids are growing up cushioned and over protected because parents rarely let them out to play like they would have say, 20 years ago. Where once they enjoyed relatively free rein to explore nooks and crannies with their friends in the safety of thir neighbourhoods, now they are kept indoors for fear of possible abductions or abuse. Where once they had a freedom to discover themselves and develop relationships with others, whether male or female, now they are often overprotected which stunts their growth.
This is primarily because of these underlying fears that men are predators who are waiting in the bushes of every park, or the alleys of every street waiting to stalk their teenage victims.
The loss is clearly that young children will grow up believing in all this guff and will be robbed of the normal healthy connections with male figures in their lives, relationships that pass on guidance and mutual respect have possibly gone down the drain.
My question is, when will thus madness end?
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Monday, 15 June 2009
When your government knows what's best for you...
Why is it that governments always seem to know what's best for the populace? When they get elected, they seem to think that they have some moral mandate to clean up all our lives? As if we couldn't possibly exist without Big Brother looking over our shoulders watching out for us?
I read with interest recently the interesting article entitled "Cocaine study that got up the nose of the US" by Ben Goldacre. In it, he charges the US government with at best exaggeration, at worst downright lying. One example is the way in which the government tried to prove that new forms of cannabis e.g. skunk, are twenty-five times stronger than they were in the heady days of the 1960s with flower power and the hippy revolution. This was tested and found to be patently false.
As he says,
"In areas of moral and political conflict people will always behave badly with evidence, so the war on drugs is a consistent source of entertainment. We have already seen how cannabis being "25 times stronger" was a fantasy, how drugs-related deaths were quietly dropped from the measures for drugs policy, and how a trivial pile of poppies was presented by the government as a serious dent in the Taliban's heroin revenue."
Why is it then that governments so feel the need to exaggerate these kinds of statistics? In fact there's little evidence to suggest that soft drugs, and by this I mean class B or C drugs, lead to long terms health problems at all. This leads me to question why governments, which are inherently right wing if not politically, then certainly socially and morally, resort to this kind of false reporting which at times borders on propaganda? Is it because a lot of revenue is spent on these kinds of recreational drugs which doesn't find its way into state coffers in the form of VAT and other direct or indirect taxes? Surely it must be for another reason for we have come a long way from the 1970s and 1980s when any form of drug taking was frowned upon and lengthy jail sentences routinely handed out.
Quoting from a report by World Health Organisation (WHO) which was ignored, repudiated by respected bodies, and left unpublished,
"Such programmes rely on sensationalised, exaggerated statements about cocaine which misinform about patterns of use, stigmatise users, and destroy the educator's credibility."
As Ben Goldacre continues,
"Health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use," they said. "Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users."
We see this dynamic play itself out in other areas where government control is routinely exercised albeit in an unwanted, unwarranted, and heavy-handed way. For example, after 9-11, we were treated to scary movies about perceived terrorist threats which probably came straight out of the Bush family homegrown terrorist factory, edited by Dick Cheney, with special effects from Donald Rumsfeld, and special lighting from Russ Limbaugh. All the interviews, videos, banners, ads, billboards were designed with one purpose in mind - to scare the living bejesus out of all of us and hand control back to our paternal brothers in The Whitehouse, Downing Street, The Reichschtag, The Elysee Palace (or wherever the French government convenes) and elsewhere.
We were scared into thinking that we were in mortal danger because of the 9-11 attacks when in fact only about 3,500 people died. Instead of us being victims of an outside terrorist group we were in fact terrorised by our own governments with the advent of the Patriot Act, where civil liberties went out the window along with the proverbial bathwater and the baby, so again we had a complete exaggeration of the dangers to us as a populace.
The most recent of these exaggerations came about with the advent of the Swine Flu. As I said in another entry, we have more chance of being struck by a meteorite than contracting the Swine Flu, yet if you read the propaganda coming out of government offices and subsequent press releases, you'd think the world was in imminent danger of a total collapse like it was during the Spanish Flu pandemic in the last century, in 1918. This is patently absurd and the virus is nowhere as potent as government agencies would have us think.
