Get motivated and motivate others. Share thoughts, information, and entertaining (T.I.E.)material. They dont necessarily have to be yours but preferablly mention the source.
Lets TIE together and traverse beyond.
Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there.”
The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water, and right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!” So he came back and told Buddha, “The water iin there is very muddy. I don’t think it is fit to drink.”
After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink.
The disciple obediently went back to the lake. This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha. Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be…. and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water. Your mind is also like that! When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.”
What did Buddha emphasize here? He said, “It is effortless.” Having ‘Peace of Mind’ is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process! When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside. It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
-- from the "Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimy (Lebanese writer)
Love is the Law of God
You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required.
And what is it to love but for the lover to absorb forever the beloved so that the twain be one?
And whom, or what, is one to love? Is one to choose a certain leaf upon the Tree of Life and pour upon it all one's heart? What of the branch that bears the leaf? What of the stem that holds the branch? What of the bark that shields the stem? What of the roots that feed the bark, the stem, the branches and the leaves? What of the soil embosoming the roots? What of the sun, and sea, and air that fertilize the soil?
If one small leaf upon a tree be worthy of your love how much more so the tree in its entirety? The love that singles out a fraction of the whole foredooms itself to grief.
You say, 'But there be leaves and leaves upon a single tree. Some are healthy, some are sick; some are beautiful, some, ugly; some are giants, some are dwarfs. How can we help but pick and choose?' I say to you, Out of the paleness of the sick proceeds the freshness of the healthy. I further say to you that ugliness is Beauty's palette, paint and brush; and that the dwarf would not have been a dwarf had he not given of his stature to the giant.
You are the Tree of Life. Beware of fractioning yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother-soil. That is precisely what you do when you live one part more than the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest.
You are the Tree of Life. Your roots are everywhere. Your boughs and leaves are everywhere. Your fruits are in every mouth. Whatever be the fruits upon that tree; whatever be its boughs and leaves; whatever be its roots, they are your fruits; they are your leaves and boughs; they are your roots. If you would have the tree bear sweet and fragrant fruit, if you would have it ever strong and green, see to the sap wherewith you feed the roots.
Love is the sap of Life. While Hatred is the pus of Death. But Love, like blood, must circulate unhindered in the veins. Repress the blood, and it becomes a menace and a plague. And what is Hate but Love repressed, or Love withheld, therefore becoming such a deadly poison both to the feeder and the fed; both to the hater and the hated?
A yellow leaf upon your tree of life is but a Love-weaned leaf. Blame not the yellow leaf.
A withered bough is but a Love-starved bough. Blame not the withered bough.
A putrid fruit is but a Hatred-suckled fruit. Blame not the putrid fruit. But rather blame your blind and stingy heart that would dole out the sap of life to few and would deny it to many, thereby denying it to itself.
No love is possible except the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self. Therefore is God all Love.
So long as you are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your love is ephemeral.
You have no friends so long as you can count a single man as foe.
The heart that harbours enmity how can it be a safe abode for friendship?
You do not know the joy of Love so long as there is hatred in your hearts. Were you to feed all things the sap of Life except a certain tiny worm, that certain tiny worm alone would embitter your life. For in loving anything, or anyone, you love in truth but yourselves. Likewise in hating anything, or anyone, you hate in truth but yourselves. For that which you hate is bound up inseparably with that which you love, like the face and the reverse of the same coin. If you would be honest with yourselves, then must you love what you hate and what hates you before you love what you love and what loves you. Love is not a virtue. Love is a necessity; more so than bread and water; more so than light and air. Let no one pride himself on loving. But rather breathe in Love and breathe it out just as unconsciously and freely as you breathe in the air and breathe it out.
For Love needs no one to exalt it. Love will exalt the heart that it finds worthy of itself. Seek no rewards for Love. Love is reward sufficient unto Love, as Hate is punishment sufficient unto Hate.
