Posts Tagged ‘Family’
* All Our Freedoms
Posted on December 3rd, 2008 by jill. Filed under Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008.
Tags: 42-day rule, anti-terrorist laws, Art, Article, Bilal Abdulla, Book, Damian Green, Family, freedom, government, home, jill, justice, Leader, Leadership, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Misc, Peace, Police, political, Rain, Sea, UK, War, Work
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* Priests and the People.
Posted on July 26th, 2008 by jill. Filed under Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008.
Increasing liberalisation in the Western developed nations and the legalisation of human
rights has meant that within traditional areas, such as the Church, recognition of these
legal and human rights has had to be incorporated in their institutions. It is illegal in
the European Union to discriminate against an individual because of their age, gender,
race or religious beliefs. All this is well and good. The Church of England has perhaps
dealt with these issues better than most.
The ordination of women became accepted in the Church of England and women were first
ordained in 1994, with resounding success. Many parishes declared that they prefered
women as priests, since they were more sympathetic and had superior people skills.
Individual priest and Bishops were allowed to opt out, and refuse women in their
dioceses. Bizarrely, several priests were permitted to become Catholic priests, despite
being Church of England, on the basis that the Catholics still retained descrimination
against women, something that would never have been accepted in secular society. These
new ‘Catholic’ priests were accepted as Catholics even if they were married, although
Catholic priests are not permitted to marry. This shows us that the issue is not so much
religious as misogynous, an accusation which has often been levelled against the Catholic
Church in particular in the past.
Several religions accept women, including traditional Buddhism and Islam, which of course
doesn’t officially ordinate leaders. Early Christianity also accepted women as religious
leaders, the early priests. The exclusion of women first took root in the early Middle
Ages, with the reformations of St Augustine. The current argument is about the next step,
ordinating women priests as bishops. It appears that church leaders who are happy to have
women priests under them, as it were, do not want to let the women get on top. Although
Jesus claimed that in heaven there are no male nor female, on earth there still is, or at
least in the Church.
Tanzania began the rebellion against the subsequent step of ordinating openly gay
priests. The Catholic Church, which requires its priests to remain celibate, has long
been recognised as a bastion of suppressed gay men escaping embarrassment, and indeed the
Church offers priesthood as a way out of temptation for gay men. It is alright to be gay,
as long as one isn’t ‘practising’.
This issue differs from the woemn issue in that there is no sense that one can be a
non-practising woman. One is just born like that. Without doubt, in one’s heart and soul,
there is no male or female but all are equal before God. There is no restriction on women
entering the Kingdom of Heaven, for example. Gay men, however, would have to be
practising gay sex to be rejected, whether by God or just the Church is the point in
question.
One of the many problems with accepting gay men as long as they aren’t practising or
openly gay, is that you are opeinig the floodgates to men who are either hiding or
denying they are gay, perhaps even to themselves. This has led to nefarious crimes
against children which have disgraced the Catholic Church in the past decade. The
Anglican Church in the UK has so far accepted gay clergy, so long as they aren’t
practising. Pressure has been on however, for the Church to live according to Godly love,
and accept all humanity, as Jesus said God loves every hair on the sparrow’s head, and
loves mankind even moreso. Compassion seems to dictate acceptance of all Christians,
irrespective of their various quirks and singularities.
And so it came to pass that inevitably in 1996 Anglican bishops began to ordinate openly
gay priests. Society would not have it otherwise, since it is completely acceptable to be
open about one’s sexuality under European law, and illegal to discriminate against gay
people. I have wondered whether external political pressure was on the Church to cease
its discrimination, though this hasn’t been mentionned. In Tanzania, where gay rights are
not as far advanced as in Europe, the Anglican clergy were furious, and said they would
refuse to recognise any church which ordained gay men. They have been a bit annoyed about
gay marriages in church too.
In 1997, an American Anglican church sent two gay Bishops to serve in Kenya. While I
consider this to be one of the bravest actions I have ever seen, on the part of the
Church as well as the men themselves, it clearly was intended to test the Kenyans.
“We see in your ministry a wonderful expression of the Gospel promise that there is
neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus”,
the Americans said. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of all Anglican
Churchs throughout the world, has himself ordained a ‘non-practising’ gay priest, but has
recently declared that all sex outside marriage, including homeosexuality, violates the
Church’s precepts. But does it?
