Save a school in Aleppo

Friends of mine in Syria Solidarity UK have been directly involved in putting together the following emergency appeal. We know the people running the school in Aleppo and the people fundraising in the UK.

We have been in ongoing contact with people in Aleppo over several months. Even as they face the horror of constant bombing and the anxiety of increased food shortages, one of our key contacts has been working on funding for this school.

Established funders we have been speaking to won’t take it on because Aleppo is high risk and therefore falls outside their guidelines for funding. Being in besieged east Aleppo there is of course no safe school option for these children, but they still need an education as well as protection from bombs and food to eat.

Please support and share.


From the Just Giving page:

We at Human Care Syria have been approached with this urgent request from a school in East Aleppo. The school has run out of funds to continue operating and we have decided to take on the challenge of running the school and raising the funds necessary because we understand how critical the situation is.

Since the start of the Syrian crisis four million Syrian children are out of school and not receiving their basic human right to an education.

What does this mean for the community around East Aleppo?

This school is the only school in the area, serving 900 students (aged 5-14) in the community. If it shuts down the children will face the risk of traveling to another school, and traveling inside Aleppo is very dangerous at this present time! This will inevitably make parents keep their children at home. It will also mean a loss of jobs for teachers and maintenance staff.

One year’s running cost is £49,000 (covering 28 classrooms for a double shift school).

Please give here:

https://www.justgiving.com/campaigns/charity/hcfww/saveaschoolinaleppo

In this UK election, let’s talk about education.

Cross-posted from Syria Solidarity UK.


Above: From a Syria Civil Defence video of a bombed elementary school in Aleppo city, 12 April 2015. At least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded. Via EA WorldView.

Schools in opposition-held territory in Aleppo shut for at least a week following the deaths of at least five children in the April 12 air attack pictured above. See Syria Deeply and EA WorldView for more.

An overview of the war’s impact on education within Syria:

Education is in a state of collapse with half (50.8 per cent) of all school-age children no longer attending school during 2014- 2015, with almost half of all children already losing three years of schooling. There is a wide disparity in school attendance rates across the country as the conflict is creating inequality in educational opportunities. The conflict has generated increasing inequality between the different regions, while the quality of education also deteriorated. The loss of schooling by the end of 2014 represents a human capital debit of 7.4 million lost years of schooling, which represents a deficit of USD 5.1 billion in human capital investment in the education of school children.

From a UN-published report, Syria: Alienation and Violence, Impact of the Syria Crisis (PDF), March 2015.

Save The Children report that:

• Basic education enrolment in Syria has fallen from close to 100% to an average of 50%.
• In areas like Aleppo which has seen active conflict for a prolonged period, that is closer to 6%.
• At least a quarter of schools have been damaged or destroyed.
• Almost three million Syrian children are out of school.
• In 2014, half of refugee children were not receiving any form of education.
• Education programmes are underfunded by almost 50%.

From The Cost of War: Calculating the impact of the collapse of Syria’s education system on Syria’s future (PDF), March 2015.

There is also an education crisis for children who have escaped Syria’s dangers. According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 400,000 out-of-school Syrian children in Lebanon. For The Guardian, Maggie Tookey describes the difficulty of supporting education for refugee children in Arsal, on Lebanon’s border with Syria. And at Syria Deeply, Lamia Nahhas talks of the difficulties in establishing and sustaining schools for refugees in Al-Rihaniyeh, Turkey, and for internally displaced children in the Atmeh camp on the Syrian side of the border.

Lastly, have a look at these descriptions by Robin Yassin-Kassab and blogger Maysaloon of working on Zeitouna education projects for Syrian refugee children.

Read more: A manifesto for Syria

Join us in London on the 26th of April to answer the call from Syria.

More school doodles

Some more drawings for Peggy’s school, continued from here.

History doodles

I recently drew a set of pictures for Peggy’s school to illustrate their curriculum. Here’s a selection of the history doodles, with a little prehistory too.