This is the Politics of Fear which we must all be on our guard against! The kind of dystopia that George Orwell talked about half a century ago in his novel 1984 is now coming to pass. It's a sad day when, as the American interviewed in his new home in Paris admits in Michael Moore's video Sicko, when asked why he didn't live the US any more - "I can't live there any more because the government scares me."
I read with interest recently the interesting article entitled "Cocaine study that got up the nose of the US" by Ben Goldacre. In it, he charges the US government with at best exaggeration, at worst downright lying. One example is the way in which the government tried to prove that new forms of cannabis e.g. skunk, are twenty-five times stronger than they were in the heady days of the 1960s with flower power and the hippy revolution. This was tested and found to be patently false.
As he says,
"In areas of moral and political conflict people will always behave badly with evidence, so the war on drugs is a consistent source of entertainment. We have already seen how cannabis being "25 times stronger" was a fantasy, how drugs-related deaths were quietly dropped from the measures for drugs policy, and how a trivial pile of poppies was presented by the government as a serious dent in the Taliban's heroin revenue."
Why is it then that governments so feel the need to exaggerate these kinds of statistics? In fact there's little evidence to suggest that soft drugs, and by this I mean class B or C drugs, lead to long terms health problems at all. This leads me to question why governments, which are inherently right wing if not politically, then certainly socially and morally, resort to this kind of false reporting which at times borders on propaganda? Is it because a lot of revenue is spent on these kinds of recreational drugs which doesn't find its way into state coffers in the form of VAT and other direct or indirect taxes? Surely it must be for another reason for we have come a long way from the 1970s and 1980s when any form of drug taking was frowned upon and lengthy jail sentences routinely handed out.
Quoting from a report by World Health Organisation (WHO) which was ignored, repudiated by respected bodies, and left unpublished,
"Such programmes rely on sensationalised, exaggerated statements about cocaine which misinform about patterns of use, stigmatise users, and destroy the educator's credibility."
As Ben Goldacre continues,
"Health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use," they said. "Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users."
We see this dynamic play itself out in other areas where government control is routinely exercised albeit in an unwanted, unwarranted, and heavy-handed way. For example, after 9-11, we were treated to scary movies about perceived terrorist threats which probably came straight out of the Bush family homegrown terrorist factory, edited by Dick Cheney, with special effects from Donald Rumsfeld, and special lighting from Russ Limbaugh. All the interviews, videos, banners, ads, billboards were designed with one purpose in mind - to scare the living bejesus out of all of us and hand control back to our paternal brothers in The Whitehouse, Downing Street, The Reichschtag, The Elysee Palace (or wherever the French government convenes) and elsewhere.
We were scared into thinking that we were in mortal danger because of the 9-11 attacks when in fact only about 3,500 people died. Instead of us being victims of an outside terrorist group we were in fact terrorised by our own governments with the advent of the Patriot Act, where civil liberties went out the window along with the proverbial bathwater and the baby, so again we had a complete exaggeration of the dangers to us as a populace.
The most recent of these exaggerations came about with the advent of the Swine Flu. As I said in another entry, we have more chance of being struck by a meteorite than contracting the Swine Flu, yet if you read the propaganda coming out of government offices and subsequent press releases, you'd think the world was in imminent danger of a total collapse like it was during the Spanish Flu pandemic in the last century, in 1918. This is patently absurd and the virus is nowhere as potent as government agencies would have us think.
This is the Politics of Fear which we must all be on our guard against! The kind of dystopia that George Orwell talked about half a century ago in his novel 1984 is now coming to pass. It's a sad day when, as the American interviewed in his new home in Paris admits in Michael Moore's video Sicko, when asked why he didn't live the US any more - "I can't live there any more because the government scares me."
I wouldn't sell that mob a virus...