Nor keep any accounts with Love. For Love accounts to no one but itself.
Love neither lends nor borrows; Love neither buys nor sells; but when it gives, it gives its all; and when it takes, it takes its all. Its very taking is a giving. Its very giving is a taking. Therefore is it the same to-day, to-morrow and forevermore.
Just as a mighty river emptying itself in the sea is e'er replenished by the sea, so must you empty yourselves in Love that you may be ever filled with Love. The pool that would withhold the sea-gift from the sea becomes a stagnant pool.
There is nor 'more' not 'less' in Love. The moment you attempt to grade and measure Love it slips away leaving behind it bitter memories.
Nor is there 'now' and 'then', nor 'here' and 'there' in Love. All seasons are Love seasons. All spots are fit abodes for Love.
Love knows no boundaries or bars. A love whose course is checked by any obstacle whatever is not yet worthy of the name of Love.
I often hear you say that Love is blind, meaning that it can see no fault in the beloved. That kind of blindness is the height of seeing.
Would you were always so blind as to behold no fault in anything.
Nay, clear and penetrating is the eye of Love. Therefore it sees no fault. When Love has purged your sight, then would you see nothing at all unworthy of your love. Only a love-shorn, faulty eye is ever busy finding faults. Whatever faults it finds are only its own faults.
Love integrates. Hatred disintegrates. This huge and ponderous mass of earth and rock which you call Altar Peak would quickly fly asunder were it not held together by the hand of Love. Even your bodies, perishable as they seem, could certainly resist disintegration did you but live each cell of them with equal zeal.
Love is peace athrob with melodies of Life. Hatred is war agog with fiendish blasts of Death. Which would you: Love and be at everlasting peace? Or hate and be at everlasting war?
The whole earth is alive in you. The heavens and their hosts are alive in you. So love the Earth and all her sucklings if you would love yourselves. And love the Heavens and all their tenants if you would love yourselves.
The Man Behind The "Hole In The Wall" -- by Peter Robinson (from the Association of Learning Technology -- Online Newsletter)
The Wikipedia entry for Sugata Mitra said, on 11 May 2009, that
"Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work have resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world. The resultant changes in the lives of people and the economy of the country can only be guessed at".
He is best known for the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments. Although the research has been mainly done with schoolchildren it raises important questions about learning and ICT in general. Recently Peter Robinson had the pleasure of hearing Sugata Mitra talk and interviewed him about the 'hole in the wall' experiments.
The first hole in the wall "In 1999 we started the hole in the wall experiments. I had an office in those days in Kalkaji, a suburb of New Delhi, India which bordered an urban slum. On our side of the boundary wall there were all these rich, high-powered software professionals and on the other there was a large sprawling slum. We cut a hole in the wall and installed a PC connected to broadband and the internet, and there was a touchpad. We covered it with a glass sheet, so the monitor glowed out on the other side. What we did then was pretty simple. We watched. As you can imagine children looked at the glass with something glowing inside it, instead of a dirty wall. This is what happened after about 8 hours: an 8 year old boy, who happened to be the son of the tobacco seller in the road outside our office, was browsing the internet and then was able to teach his student, a little 6 year old girl, to browse. We found that most of the slum children were able to use the computer to browse, play games, create documents and paint pictures within a few days. What we saw provoked many questions: Is it real? Does the language matter? Would the computer last, or would they break it or steal it? Did anyone teach them? People said, chances are that friends on the other side of the wall must have popped their heads over and showed them how to navigate and that is how they knew about it."
Did anyone teach them? "So we visited a small town in central India in a backward area where there were no computers and no one was going to teach computing. I buried another computer in the wall and we recorded the results. A 15 year old drop out began fiddling about with the touchpad. He quickly noticed that his finger points moved things around on the screen. When he tapped the touchpad, the Internet Explorer changed page. He had done his first click. This was after 6 minutes; 8 minutes later he was going from website to website and coming back. He was browsing. When that happened he started to call other children. By the end of the evening 70 children were browsing the internet. This showed me that children, in groups, can teach themselves to use a computer and the internet."