A kids’ outing: Peggy plays philosophy at Parliament

Nine year old Peggy and two of her classmates had an unusual afternoon on Wednesday. Along with children from a number of other schools, they had been invited to take part in an event at the Houses of Parliament. It was held by by the Philosophy Foundation, to demonstrate how the Foundation holds lessons in philosophical enquiry in schools. Peggy’s class had previously  been lucky enough to have a series of lessons with one of the Foundation’s specialist philosophy teachers, Miriam Cohen Christofidis.

The Foundation’s lessons use games, stories, and group discussions, to explore ideas and dilemmas. The ideas to be discussed are introduced through the games and stories, and the discussions are moderated by the specialist teacher. When Peggy’s class last had a series of lessons, all of the discussion themes came out of stories from the Odyssey. On the days when Peggy had philosophy she would be full of talk after school about who thought what, and wanting to carry on the conversation with us at home.

The demonstration lesson at The Houses of Parliament was on the theme of truth and lies. First there was a spirited introduction by Angie Hobbs. Then the specialist teacher conducting the lesson, Peter Worley, sparked it off with a game of pretend involving magic stones and pendants that caused the wearers to either tell truth or lie, and from there quickly moved into a discussion of what had happened in the game.

It was great to see how quickly all the children became engaged, and how they were ready to explore ideas, and were ready to shift positions as they heard others come up with alternative ideas. This exploratory openness made the discussion very different to the kind heard in a debating competition where participants must defend a predetermined position. It also made for a discussion where it was possible for children to contribute without worrying too much about having a correct answer in advance.

And afterwards there was tea and cake, and a chance for the audience to talk with the young philosophers.

You can read a post by Peter Worley arguing for teaching philosophy in schools on the TES Opinion blog. It’s a short enough post, but I’m including an an even shorter extract below:

There was a time when the chief way through which we understood the world was myths and legends; later, it was religion. And it was through philosophical lines of inquiry that these paradigms were challenged, either by philosophers such as the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and later Popper and Kuhn or by scientists adopting a philosophical attitude such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein and Feynman. (Interestingly, Newton was known in those days as a ‘natural philosopher’ not a ‘scientist’.)

By extension, when ‘how we understand the world’ is taught uncritically there is, of course, the ever-present danger that those undergoing the education programme may be subjected to indoctrination, either political or religious. The ‘philosophical attitude’ that I claim any education programme should include, safeguards those undergoing it from these very real dangers, that history has shown – and continues to show – to be much more than the paranoid delusions of conspiracy theories.

Another claim I will make is that philosophy – done well – is dedicated to understanding, and if understanding really is at the heart of education, then, wherever possible, philosophy should be included in any education programme.

Read more here.

Play in the Infants’ School

There is no Raleigh School on Ocean Street anymore, and no buildings from the time survive there.

Published in 1938, ER Boyce’s book tells of how as head teacher from 1933 she led an experiment in play-centred learning in the Infants’ School, with approximately three hundred children on the roll, aged between three and seven-and-a-half. From the preface:

In the heart of the East End of London, you will find an odd tangle of courts and alley-ways connecting long, narrow streets of shabby cottages, each housing several families. The monotony is broken by public houses and dingy shops which deal in very small quantities of groceries, cheap sweets or fish and chips. On fine evenings, these streets are scenes of lively social life. The children play and the parents gossip. In the hot weather, the babies crawl naked on the pavements. There are brawls and parties during the week-end: sometimes a piano is dragged into the street so that jollity may be enjoyed by all. The noise is often deafening; iron hoops and wireless mingle with shrill calls and whistles, the crying of babies and the laughter and shouts of women.

The children who live in this particular district have only one other playground, a small disused burial-ground, planted with trees and consisting mainly of concrete paths. They frequent a neighbouring street-market which, on Saturday evenings is picturesque in the light of flares. Many of them go regularly to the Penny Pictures; a cinema performance of cowboy and crook films. Each year there is a visit to the hop-fields. A certain number of them get an outing to Southend, many more dream of going and hear so much of it from others, that they invent stories of their own adventures at the sea.

The ordinary events of a child’s life are unknown. Birthdays are rarely kept, new toys are unusual, stockings at Christmas are seldom hung up and there is no annual holiday.

