My Beauty Best Teacher

• 1st Annual “Art Ed Blog of the Year” Contest « The Art of Education

  Another "contest" but one for art teacher bloggers. The great thing that happens is that this sort of thing helps subject area teachers find each other. If you're an art teacher, you may want to peruse this blog for links.

  tags: education art teaching lessonplans

• Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog? | Michael Hyatt

  A great post about the common mistakes of bloggers. I will use these with my students.

  tags: education teaching lessons blogging

• Twenty Dyslexia Friendly Writing Tips - Resources - TES

  20 Dyslexia friendly writing tips. (Yes, I've spent the evening browsing the ideas on the Tes website.)

  tags: education teaching lessonplans engchat

• What Periodic element Are you?

  This Facebook-style quiz gives students an element that is like their personality. Might be fun to finish up class one day in science.

  tags: education teaching lessonplan Facebook

• Explore the Seafloor Physics Teacher's Pack - Resources - TES

  This study pack has videos, handouts, and lesson plans that accompany a lesson about mapping the sea floor.

  tags: education science teaching lessonplans

• Holocaust Resources

  In the UK, Holocaust Memorial Day is the 27th of January. This is something that we should all discuss and cover in an age appropriate way. Actually, I have permission and show Hotel Rwanda to my class. I want the students to understand and know what happens in the world and that all it takes for bad things to happen is for good people to do nothing.

  tags: education holocaust teaching socialstudies history_teacher

• Holocaust worksheets - Resources - TES

  Dyslexic friendly resources for teaching about the Holocaust.Notes and handouts.

  tags: education teaching history history_teacher

• KS3 History - McCarthy Trials - Resources - TES

  Talk about the McCarthy trials using archived film from the 1950's. 

  tags: history teaching history_teacher

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Often overlooked on this blog and others is foreign policy. Those who follow the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan usually only do so as a reflection on US domestic policy. Events in North Korea or Georgia serve only to give citizens of the United States a chance to test responses by political actors. Few really truly appreciate that importance of foreign policy, but it was foreign affairs that dragged our nation into the War on Terror, the Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, etc. It was foreign policy that led to crisis in the Balkans, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. It was foreign policy that opened up markets to our products.

Walter Russell Mead never losses sight of foreign policy and its importance and today put together an excellent article that surveys the major challenges facing the world. Here are some highlights from his article Things Fall Apart, via The American Interest:

...There are times when the ideas of the world’s rulers and the institutions through which they govern are adequate to the needs of the era, and there are times–like the present–when they are not. It is not just the Obama administration that seems mentally and even culturally unprepared to understand much less to guide the events now sweeping through the world. In Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and Delhi — to say nothing of Washington – leaders seem equally clueless, equally committed to outmoded, inaccurate approaches to the issues of our time...

Europe

...The European Union is perhaps the most feckless of the world’s power centers. Its currency is built on a foundation of hopeful assumptions that haven’t panned out: for example that countries as disparate in culture and situation as Greece, Germany, Finland, Ireland and Italy can all live happily under a common currency. There has been no shortage of warning signs for the last decade: there was no secret about the housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain. The falsity of Greek statistics was well known, as were the imprudent habits of its governments and the dysfunctional nature of its economic culture....

...Meanwhile, Europe continues its relentless failure to manage urgent challenges at home and abroad. The Europeans are unwilling (and in some cases, unable) to make the investments that would keep NATO strong; the continuing refusal to take Turkey’s application for EU membership seriously further and decisively marginalizes Europe in the Middle East. Wishful thinking cannot substitute for policy when it comes to the question of immigration, and Europe’s deepening demographic crisis ensures not only a future of population decline but of economic decline and welfare state bankruptcy as well...

China

...Europe is not the only place where leaders don’t measure up to the problems. Although China is not as democratically governed as Europe, on the whole the technocrats of Beijing have handled the last twenty years better than the bureaucrats of the EU. Nevertheless Beijing is confronting a confluence of economic, environmental and social challenges that pose problems which even China’s leadership is unlikely to overcome. Arguments about China’s currency undervaluation, while real, miss the main point: Whether China revalues the renminbi or not, its model of rapid growth based on manufactured exports is reaching fundamental limits... Rising raw material prices combined with consumer fatigue in the malls is squeezing the profitability of Chinese industry just as workers are demanding higher wages. Meanwhile, food price inflation in China is triggering mass anxiety and the financial system appears vulnerable to the kind of bubbles that have wreaked such havoc in the West....