Recently, I heard the manager of Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson, remark that he "wouldn't sell that mob a virus" when referring to the possible sale of Ronaldo to Real Madrid. Whilst Ferguson was using the term in a pejorative way, he was using it in a sporting context although as we've recently seen, he did in fact sell the virus to Real Madrid as presumably did Inter Milan in selling Kaka to the same club.
However, it always used to be that when you heard the word virus, you immediately thought that some Trojan had infected your computer, and the worst case scenario was that you'd have to wipe your hard drive clean and reformat it. The fact is the word virus has taken on a whole new meaning and rarely been out of the news lately in one form or another, and I predict that it'll be used just as prolifically in the future.
A friend recently emailed me the following to which I replied.
Hi UrbanCrazyMan,
The world of viruses is a wild place. This is where we realise that we're not in control. Apparently, there are researchers trying to ascertain whether diabetes and other diseases are started by a virus, and then develop.
Like I said, they're gonna get us one way or another because we crowd together so much. We're not meant to do so, and neither are animals. The conservative opinion on the H1N1 is that it's the high volume, low quality of life, cramped-farm pig rearing that caused the virus to spread and then metastasise to the humans around them. I can believe that.
Achoo... I mean cheers
My reply:
Hi,
I agree that the appalling cruelty e.g. battery farming and other unsavory aspects of so-called modern modes of food production have contributed to the growth but not origin of these viruses. I suspect darker forces at work I'm sorry to say.
We've unfortunately come to an era in human development where bombs and battlegrounds have shifted in a seismic way. Some clever people have realised that you can first control, then wipe out an entire generation of people through chemical as well as biological warfare. That's too scary to imagine! Now, instead of sendining off the troops to battle in huge numbers (only 4,000 US soldiers have died in this Iraqi conflict), the soldiers have become pharmacists and chemists controlling us with their poisons.
Although some people are silly enough to think that this locus of control somehow takes place in a similar arena of war like Saddam Hussein gassing the Kurds in the north of Iraq, when in fact it is something that lays itself out in every major city through vaccinations, and other supposedly healthful ways.
Who knows what is in your medicines when you go to get a flu jab, or inoculate your kid from TB? Rubella? Measles? Or when you get a Hep B, or C booster? A Diphtheria back up? Or a ten-year Tetanus jab?
The problem is that governments are too closely connected to drug companies and too intent on staying onto power to care about the likes of me and you. "It's all about the money, baby."
I read recently that the British government under Blair then Brown has become more authoritarianism than any of its previous leaders and many people are really pissed about it - the Identity Card scheme, the Xenophobic immigration policies, the cameras everywhere (more than anywhere else in the world!)
Because of the crisis in the banking sector, and the destabilisation of the global economy, governments have become largely redundant, or at least shown up to be incapable of protecting their populaces from this kind of disruption, and modern warfare, which is the basic element of human existence and is manipulated by them to continue to wield their hegemony over the rest of us!
In other words, ether they manipulated the Credit Crunch and global downturn to get a tighter control over us, or they saw it happen and decided to take advantage of it. Either way, for my money, they are a bunch of dangerous rogues but rogues who cannot be stopped.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Football stuff...
Here I am going to be adding my thoughts on football topics around the world from the English Premier League to the La Liga, The Bundersliga, Serie A, and others.
Is Ronaldo the wonderkid really worth 109 million US dollars?! Will Man Utd be able to hang on to him? He seems to have decided that he wants to (a) be the highest valued player in the transfer list ever and (b) prove it by playing against someone who many others believe is the best player in the world, Lionel Messi?
It'll be an interesting match up to see who steals the show on May 27th when The Champions Lague final is played between the two giants of world football - -Man Utd (the holders) and F C Barcelona.
Roanaldo's outburst when being taken off a couple of weeks ago in the derby game against City, underlies his immaturity and petulance, but Ferguson has dealt with his like before and will know exactly what to do as always!
There's also Teves - he's been outstanding for Man Utd this season and the fans love him, so why can't he get a contract like the others? He's right when it seems like his football talents are not respected enough by the club!
