The girl who silenced the world

In 1992 at the UN Earth Summit, in Rio, Severn Suzuki, a twelve year-old Canadian gave the most powerful speech during the plenary session. It literally silenced the assembled world leaders. Sadly little has happened and now some 17 years later, as the world's leaders prepare to thrash out a new agreement on GHG emissions, I hope that each and every one of them reads her words and feels shamed by their lack of action in the intervening years and a real desire to make a change for the future.

My government, or more correctly the government of my country, are already positioning themselves to take a middle of the road approach so as to avoid any great economic impact. This is embarrassing. Here in NZ we pride ourselves on our Nuclear Free status which we pledged against the nuclear powers of the world in spite of the economic ramifications yet we shy away from a bold stand on a much more threatening problem for fear of damage to our economy when there'll be no need for one if we can't live within our environment.

Here's what Severn said.


"Hello, I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We are a group of four twelve and thirteen year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference…


We raised all the money ourselves to come 6,000 miles to tell you adults 
you must change your ways.


Coming here today I have no hidden agenda. I’m fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points in the stock market.


I am here to speak for all future generations yet to come. I am here to
 speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.


I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone.

I
 am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in 
it.

I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my hometown, with my dad, until just 
a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear about animals and plants going extinct every day—
vanishing forever.

In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles, and rain forests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.


Did you worry about these things when you were my age?

All this is happening before our eyes, and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to 
realise, neither do you!

You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.

You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct.

And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now a
 desert.


If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!

Here you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters, or politicians. But really you are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles.

And all of you are somebody’s child.

I’m only a child, yet I know we are all a part of a family, five billion
 strong—in fact, 30 million species strong. And borders and governments will never change that. I’m only a child, yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world toward one single goal.


In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.


In my country, we make so much waste. We buy and throw away, buy and throw away. And yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to let go.


In Canada, we live the privileged life with plenty of food, water, and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers, and television sets. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us:
 “I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter, love, and affection.”


If this child on the street who has nothing is willing to share, why are we
 who have everything still so greedy? 
I can’t stop thinking that these children are my own age, that it makes a
 tremendous difference where you are born.

I could be one of those
 children living in the favelas of Rio. I could be a child starving in Somalia, a victim of war in the Middle East, or a beggar in India. I’m only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on
 ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this Earth would be.


At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to 
share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?


Do not forget why you are attending these conferences, who you are doing this for—we are your children. You are deciding what kind of a world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "Everything’s going to be all right.” “We’re doing the best we can.”
 “It’s not the end of the world.”


But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your 
list of priorities? My dad always says, “You are what you do, not what you say.”
 Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us.

I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words.


Thank you for listening."

Looking back and looking forwards

So as EDIT400 comes to the end of its first five-week block, the time has come to review the course and have an honest appraisal of what’s happened.

I’ve created a delicious.com account for myself. Four weeks ago I’d never heard of delicious in any context other than food. Who told the marketing brainiacs they could take ownership of a word we all use, slap a little ® or © next to it and call it their own. Foods are delicious. Websites aren’t. That aside, I can definitely see myself using delicious. I now only need to remember one web address and I can have access to all my favourites. Brilliant. A real effort saver.

PowerPoint. Been there, done that. (Where do I queue for the souvenir t-shirt?) I’m sure it hasn’t changed too dramatically in the last few years. Time in Africa doesn’t seem to have hurt my PowerPoint skills. PowerPoint, like delicious is useful, and I will use it in my teaching. I’d have liked to have had a play with Prezi. I’m told it blows PowerPoint away. You can dump all manner of stuff into it and organise it however you like. Skip over bits if time runs short or have extra bits to use if there’s time available. Maybe Prezi’s the personal jet pack to PowerPoint’s skateboard.

A wiki? Sorry, way too complicated for me. The one I was involved in setting up didn’t look at all like I expected, didn’t get quality input from all the members and was, for me, quite hard to navigate. Not intuitive at all. And people’s comments were signed with their UC student login ids. I’m sorry but what’s happened to names? I am Stu, I am not swm57. I did however manage to paste up some great pictures of Joe90 – I wonder who’s got that as their UC student logon?

The video that sold the idea of a wiki to us was great. Sliding bits of paper making a list for a camping trip and, hey presto! Stu’s bringing the tent and David’s got the camping stove. Translate that into a different field like talking about websites that’d be good for teaching mathematics though and I missed the boat somehow.

As for the name “wiki”? Last time I checked it was Ruben’s surname and Māori for week, yet in this case it seems to be a made-up word that simply sounds good. It certainly doesn’t mean anything to me. I just don’t get it – the word or the place for wikis. Unless I’m going camping, that is.