China’s problems go beyond economics. Chinese public opinion, smarting from what it sees as two centuries of humiliation, and now elated by (overblown) press reports of China’s rise, wants its government to follow a more assertive and even aggressive foreign policy. Disputes with Japan, Korea and Vietnam over offshore islands stir deep currents of emotion, and public opinion judges the Chinese government by its ability to prevail in these disputes.

...Looming environmental disasters threaten China’s future, with issues of water, air quality and the usual environmental devastation that accompanies communist governance on a massive scale already taking a toll. The consequences of the one-child policy threaten a demographic disaster as an aging Chinese population will place a growing burden on a society not yet affluent enough to support it...

Russia

Emerging from the sordid shadows of the Soviet Union, Russia faced four great challenges. It needed to come to terms with the horrors and failures of the past, recognizing the enormous evil that Russia both suffered and inflicted during the Soviet period... It has failed, and Russian life and culture remain poisoned by the residue of unrepented horrors and uncomprehended crimes.

...Second, Russia needed to build a modern and competent state that in turn could provide the framework for a new economy and a new society... but with every passing year the critical failure of the Putin presidency to build the stable institutions and solidify the rule of law that a genuinely strong Russian state would require becomes more clear — and more costly....

...The third task, of building the kind of capitalist economy that could provide its citizens with dignity and affluence, has also been left undone. There is no one who thinks that the rule of law is secure in Russia, or that investors (foreign or domestic) have any real security for their investments....

...The fourth task, of finding a suitable world role for a new Russia, has also been decisively botched. Russia has no real friends anywhere in the world; there are those it can bully and those (a much greater number) that it can’t...

Mead also touches on Japan ("a pale shadow of its former self"), India (scandals, poverty, political chaos), Israel, Turkey, etc. His conclusion is one that I also echo:

I hope and pray that the generations of today will not know the sick despair of September 1939; if we are to avoid that kind of fate under even uglier circumstances, we need to start demanding more of our leaders — and of ourselves.

For those interested, check out some books by Walter Russell Mead such as Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage), or Walter Russell Mead.

In Shadow and Act:

During the Rwandan genocide, when neighbors killed neighbors and friends betrayed friends, some crossed lines of hatred to protect each other. At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Mufti of Rwanda, the most respected Muslim leader in the country, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from participating in the killing of the Tutsi. As the country became a slaughterhouse, mosques became places of refuge where Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis came together to protect each other. KINYARWANDA is based on true accounts from survivors who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the madrassa of Nyanza...[continue reading]

Susie Linfield writing in Guernica:

“Reconciliation” has become a darling of political theorists, journalists, and human-rights activists, especially as it pertains to the rebuilding of postwar and post-genocidal nations. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of Rwanda. Numerous books and articles on the topic—some, though not all, inspired by Christian teachings—pour forth. It can plausibly be argued, of course, that in Rwanda—and in other places, like Sierra Leone and the Balkans, where victims and perpetrators must live more or less together—reconciliation is a political necessity. Reconciliation has a moral resonance, too; certainly it is far better than endless, corpse-strewn cycles of revanchism and revenge. Yet there is sometimes a disturbing glibness when outsiders tout the wonders of reconciliation, as if they are leading the barbarians from darkness into light. Even worse, the phenomenological realities—the human truths—of the victims’ experiences are often ignored or, at best, treated as pathologies that should be “worked through” until the promised land of forgiveness is reached.

via
3QuarksDaily

This is Africa reporting on efforts to bolster regional integration. A bugbear if there ever was one:

Africa accounts for just 3 percent of world trade today, and just 12 percent of that is internal. Underdeveloped transport and power infrastructure, as well as cumbersome regulatory environments and corruption also make it the world’s most expensive business environment. Dominated by fragmented and small economies, the continent lags well behind the likes of Asia, Europe and North America in terms of competitiveness – and as a consequence – struggles to attract large scale private investment outside of the extractive minerals and oil and gas industries.Addressing these challenges will invariably focus attention on Africa’s regional economic communities. While each geographical part of the continent has its own REC, one has quickly emerged as a model for integration; the East African Community. Having broken up in 1977, the EAC was re-established in 1999, and has since then taken significant strides towards building an effective economic and political framework for integration across its five member states – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

More here

More on the finance for the 'missing middle' in This is Africa:

While small enterprises are the lifeblood of African economies, they often struggle for financing. but are things changing?...reforms to the business environment in several countries, particularly Rwanda, and a degree of coalescence by international development financiers and investors around an understanding of the social and economic importance of SME development mean that increasing amounts of time and money are being spent on understanding and addressing the needs of this complex market segment. Together these businesses are more often than not the principal employer in any given country. They compose anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of most African economies, with the variance generally more a matter of definition than of structure. Furthermore, owner-entrepreneurs drive the creation of a middle class, a crucial factor in countries’ movement out of poverty and in their development as markets for international investment...

More here

Yesterday was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24). The word ‘genocide’ is a recent word that means destroying, either in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This can be done by killing them all off, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life that are calculated to kill them off, imposing measures on the group intended to prevent births by the group, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, and trying to breed the group out of existence by raping the women of the group.

The 20th Century has a brutal legacy of genocide, and it all started with the Armenian Genocide from 1915-1923. Before Darfur (current day), before Bosnia (1995), before Rwanda (1994), before Cambodia (1975-1979), before the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and Poles and Gypsies (1938-1945), and before the Ukrainian Famine, there was the Armenian Genocide. Hitler once justified his Holocaust by asking “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

In the Armenian Genocide, more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed out of 2 million. The main reason for this was a desire to ‘Turkify’ the Ottoman Empire and kill off all non-Muslims (Armenians were largely Christian). Armenian men were drafted into the army to fight WWI- and then were disarmed and put into labor camps, where they were soon starved or killed. Groups of government officials spread rumors of the Armenians betraying Turkey, blamed them for the losses Turkey was suffering during WWI, and demanded ‘justice.’ In April 24, 1915, all community leaders were systematically rounded up and put to death. After that, as WWI spread and became more confusing and disorganized, armed groups would come into Armenian villages and kill off the rest of the men or make them go on death marches, rape or carry off the women to use as slaves, kidnap or enslave the children, loot the village of all valuables, and then chase off remaining Armenians (who then later died of starvation, exposure, or brutality). By 1923, Armenian was simply a memory- 4000+ years of history wiped away like it never existed- churches, monasteries, schools, people, possessions were all destroyed or gone. Even the Armenian names of cities, villages, and rivers were changed.

The official line in Turkey is that the number of people that died has been grossly inflated, and the evidence of this genocide comes from dubious and prejudicial sources. Turkey claims that more Muslims than Christians died during the same period in the chaos that engulfed Turkey during and after WWI. Turkey says that Ottoman officials were tried for crimes against the Armenians and were acquitted, and that the word ‘genocide’ wasn’t even around until after WWII, and that the Holocaust isn’t anything like what happened in Turkey to the Armenians. In 2004, Turkey passed Article 301, which makes it a crime to even talk about the Armenian Genocide, and Turkey today spends millions lobbying the US to try to defeat efforts here in the US to recognize the genocide. Turkey even gives millions to prestigious universities to fund studies of the ‘Turkish view’ of the genocide and offers scholarships to people who will write books or articles denying that the genocide ever took place.

Typical for the waffling spineless President that he is, Barack Obama refused to call what happened in Armenia from 1915-1923 a genocide, instead 'artfully' finding a middle ground on the issue, much like Chamberlain did when confronted by a similar display of evil. "On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that ninety-five years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began," Obama said in a statement.... " It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts." He then refused to call what took place in Armenia a 'genocide' and mouthed vague words of nothingness to mark the occasion.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) rapped Obama for "disgraceful capitulation to Turkey's threats" and of "offering euphemisms and evasive terminology to characterize this crime against humanity," in a press release Saturday. I agree.

While it is important to maintain relations with Turkey, and while we badly need their support on a bunch of important subjects, the truth is the truth, and it is black and white. Obama should recognize the truth and quit trying to make everything so grey.

The 'Urban Africa and Sustainable Futures' photography exhibition by David Adjaye
will:

"...reveal a unique snapshot of life in Africa today, documenting the nature of urban life in a developing country, a unique geo-cultural survey profiling the African city in a global context...he has captured the urban development of cities including Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda showing traces of its Colonial past, Tripoli in Libya, very much invaded by the energy of the present, the informal settlements on the edges of new cities like Abuja, Nigeria and the traces of apartheid still inscribed on Pretoria, South Africa."-creative boom

HT! @digitalafrican

Mukoma Wa Ngugi writing in Zeleza:

The fiery Che Guevara once said that love is the basis of revolution. The clergy that stood against apartheid and dictatorships, or gave refuge to the hunted during the genocide in Rwanda, might not have agreed with Che's methods, but they were certainly being moved by a deep love for a collective humanity...today, without the evil incarnates of apartheid and the neocolonial dictatorships of the 1990's, oppression is no longer so easily definable. We are living in confusing times. Opposition parties have been bought off. Intellectuals are unable to help us digest what the betrayal of our second independence demands of us. Political activists engaged, sometimes by necessity, in bread and butter issues such as housing cannot attend to the national and international dimensions of our struggles.