While the church is ‘about’ Jesus, it was founded by Peter in Rome, heavily influenced by
Paul, who didn’t himself know Jesus, and changed beyond recognition throughout the
centuries, particularly in the Middle Ages.
The contemporary Church is an invention, and can be however the current administration
want it to be. Reformers say it must be modern and inclusive, and accord with current
laws against discrimination. Radicals say that what matters most is the spiritual aspect
of Christianity, and the Church needs to be mainly about compassion to the whole
community.
It is certain that discrimination causes a great deal of pain and anguish among believers
and their families who may not be within the strait norms permitted. 50% of all
believers are women, if not more. It seems almost impossible to maintain an exclusive and
rejecting attitude towards people, whatever their private weaknesses or circumstances may
be, in this day and age. Jesus himself does not seem to have ever rejected anyone,
including the Samaritan woman who had many husbands, one whom she was living with when
Jesus kindly drank water with her, despite current ruling to disciriminate against
Samaritans and women.
African Anglicans are currently boycotting the international Lambeth Conference over this
issue, and it looks likely that there will be a schism over it. It seems a shame that the
years the Churches in the UK and USA have spent toiling over this issue, with which they
are uncomfortable, should not be made use of by the Church in Africa, and that one of the
few positive links we have should be broken. African Church leaders should think very
carefully about whether a knee-jerk reaction which is so divisive in itself is worth it
for the sole purpose of excluding people who are so desparate to play a part in the
religion that they love. Rejection from their church must be a great burden on those who
already have so many self-doubts and obstacles in their lives. Is ideology the
appropriate tool to respond to these particular Christians?
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* Who is disabled?
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by jill. Filed under Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008.
One of the last pictures of Princess Diana showed her holding a disabled baby during her land-mines visit to Angola in 1997, just a couple of months before she died. She had found the child huddled in blankets in the corner of a dark hut, hidden from view because of the shame felt towards disabled people in that community. She had somehow sensed that there was someone inside, and walked in, looked round to see a huddle of blankets in a darkened corner, picked up what turned out to be a child with polio, and cuddled this child throughout the interview with the world’s TV looking on. The child’s mother looked up at the Princess with awe and love. In a society where she had always been made to feel ashamed of her child, this beautiful, rich, influential princess had shown this one child love, as if it were special.
Indeed the word special was used for a long time in the UK as society fought against prejudice and sought to release disabled children into a life in which they too would be part of society. Slowly, disabled children were brought into ordinary schools, and today, with additional help, all schools are inclusive in the UK, and take in all children whatever their ability or disability. It is illegal to refuse a school place or a job to someone on the grounds of their disability, and it is the responsibility of the employer to ensure his or her workplace is equipped to enable disabled workers to work there.
In the past disability was considered a punishment from God, which displayed some terrible sin a person had done in the past. This turned out to be a strange belief, since for it to apply to a baby born disabled, which used to be the most common cause, it would imply reincarnation, something the Church didn’t want to agree to at all! Nevertheless the idea that God had punished someone’s child ensured a lifetime of neglect and mistreatment for the child, and shame for the parents, and inaction from the community.
As illnesses like polio became less common because of the vaccination programme, people began to believe they could affect disease and afflictions of the human body without God’s interference. Men injured at work and women in childbirth could be saved, their wounds staunched and penicillin stem the risk of infection provide the new disabled, people who consider their affliction as accident rather than punishment. Many of today’s disabled are the result of the 3,000 road accidents in the UK, several thousand which result in permanent disability. In the UK, where most babies are born in hospital, premature babies as young as 23 weeks can be saved by artificial incubation, but often end up with some form of disability. It seems ironic to me that we spend so much money saving scarcely viable babies, and yet can’t invest in a decent rail service to get people off the roads. The other group of the disabled have always been the brave soldiers injured in war, and we have a new batch of these in the UK as a result of the military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The possibility of any of us becoming disabled at some point as well as the development of human rights and the humanitarian ethic in Europe has led to a series of anti-discrimination laws. The UK is way ahead of other European countries in this, perhaps because inclusivity policies save a lot of money on special schools and lost income from those who are able to work with a little help.