Their physical condition is extremely poor; there are three or four bonnie children in each class of forty, and these are not always fully grown. They suffer from rickets, impetigo, adenoids, rheumatism, colds, and various forms of malnutrition. The cases of underfeeding are comparatively small, but all of them live on a diet of cheap sweets and cakes, bread and margarine, fish and chips, and tinned food. The facilities for cooking are poor and the mothers are ignorant of good, simple feeding, and many of them are the wage-earners of the family and the small child is fed by the elder sister. The majority of the parents, especially the younger ones, make continual efforts to keep the children clean and tidy and have some conception of their duty to them. In spite of this, sores and cuts are always septic, hair is often verminous and many small bodies are flea bitten.

Nearby Duckett Street in 1939, found here. Copyright © Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives.

While aspects of the Raleigh School project are familiar to me from my children’s experience in London nursery schools, ER Boyce seems to have gone much farther than is usual today in her effort to work for a child-centred school where children experienced as much liberty as possible, and where academic learning developed out of the children’s own interests and curiosity.

Equality law: the Scouts’ exception

From the Telegraph:

Schoolboy ‘banned from Scouts for being an atheist’

Schoolboy George Pratt had attended his local Scout group for ten months, and was expecting to invest in the group along with his friends.

But, after being required to swear the traditional promise, he found himself unable to join as he does not believe in God.

George, 11, said he was “very disappointed” in the decision, calling it “very unfair” and claiming he feels left out from experiences and trips his friends are attending.

His father Nick Pratt, 45, has accused the Scout movement of being “narrow minded” and “intolerant”, saying his son is being “excluded because he doesn’t believe”.

To become a full member of the 1st Midsomer Norton Group in Somerset, which meets in a hall opposite his home, George must take the Scout Promise.

This reads: “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, To do my duty to God and to the Queen, To help other people, And to keep the Scout Law.”

Different versions of the oath are available for different faiths, such as the use of ‘Allah’ to replace ‘God’ for Muslims.

Read the full story at the Telegraph. Another account is at the British Humanist Society website.

When I first read this story, I thought that the demand by the Scout group to swear an oath referencing God must breach the law in some way.

Reading guidance from the Charity Commission on the Equality Act 2010 reinforced this thought.

According to the guidance, the Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against anyone in the provision of services because of a protected characteristic, one of which is religion or belief.

The charities’ exception allows a charity to limit its benefits to people who share a protected characteristic only if the charity’s governing document only allows people who share a protected characteristic to benefit, and the restriction can be justified either by Test A: Tackling disadvantage, or Test B: Achievement of a legitimate aim. The guidance gives examples to help understand what this means.

From this it would seem that demanding that individuals swear a religious oath in order to access a service would be in breach of the act unless the organisation could show that it was A: tackling a disadvantage suffered by religious people, or B: excluding non-believers in pursuit of some legitimate aim. I’ll try to get back to the legitimate aim argument in a later post, but for now let it suffice that I don’t think it could be justified in this case.

So is the 1st Midsomer Norton Group in breach of the Equality Act 2010? Well, I think they would have been had the original draft of the bill been enacted, but Scout and Guide groups successfully lobbied for an amendment to the Equality Act 2006, and it remains in the 2010 Act as Sections 193(5) and 193(6):

(5) It is not a contravention of this Act for a charity to require members, or persons wishing to become members, to make a statement which asserts or implies membership or acceptance of a religion or belief; and for this purpose restricting the access by members to a benefit, facility or service to those who make such a statement is to be treated as imposing such a requirement.

(6) Subsection (5) applies only if—

(a) the charity, or an organisation of which it is part, first imposed such a requirement before 18 May 2005, and

(b) the charity or organisation has not ceased since that date to impose such a requirement.

By that means the Scout Promise escaped the Equality Act, but being ‘not a contravention of this Act’ doesn’t mean the promise might not be in breach of some other law. How about the Human Rights Act 1998 which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law? This is the part of the Convention that’s relevant:

Article 9 – Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

While one could hardly argue that the Scout Promise is a shining example of the spirit of Article 9, it’s not clear that it’s in breach of it either. If one likens the Scouts to a broad church that goes camping, then one could argue that they’re exercising freedom of thought in community. As they are a private organisation not imposing their will on those outside the organisation, they can argue that they’re not limiting non-members’ freedom of belief.

And yet there’s more to it, even if it falls outside the scope of the ECHR. If an organisation for the promotion of a religious doctrine becomes the dominant provider of certain services, then it can impinge on individuals’ ability to preserve freedom of belief while playing a full part in their community, on their ability to be true to themselves while sharing experiences with their friends that are largely secular, such as going caving. And the Scouts present themselves as more camping and caving than God. Ten months this boy had been going to Scouts before God came up. I’m beginning to think that this is not so much different to other sorts of clubs that used to exclude people on the basis of belief.

There’s another international convention to consider, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It includes the following:

Article 2

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members.

Article 14

1. States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.

3. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

Article 31

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.

2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

In responding to the current controversy, Simon Carter, assistant director of media relations for the Scout Association, said “young people will not be refused membership solely because of their parents’ beliefs or non-beliefs,” a phrase that in emphasising parents’ beliefs rather than children’s seemed tailored to satisfy Article 2 (2), though perhaps it’s more likely that it was drafted with the Equality Act in view.

On Article 14, it’s not clear to me that the Scout Promise is incompatible with Article 14 taken just by itself, for the same reason that I doubted earlier whether the ECHR would apply, but if you read Article 14 together with Article 31, particularly 31 (2), then I think it becomes clear that in adopting the Scouts and Guides amendment, Parliament failed to live up its their duty under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This is because in a case like George Pratt’s the Scout Promise prevents him from exercising his rights under Article 14 while also exercising his rights under Article 31. The Promise means he can’t both exercise freedom of belief and participate fully in cultural and artistic life, because in his town and amongst his friends the Scouts are a dominant provider of facilities for cultural and artistic activity. There don’t seem to be many other alternatives.

_

Under Article 4, responsibility for enacting measures to implement the rights described in the UNCRC lies with the State, that is with Government and Parliament.

Unlike the ECHR the UNCRC has not been incorporated into UK law, though the UK is a signatory. There were repeated but unsuccessful attempts in the House of Lords in 2005 to amend the then Equality Bill to include a reference to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

As the UNCRC hasn’t been incorporated into UK law, it can’t be enforced by UK courts, though they may refer to it in interpreting UK law. Interpreting does not mean creating or overturning law however. Even with the ECHR which is incorporated into UK law via the Human Rights Act, UK courts can’t change or overturn existing legislation where it’s in conflict with the ECHR, but at most issue a declaration under Section 4 of the Act that the relevant statutory provision is incompatible with the rights set out in the Convention.

A declaration of incompatibility leaves the law in force and passes the problem back to Parliament. It doesn’t seem clear that even this option is available to a UK court when it comes to the UNCRC.

UPDATE: The Scout Association’s anti-bullying policy cites the UNCRC.

_

Time to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK Law.

Time for the Scout Association to stop religious discrimination against children in its non-religious activities.

The Silent Three

Jacqueline Rayner wrote a very nice piece for The Guardian last month about girls’ comics of the 1970s and 80s; a whole area of British comics publishing that has since been completely wiped out. The above title, School Friend, is a couple of decades older. Inspired by Ms Rayner’s article, I went looking for some old girls’ comics for my eight year old daughter to try. The first story in this annual, The Silent Three, has a character called Peggy, and so I had to get it.

We’ve been reading a few strips from it each evening, school stories, ballet, skating, circus, western, mystery and war stories, featuring girls from lots of different countries being loyal to their friends and thwarting rivals, and occasionally rescuing men from mortal peril, and Peggy has enjoyed the novelty immensely. There’s also one story with a princess, but we haven’t got round to that.

Here’s The Silent Three, a school mystery that involves dressing up with masks - just the thing for Peg! Click pages to enlarge.

Where the action is . . .

 . . . well it’s not here.

