This week, I felt like a boxer who was first hit hard with an upper-cut to the head, then sucker punched with a second to the gut. The first hit came from an article in the NY Times, titled "No Rich Child Left Behind." The article reported a number of research findings that dispelled common myths about education reform. The one that stood out most to me was this; "It may seem counter-intuitive, but schools don't seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10% between kindergarten and high school....the academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students." Reading on, it was clear that the leverage point in education, the place we could score the most in reducing the widening gap between rich and poor is investing in child care and preschool. Clear enough. Until I picked up the Seattle Times and read this; "Per Pupil Spending on Pre-K Lowest in Decade." Don't get me wrong, there is a lot we could do to improve education all along the line, birth through completion of college. And we should. It's why organizations like the Road Map Project and Powerful Schools-two organizations I have worked closely with-are so important. But we need to be smart about where we invest the most time, the most money and the most effort. Or else we all will keep getting sucker punched year after year after year.
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I live with the illusion that I have a fairly firm grip on reality. This, despite the fact that scientists tell us that 96% of what exists in the universe cannot be seen, detected or comprehended. (Dark Matter and Dark Energy being their technical terms!). Yet when it comes to trying to understand what is going on politically in Egypt, I feel I am clearly in the Dark Matter region of the universe. Egypt is in the midst of a profound revolution, having just elected, in mid-2012, their first President through democratic elections in 40 years. For the past two years I have been working with university students, professors and young activists there. In October, I lived in Egypt for several weeks, as part of a unique international Social Media and Global Change class I teach, connecting students in the US with students and activists in Egypt. What I found was that despite the euphoria over that election, the Egyptian activists I met with were mostly filled with huge buckets of frustration mixed with a large dollop of deeper determination and hope that there will be a better future for all. This week, in response to President Morsi’s latest moves to take more power from the Judiciary Branch of Government, hundreds of thousands of citizens are camped out in the streets of Tahrir Square vehemently protesting his actions. This week, I asked a young activist/journalist I work with, Shorouk, to explain her take on the protests. She said she mostly keeps her head down now, focusing on her work and daily living, rather than trying to understand what is at the root of the upheaval. “It’s impossible to understand what is going on behind the scenes at this moment and to grasp the truth behind everything (due to) saturation. We're overloaded with media messages, whether from TV, newspapers, or social media, and with so many strings, it's difficult to stitch an opinion”. Professor Modany (speaking), Ahmed Salama, Greg Tuke And this morning I received a long letter sent out by Osama Modany, an English professor at one of the universities outside Cairo. He opens his letter with this: “Current political turbulence in Egypt is simply an elitist power struggle. All political groups hovering up there, whether Islamists, or the so called secular, are corrupt to the core. Even figures like El-Bardai and Wael Ghoneim, once affiliated to political factions, will be overwhelmed with more domineering, inherently corrupt figures from the same factions. The polarization between political factions in Egypt is not based on political opinion, or each one's agenda for the well being of the country. It is simply personal gain that drives them all which is not surprising considering that these figures have lived either thriving or moaning under successive dictatorships. They were part and parcel of Egyptian politics whether on the top or at the bottom. Now, it is each of these figure's one and only opportunity to jump and secure power, manipulating in the process the fragile feelings of the ignorant majority”. (full text; click here) The level of distrust and pessimism in the governing forces of Egypt seem extraordinarily high right now, even among the optimist activists I talk with regularly. “Why is the Muslim Brotherhood choosing to not organize a counter demonstration this Friday?” Why is Morsi really going for this power grab?”. Understanding the basic motivations and intent in the actions being taken by various moves grassroots organizational leaders and high government officials seems nearly unknowable right now. Yet, what happens in Egypt is no small matter to those of us in the west. So I invite others, particularly those of you in Egypt, to share your understanding of reality. I particularly invite responses longer than a tweet or “like” button push. Give us your perception of the Dark Matter in Egypt right now. Maybe, just maybe, as a result of the light you can shed on that reality, the 4% of what is known in the universe will grow just a hair. Midnight in Malta “Did you hear they declared martial law in the States?” It was midnight in Malta, a tiny island off southern Italy, and Denise and I have just landed here, awaiting transport to the even smaller island of Gozo, after a 10 hour flight from Cairo. We are, in a way, on the run. I learned