Pauline Alexander is deaf, yet a lady with many talents and skills. She has worked in administration and secretarial areas for many years, including work with the society for the deaf, lecturing and writing on contemporary issues. Last year she was refused agency work because the company couldn’t provide the equipment needed. She challenged their refusal on the basis of the discrimination law and won, which means that companies can’t discriminate against agency workers, and must all ensure they are ready to employ disabled people.
She is currently staging a beautiful exhibition of her work in London, which celebrates the humanity of everyone with a disability, and expresses the frustration felt by disabled people in an able world. This is perhaps the next battle, for disabled people to be not just to have their rights recognised, but to be able to feel accepted. But think for a minute, is the world entirely well-measured for those of us we consider to be normal?
If you are thinking in an absolute way, the world today is made for a’perfect human’, usually the young male. Everyone else in our world is disabled by the way we have made it. Everything from the height of shelves to the thickness of doors is poorly designed for women and children. Ordinary kitchen appliances are often difficult to manoeuvre for older people. In circumstances like these, additional tools or aids are required, just as a wheelchair or hearing aid is used by disabled people.
Minority groups usually are the ones who have to fight to improve the lot of ordinary people. When I was a child, disability was hidden, and the first time I saw a disabled person was in College, when I was 19. Thalidomide kids my age, with their shortened arms and legs, were permitted to come to an ordinary college to finish their studies. Since then, I’ve been constantly grateful for the opportunity to teach children with varying skills and limitations, including fighting for a deaf student to continue with her GCSE French, which her school tried to push her out of despite it being her favourite subject and one she was good at, taking pleasure in careful pronunciation, which of course also helped her English too. I have taught blind kids, using special screens, and devised complex physical games which take into account boys in wheelchairs. Great fun, exciting challenge, rewarding to us all, thanks guys, keep coming to my classes please.
Pauline’s wonderful paintings teach us how valuable it is to get to know and work with people with experiences which differ from our own, who can enable us to understand and appreciate each other’s differences and different needs. As we learn to accept the differences between us, we become more able to have positive relationships with people from different cultures too, and with values which are different from our own, which is what being human is all about.
You can see some of her stuff here http://disabilityarts.com/site/pauline_alexander
1093 words
©Jill Rees
Tags: Art, Creative Writing, Design, disability, Europe, Family, Games, jill, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, money, Sea, Teach, War, Work, WritingRelated posts
* What we see of Nigeria
Posted on May 5th, 2008 by jill. Filed under Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008.
The most common way someone in England comes into contact with Nigeria is through emails begging for large sums of money. These range from sophisticated opportunities to invest in imaginary companies, to appeals to one’s better nature. Often these latter are for women, who are thought to be a soft touch.
My latest one came from someone purporting to be called Quin Rafer, who begins the letter ‘I am a dying woman’. Clearly this is a man. A woman might say ‘I am dying’ but wouldn’t think to point out her gender. This clumsy introduction already alerts us that it is probably a scam.
She goes on to say that her husband died and left her a lot of money, which his relatives stand to inherit on her death. Quite right, we think. However, she doesn’t like her husband’s relatives, so has decided to leave her money to an unknown white person in a rich country. It is unlikely that such an attempt would make it through any legal system, especially one which must transverse international borders. The law determines that relatives normally inherit precisely to guard against an unfriendly in-law cheating them out of the sum. It is unlikely that anyone in a law-based society would go along with this, as it is immoral as well as illegal.
She wants to leave it to me, she says, as I am a good person. She doesn’t know me from Adam, or Eve, so this is ingenuous.
The sum is $2,500,000 in US dollars. Here lies another mistake. If this person sent a message to me in the UK, why would she or he express the sum in dollars? Clearly this has been sent as spam and intended for Americans. This shows that it isn’t a personal message, and as she/he doesn’t have several intended beneficiaries, to send more than one message would contradict the claim that she/he wishes to leave this sum of money. Also it seems like a very tidy sum, strange that it is such a round figure.