What's happening in Serie A? A breakaway club system like The Premier League? Or is it in Scotland (as well)?
I'm going to be analysing what the reaction will be by the bigger clubs being asked to put some of their money back into the game and how that might affect the system as it is in place there nowadays.
Watch this space as they say!
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Teaching Discursive or Creative Writing
Why isn’t creative writing taught in Thailand in general?
At first glance this may seem like a silly questions, but why aren’t there that many courses that teach the basics of creative forms of expression in writing in Thailand, instead of students simply being asked to regurgitate, often with parrot-like efficiency, the input from the teacher in the lesson using continually unchanging media? Surely, it can’t just be because local educators feel that Thai students aren’t up to the task for that would be a complete cop out, right?
I did a quick search on Google.com and came up with the following schools which do or have provided ‘creative’ writing modules in Thailand in the past: Ruam Rudee International School, Thammasat University, Mahidol University International College, Lanna International School, The American School of Bangkok, Australian International School Bangkok and the International School of Bangkok.
Whilst this list is not meant to be exhaustive, if you look long enough, you’ll soon start to see a pattern develop. In other words, where it is offered, it’s usually at a high-end school such as those above, not in the Thai National Curriculum, and most definitely not at the lower end of the educational scale e.g. in the temple schools or poorer Thai schools.
The traditional model
Most teachers reading this will be familiar with the basic mainstay of EFL teaching e.g. Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. These subjects are traditionally taught using the three Ps: Presentation, Practice, Production – the standard TEFL methodology. EAL, ESOL, EAP, TPR, and other teaching methods have their own working dynamics, but often incorporate some or all of this approach, too.
Within each of these subjects is a variety of ways of developing skills to get the message across, and the learning outcome achieved, so for example, in Reading, a student learns strategies such as skimming and scanning, understanding paraphrasing, summarising, and various lexical sets of vocabulary etc., etc.
Listening too will have its own sets of approaches, such as, pre-listening activities, listening to CDs, note taking skills, and so on. Likewise, Writing has a fixed way of being taught in general which usually involves the teacher setting up an assignment with clear objectives, and the student being required to produce a completed written text of varying lengths whether as a controlled activity or a freer based one.
However, what’s noticeable about typical Writing courses, certainly where Thailand is concerned, is that they rarely ever deviate from what could be called the standard ‘norm’ or regular practice, as the output is always related to something outside of the student.
For example, if the writing task is a Geography assignment: writing about the evolution of an earthquake, or in Literature: writing about the meaning of a Shakespearean sonnet, the student is merely required to react to the media e.g. give a written opinion or evaluation of it, not be proactive – not create an original medium themselves.
In the world of EFL, the task might be to write about a story or set of facts presented using a CD or a reading text, but it would always be based on the story as listened to or read, not a story that came from the student’s own life experience. Why is this so?
Defining creative writing
By creative writing, I don’t just mean the very narrow definition of ‘storytelling’ with characters, plots, and dialogue, though in my humble opinion, these are equally valid mediums for a language-learning classroom. What I mean is a much broader definition e.g. journalism, poetry, personal narratives, short stories, family histories, indeed the whole gamut discursive writing has to offer.
A lot of my own teaching experience (certainly related to the teaching of writing) has only ever been in a middle ranking Thai university and a couple of private language schools, or when teaching business writing, although I can safely say that in my twelve years here in the Kingdom, I have rarely ever heard about any Thai schools that offer such a program, which should tell you a lot.
The fact is that the high-end schools know the value of such programs, yet it’s still not clear why they are more likely to offer them when there really isn’t that much extra to consider by way of additional cost? Given all that’s needed is to hire an industry qualified professional in accepted writing practices, someone with a reasonable amount of experience, it obviously must be for another reason, so why don’t we see more of these types of programs?
So, again, I repeat my original questions - Why isn’t creative writing taught in Thailand in general?