For words on fees, cuts, and protests, I’ve been reading Flesh is Grass, Stumbling and Mumbling, Bad Conscience, and Marko Attila Hoare.

ADDED MONDAY: Stumbling and Mumbling on the pathetic Pupil Premium.

On Wikileaks and Assange I’ve been reading Carl Packman, Harpymarx, Laurie Penny, and also regrettably Naomi Wolf.

Enough words, Weimar Art posts an eclectic collection of portraits of business leaders, including some surprising choices.

Troll

What a business that school magazine turned out to be. Next year, let’s get the kids to do more of the work. Here’s a great troll, one of a bunch of fine paintings and collages illustrating The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Copyright © 2010 by a child in Reception.

Monsters

I’m scanning a load of stuff for the school magazine this weekend. Here are some great monster drawings from Year 2, that is 6 to 7 year olds. And there are so many more of the horrors!

Copyright © the individual artists.

Set design for the school play

4.5 x 2.8 metres - yikes!

Update: With a cast as good as this, who cares about the set?

If I were an atom

This book came up in an e-mail exchange with a friend, but I couldn’t find anything online to explain what it was I was talking about, so here I am hauling out the scanner, no longer at its best after my attempt to repair it with Super Glue.

This introduction to atoms for the very young was published in 1970 by Hutchinson of Australia, and was one of a series of picture books on physics written by Noel Wilson and illustrated by Raymond Smith. Others titles were If I met a molecule, If I were an electron, If I were radioactive, and If I were energy.

Below, a selection of spreads from If I were an atom. Click to enlarge.

Some more atomic art: Hans Bacher posts some illustrations from the book of Disney’s Our friend the atom, and The Poor Mouth has some 17th Century atomic poetry by Margaret Cavendish, of which there is much more here.

Extra: atomistic reductionism, by way of Jeff Weintraub.

If I were an atom, copyright Raymond F. Smith & Noel L. Wilson, published by Hutchinson of Australia 1970, S.B.N. 09/100620/1.

Talking about illustration

The children in Bo and Peggy’s school are putting together a magazine, and I’ve been helping out a little. Before the half-term holidays I was talking to Peggy’s class of five and six year olds on typography. This week I talked to Bo’s class of eight and nine year olds about illustration.

There were a lot of great pictures on show in the classroom, but doing a drawing for a magazine or newspaper is different to making a painting to hang on the wall. A magazine illustration has to compete and co-operate with words, headlines and body copy,  and with other images, photos, icons, and other illustrations. Also, magazine illustrations have to reproduce well at sizes that are small compared to what you can show on a wall.

Below are some of the examples of magazine illustration I used in talking about these issues, along with some minimal notes to help start off the conversation.

Here is a page from The New Yorker magazine. How big do you think these drawings were originally?

This big? Bigger?

The drawing is by Otto Soglow. He also drew a comic strip called The Little King.

This drawing is by Tom Bachtell. What do you think he might have drawn it with?

MacGiolla’s Guerrillas

I read with interest Johnny Guitar’s post last week on the death of Tomás MacGiolla, of the Workers’ Party, formerly known as Sinn Fein The Workers’ Party, and before that, Official Sinn Fein, &c. His headline was “A greatly underestimated figure”, though there are reservations, particularly in the comments.

My own view of the Workers’ Party was no doubt coloured by having their man in Galway as my science teacher. I can attest that the candidate had a strong belief in independent study, and took a keen interest in current affairs, reading The Irish Times from cover to cover in class while telling us to get on with our work and leave him in peace.

A couple of years after completing this uneducation, I did a drawing of my science teacher’s party leader as part of a batch of 1987 election campaign caricatures for the Irish Independent. Due to events described earlier, it wasn’t published by them, and instead appeared later that year in In Dublin magazine, illustrating a detailed article by Derek Dunne on MacGiolla, the Workers’ Party, and the Official IRA. Click away:

The grand design work on these pages was of course by the one and only Syd Bluett.

Big shoes

Drawn for The Guardian’s education section, 1993.

Here’s Unemployed Dad on education, and from a few months ago, Shuggy’s proposal on teachers’ pay.