Next enters the lawyer, a Barrister called Parker Brown, and an email address. The Barrister has apparently been instructed that she is intending to cheat her relatives, and will forward the money to my account when she dies. I can’t call her, as she is surrounded by her relatives. Of course a lawyer would be aware that the relatives would challenge such a will, and would no doubt win this challenge, so this would not go through. A responsible lawyer would perceive indeed that she is not in sound mind, and that the relatives need to become involved at this stage with helping her, in the presence of a lawyer for her protection, in determining the destination of her inheritance. It is unlikely that a genuine lawyer would go behind the family’s back in this case.
To a respectable British person, as anyone else indeed, the lady’s family need to be warned that this is going on, and perhaps it is the lawyer who is deceiving her, should she in fact be genuine.
Finally there is a lot of rhythmic rhetoric about the goodness of the Lord and all that, which is unlikely to have any effect in the UK where practically everyone is an atheist and is highly suspicious of people using the Lord’s name for their financial dealings. We have witnessed enough of George Bush for faith-claims to hold much water.
What usually happens in these scams is that I, the victim, would contact this ‘lawyer’ who demands a payment of a few thousand pounds into an account in Nigeria or in London, in order to process the dying woman’s will. Sometimes the request is for one’s bank details, which are then used for nefarious purposes. Occasionally people fall for this, because of their greed. The figure needs to be large enough for people to think, ‘Hey, what if it were true?’ when they know deep down that it obviously isn’t.
Or the emails appeal to our softer side, little old dying ladies, starving children, orphans, widows and so on, so that we feel bad about refusing. These scams are nasty and underhand, appealing as they do to people’s better nature and therefore destroying people’s faith in humanity when, sometimes after great financial loss, they realise the truth.
If we imagine however that this poor dying widow surrounded by her unfriendly in-laws is actually a bunch of crooked youths cackling into their computers at some cybernet cafe as they think how clever they are feeling, it becomes much easier to reject.
As an addendum, I have to add that if this is in fact genuine and you are a relative of Mrs Qwin Rafer, she is trying to diddle you out of your inheritance and you need to contact the lawyer promptly. It is possible she has senile dementia and may need nursing care. Her large sum of money she inherited from your blood relative, her husband, should help cover that. It might be wise to take her computer off her for a while, as she is using it to do pretend scams round the world and may being trouble down upon your house should the police become involved, as they may when I forward this email to them.
If any crooks reading this are tempted to try this kind of scam, be aware of one or two things. The police in the UK are tuned into these and are able to trace your computer. People in the UK are very familiar with these scams and have been well informed about them.
It is one of the only ways to turn people against your country, and to display a side of Nigeria which may be the only knowledge people here ever gain about your beautiful country and your lovely people. This will inevitably impact on Nigerians travelling to the UK and around the world, to the way foreigners deal with Nigerian businesses and so on, and to the credibility of Nigerian entrepreneurs as the country becomes wealthier and starts to play a more active part on the world’s stage. It is more damaging than you can imagine, and I wish people would stop doing it.
1042 words
©Jill Rees
2008-05-05
Tags: Art, Family, Friend, jill, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Mail, money, Nigeria, Reading, scams, Travel, WarRelated posts
* The image of Africa
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by jill. Filed under Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008.
To my mind people are the same everywhere. We all have our worries and try to care for our families. When women sit down together we seem to say the same things whatever our background, and the men we complain about seem to have the same strengths and weaknesses. It seems obvious to me that people are the same everywhere, as we live the same life, and it is hard for me to understand how anyone can see the differences that they claim to see between peoples. How do people end up with seemingly absurd views that to me, appear racist and extreme? You would imagine these would be street thugs, but sometimes they turn out to be educated people too. This is when bias is systemic and institutionalized.
Last week we all had a laugh at attitudes white people had in the US and the UK about how Africans live. People tend to have an image of Africa as full of lions and, bizarrely, tigers, where people sleep in the trees and eat nothing but aid parcels. It may not surprise people in Abuja to know that some of these strange ideas were expressed by black Americans and not just whites. Perhaps it’s understandable, after all, how would they know? Apart from Tarzan, the only images we have of Africa are news stories about warzones, refugees and the subsequent famine. Ordinary life just isn’t that interesting. But the point has to be raised, don’t people in the white countries study anything about Africa, and the shocking answer is, no we don’t.