This blog? I’ve already got a blog. A friend set it up for me so she and my other friends could track my cycle tour and for me to keep a record of it. Some days it was a right pain to update. On others it was therapeutic. And on some it was an absolute joy to write. I still use it occasionally, but not very much.

My favourite part of my regular blog is “What’s on the myPod” and I've added a similar section to this blog. Long before Apple introduced the iPod or Sony brought out the Walkman - that often touted marketing gem they thought wouldn’t fly but took off and created an entirely new market segment - the myPod rose to fame. We all have one. Our ancestors had one. Adam and Eve may have had the first ones. Or maybe Lucy.

The myPod is your own internal iPod. Entirely free and permanently on shuffle, with batteries that never go flat, a myPod plays the songs that go round and around inside your head. It might skip on occasion or get the repeat button stuck at times, but it’s there and it goes on and on (and on). Some days it’ll keep playing the last song on the radio or TV before you walk out the door; I’ve had days filled with the closing song from Hi-5. On others something will trigger an old favourite to play again and again.

Of late my myPod has been repeating The Mutton Birds - “A Thing Well Made”. Maybe because the song is set in Christchurch (my current home), maybe because of a veiled reference to the Aramoana mass murder (close to my old home town), or maybe because of the haunting tuba refrain. Sometimes it’s obvious why a song’s on my myPod, other times it’s not.

But, sorry, I digress…

This blog however has become more of a reflective blog. And a soapbox for airing a few views. (The nature of public blogs though naturally tempers some of my more extremist views – you never know who’s reading.)

Which brings us nicely to what I would rather have learnt in an ICT course. If I’d been asked five weeks ago I’d have had no idea, but with the benefit of some 20:20 hindsight I would have liked to have been given the do’s and don’ts; discussed the ethics; been warned of the pitfalls and dangers; seen some of the things to look out for, those traps for young players. We got the good, but what of the bad and the ugly?

My last post, on the headmaster who unwittingly ended up with masses of porn on his work computer, drew a few comments along the lines of the tragedy of it all and how sad it was that kids would Google him. Those are facts of life for the world we live in. People do Google one another. Employers regularly check people’s Facebook sites before employing them. To me these are realities of the modern age and they’re ugly.

In an increasingly technologically-connected world we are all more connected and exposed than ever before. We’re connected electronically to many, many more people, from the man or woman at the next desk, the bloke down the road, to the web-enabled child in London, La Paz or Lahore and the Midnight Oil’s cannibals in smart suits and ties. And those connections are for ever – once something goes into cyberspace, whether it be fact or fiction, it’s there for people to see. Yet short of a natty little YouTube video on “once it’s posted, it’s there forever” I’ve not picked up any tips on keeping myself safe.

As a new migrant to Digi-land I feel like I’ve missed the induction programme. Migrants to new countries get some sort of indoctrination on the culture and safety aspects of living in their newly adopted home; migrants to Digi-land, a place fraught with cultural norms, etiquette and dangers just as real, do not. I’ve been told what to sign up to, and yes delicious is yummy, but I’ve not been warned to look after myself or advised as to how to do this.

The revised New Zealand Curriculum has a vision of young people being connected – able to relate to others; effective users of communication tools; connected to the land and environment; members of communities; international citizens. As someone who hopes to play a big part in helping to fulfil the aspirations of the new curriculum I wonder two things:

One, am I being well prepared to help young people become effective users of communication? I think so – EDIT400 has given me some arrows to add to my quiver and plenty of food for thought. My students will forever be much more technology-savvy than I can ever hope to be, but at least I’ve got a greater awareness of what the beaches and cliffs, the fields and rivers, the mountains and plains of Digi-land are like and I’ve got a couple of new tricks up my sleeve.

And two: The Mutton Birds song on the myPod has the lines

'cause when a man holds a thing well made

there's connection

there's completeness

when a man holds a thing well made

He's not viewing a virtual object. He's touching it. Holding it. And that gives the connection, the completeness.

So what of the new curriculum's desire for connection to the land and environment? As I’ve blogged before, technology needs to be used appropriately. ICT can be an effective tool to help people connect to the land and our environment, but wiki all you like and there’ll be no real connection to what really matters – not only the land and the environment, but other people and communities, locally and internationally – unless you grab your tent and camping stove and get out there. I sincerely hope other parts of my teaching course devote as much time and effort to providing the opportunities and the tools for making those connections as EDIT400 has devoted to ICT.