"Vince- Send my friend to school!"
Oxfam London and South East | 29.06.2010 13:51 | Education
Students in Twickenham ask Vince Cable to pressure world leaders to meet promises made on ensuring all children will receive primary education by 2015.
On Friday 25th June as England fans the world over were preparing for the big World Cup game on Sunday, girls from Waldegrave and Lady Eleanor Holles schools were pointing to a different goal - to send all children to school by 2015.
As advocates for the 1Goal Send my Friend to School campaign, the girls made a special presentation to Vince Cable, Business Secretary and MP for Twickenham, calling for World Leaders to provide education for the 72 million children currently not in education.
As part of the campaign over 8,000 schools in the UK have been making football scarves with individual message panels calling for global education for all, to send to the Prime Minister. The girls at Waldegrave decided to go a step further and invite Mr Cable along to see their scarves in person, and have been writing and preparing speeches ready to deliver to him in the outside amphitheatre at the school.
At the event several girls from year 10 talked passionately to Mr Cable about why they thought global education was a priority for World Leaders to address - and why it meant so much to them that children around the world had access to education. To emphasise their point they displayed the scarves made in the school during the campaign, many of which contained sequins and glitter, and cards featuring statistics on those missing out on an education.
1Goal Send My Friend is this year's youth action in support of the Global Campaign For Education. Coinciding with the FIFA World Cup, it hopes that by raising voices all over the world, education can be a reality for the millions of boys and girls who remain out of school. Since 2000, 40 million more children are in school, yet with World Leaders promising that all children will receive a primary education by 2015, it is vital that actions are taken so these promises become reality.
What do those who took part have to say?
Amber Syed, 14, one of the pupils who wrote the presentation:
"I felt completely awed, it was so amazing. It was a great experience to be able to talk to someone so influential in parliament. I think that if we get together as a team and we really try hard then we can make a difference. Each and every one of us can change this horrific situation where millions of children are missing an education and school”
Vince Cable said this about his visit:
'The presentation from Waldegrave and Lady Eleanor Holles pupils was highly professional and was a very powerful message of support for global education. I fully support what the pupils are trying to achieve.'
Alice Davies who is in Year 9 at Lady Eleanor Holles School:
As our scarf had so many contributors, we hope it will be even more effective in putting pressure on the government to achieve their Millennium goals. A lot of girls at LEH contributed to this charity effort, and it will make a big difference to the campaign, showing that young people do care about other children that need an education
As advocates for the 1Goal Send my Friend to School campaign, the girls made a special presentation to Vince Cable, Business Secretary and MP for Twickenham, calling for World Leaders to provide education for the 72 million children currently not in education.
As part of the campaign over 8,000 schools in the UK have been making football scarves with individual message panels calling for global education for all, to send to the Prime Minister. The girls at Waldegrave decided to go a step further and invite Mr Cable along to see their scarves in person, and have been writing and preparing speeches ready to deliver to him in the outside amphitheatre at the school.
At the event several girls from year 10 talked passionately to Mr Cable about why they thought global education was a priority for World Leaders to address - and why it meant so much to them that children around the world had access to education. To emphasise their point they displayed the scarves made in the school during the campaign, many of which contained sequins and glitter, and cards featuring statistics on those missing out on an education.
1Goal Send My Friend is this year's youth action in support of the Global Campaign For Education. Coinciding with the FIFA World Cup, it hopes that by raising voices all over the world, education can be a reality for the millions of boys and girls who remain out of school. Since 2000, 40 million more children are in school, yet with World Leaders promising that all children will receive a primary education by 2015, it is vital that actions are taken so these promises become reality.
What do those who took part have to say?
Amber Syed, 14, one of the pupils who wrote the presentation:
"I felt completely awed, it was so amazing. It was a great experience to be able to talk to someone so influential in parliament. I think that if we get together as a team and we really try hard then we can make a difference. Each and every one of us can change this horrific situation where millions of children are missing an education and school”
Vince Cable said this about his visit:
'The presentation from Waldegrave and Lady Eleanor Holles pupils was highly professional and was a very powerful message of support for global education. I fully support what the pupils are trying to achieve.'