The English factor "At this time the main question being asked of me was what about English? People said to me, 'you are being very unfair; it is amazing that they are able to do what they are doing. You are confronting them with a machine they have never seen, language that they don’t know and then expecting them to do something; it can’t work.' I decided to check the role of English and repeated the experiment on 30 June 2000 in a rural village where nobody spoke English. More girls came to this than boys, unlike in my previous experiments. I did not have a good quality connection to the internet, so I left them with a load of CDs. I came back after 3 months. A 10 year old boy and 12 year old girl were playing a Microsoft game. The moment they saw me they said they needed a faster processor and a better mouse. I asked what they had learnt and the reply was an anatomy lesson, the skeleton structure of a hand. The boy asked me in Hindi, 'Do you know how many bones there are in a human hand?' I said I didn’t know. He said there are 32 and in English with a very strong American accent he started telling me about them. We found that the children had acquired a vocabulary of about 200 words in English, words like exit, stop, file and save. When they want to learn children do not find language a barrier."
General findings "We needed to know how far does it go? We could not understand how this happened. It took us five years of measurements across the Indian subcontinent to verify the results amongst 40,000 of the world’s poorest children. We found that children given unsupervised access to computers mainly located in a government school playground or in similar safe, public areas, would become:
1. computer literate – in their own way, with their own vocabulary, but highly effective nevertheless; 2. better at maths and English – I do not know why, maybe because they learn to analyze and solve problems in groups; 3. more social and cooperative – because they learn that knowledge, unlike material objects, grows with sharing; 4. more interested in school – if the computer is near or in the school premises; 5. less likely to drop out of school – because they want access to their computer; 6. less interested in petty crime – mostly because all their free time is spent at the computer; 7. viewed with more local goodwill – parents and others like the idea that the child is learning something and not creating trouble at home.
The measured outcomes showed:
* acquisition of functional computer literacy; * improvement in academic performance; * increase in confidence and self esteem; * increased collaborative behaviour.
Apart from these measured findings, there is consistent anecdotal evidence of large-scale impacts on school enrolment, retention, concentration, attention span and problem-solving ability. Teachers have been very positive about the whole thing because of the children’s increased interest in learning, higher enrolments, and their concentration on higher level tasks like mentoring other students and leading class discussions."
What the children cannot teach themselves? "We wanted to see what the limits were of self learning in groups. We wanted to see what children could not solve in order to test the boundaries of this form of learning. So we set up an experiment. In 2006 we went to a little village in Kalikuppam in Southern India, a place that had been hit by the tsunami and where illiterate fisherman lived. If Tamil-speaking children could teach themselves biotechnology in English, on their own, how far could we go?
I downloaded some difficult material on biotechnology, all in English, a language foreign to the children. We put this into the hole in the wall computer that NIIT had installed there. After 2½ months I went back and asked the question, have you learnt anything? As expected they said, 'Nothing, it is very hard as it is all in English and it is something we do not know anything about.' 'Did you use it?' 'Yes we used it every day.' 'What were you doing with it?' The young girl said, 'Well, it’s OK if you wanted to learn that DNA replicates and that defects in DNA cause disease, but apart from that, nothing.' I investigated a bit more and she showed me the things she knew – she showed me material on Alzheimer’s disease, and, when I asked what it was, she said, 'It’s complicated, but it’s why old people forget.' So, even when I made things as difficult as I could for these very young children, they found ways to make learning happen. The girl in this story was particularly interesting – she had started out with a couple of boys, but the boys had said to her 'We’ll do this. You’re only a girl, you won’t understand.' So she had said to them, 'I’ll come back when you’re gone then.' And she did return, determined to prove them wrong."
"Overall we found that children who had started with a score of zero had taught themselves basic biotechnology on their own to reach a test score of 30% in just two months. We did many experiments looking at what children learn by themselves. Here is another example. In Hyderabad, groups of children showed significant improvement in English pronunciation on their own with only a few hours of practice. They used a computer and a speech to text programme that had been trained in a native English accent. The published results (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/itid/1/1) show that speech to text engines can be used for self-regulated improvements in pronunciation."
Gateshead Professor Mitra is now at Newcastle, and has been working in the neighbourhood there. He was invited to a primary school in Gateshead. "At a primary school in Gateshead, UK – the remotest of the remote places I have been to – a class of children, aged around 10, had a laptop each, but their school performance did not seem to have changed much. I set up a challenge. I devised six GCSE level questions on science, the environment and such issues, and told the children there was only one rule – they had to work in groups of four and there was one laptop per group. All but one of the groups solved the problems, the first in 20 minutes and the rest all within an hour. The group that didn’t succeed consisted of one girl and three boys. As soon as the exercise began, the boys all went to the toilet and did not come back. The girl tried on her own but was unable to make progress. So here we saw that ten-year olds working in groups could answer in less than 20 minutes GCSE questions they would encounter six years later. I asked them if they could have done this in less time if they had not shared a computer in groups but had worked on their own laptops, alone. They said they could not have done it that way at all."
What can we learn from the 'hole in the wall' experiments? The materials and findings from the 'hole in the wall' experiments are fascinating and one could describe them forever. Sugata Mitra spent some time discussing with me the implications for adult learners in the UK. Here are some conclusions.
* The 'hole in the wall' experiments suggest an alternative, inexpensive and reliable method for bringing computer literacy to those areas where the ICT provision is inadequate. “Such facilities are not meant to replace schools and teachers, they are meant to supplement and complement and to be a stand-by for those areas of the earth where good schools and goodteachers are, for whatever reason, absent.” * In the context of education in the UK, teachers in classrooms may need to be reminded that many learners, and not just children, are learning about and using ICT outside the formal learning environment. * Working in self-organised groups and helping each other, the children typically achieve basic computer literacy within three months, and by nine months have achieved the proficiency level equivalent to the skills of most modern office workers. * One does not have to learn just by doing. Watching and discussing is very important. A noticeable finding from the 'hole in the wall' experiments was that only a small group would be actively involved in working the machine or making suggestions from close by, but that a larger group standing by but contributing relatively little also gained knowledge and expertise. * In effect, in the 'hole in the wall' experiments, every learner was a teacher and vice-versa. 'child teachers' emerged at each of the experimental sites – typically, talented 6–8 year old girls and boys who took on the 'teacher' role and taught 3 or 4 'generations' of children to use the computers. It may be that the phenomenon of peer learning and teaching is not just confined to children. * The projects were not set up to look at learning by older people. As Sugata Mitra says, “I am not suggesting that older people learn in the same way as children. But I suspect that many older people will learn about things when they need to and want to. Take pornography for example. It is unlikely that the users would learn about video format and file technologies in a classroom. Adults are able to do quite complicated things when they want to.” * Learning works well when self directed and much better when done in groups. Learners learn best in groups, because learning is a social activity. Groups function better than individuals. Of course many in adult learning as well as primary education already know this. It is why, in organisations and business, we often have so many meetings. That is why we don’t sit in rows like in classrooms. We learn from testing out ideas and discussions. Learning is fundamentally a social process.
This article originally appeared in ICT Skills Briefing
Peter Robinson peterfrobinson@ntlworld.com
Notes
1. Sugata Mitra is now Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is a physicist by background. He has taught and researched computer applications for over 25 years. He was until recently Chief Scientist with NIIT Limited in New Delhi. 2. This article is a compilation from different sources. See: The hole in the wall official website The Hole in the Wall, a documentary about the experiment The Beginnings
This is an exercise in language skills. To get the full effect, this should be read aloud. You will understand what "tanjew berrymuds" means by the end of the conversation.