the news of martial law from the lady behind the counter at the Malta ferry terminal, who upon hearing I was American, wants desperately to share this latest news bulletin with me. Cannons at Citadel on Gozo island Her startling information comes on the heels of a series of unwelcome news, starting with the warnings of imminent terrorist attacks to the small, quiet village on the Red Sea in the Sinai for which we had just purchased tickets but 24 hours earlier. Not to be deterred, we sought to go to other, less targeted regions of Egypt’s Red Sea for some rest and relaxation, only to be told that most rooms were now taken for upcoming Eid festivities this weekend. Except for one. Yet it had one minor downside; we would need to be ever mindful of possible unexploded land mines scattered about the beach. While we knew the chances of such encounters was slim, it was the final warning that an armed guard would be needed to transport us from this chosen remote Red Sea village to our reserved Nile boat departure in Luxor some 100 miles away, coupled with Denise’s lack of sleep for the past 7 days, that had us decide to fold our cards for now, and head to any nearby location that didn’t require artillery protection. Gozo shrine built 1000 years before pyramids We thought we had found it in Malta, an island but 2 hours from Cairo, and site of historical constructs that predated the pyramids. But now, with news of Marshall Law being declared in the States, I was thinking we might be here for little longer than the 8 planned days. The Maltese vendor grabbed her laptop from behind the kitchen curtain and clicked on the YouTube video, entitled “martial law coming to US". I felt some sense of relief when I noticed that the date of the video was Feb, 2012. Fifteen seconds into the first of three very grainy videos I knew War of the Worlds was not upon us. The first hard hitting expose, , narrated by none other than former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, revealed the US was now in control of a massive weather-changing device that Jesse inferred caused last year’s horrific tsunami off the coast of Japan. And that this was all part of the New World Order and its planned takeover of the world. The leaders behind the New World Order, Satanists for sure, also were behind the beheading of targeted Christians at Ft Lewis, now on the rise. Again, given that I was from Washington State, she was sure I would have at least heard of the guillotines present there (and clearly shown on this video, along with a stack of 3-4 heads lying on the ground nearby). If that wasn’t enough, she showed me another video revealing the stockpiled coffins that FEMA had on its grounds, all set to haul the Christians away. “Get out of the United States now, before it’s too late!” she warned, as she rested her case. Mediterranean one night in Malta The hour was late, but as the only American for miles around, I decided it was my duty to gently but firmly address this fool hardiness, point by point. I rarely try to refute someone else’s reality when I am traveling, preferring instead to try to understand theirs and learn. But somehow, at this late hour, and in my own state of uncertainty, I chose this as the time to clarify truth from falsehood, and stand my ground. I acknowledged that indeed these coffins could be owned by FEMA, and that in fact they could be for dead bodies, given that it is FEMA’s role in our country to deal with natural disasters. I told her I live 30 minutes from Ft. Lewis and we would have heard, rest assured, if there were guillotines in operation there. I have friends who have been stationed there, I added. I went on to tell her that FEMA has done some unusual stuff in its day. In fact, I explained, “In 1983 I had personally conducted a fact-finding protest tour with 20 other citizens and went inside one of about a dozen FEMA bunkers that were built in the 70’s and 80’s to house the top 75 corporate and political leaders in the Northwest, in the event of a nuclear war”. “But what you are telling me takes a grain of truth and turns it into a grand fabrication", I said. Our ferry was coming to take us to our island destination, so I rested my case and bid her a warm farewell. But I could see she was a bit taken aback about the nuclear war thing, and now, in the light of day, I am thinking she may have thought I was the gullible whack job. “Nuclear bomb shelters with names of the 75 people (families not included) to save while their families and 200 million others perish? And they have food and generators to last for 60 days till the war is over?! I know there truly are people who want to blow up buildings with innocent women and children in them, and I know there are people who think the end is near, and who drink Kool-aid to meet the Messiah, and devise sophisticated cigars that will kill elected leaders. It’s a big world. As my dad said, it takes all kinds. But 99.9% of the people I have met on this trip to Morocco, and Egypt and Malta are men and women and children laughing, and wanting to be kind, and who help me cross crazy streets, and want to help me understand the complexities of a revolution and nation-building, and who will stand up to despots and fanatics who seek to benefit a few at the expense of the many. But at midnight in Malta, reality and fantasy can be like two identical twins under the shadow of a dark Mediterranean sky. Political grafitti at Tahrir Square “Don’t worry if you see blood in the streets this week,” Shorouk tells me. “it’s normal.” But Cairo is not my normal. Not the traffic, the language, the dress, the smells, the color of the evening sky. I have been