History, it is said, is written by the winner. While Africa has been home to various empires throughout the ages, the decline in the 17th and 18th centuries in all but the Arab Empire, led to its vulnerability and inevitable defeat by the British, French and Dutch. They are the ones who have written the History of Africa, and it is one of slavery and lost identity.
Neither did the white societies bother to try a relative interpretation of the traditional belief systems of the diverse peoples who ended up trying to rescue shreds of their memory of Africa in centuries of hellish mistreatment as slaves. Deprived of their name, language, community and families, the slaves struggled to pass their traditions down with any coherence. There are merely whispers of voodoo, and the echo of drumbeats.
There was a window of opportunity in the early 19th century, when the African Association in London tried to explore West Africa and the Sahara, obsessed with tales of great empires, kings with marvelous treasures, trade routes beyond compare, and streets paved with gold in Timbuktu. Explorer after explorer trudged through the swamps and deserts in the footsteps of the great Mungo Park, who eventually did discover Timbuktu after sickness and capture, only to find a small huddle of mud huts, the gold having been pillaged by the Arabs. He managed to leave a letter about the first half of his journey behind, before following the River Niger onward and drowning somewhere in what is now Nigeria. On record too, is a song a local woman wrote for him, which asks why he has come here without any wife or family to care for, the lonely white man who as no home. Even then, Africans thought northerners were a little crazy.
Most of the explorers, who sought nothing except knowledge, died of malaria, dysentery and other tropical diseases, leaving West Africa to become known as ‘the white man’s grave’. By the coast, minerals and precious stones were found, as well as local traders selling people, and thus started the rape of West Africa and the accompanying slave trade. Those who had cared about the culture and history of this mysterious continent were ridiculed for interfering with profit and industry. Who now would claim to be interested in the African people?
In October 2007, James Watson, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, declared that black people are less intelligent than white people. Basing this idea on his study of IQ test results in the US, he surmised that intelligence is not only genetic, but racial. I remember reading this in Abuja, and marveling at the incredible idiocy of white men.Critics rose up angrily in outrage. The black MP Keith Vaz commented on how sad it is to see such an eminent scientist make such ‘baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments,’ which, he says, seems based simply on his personal prejudices.
Watson himself was stunned at the reaction to what he thought were simply facts: in recent IQ tests, black people had achieved far lower results than white people. What was he supposed to think? As well as his personal prejudices, his blinkered belief in science had also prevented him from seeing clearly. He took psychology as a science and believed that IQ testing is scientific. In fact, IQ tests had been under a deal of debate which had passed Watson by, as it came under the flag of social sciences, which do not come into his radar. Modern studies# have shown that when IQ tests are socially corrected to take race and class into account, the difference drops from 15% to 5% lower. At the very least, this shows that the tests are biased. It also shows that social resources have more impact on the ability to show intelligence, than race or ethno-cultural background.
The gap in understanding between people brought up on the African continent and Euro-Americans needs to lessen before we can really find a way to work together to create the kinds of circumstances Africans want to see, and Europeans hope to support. Somehow, the myths about life in Africa need to have light thrown on them in the rest of the world. Heroes like Mandela at least create a dichotomy in the minds of non-Africans, which is an improvement, as they struggle with the images of an intelligent, humanistic hero and the uneducated victims of drought and famine we see daily on our screens. Perhaps gradually as African culture, music, plays, cinema, novels and statesmen become increasingly central and respected, the image of Africa will start to change. Since the white man currently seems to find himself blinded by the African sun, it looks like the onus is on Africans themselves.
*According to Larry P. v. Riles (1971-1979) from: Culture and Bias, Kamphaus. R.W. Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Intelligence (2nd. Ed.)
#Satler in Cleary 1968 A critical re-examination and analysis of cognitive ability tests using the Thorndike model of fairness Authors: Chung-Yan G.A.; Cronshaw S.F.Source: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Volume 75, Number 4, December 2002 , pp. 489-509(21)Publisher: British Psychological Society
1119 words
© Jill Rees
April 22, 2008
Tags: Art, Article, Continent, Creative Writing, Europe, Family, Famine, home, Humanist, jill, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, News, Nigeria, Novel, Publish, Publisher, Reading, Sea, Stories, Story, Sun, Systemic, War, Work, WrittenRelated posts
* April 2008 SEIN Conference Bridgwater - Hand of History
Posted on April 14th, 2008 by jill. Filed under jill.
GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE FOR THE LATEST ENTRY OR COMMENT Hand of History SEIN Conference Bridgwater Welcome to the home page of the SEIN Conference, taking place this week in Bridgwater, a small rural town in Somerset in the South West of England. We already know that people have joined us from around the world, Welcome. If you wish to translate this page, click on your flag at the top right.
Today the conference has begun with a three hour meeting with Robert Samuels, General Director for SGI-UK Buddhist group at Taplow Court, Buddhist National Centre in Maidenhead near London. I wasn’t there and will receive the report tonight or tomorrow when they all get here to Bridgwater. This evening at about 7 everyone will be here to do gongyo and eat Bob, Bulgarian spicy bean soup I’ve been experiencing lately. I expect we’ll have an impromptu meeting before heading for Chedzoy, a village on the outskirts of Bridgwater, where some of the educators will be staying in a small B&B. The following are primary and informal discussions about the suggested future of SEiN and some ideas we are having. Everything is of course flexible and subject to change as required by all members of SEIN.This page will continue reports as we go through the conference and everyone is welcome to participate by leaving comments or questions, and to contact me if they would like to take part. Thanks everyone.
I can feel the hand of history upon us………
Today is not a day for soundbites, but I can feel the hand of history upon us. Today is the first day of the Soka Educators International Network week-long seminar in Bridgwater, Somerset, UK. It is fitting that Bridgwater is a post-modern industrial town and a total non-entity, since Soka, or value-creating, education is for the liberation and happiness of all people, however ordinary, however unacademic, wherever they live, whatever resources they have access to. This week will determine how the educators in SEIN, currently members of Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Organisation, proceed to find ways to support the world’s students and children by applying the ideas and beliefs of the founder of Soka Education, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. Soka Education, or Value-creation in education, isn’t originally a Buddhist ideology. The connection is that the educator Makiguchi first founded Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Society for Value-creating Education), in Japan in 1930, and later himself became a Nichiren Buddhist, realising that his humanistic ideas are in fact Buddhistic and are more powerful coming from the Buddhist faith. My personal desire, or mission, is to enable all educators to benefit from Soka ideas, whether or not they be Buddhists, so that these wonderful humanistic methods which enable children to be happy at schol and to develop as they should naturally, can be to the benefit of all children in the world. These ideas are based on absolute respect for each individual child, and are the human right of every child. Today some of the founder members of SEIN are getting together to discuss a variety of issues relating to SEIN activities, sustainable education and systemic analysis. They are: Stephanie Tansey, founder of humanistic schools in China and Turkmenistan, trainer in dialogue skills, author of the Handbook on Dialogue skills and founder of Dialogue workshops in Israel; Constance Haig, technical writer for an aerospace corporation; Jill Rees author here, consultant and trainer for sustainable education and acting teacher; Elissa Lewis, specialist in Systemic Family Therapy and the work of Gregory Bateson; Martin Rees, computer and webpage designer and trainer in Information Technology. Others may appear during the week. Some of our discussions wil be about, SEIN Forum 6 which is to start shortly and will be in Portuguese; Systemic Ideology and how it relates to education; implementation of Soka education in the wider educational sphere; as well as more Buddhist-linked topics. We are a Buddhist group, followers of Mr Makiguchi our mentor and founder of Soka Education, his disciple Josei Toda, educator, and his disciple and current President of SGI Daisaku Ikeda. These discussions are based on our Buddhist practise and are a faith activity. They will assuredly lead out into the secular world, enabling many more humanistic activities to proceed. This is my wish for this week’s discussions, and an espression of my desire to fulfil my vow to the Buddha to enable all beings to become absolutely fulfilled and happy in their own lives. I will report on these discussions on this site under Buddhist Education during the week. Anyone who is interested and the other SEIN members are asked to please contribute to the discussion. The current blog is on at the following site: http://sein2008.blogspot.com/ DAY ONE Tuesday 15th April 2008 
We had our first two meetings today, the Planning for SEIN and Website discussions. After that we trucked off to Costa Coffee - yes Bridgwater is so endowed - for a relaxing cappuccino. My view was that Americans would appreciate proper coffee but they said it was more like Italian stuff. Where is Starbucks when you need them? ey? ey? Below is a brief description of what went on in the meetings as I remember it and as applied to my notes. Please understand this may be amended and corrected, it is a first draft, but I feel it better to get it online asap. Planning for SEIN ALL DECISIONS AND IDEAS HERE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE SO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PARTICIPATE AND BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE. SEIN is a volunteer organisation, supporting Soka Education rather than an integral part of Soka Education. The word volunteer is in our mission statement. The planning meeting is about out intent, which is to form a just, sustainable and dialogical community. The aim is to make a 7 year plan starting from where we are. Rather than describe ourselves as a car, or some kind of unsustainable object, we like to think of our structure as being that of a tree, with ourselves being the lower branches, and aiming to raise capable people to take SEIN into the future. We must be planning for the next 1,000 years or 2,000 years, as Josei Toda advised. Josei Toda told the youth division of the time to nurture capable leaders, who should be encouraged to feel happy to work in line with SGI. Our aim is to become better Soka educators, to care for the individual. There are two aspects to SEIN, the intellectual and the applied/practical Soka education. We influence the SEIN community and the SEIN community influences us in turn. This led to raising the question, does the SEIN community support the individuals who come onto the site. In line with guidance received from senior leaders, we must always remember that Soka education, like Buddhism itself, must always be in a one-to-one relationship. Other senior guidance was that SEIN might develop as a kind of virtual Gakkai, with virtual districts. We are wary of the pitfalls of the pyramidal structure, and ascertained that we are talking about two kinds of support, faith and practical support, such as how to log on to the site and so on. It is important not to confuse the two, and we determined to chant about this and talk about it on Friday. Training must be based on the examples of the SGI, the three presidents, the master/disciple relationship and the Human Revolution. It was suggested that the Human Revolution might be a good subject for a future forum. Appreciative enquiry means finding out what each person wants to do and encourage them in that, working out how to fit that into SEIN. Our areas are: the Newsletter, the AGM, the Forum, the Blog and the Committee projects. The SEIN year goes like this: January Committee meets February Newsletter prep March Blog April Committee May Forum Planning June Forum and newsletter July Committee August Rest September Newsletter October AGM November Forum planning, conference planning December Forum, Newsletter The provisional timetable for SEIN goes like this: 2007 Exhibition, website 2008 Exhibition, Primer 2009 Improve Primer and website, eshibition 2010 Add Soka Education teachers online Institute for Research and Development 2011 Brazil Conference 2012 Soka training workshops in league with local Soka Education Divisions 2013 Makiguchi In Acton project Professional Development Training Meeting II Website planning Our programme needs more streamlined organisation, which is more transparent and which does not involve everything going through one person. Projects are Dialogue,Translation,Exhibition and Website. These all are done by the Committee. We all agreed that we need a unified website with links to our various activities, with potential for limitless growth. Constance and Rees are on this project. The areas to be included are: Forums Blog Exhibition Dialogue Library Glossary Newsletter Wednesday 14th April Meeting III Cardiff The influence of systems theory on Soka Education Present are Elissa, Jill, Stephanie, Constance, Kirsty. We drove to Cardiff with Rees, Bob and David in the morning, parked on the beautiful docks and walked round. Cadawallers has changed and is now expensive and not so good. ‘It used to be all old ladies sipping tea and eating lovely Welsh cakes,’ I said to Constance. ‘The trick is to find out where all the old ladies have gone now,’ she replied. The American contingent were delighted to be visiting Wales, didn’t fall for the joke about needing their passports, and were happy to pay for the cost of crossing the bridge. The sun shone on the Cardiff water, and the boat called out for us to take a trip. But no! Soka Education calls! Stephanie introduced the concept of SEIN as a support for people involved in education to fulfil the mission of the founder of Soka Gakkai, the educator Makiguchi, and welcomed Elissa as a systemic family therapist. We mentionned the close links between psychology and the family, and education and the classroom, and how in systemic theories all of the child’s social and physical environment plays a part in their education. Our endeavours must be collaborative as systems theory requires collaboration, one ‘expert’ can’t tell other
people their own solution, but may be able to lead them to find it for themselves. The therapist trusts that the person themself has the resources to solve their own problems and cannot pre-guess what dirction that will take. As in education and sustainable development projects, therapy may involve the use of stories, or narrative. The aim of these is to release a person from their previous fxed way of thinking and allow this person to be different, to explore ways to go forward. Kirsty said when she takes children on trips, they are able to do this becasue of the changed environment, and it can be very powerful. The other aspect of systemic therapy is that te therapist considers themself to be part of this unit, rather tan a sort of ‘mechanic’ or an expert who is ‘fixing’ the unit. This is similar to the buddhist concept of ‘dependent origination‘. Elissa suggested some books to further our understanding of systems theory, Francisco Varela ‘The View from Within’ Materana speaks of ‘autoparesis’ our conciousness in a structured self-concious. When this conciousness is detached from its fixedness it is like what Bateson called ‘perturbation. A change in the environment causes a change in our conciousness, and this is what learning is, as the Internal structure seeks to adapt. It receives ‘news of difference’, an alternative narrative, in line with the structured conciousness. This challenges the idea of instructive intervention, because the ‘news’ must be balanced with the lifestate of the individual, or the tendency will be to fix down more. Bateson also speaks of the need to feel love, emotion, human warmth. Etienne Wenger - Communities of Practise. We learn in our various communities of practise, so we should create communities of practise that optimise learning. This is the Buddhist idea of ‘en’, relation, creating a community, in your role, which is different in each of your communities. The individual has different levels of participation in each of his or her communities. A community has necessary elements, and the community persists. Finally we spoke of the master/disciple relationship in education. Wenger speaks of apprenticeship, not in the same way as Buddhists, but this shows that the basic idea of Master/Disciple is not obsolete in the Western tradition. Meeting IV - Soka Educators Division Meeting at Jill’s Present were Stephanie, Bob, Constance, Jill, Evelyn, Harriet What is the purpose of education? This is the regular 6-monthly meeting of the Soka Education Divison for the South West of England. Being so far dispersed is a problem for us with regard to attendance. We determined to address this. In this meeting, Harriet has taken part in the SEIN Forums and was pleased to meet with other members of the Forum. The meeting started with the idea that, while economic wealth and living standards have risen, human happiness has remained stagnant. This ma be becasue people are feeling increasingly disconnected with nature, with others, with life itself. The feeling of interconnectedness with nature needs to be taught now, whereas in the past it was perhaps more integral to daily life. We discussed human rituals such as heralding rain, chasing the winter away. Schools and communities can embed their own rituals. Before public education, education was by means of metaphor through story-telling, and seeing themselves ar=s part of nature.We gave some examples of the use of storytelling. You can make profound relationships with people by activities interacting with nature, such as gardening and caring for animals. Life itself is a story, expeerience of nature as a child is culture ecology transference. This is what led to the Earth Charter. It is important to enable children to connect in a personal way with nature. Friday 16th April Meeting V Following guidance from Sensei which we have not yet sourced, and for which we have to thank Michel in Brazil, Education should have the same influence in government as the fourth power, along with the executive, legislative and judicial powers. Education should not be subservient to political influences, therefor the bodies which deal wihth education must be transnational. This is the way to educate for global citizenship. SEIN is the first step towards an international educative body. In the past education was used to raise soldiers and factory workers. This was the reason education was made public in the 19th centruy. although individuals have always been idealistic, the basic organisation of educational institutions has alwasy been nationalistic. As soon as there is a global influence on educational institutions, the original nationalism is erased. In this way education can become the fourth power of an international earth charter. We made a basic plan for the next SEIN Forum, which will focus on the original translator of the Lotus Sutra Kumarajiva, and education as the fourth power which can be ‘translated’ to all people. We also wish to help make awareness of Soka University USA to students who may wish to find a global humanitarian ethos for their studies. THIS ENDS THE APRIL 2008 SEIN CONFERENCE IN BRIDGWATER AND CARDIFF UK Please continue to make comments etc. Thank you.