The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service, at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the Far East Economic Review:
Room Service (RS): "Morrin. Roon sirbees."
Guest (G): "Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service."
RS: "Rye..Roon sirbees..morrin! Jewish to oddor sunteen??"
G: "Uh..yes..I'd like some bacon and eggs."
RS: "Ow July den?"
G: "What??"
RS: "Ow July den?...pryed, boyud, poochd
G: "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please."
RS: Hokay. An Sahn toes
G:"What?"
RS:"An toes. July Sahn toes
G:"I don't think so
RS: "No? Judo wan sahn toes
G: "I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what 'judo wan sahn toes'means
RS: "Toes! toes!...Why jew don juan toes? Ow bow Anglish moppin we bodder?"
G: "English muffin!! I've got it! You were saying 'Toast.' Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine."
RS: "We bodder?"
G: "No...just put the bodder on the side-
RS: "Wad!?"
G: "I mean butter...just put it on the side."
RS: "Copy?"
G: "Excuse me?"
RS: "Copy...tea...meel?"
G: "Yes. Coffee, please, and that's all
RS: "One Minnie. Scramah egg, crease baykem, Anglish moppin we bodder on sigh and copy....rye??"
G: "Whatever you say
RS: "Tanjew berrymuds."
This is scary...I can actually read and understand this!!
In this last Swaminomics of the millennium, I would like to sum up our performance in the 20th century in one sentence. Indians have succeeded in countries ruled by whites, but failed in their own.
This outcome would have astonished leaders of our independence movement. They declared Indians were kept down by white rule and could flourish only under self-rule. This seemed self-evident. The harsh reality today is that Indians are succeeding brilliantly in countries ruled by whites, but failing in India . They are flourishing in the USA and Britain .
But those that stay in India are pulled down by an outrageous system that fails to reward merit or talent. Fails to allow people and businesses to grow, and keeps real power with netas, babus, and assorted manipulators. Once Indians go to white-ruled countries, they soar and conquer summits once occupied only by whites.
Rono Dutta has become head of United Airlines, the biggest airline in the world. Had he stayed in India , he would have no chance in Indian Airlines. Even if the top job there was given to him by some godfather, a myriad netas, babus and trade unionists would have ensured that he could never run it like United Airlines.
Rana Talwar has become head of Standard Chartered Bank Plc, one of the biggest multinational banks in Britain , while still in his 40s. Had he been in India , he would perhaps be a local manager in the State Bank, taking orders from babus to give loans to politically favoured clients.
Rajat Gupta is head of Mckinsey, the biggest management consultancy firm in the world. He now advises the biggest multinationals on how to run their business. Had he remained in India he would probably be taking orders from some sethji with no qualification save that of being born in a rich family.
Lakhsmi Mittal has become the biggest steel baron in the world, with steel plants in the US , Kazakhstan , Germany , Mexico , Trinidad and Indonesia . India 's socialist policies reserved the domestic steel industry for the public sector. So Lakhsmi Mittal went to Indonesia to run his family's first steel plant there. Once freed from the shackles of India , he conquered the world.
Subhash Chandra of Zee TV has become a global media king, one of the few to beat Rupert Murdoch. He could never have risen had he been limited to India , which decreed a TV monopoly for Doordarshan. But technology came to his aid: satellite TV made it possible for him to target India from Hong Kong . Once he escaped Indian rules and soil, he soared.
You may not have heard of 48-year old Gururaj Deshpande. His communicat ions company, Sycamore, is currently valued by the US stock market at over $ 30 billion, making him perhaps one of the richest Indians in the world. Had he remained in India , he would probably be a babu in the Department of Telecommunications.
Arun Netravali has become president of Bell Labs, one of the biggest research and development centres in the world with 30,000 inventions and several Nobel Prizes to its credit. Had he been in India , he would probably be struggling in the middle cadre of Indian Telephone Industries. Silicon Valley alone contains over one lac Indian millionaires.
Sabeer Bhatia invented Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft for $ 400 million. Victor Menezes is number two in Citibank. Shailesh Mehta is CEO of Providian, a top US financial services company. Also at or near the top are Rakesh Gangwal of US Air, Jamshd Wadia of Arthur Andersen, and Aman Mehta of Hong Kong & amp; Shanghai Banking Corp.
In Washington DC , the Indian CEO High Tech Council has no less than 200 members, all high tech-chiefs. While Indians have soared, India has stagnated. At independence India was the most advanced of all colonies, with the best prospects.
Today with a GNP per head of $370, it occupies a lowly 177th position among 209 countries of the world. But poverty is by no means the only or main problem. India ranks near the bottom in the UNDP's Human Development Index, but high up in Transparency International's Corruption Index.
The neta-babu raj brought in by socialist policies is only one reason for India 's failure. The more sordid reason is the rule-based society we inherited from the British Raj is today in tatters. Instead money, muscle and influence matter most.
At independence we were justly proud of our politicians. Today we regard them as scoundrels and criminals. They have created a jungle of laws in the holy name of socialism, and used these to line their pockets and create patronage networks. No influential crook suffers. The Mafia flourish unhindered because they have political links.
The sons of police officers believe they have a licence to rape and kill (ask the Mattoo family). Talent cannot take you far amidst such rank misgovernance. We are reverting to our ancient feudal system where no rules applied to the powerful. The British Raj brought in abstract concepts of justice for all, equality before the law. These were maintained in the early years of independence. But fifty years later, citizens wail that India is a lawless land where no rules are obeyed.
I have heard of an IAS probationer at the Mussorie training academy pointing out that in India before the British came, making money and distributing favours to relatives was not considered a perversion of power, it was the very rationale of power.
A feudal official had a duty to enrich his family and caste. Then the British came and imposed a new ethical code on officials. But, he asked, why should we continue to choose British customs over desi ones now that we were independent?
The lack of transparent rules, properly enforced, is a major reason why talented Indians cannot rise in India . A second reason is the neta-babu raj, which remains intact despite supposed liberalisation. But once talented Indians go to rule-based societies in the west, they take off. In those societies all people play by the same rules, all have freedom to innovate without being strangled by regulations.
This, then, is why Indians succeed in countries ruled by whites, and fail in their own. It is the saddest story of the century.
PS: I HONESTLY WONDER WHICH EXPAT ASIAN NATIONALITY IN CAN CLAIM THE SUCCESS INDIANS HAVE HAD WORLDWIDE.
Ravi Shankar Jayaram Research associate Council on Hemispheric Affairs The Hague
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey.. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.
He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.
I read this article today, and was not sure how to react to it. Apparently, there is a group that formed this year called “Youth for Western Civilization” – YWC and they already have eight chapters on various US campuses.
Most of the student population on campus might not want anything to do with them, but there are a few who would be just too happy to join. The reasons for this, I feel, are ignorance of another culture, ignorance of opening up to another culture, and ignorance of ones’ own culture. Most American students I met during my period as a student in the US didn’t know much about another civilization or country; most of them were content knowing just about their state, not even their country. However, when these same students interacted with international students, they got a better perspective on issues facing the world, they enjoyed the different cuisine, tried to learn words of a new language, and grew from these interactions; and so did we international students grow from our interactions with the American students. In this age when all and sundry are talking about the world being a global village, isn’t pluralism the need of the hour? The international students didn’t try to change the American students, nor did the Americans try to change the international students; both sides were happy learning and growing from each other.