here two weeks now, and just as I start to feel I am getting into the cultural flow, I am hit by a rogue wave. Take last night for example. I just finished teaching a Making Compelling Videos workshop to Shorouk and a few other Egypt activists and journalists. They really got into the training, and you could watch their editing and videography skills improve by the hour. Everyone is now making plans for the evening, and there is talk of the Tahrir Square protests tonight. There are two issues of concern, I am told. One is protesting President Morsi’s lack of any measureable progress in his first 100 days. The other is the injustice of the government-aligned horse and camel riders who trampled and killed several protestors last year and were just declared by the courts to be innocent, despite damning photo evidence. But they warn tonight is not a good night to go to Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood is said to be organizing to come en mass, and it’s not clear what their intent is. Mena creating "Dogs of Cairo" video I am pooped anyway after the two day workshop so I walk the few blocks home as darkness settles in. I get ready to cross a street I have now crossed 5 times and have named it “The Gauntlet”. It is 8 lanes of highway with an island half way across, and it’s clearly the most dangerous thing I must regularly do to get home to my hotel. But tonight as I approach I hear loud, live music above the roar of the traffic. I stop just at the edge of The Gauntlet, and look over the black, wrought-iron fence surrounding a beautiful mansion and expansive yard. Inside the gate are hundreds of people crowded in, African looking, not Egyptian, the music is some kind of Afro-hip hop funky thing, and the women are dressed to the nines, in tight short skirts like it’s prom night. Long story short, a very well dressed man, who turns out to be a pastor in Uganda, invites Curious Greg inside, gets clearance for me past the guard despite my backpack banjo on board, and proceeds to escort me up on stage where just two other dignitaries, including the Ambassador of Uganda, are sitting. After more music and speeches and trophy giving, as they celebrate Uganda’s 50th year of independence, I am then invited into this Ugandan Embassy for dinner with the Ambassador and 30 of his closest friends. Goats and lambs on Cairo streets Now understand, during the entire evening, I am clearly the only white guy anywhere. I sit down for dinner with a representative from Nigeria, and a Zambian man, Fahad, who just graduated in Islamic Law here in Cairo. We have a pleasant enough conversation over dinner, given my 12 words of Arabic and his only slightly better English. At the close of dinner, I go to shake his hand. And as I do, he flips his hand slowly, palm up. So I am thinking, maybe this is the Zambian form of “Give me some skin”, which I begin to do. And as I start to touch his hand, he pulls it back, and looks hurt and confused. As am I. “Islamic Law Thing” I wonder? I know not to offer my hand to Muslim women unless they first offer theirs, but religious men too? I step away awkwardly, apologize using universal face language, say my quick good byes to the Uganda Pastor and Ambassador and Aide, and go home. This morning I wake up and turn on CNN to find out what happened in Tahrir Square last night. Basically the story is “Protest in Cairo again. Hundreds injured. Muslim Rage.” Nothing about the complexities of what I was told last night. Nothing about a new democracy’s early struggles, after 30 years of oppressive government. To get that, you have to go somewhere else. Because Truth, like Beauty, is NOT found in the eye of the beholder. We all tend to be blinded by our own cultural lens. The mistake is when we can’t suspend our preconceived assumptions long enough to dig deeper, and go directly to the eyes of those who use a different, and more familiar cultural lens. Because its then that our kaleidescope of Truth and Beauty becomes both more complex, and more clear. I don't know really know why I was seated on the embassy stage, or why there are no traffic lights in Cairo, or why Morsi over promised what he would do in his first 100 days. I still don’t know why Fahad refused my handshake. Even the Muslim activists I later asked thought it was weird. I do know why there will be blood in the streets this week though. It’s Eid, a major and sacred holiday, so its lambs to the slaughter. Turkeys in America, take note. And run. Thanksgiving is coming. As the protests in the Arab world erupted in two dozen countries this week, leaving four US embassy personnel, and at least one protestor dead, social media and mainstream media were filled with pronouncements and exclamations of what it means. Few are asking questions. In the next two weeks I head to Egypt to ask questions, and I invite you to go along to ask your questions too. We are living at a time we now have all the tools we need to communicate, but we have equipped ourselves with few of the tools to understand. Lawrence Pintak, dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, described to the New York Times this week how this recent episode demonstrates how easy it is for a few extremists to spread chaos around the globe "We're so far beyond the CNN-effect days. We're into this YouTube effect, where words are lethal ... All it takes is a laptop and an Internet connection and you can cause people to die and you can play to the script." I am a big believer in the positive power of social media. Part of my work is teaching others how to make compelling videos and use social media to address pressing social problems. But we cause