\What is perhaps the only reliable factor in an unreliable world? Why, it's change itself! - and if you substitute the word process for the word change, you may see what I am talking about! It's a scary prospect, one that deserves a lot of careful study! Just now it's coming at us from all sides - economically, environmentally, politically, socially, personally, spiritually!

Would you really like to hold the power of magically resolving the world's problems in your hand, as the image above suggests? I think most of us would, if we believed we could - but it would depend on what kind of changes and in what realm they occurred, wouldn't it. The kinds of changes brought about by our neglect of environmental vulnerabilities like the devastation created by Katrina we would not appreciate! As parents, most people feel trapped in the system in order to keep their children safe. But is this an illusion? What might happen if you decided to break out?

I am suggesting we take a closer look and find out whether we might actually be able to break out of this pattern of helpless dependence on whatever our society decides to dish out to us! Do you know about what Wangari Maathai did in Kenya, for example? SHE PLANTED A TREE. Click here to read about what happened from then on! It's a miraculous take of courage and determination. And they've now gone to Haiti to teach women there to do the same thing!

Women, I believe we need to begin providing a future for and with our children. Because they are the future, aren't they. They may still have a chance to learn how to live with change, given good support - especially in school. It has been done, by lots of ordinary people. It's not that difficult. It takes willingness to risk, to be different, to create a mini-world. As Margaret Mead once wrote,

"Never think the future cannot be changed by a few people. In fact, it is the only way it ever has been!

You might be inspired by the work of a group that call themselves Echoing Green, whose mission is to support social entrepreneurs and innovators who want to make real changes in our society. Take a look here. 

And here's another quotation that just might knock your socks off - especially if you consider the possibility that - among other things - it might even characterize the "dumbed-down" mentality of our present government -- and half of our population!:

 

"The whole dull liar's world that government schooling has created is a form of abstract witchcraft, mumbo jumbo leading [to] nowhere [ideas] like Mogadishu or Saddam Hussein. The truth is that my kids are unable to plot a future because they don't know where they are or who they are. How can you know who you are if you don't know your own family, and how can you know your own family if none of you are home together very often? Who arranged things this way, because surely they didn't just happen?

 

That's John Taylor Gatto at his most passionate! Click here to read the marvelous essay it was taken from, and here to see a page of all John's writings taken from many issues of SKOLE, the Journal of Alternative Education.

 

Click here to read about what it's actually like now to be at the Free School, and here to read an essay on the resolution of conflicts at the school which appeared recently in a magazine about the IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) put together by Isaac Graves, a recent Free School graduate.

 

  ........./. ......