Prejudice has always been extant, it can be seen on US campuses esp. in the Cafeteria’s where the African Americans have their own tables, the athletes have their own space, the Asians, the footballers, the swimming team, the theater group, all have their own sacred place, which members of another group dare not cross; and the YWC is just adding to the divide. Instead, why not have a group Youth For Humanity that helps amalgamate different peoples, while still keeping their original identities intact.
Western Expansion –by Jack Stripling from “Inside Higher Ed”
If there is a void in the conservative movement, a group of college students thinks it can be filled with culture warriors fighting for “Western Civilization.”
Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) debuted this year as a co-sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual political event commonly known as CPAC. Since that time, chapters have emerged on eight college campuses – not without controversy. With stated opposition to “radical multiculturalism, political correctness, racial preferences, mass immigration, and socialism,” the group has drawn early critics who view its members as intolerant at best, and linked to white supremacists at worst.
Adding fuel to the criticism is Youth For Western Civilization’s chosen “honorary chairman,” the former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo. Tancredo, a Colorado Republican known for his anti-immigration stance, was invited by YWC to speak last week on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Furious that he'd been invited to campus, protesters interrupted Tancredo's talk, drawing their own accusations of intolerance while decrying Tancredo and his hosts for intolerance at the same time.
“We’re still considered probably by most students to be sort of a rogue group right now,” said Riley Matheson, president of the Carolina chapter. “I think that that played a large part in creating the atmosphere of Tuesday night.”
If YWC has been relegated to “rogue” status, it’s no doubt in part due to the concerns expressed by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center recently published an article about YWC on its Hatewatch Web site, alleging links between the group and “white nationalists.” Matheson and other YWC members scoff at these claims, which they view as part of an ongoing effort to vilify “right wing” policy positions.
“When they didn’t like the fact that we want to enforce immigration [laws], what did they say? They said we were haters; they said we were white supremacists,” Matheson said. “The culture of this university is such that left wing activism is OK, [but] right wing activism isn’t.”
Tancredo’s speech was abruptly cut short when protestors shouted him down and then proceeded to break a window. Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp has apologized to Tancredo for the incident and promised an investigation that could lead to criminal charges or disciplinary action.
Group Aims to Groom Leaders
Youth for Western Civilization is the brainchild of Kevin DeAnna, a graduate student studying international relations at American University. DeAnna’s goals are significant. Far from merely launching a self-described “right wing” advocacy group, DeAnna wants to groom like-minded students for positions of power within the university.
“You go to a typical campus, and in my opinion your college Republicans will be even better organized than the college Democrats,” DeAnna said. “It will all be very organized and everything else, but that’s not who controls the campus. Who controls the campus is this constellation of groups based on ethnic identity. … This is where you get the far left stuff that gets shoved down everyone’s throat.”
DeAnna aims to place his members in groups that allocate student funds, giving them a say in university priorities.
If anything gets DeAnna and his cohorts worked into frenzy, it’s the growth of groups on college campuses that cater to specific students based on race or culture. Think black, Asian and Latino student unions. Some of YWC’s harshest critics have emerged from these groups, and DeAnna says he sees some irony in that fact.
“When they start advocating for the abolition of all these groups based on race … then I can take their charges seriously,” he said.
Frank Dobson, director of the Bishop Joseph Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt University, has questioned the motives of the YWC chapter on his campus. Dobson said last week that he was worried the group may be using “coded language,” signaling intolerance without overtly expressing it. He went further in an interview withThe Tennessean, saying he wondered if Youth for Western Civilization is “a euphemism for white civilization.”
“I would love to be able to speak with them to get a sense of what really is in their heart and their head regarding starting the group on campus,” Dobson told Inside Higher Ed.
“I do think what we have to realize in a much larger sense … is that when we look at the political landscape, with an African American president, there are going to be instances of backlash towards what he represents, what his administration represents, and the types of changes that are going on on college campuses across the nation.”
YWC's Web site does not list its member chapters, but DeAnna says groups have formed or are organizing on eight campuses. The campuses include the University of Connecticut, Vanderbilt, American University, Elon University, Carolina, Providence College, Bentley University and the University of Rhode Island.
YWC’s stated mission is guided or at least informed by the views often espoused by David Horowitz, a conservative critic who claims professors routinely indoctrinate students with liberal ideology. The group also joins a longstanding chorus of critics who suggest quintessential American figures like George Washington get short shrift as colleges craft curriculums designed for multicultural inclusion.
“Group identity pandering and things like that give way to history and things people should know if they’re living in a Western country,” said Devin Saucier, vice president and co-founder of Vanderbilt’s YWC chapter.
Saucier cites Brown University’s recent decision to stop recognizing Columbus Day as an example of antagonism many institutions have toward the history of Western civilization.
College Republicans Not on Board
The YWC’s agenda has some overlap with the platform of the Republican Party, but the group has defined itself in some ways as an opposition movement. The Republican party dodged red meat issues like immigration during the 2008 campaign, and its losses were in part a consequence of that, Saucier said. The YWC seeks to highlight the very issues that Republican groups have decided to place on the back burner, he said.
“The left has taken over the country,” Saucier said. “This is a very urgent thing. This not something where we can sit in a room in coats and ties like College Republicans and discuss how bad it’s going to suck.”
But the approach of YWC counters the “big tent” strategy that many argue Republicans will have to employ if they hope to return to power. To that end, some College Republicans have already started to distance themselves from the YWC.
“In some ways the YWC could hurt the Republican party,” said Anthony Dent, treasurer of the College Republicans chapter at Carolina. “But at least on UNC’s campus, I don’t see that happening because the leadership structures are distinct, and I think we made it clear that College Republicans do not share the aims of YWC.”
While College Republicans may not be rushing to join forces with the YWC, the group has managed to garner financial backing from the Leadership Institute, an organization based in Arlington, Va. that bills itself as a “training ground” for conservative leaders. The institute funded Tancredo’s visit to Carolina, along with a speech by Bay Buchanan at Vanderbilt, DeAnna said. Buchanan, former U.S. treasurer and sister of conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, was met with protest when she spoke at the university about the need for immigrants to “assimilate.”
DeAnna is deputy field director for the Leadership Institute, but he says he does not play a role in deciding where the institute provides funding. The YWC chapters had to submit competitively reviewed applications for funding just as any other group would have, DeAnna said.
Founders' Connections Questioned
If there’s concern about Youth For Western Civilization, some of it stems from questions about its leadership. The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] raised particular concerns about the group’s connections to Marcus Epstein, a fundraiser for Tancredo as well as Pat and Bay Buchanan.
Epstein, who says he was erroneously identified by the SPLC as a founder of Youth For Western Civilization, is a frequent contributor to VDARE.com, a Web site the SPLC has labeled a “hate group.” In one post, Epstein argued “Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don't mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”
Epstein, whose mother is Korean, says his only connection to YWC is the fact that he was a classmate of DeAnna’s at the College William and Mary. While in college, the two wrote for the now defunct conservative newspaper, The Remnant, and they have remained friends.
“If me being friends with the founder is the worst thing [about YWC] … then I think that says something about how silly these racism accusations are,” Epstein said.
The imagery and rhetoric employed by YWC have also contributed to concerns. The group’s Web site features a black and white crest with a hand gripping a hammer, which YWC members say is meant to symbolize Charles Martel, a Frankish ruler of the Middle Ages credited with halting Muslim expansion. The hammer may evoke different connotations for some.
“People have compared it to the fasces, which is simply not the case,” Saucier said.
DeAnna says he’s not surprised YWC is dodging allegations of racism, because that’s a common charge made against anyone that takes a hard-line position on issues like immigration or affirmative action.
“They’re going to say that no matter what we do,” he said. “If we say there shouldn’t be in-state tuition for illegals, they’re going to say that’s Nazism.”