great harm when we use it primarily to talk and not listen. My dad grew up in a small farming community in central Washington state. Like all of us, he had his own set of prejudices, which he shared regularly with anyone who would listen to him in the family and in our neighborhood. Some were pretty outrageous. Even as a kid, I could see he was not a big fan of black people, Jews, Catholics or Arabs. But his claims about such people (even now, it’s too embarrassing to even give specific examples) rarely got out of the neighborhood. I hate to think what he might have done some evening with an internet connection back then! The good thing about my dad though, is that when he got to know the Jewish family that moved in to the neighborhood, and the Catholic family across the street, and the black guy at work, his general prejudice began to melt away. Often shockingly fast. And my experience, as well as the social science research on this, shows that my dad is not an exception. Personal contact, combined with cooperative action makes a huge difference in reducing our stereotypes, increasing empathy and understanding Yesterday, an editorial in Al Monitor, a media network covering the Middle East, asked this; “Why is it that every now and then there are some people who try to offend Islam and Muslims, whether through cartoons, burning the Koran and now through this video? These disrespectful acts are on the rise because our leaders are being lenient in this matter.” Are these acts on the rise? Do many Muslims feel local or intenational media are sensationalizing such acts? We all have lots of questions. I invite you to send me yours and I will do my best to ask them as I meet folk from all walks of life s in Egypt and Morocco. (Just type your email address into the “subscribe” box in the upper right corner of this page to keep in touch) Egyptian policeman tries to protect female reporter from thugs during protest June 2011 (Mohamed Omar, EPA / Landov) This week my friend Rabab in Cairo reports that widespread sexual harassment has continued in Egypt since the revolution, despite groups of men forming around females to try to protect them at times, like at a recent demonstration this week. The US has never been immune to degradation of women either, and comments by elected officials like Rep. Todd Akin (Rep-Kansas) this week about "legitimate rape" and his statement that women rarely get pregnant from rape only show how far our own country has to go. Fortunately, his comments have been repudiated this week by most, including many in his own political party. But as I head to Egypt in a few weeks to learn more, I am looking for examples of strategies Egyptians are engaging in to try to change all that. This week I found one such group. Its called Harassmap and is an organization that encourages women to immediately report all forms of sexual harassment (even rating the level of attack), and then showing these incidents on a map. In this way, a bright light is put on the extent and severity of the problem. In so doing, the organization hopes it will begin to alert women to high danger spots, help reduce the feeling of resignation that nothing can be done, and help increase reporting and eventual punishment and reduction of the harassment. It has been often said that "Women hold up half the sky", as Nicholas Kristoff popularized in his compelling book Half the Sky in which he catalogs the countless examples of the essential and equally powerful contribution women make to humankind. Yet its tough to hold up the sky when someone is grabbing at your pants. In fact, men don't stand for it. And neither will women. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. 'Our traditional dress', Kurdish youth tell me. Last night I had a live video conference with my daughters, Erica and Jenny. Iraq to Seattle, my bedroom to theirs, easier than a phone call, and it’s free. This is the new world of today. Electricity goes off from time to time each day here, there are worries of terrorist attacks in the markets and there are virtually no Americans in the two small towns we visit. One hundred percent Kurds. American, or any other non-Arab/Kurdish face is hard to find anywhere around here. (Military personnel are farther south). But every Kurdish /Iraqi teen worth his salt has a cell phone, peppering each meeting I attend with cell phones going off, and texting going on non-stop. And if you have a computer and internet (common) and a $50 webcam, you’ve got some potentially serious global legs. The most disconcerting part of being here is the tight security leash we must be on. ‘When you leave here at the MercyCorps offices you must text message the Director to let him know you are leaving”, I tell my daughters on our call. “And then you have to text message him again when you arrive at your destination just a few minutes away to let him know you have arrived safely”. “Wow, it sounds just like when we lived at home in high school”, Erica exclaims. Despite the heavy security that can be a real downer, I leave tomorrow with an enormous dose of optimism. The young people I have met in Gaza and Iraq, two of the most war-torn areas of the world in recent years, are filled not with hopelessness and grinding despair, but with hope and enormous energy. They are painting and repairing schools neglected by their governments, doing teach-in’s on democracy, and educating children and teachers about how to dispose of unexploded bombs that still lay about the community. They want to really connect with Americans, and see it as a beacon of hope, of freedom and potential allies to discuss problems they face that are similar. