I was told this cute little story a few years ago. It happened in a Catholic Primary School. A little girl, recently arrived in Australia from a refugee camp in Africa, was listening to a talk given by a visitor to her school. The talk was on conditions in the Solomon Islands and what was being done to help the people there. One slide that was shown was of a pathetic little tin shed that served as the community school. It was of course shown to highlight the terrible plight of the people. On seeing the shed however, the little girl was heard to say “O isn’t that lovely.” And she meant it!
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)
The profound truth expressed so succinctly above is one that is often forgotten in our modern, frantic, materialistic society. Thanks to self-interested big business and the often morally challenged media, people have been spun a wonderful myth. Happiness is out there! All we have to do is find it. How do we find it? Well, if we spend enough money on ourselves we are sure to find it. We can even make the people we love happy by buying things for them. There are clothes and jewellery, I-Pod’s and mobile phones, TV’s and DVD’s, computers and coffee machines – the list is endless! There are even people who risk unnecessary major cosmetic surgery in the pursuit of happiness – breast enlargements, face lifts and liposuction and people even go overseas to get them cheap!
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong in buying any of these things. The danger is that people, especially young people, can be brainwashed into believing that they need these things to be happy. Worse, they can become depressed or angry that others have more or better things than they do.
The Christian belief is that happiness comes from knowing God and ourselves as well as we possibly can and in serving others first rather than in serving ourselves. In getting to know God, we enter into and strengthen a relationship with our creator, a relationship that can nurture and sustain us through good times and bad. By getting to know ourselves well, we come to know our gifts, abilities and talents as well as our weaknesses, which in turn allow us to decide a meaningful direction in life. In serving others first we actively share the love of God wherever we are in the world. Happiness is an internal sense of self worth and of connectedness with our loving creator and with our fellow human beings. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
Catholic schools in Australia make a real difference to the lives of thousands of young people every day. We are fortunate to live in a country that allows freedom of Religious expression. Our Catholic schools work in partnership with parents, parish and the wider community to provide our young people with the time, teaching and example necessary to get to know themselves and to get to know God. In this way our young men and women come to know that it is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Climate Change Debate
There seems at present to be a great deal of confusion in the general community as to whether or not global warming and climate change are real. Climate change skeptics abound. Lord Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley for instance, recently toured Australia, including Newcastle, spreading misinformation. In his lectures he disputes whether global warming is man-made, suggests that it is unlikely to prove catastrophic, and criticizes the science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body established by world governments to provide a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences. Lord Monckton accuses world governments of conspiring to make money out of the climate change scare by ultimately taking control of world financial markets. It seems to me that Lord Monckton is doing quite nicely out of climate change himself!
Schools are in an ideal position to provide the facts and clarify the issues associated with climate change. Every opportunity to do so must be taken so that our students are accurately informed.
People in the community need to stop debating the science and start debating the politics of the best way to solve the problem. It really makes no sense for people, especially people with no scientific background, to make statements like: “I don’t believe in climate change.” With the huge amount of evidence now collected and analyzed, it is akin to saying “I don’t believe in atoms.” or “I don’t believe in DNA.”
Amongst the scientific community worldwide, the basic understanding surrounding the global warming issue is that warming since the Industrial Revolution is undeniable, it is being driven by human causes, and it presents a distinct threat to the earth’s climate system. Global warming is a definitive reality created by human actions, and it connects at a fundamental level with several other serious problems facing society – the global population crises, the power crises, the global food & water shortage to name a few. Climate change ranks as the single greatest threat to modern society, and the future results will be cataclysmic without effective policies to control the human destruction on the climate. As members of a Catholic school community we have a joint responsibility to get this message out there and to get the debate focused on solving the problem!
Schools are in an ideal position to provide the facts and clarify the issues associated with climate change. Every opportunity to do so must be taken so that our students are accurately informed.
People in the community need to stop debating the science and start debating the politics of the best way to solve the problem. It really makes no sense for people, especially people with no scientific background, to make statements like: “I don’t believe in climate change.” With the huge amount of evidence now collected and analyzed, it is akin to saying “I don’t believe in atoms.” or “I don’t believe in DNA.”
Amongst the scientific community worldwide, the basic understanding surrounding the global warming issue is that warming since the Industrial Revolution is undeniable, it is being driven by human causes, and it presents a distinct threat to the earth’s climate system. Global warming is a definitive reality created by human actions, and it connects at a fundamental level with several other serious problems facing society – the global population crises, the power crises, the global food & water shortage to name a few. Climate change ranks as the single greatest threat to modern society, and the future results will be cataclysmic without effective policies to control the human destruction on the climate. As members of a Catholic school community we have a joint responsibility to get this message out there and to get the debate focused on solving the problem!