Alice Davies who is in Year 9 at Lady Eleanor Holles School:
As our scarf had so many contributors, we hope it will be even more effective in putting pressure on the government to achieve their Millennium goals. A lot of girls at LEH contributed to this charity effort, and it will make a big difference to the campaign, showing that young people do care about other children that need an education
Oxfam London and South East
Homepage:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/?p=13632&v=campaigns
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
why is this posted on Indymedia?
29.06.2010 15:38
Ann Arky
State Schools are a key weapon of domestication - and should be fought!
29.06.2010 19:56
After 12 years of having the stars beaten out of their eyes, most students numbly file off to college or work.
Some may find the following links interesting on this subject. Obviously they are not representative of a unified ‘school of thought’… :
Towards the Destruction of Schooling - Jan D. Mathews:
Schools No Longer - Colin Ward:
Against Schools & The Tyranny of Compulsory Schooling - John Taylor Gatto :
I would also recommend (with obvious reservations about its soft spot for buddhism etc) having a look at the film ‘Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh’ - specifically the section on modern schooling, (the link is to part 5 as this is the section with a bit about schooling – starting at 2:39 ). :
I would also recommend Paul Avrich’s, ‘The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States’ and the relevant section in his ‘Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America’.
Also its worth having a look at the websites and publications of the following groups:
Libertarian Education:
Education Otherwise:
Anon
Which may be fine in Utopia. Back in the real world ...
30.06.2010 19:02
The kind of people this campaign refers to are those that don't even get the most basic education, and as a result will be vulnerable and disempowered for all their lives.
I don't doubt that state (and other) schools f*ck kids minds up (signed: one who was himself thoroughly f*cked up by a "good" state grammar), but that's vastly preferable to going through life unable to read, write or do basic maths.
A couple of names were, IMHO, conspicuous by their absence in the above - Ivan Illych (author of "Deschooling Society": regarded as a classic though I personally couldn't get into it), and, my own favourite, A.S.Neill, founder of Summerhill School and a leading light in progressive education. A quick Google will soon reveal much about these two.
Gregory Beetle
Being shaped by the state is not a 'luxury'
30.06.2010 23:01
In fact I am being in no way utopian. Widespread schooling was consciously introduced - alongside factories and prisons - to domesticate a troublesome, dysfunctional, rebellious poor and to shape them into good workers, subjects and citizens. I would suspect most readers of Indymedia would agreed with the American Indian Movement's condemnation of the forceful removal of American Indian children into USA schools as a weapon of capitalist assimilation. Here But in the UK what chief of all trains US for capitalism's life of work, disconnection from nature, age stratification, obedience to the clock, acceptance of competition and social hierarchy and internalisation of such idiocies as sitting indoors when its sunny. School!
For those who believe the majority worlds 'poor' can be ‘empowerd’ ( as 'Gregory Beetle' puts it) by a decade or so of state schooling I would recommend checking out at least the example in the on-line film 'Ancient Futures- Learning From Ladakh' I recommended above.
I severely doubt that this is campaign was thought up by and organised by school aged people... I am sure the young people in the original posted story are in large part motivated by a genuine empathy for those unreached by schooling. On one level I applaud their empathy. Yet it is worth remembering that once institutionalised many can only see such institutionalisation as a good. The alternative is to see oneself as a victim- something people generally try to avoid - at least consciously. To quote Leopold Roc:
"There is always a tendency to rationalize insults when revenge does not take place."
(Industrial Domestication: Industry As The Origins Of Modern Domination -
This is as true with school for young people as it is of work for adults.
“In the past, if anyone called a tradesman a worker, he risked a brawl. Today, when they are told that workers are what is best in the state, they all insist on being workers" -M. Mav. 1948
Anon - again