The advantages
There is a huge number of advantages, a few of which I’ll list a few here. When you teach a child how to write a sentence or paragraph, using input from his or her own life, there is a sudden and dramatic interest in the child’s level of interest because now, that child has something invested in his or her education.
They are not simply learning by rote e.g. a process paragraph on how to write about the dynamics of photosynthesis in a Biology class, or how to calculate the time difference between Sydney and Chiang Mai in a Geography class. Here they are invited to write about the world around them in a way that automatically necessitates that they include their own views and place within it.
It also encourages them to reflect on different techniques that strengthen their writing: the use of appropriate words to provide the required register, the targeting of sentences and meaning to reach different audiences, the use of figurative language e.g. metaphors, similes, idioms etc., etc., and the effect that has when compared to more literal forms.
One of my own earliest experiences of creative writing was in a classroom in the UK when I was about eleven. The teacher asked us all to create a story using only our imagination. I wrote a story about the God Thor from Norse Mythology who drove a truck and beat up bad guys. However, what was so memorable to me about this is it opened my eyes to the power of language and how I, a small child could create something literally out of the thoughts in my head.
One of the creative writing programs I took a look at is Lanna International School, which I have to say, looks really great. Here are a few more advantages creative writing brings courtesy of their own website:
Statement of Purpose: The course is designed to be studied by students wishing to extend their creative use of the English language. Students following this course will learn to:
ท enjoy the experience of writing without being penalised for mistakes in usage;
ท understand the structure of different types of writing;
ท demonstrate ability to communicate stories, thoughts, and experiences through writing;
ท appreciate different ways in which writers achieve their effects;
ท see writing as a means of social action in areas of human concern;
ท enjoy and appreciate variety of language;
ท understand themselves and others better through writing;
ท free themselves of writer‘s block through creative activity;
ท prepare a portfolio of publishable-quality writing;
ท originate and/or edit school paper articles.
(http://www.lannaist.ac.th/ Reproduced here by kind permission of the Headmaster of Lanna International School, Mr. Roy Lewis.)
Success Stories
You don’t have to be a genius to see that there are a lot of advantages in encouraging students to be more creative and expressive in their writing. Lanna International School produced three recent winners out of the five awards in a Dublin based competition to find winners of the 4th Junior IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards for Thailand, Northern region.
The winners were announced in a ceremony held on January 11th, at Citylife Magazine - the regional coordinator for the contest. The essay-writing contest was open to Thai students aged 14-18, writing in English on the topic “If We Could Change the World.”
The conclusion
Instead of simply putting your kid into a regular school which will provide him or her with a sound basis in the Three Rs, step back and think a bit more about what other opportunities are open to your child to make him or her a more rounded individual.
If you want him to know what the present perfect tense is, how to score well on an IELTS test, or how to say hello to your English-speaking guests, then put him or her into a traditional school where they’ll be fine.
However, if you also want your child to be able to give his opinion about a current topic in the news, or to be able to tell a story using well-known narrative elements, then enroll your child in a school that will provide all the necessary language skills, so that child is equipped throughout his or her life to be able to communicate in a much more creative way.
=============================================================
At first glance this may seem like a silly questions, but why aren’t there that many courses that teach the basics of creative forms of expression in writing in Thailand, instead of students simply being asked to regurgitate, often with parrot-like efficiency, the input from the teacher in the lesson using continually unchanging media? Surely, it can’t just be because local educators feel that Thai students aren’t up to the task for that would be a complete cop out, right?
I did a quick search on Google.com and came up with the following schools which do or have provided ‘creative’ writing modules in Thailand in the past: Ruam Rudee International School, Thammasat University, Mahidol University International College, Lanna International School, The American School of Bangkok, Australian International School Bangkok and the International School of Bangkok.
Whilst this list is not meant to be exhaustive, if you look long enough, you’ll soon start to see a pattern develop. In other words, where it is offered, it’s usually at a high-end school such as those above, not in the Thai National Curriculum, and most definitely not at the lower end of the educational scale e.g. in the temple schools or poorer Thai schools.
