LOCUS second discussion group meeting : Weds 11th Jan at 8pm sharp, to finish by 9.30pm
at no. 4 Sixth Street Houghton – (on the Oxford Rd side of the Highway off 11th Avenue)
Weds 11th Jan at 8pm sharp, to finish by 9.30pm
PLEASE RSVP to help us estimate numbers for planning – but you are still welcome to turn up if you did not RSVP
Thanks to Anne-Marie Moore for so generously offering her studio for all meetings until further notice.

For those of you who are new – one of the things I send out are ‘food for thought’ emails with interesting, DIRECTLY relevant articles, bits of theory etc. Please let me know if you have material for these. Also if you would like to be copied on back mails.

Rather than relevant theory or models, today’s mail includes a few shorter anecdotes and other contributions from various list members. Remember – not all members have the same perspective, so don’t feel you have to resonate with everything here – that’s why we are a discussion group at present – we are in search of common ground.

The attached cartoon is from the latest issue of the CYE journal (Children, Youth, Environment)

Looking forward to a dynamic 2006

Je’anna Levannah Clements
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”…TS Elliot. .

—-Excerpt from School Diaries – Nicolette Croucamp, LOCUS meetings participant and webmistress of www.mother2mother.co.za

Tues 29 Nov, Kindermusiek Class
This morning at Kindermusiek class I walked in on a conversation about Ritalin. Mothers are talking on the benefit of Ritalin, the improvement seen in other children. The class teacher has a daughter who is ‘right brain dominant’, she enjoys the artistic side of learning, but is not keen on the ‘information’, her project show artistic flair but there is no information present. Waldorf is mentioned as an option. A few of the mothers mention that there are religious problems, that it is a ‘religious thing’, I think 99% of the mothers here are Jewish (I perhaps am the only one who is not) so may have to send their children to Jewish schools. Another mother speaks up that the problem is that schools don’t cater for different types of children. Their complaint is that BOE is meant to cater for this, to take this factor into consideration, but don’t. Our class teacher finishes off by looking at me and saying ‘Home schooling Nicky, I’m telling you, home schooling’.

—-A Quote via André Clements, meetings participant and webmaster of andresc.net

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens. – Fran Lebowitz

—–Excerpted from the David Icke newsletter, via Trevor Toerien, list member

“You can’t control the different and diverse on anything like the scale of the uniform and universal.

This is why they want to centralise everything, in this case the indoctrination of children. He who thinks the same can be controlled the same. One blueprint, one mind, one reality. Bel Mooney was right when she wrote|:

‘Is the real goal of this control-freakery to raise a new generation of hapless production line children who will not have enough independence of mind to say boo to a goose, still less to challenge those in authority?’

The question answers itself.

A major aspect of this, as I have explained in the books, is to turn children and the general population into what I call ‘left brain prisoners’. The brain has two hemispheres connected by a ‘bridge’ called the corpus callosum. The left side of the brain involves the ‘this world’ reality of language, what passes for ‘logic’, and the ‘physical’ world view; the right side is the creative, the artistic, the ‘out there’ connection to levels of consciousness beyond this five-sense reality. In our balanced ‘whole brain’ state the two sides are in harmony, neither dominating the other, with the bridge passing all information and insight between the two. ”

—From Je’anna L Clements, LOCUS list coordinator

I went to chat with one of the Prof’s at the Wits education school, who told me of a rather wonderful school – Baker str school in New York, if I remember correctly.
On the first day of school the whole class went to the park, walked around the park, asked questions, etc. On the way home they had to cross the river. The river was littered and polluted. Why? The class was captivated by this question. This question became theirs to pursue for the rest of the year – they researched and worked with the issue of the pollution of this river: their literacy centred around relevant reading, their maths around tracking and recording the extent of the problem, science around testing the water, etc. Close your eyes and picture this… !

—And finally, via Lola Kirigan, meetings participant
from Biophile magazine article entiled “an indigo approach to education”

A Chilean boy wrote the following:

The Student’s Prayer

Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
and be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known buy my liberation, not my slavery.

The world of truth can be my limitation;
your wisdom my negation.
Don’t intruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my richness begin where yours ends.

Show me so that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
something different.

You believe that every human being
can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
when I ask you to live according to your wisdom.

You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.
Your failure is that I be identical to you.

Quoted in Spiritual Intelligence, pg290- Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall