The Freire Project

From the way liberal blogs, websites, and groups have, since last week, obsessed over every minute detail about, or in, the book released publicly, one would think 100 years from now Going Rogue would be placed alongside War and Peace or The Souls of Black Folk.

The general sense of the word technology involves the activity of a culture, and how knowledge is created within that culture.  Specifically, the study of how different cultures categorize their own knowledge, and the ways in which that knowledge is applied, these are the specifics of technology.
I am interested in the ethnogeography of the Eastern James Bay Cree.  Maps have been in use by indigenous groups around the world since well before living memory, and continuously up to the present day.  The fact that mapping technologies change does not alter the continuity of mapping within indigenous cultures.

The following article appeared in newspapers across Australia highlighting the over-representation of Indigenous youth in juvenile justice systems, not just in the State of Western Australia where this case took place, but right across Australia.
 
A 12 year old Aboriginal boy has been charged with receiving stolen goods, a 70 cent chocolate Freddo Frog. The Freddo Frog was stolen by a friend of his. This 12 year old has not had any prior convictions.
 
According to the newspaper report "when the boy last month missed a court date due to a family misunderstanding, police had apprehended him about 8am on a school day and taken him into custody. The boy was then imprisoned for several hours in the holding cell at the police station."

David Brook's Op-Ed in the NY Times states that Major Hasan's Muslim identity was "played down"  because the media "didn't want the horror to become a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry." 

While I would dispute his assertion that Hasan's Mulsim identity was "played down" (it did not seem played down at all to me), let's suppose, just for a minute, it was. 

How to bring schools to the 21st Century? How to change school curriculum to better educate children? A 10-minute anonymous online survey seeks your input on these issues. It is an education research and the information will be used for that purpose only. Your time and participation are greatly appreciated.  The link below takes you to it.

Click Here to take the survey.

Over this last fortnight, through some twist of fate and circumstance, I’ve encountered more than my fair share of dickheads. By this I refer to people who are supercilious in their arrogance, egotistical in their conceit, and fundamentally wrong in their assumptions about the world and other people. In my experience, these people exist along the full spectrum of humanity- from annoyingly loud and overbearing parents of kids at my son’s kindergarten to the people I am expected to work with.  We all know them. These are people only interested in themselves and the manipulation of others to fulfill egotistically driven desires; people too pompous to contemplate anything other than their own lot, too forthright to express humility and a concern for anyone else.

Again I repeat friends, as a nation, this country is wretched when it comes to children! The United States and Somalia are the only two nations in the world who have not ratified Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which bans participants from sentencing children to life in prison. Here's a conne...ction we can make then with the earlier post about Sarah Kruzan, the 16 year old who was sentenced to life in prison.

“Africa will only remain when it realizes that the future remains with the youths.”—Oby Ezekwesili

Throughout our near-50 years as a free country, all indications that Youth play a part in sustaining and safeguarding the fundamental foundations of our democratic experiment have been validated time and time again. And there’s little doubt that the concern for the future of young people is of top priority with elected officials.

Joe and I were so informed by Claude's work, what a intellectual heritage he has left us.

Working with "at risk" Urban Youth in schools I am constantly struck by the amount of strength they display in a world that so often (and so deeply) abandons them. For one thing love and compassion are not easy to hold on to, particularly in difficult times, yet I have seen so many youth who have been pushed so far yet retain dignity and care as core values. As Giroux, Joe, Shirley and many others note this is not the story of teens we see in the press. In the media they seem to exist as only victims or victimizers or recipients of someones saving. These two links (one from this weeks NYT ) speak of so much more, of quiet bodily harm and quiet strength.

I was browsing the web a few days ago when I ran across the following headline: "16yr old gets life in prison for killing her pimp." Perhaps my considerable awareness of the way the internet works--Shock and Awe = Traffic--was what led to initial skepticism; but once I clicked the YouTube video link, all ambiguity vacated.