The traditional model
Most teachers reading this will be familiar with the basic mainstay of EFL teaching e.g. Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. These subjects are traditionally taught using the three Ps: Presentation, Practice, Production – the standard TEFL methodology. EAL, ESOL, EAP, TPR, and other teaching methods have their own working dynamics, but often incorporate some or all of this approach, too.
Within each of these subjects is a variety of ways of developing skills to get the message across, and the learning outcome achieved, so for example, in Reading, a student learns strategies such as skimming and scanning, understanding paraphrasing, summarising, and various lexical sets of vocabulary etc., etc.
Listening too will have its own sets of approaches, such as, pre-listening activities, listening to CDs, note taking skills, and so on. Likewise, Writing has a fixed way of being taught in general which usually involves the teacher setting up an assignment with clear objectives, and the student being required to produce a completed written text of varying lengths whether as a controlled activity or a freer based one.
However, what’s noticeable about typical Writing courses, certainly where Thailand is concerned, is that they rarely ever deviate from what could be called the standard ‘norm’ or regular practice, as the output is always related to something outside of the student.
For example, if the writing task is a Geography assignment: writing about the evolution of an earthquake, or in Literature: writing about the meaning of a Shakespearean sonnet, the student is merely required to react to the media e.g. give a written opinion or evaluation of it, not be proactive – not create an original medium themselves.
In the world of EFL, the task might be to write about a story or set of facts presented using a CD or a reading text, but it would always be based on the story as listened to or read, not a story that came from the student’s own life experience. Why is this so?
Defining creative writing
By creative writing, I don’t just mean the very narrow definition of ‘storytelling’ with characters, plots, and dialogue, though in my humble opinion, these are equally valid mediums for a language-learning classroom. What I mean is a much broader definition e.g. journalism, poetry, personal narratives, short stories, family histories, indeed the whole gamut discursive writing has to offer.
A lot of my own teaching experience (certainly related to the teaching of writing) has only ever been in a middle ranking Thai university and a couple of private language schools, or when teaching business writing, although I can safely say that in my twelve years here in the Kingdom, I have rarely ever heard about any Thai schools that offer such a program, which should tell you a lot.
The fact is that the high-end schools know the value of such programs, yet it’s still not clear why they are more likely to offer them when there really isn’t that much extra to consider by way of additional cost? Given all that’s needed is to hire an industry qualified professional in accepted writing practices, someone with a reasonable amount of experience, it obviously must be for another reason, so why don’t we see more of these types of programs?
So, again, I repeat my original questions - Why isn’t creative writing taught in Thailand in general?
The advantages
There is a huge number of advantages, a few of which I’ll list a few here. When you teach a child how to write a sentence or paragraph, using input from his or her own life, there is a sudden and dramatic interest in the child’s level of interest because now, that child has something invested in his or her education.
They are not simply learning by rote e.g. a process paragraph on how to write about the dynamics of photosynthesis in a Biology class, or how to calculate the time difference between Sydney and Chiang Mai in a Geography class. Here they are invited to write about the world around them in a way that automatically necessitates that they include their own views and place within it.
It also encourages them to reflect on different techniques that strengthen their writing: the use of appropriate words to provide the required register, the targeting of sentences and meaning to reach different audiences, the use of figurative language e.g. metaphors, similes, idioms etc., etc., and the effect that has when compared to more literal forms.
One of my own earliest experiences of creative writing was in a classroom in the UK when I was about eleven. The teacher asked us all to create a story using only our imagination. I wrote a story about the God Thor from Norse Mythology who drove a truck and beat up bad guys. However, what was so memorable to me about this is it opened my eyes to the power of language and how I, a small child could create something literally out of the thoughts in my head.