Creativity
Mention the word “creativity” and people usually think of some famous artist or musician. Most people do not consider themselves to be particularly creative. One of the essential goals of modern education must surely be to change this perception.
Creativity can be defined in many ways but I especially like Sir Ken Robinson’s definition. Sir Ken is one of the world’s most highly respected thinkers on creativity and education and his view is that:
“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value”.
Defined in this way it is easy to see that every human being can be creative in many different ways. Every teacher and every parent needs to be conscious of this fact when interacting with our children. We must nurture creativity in our children not stifle it by insisting that children always conform to our own ways of thinking or to our own ways of doing things. We must encourage our children to think outside the square and we must support them in their efforts when they do so.
History is full of examples of people who changed the world by thinking outside the square. We can all name the famous examples from the history books or from the newspapers – the explorers, the leaders, the academics, the entrepreneurs and yes the great artists, musicians and writers. What we need to remember though, is that there are countless examples of everyday men and women who make wonderfully creative contributions to their workplaces, societies and communities, often without ever being formally recognized or rewarded for doing so. We can all do it. We should all strive to do it.
Over the next few years, teachers in all schools must face the many challenges that 21st Century education brings. One of those challenges is to foster creativity in all our students, in all areas of the curriculum. If we are to do this, we must relinquish our time-honoured position of gatekeeper to knowledge. We must accept that the students sitting in front of us, even in Year 7, know how to access more knowledge than they could use in a lifetime. We must accept that our students know far more about technology and how to use it than we will ever know. This can be a frightening fact but it need not be. This realisation can be very liberating. This realisation can liberate us from that old industrial paradigm of education and can allow us to reconceptualise our role. We can begin to explore the roles of learning mentor, learning consultant, learning motivator.
To foster creativity amongst all our students, we must be creative ourselves and be open to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, and new ways of being “teacher”. In the words of one famous creative thinker and innovator, Albert Einstein:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
All this sounds like hard work and a lot of it. What, then, is our motivation for doing all this hard work? I believe that high quality teaching and learning is a moral imperative. The provision of excellent teaching that facilitates student engagement, sets high expectations, encourages creativity and ensures a high level of social support for all students is essential to enabling the best possible learning outcomes for students. We owe the next generations our best work.
Creativity can be defined in many ways but I especially like Sir Ken Robinson’s definition. Sir Ken is one of the world’s most highly respected thinkers on creativity and education and his view is that:
“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value”.
Defined in this way it is easy to see that every human being can be creative in many different ways. Every teacher and every parent needs to be conscious of this fact when interacting with our children. We must nurture creativity in our children not stifle it by insisting that children always conform to our own ways of thinking or to our own ways of doing things. We must encourage our children to think outside the square and we must support them in their efforts when they do so.
History is full of examples of people who changed the world by thinking outside the square. We can all name the famous examples from the history books or from the newspapers – the explorers, the leaders, the academics, the entrepreneurs and yes the great artists, musicians and writers. What we need to remember though, is that there are countless examples of everyday men and women who make wonderfully creative contributions to their workplaces, societies and communities, often without ever being formally recognized or rewarded for doing so. We can all do it. We should all strive to do it.
Over the next few years, teachers in all schools must face the many challenges that 21st Century education brings. One of those challenges is to foster creativity in all our students, in all areas of the curriculum. If we are to do this, we must relinquish our time-honoured position of gatekeeper to knowledge. We must accept that the students sitting in front of us, even in Year 7, know how to access more knowledge than they could use in a lifetime. We must accept that our students know far more about technology and how to use it than we will ever know. This can be a frightening fact but it need not be. This realisation can be very liberating. This realisation can liberate us from that old industrial paradigm of education and can allow us to reconceptualise our role. We can begin to explore the roles of learning mentor, learning consultant, learning motivator.
To foster creativity amongst all our students, we must be creative ourselves and be open to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, and new ways of being “teacher”. In the words of one famous creative thinker and innovator, Albert Einstein:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
All this sounds like hard work and a lot of it. What, then, is our motivation for doing all this hard work? I believe that high quality teaching and learning is a moral imperative. The provision of excellent teaching that facilitates student engagement, sets high expectations, encourages creativity and ensures a high level of social support for all students is essential to enabling the best possible learning outcomes for students. We owe the next generations our best work.
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