More here

In the Washington Post Michael Fairbanks on Paul Kagame:

Rwanda is one of the few nations in the developing world spending more on education than on the military. Kagame re-wrote the constitution such that his party cannot have more than 50 percent of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his Prime Minister and 70 percent of his cabinet are from the other. Thirty percent of elected officials at the level of municipality, parliament, and cabinet are required to be women; and a world-leading 56 percent of parliament is now women. The country is secure and the World Bank's Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world last year.

More here

In LRB Stephen Smith writes about France's slow withdrawal from its erstwhile colonies:

It’s hard to date the death of Françafrique precisely: the exquisite corpse still haunts many minds, and ghost stories are a lucrative business. Even so, three events in 1994 adumbrated the end: the (unprecedented) devaluation of the CFA franc and with it the crumbling of the monetary wall around the Franco-African enclave economy; the genocide in Rwanda, which left blood on the hands of Africa’s gendarme (having failed to understand a country outside its historical zone of influence, France had thrown its weight behind ‘Hutu power’); and finally, the state funeral of the Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the sub-Saharan godfather of Françafrique and an enthusiast of the ‘Franco-African state’ – indeed, it was Houphouët who coined the term at a party congress in 1973.

More here

Thomas Sowell put out another brilliant article today, and the title of my post is the title of the headline. Democratic President of the United States Barack Obama is actively and personally trying to create a potential disaster for our nation, and Sowell writes about it in clear and powerful language. Here are some selected parts, although you should read the whole article here:

When that person is the president of the United States, the potential for disaster is virtually unlimited. Many people are rightly worried about what this administration's reckless spending will do to the economy in our time and to our children and grandchildren, to whom a staggering national debt will be passed on. But if the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief. He is heading this country toward disaster on many fronts...

Sowell goes on to talk about the country heading towards disaster by Obama and the Democrats putting in place and rhetoric encouraging and helping Iran to become nuclear, but he could have talked about Obama destroying our manufacturing capabilities with the energy limit-and-tax bill, or the Democrats policy of nationalizing key industries and then running them into the ground, or the Democrats and Obama taking over health care of you and you family so that they can encourage aborting your babies and killing off your grandparents. These are all disasters in the making, but Sowell goes another direction:

Nothing has torn more countries apart from inside like racial and ethnic polarization.

Sowell is right- identity politics is a corrupting influence on a country and will rip countries to pieces. Whether they be poor (Rwanda) or okay (Czechoslovakia), what tore apart these nations was identify politics. Making judgements and decisions based on race, color, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or religion- America was founded on not doing this, and we now have elected a President who is going to try hard to encourage these very things. Sowell ends his essay with these powerful lines:

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites-- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.Moreover, ignorance by itself is not nearly as bad as charging full steam ahead, pretending to know.

While the mainstream media in America will never call him on this, these repeated demonstrations of his amateurism and immaturity will not go unnoticed by this country's enemies around the world. And it is the American people who will pay the price.

America will pay the price for electing this Democrat.

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) aims to create a safe and structured residential community for orphaned children in Rwanda. The village will be a place of hope, where traumatized youth can "dry their tears" (Agahozo) and "live in peace" (Shalom).-website

From Walrus Magazine:

Emmanuel: Alice is the last person I cut. I cut off her hand and made a scar on her face. I thought I killed her. And then I stopped killing. Something had begun to bother me...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of Lionel Healing

Jen Brea at Global Voices provides us with a litany of excerpts that put the Congolese leader to task:

The Congolese blogosphere had harsh criticism for Congolese president Joseph Kabila's recent interview in The New York Times. In it, Kabila talks about Rwanda, AFRICOM, Chinese investment, and his passion for motorcycles.He also talked about how good help is hard to find; many bloggers have blasted him for it. Kabila blames corruption on Mobutu's legacy and the ineptitude of his own officials, rather than taking responsibility for his government's problems...[continue reading]

Paul Kagame states:

“Without a knowledge base, Africa’s imperative for agricultural and industrial development to create wealth will remain unrealized. Nor will we be able to develop and manage water, energy, resources, health, climate change and biodiversity, to name a few fundamentals.”

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• Rwanda lambasts 'cowardice' of UN (news.bbc.co.uk)