One of the creative writing programs I took a look at is Lanna International School, which I have to say, looks really great. Here are a few more advantages creative writing brings courtesy of their own website:
Statement of Purpose: The course is designed to be studied by students wishing to extend their creative use of the English language. Students following this course will learn to:
ท enjoy the experience of writing without being penalised for mistakes in usage;
ท understand the structure of different types of writing;
ท demonstrate ability to communicate stories, thoughts, and experiences through writing;
ท appreciate different ways in which writers achieve their effects;
ท see writing as a means of social action in areas of human concern;
ท enjoy and appreciate variety of language;
ท understand themselves and others better through writing;
ท free themselves of writer‘s block through creative activity;
ท prepare a portfolio of publishable-quality writing;
ท originate and/or edit school paper articles.
(http://www.lannaist.ac.th/ Reproduced here by kind permission of the Headmaster of Lanna International School, Mr. Roy Lewis.)
Success Stories
You don’t have to be a genius to see that there are a lot of advantages in encouraging students to be more creative and expressive in their writing. Lanna International School produced three recent winners out of the five awards in a Dublin based competition to find winners of the 4th Junior IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards for Thailand, Northern region.
The winners were announced in a ceremony held on January 11th, at Citylife Magazine - the regional coordinator for the contest. The essay-writing contest was open to Thai students aged 14-18, writing in English on the topic “If We Could Change the World.”
The conclusion
Instead of simply putting your kid into a regular school which will provide him or her with a sound basis in the Three Rs, step back and think a bit more about what other opportunities are open to your child to make him or her a more rounded individual.
If you want him to know what the present perfect tense is, how to score well on an IELTS test, or how to say hello to your English-speaking guests, then put him or her into a traditional school where they’ll be fine.
However, if you also want your child to be able to give his opinion about a current topic in the news, or to be able to tell a story using well-known narrative elements, then enroll your child in a school that will provide all the necessary language skills, so that child is equipped throughout his or her life to be able to communicate in a much more creative way.
=============================================================
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Who are the real Swines?
Am I the only one who is highly suspicious of the current pandemic? The fact that the swine virus seems to have come out of nowhere? Curious too that it comes right at the beginning of Obama's presidency like 9-11 did for George Bush? To scare the living bejesus out of us all like 9-11 did? Or just to sell more drugs and make the fat cats who are shareholders even richer than they already are?
To be honest, when I first heard about the swine flu in Mexico, my immediate reaction was that the US government was involved. However, if you wanted to (a) reduce the population or (b) provide a necessary demand for drug companies to sell more drugs, would you do it on your own doorstep? Where American citizens would be affected? Wouldn't you do it some place further from home? The acronym NIMBY springs to mind.
I am deeply distrustful of world governments these days although until I see real evidence, I remain sceptical that they could stoop this low e.g. to maintain control over their populations by such unsavoury means. I have heard about the fluoridation of the UK's drinking water and the negative effects. There are many other conspiracy theorists who believe that governments have for a long time been putting viruses into the vaccines and immunisation drugs currently on the market which have resulted in autism and many other birth defects. Is any of this true? Or are we so polarised nowadays after Bush's eight years of promoting a Politics of Fear?
In his 'Swine Flu Special 2009-04-25' Alex Jones, a fierce opponent of American politics, talk about the deadly swine flu outbreak and the early evidence that it may be a limited scope synthetic bio-attack to prepare the population for future major outbreaks and martial law - http://prisonplanet.tv/component/user/login.html
However, in an article curiously entitled "World 'well prepared' for virus" I read the following:
"The WHO added that there was no evidence to suggest the outbreak was a bio-terrorist attack - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8019566.stm
Of course there isn't because this will have been planned at the highest level of government where the real swines are. And if the drug companies are really that prepared for this virus how fortunate for them that a semblance of strains already known are present again as if by a miracle? People need to be much more vigilant about watching to see what their government is doing nowadays!
On a lighter note, the power of the internet is going to show these world governments what real 'people power' is!
This girl in Moldova sent a Twitter message from a cafe to a group of her friends asking them to meet in the city for an impromptu protest. When she arrived, 15,000 people were there such is the power of the internet!! Truly amazing! - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8018017.stm
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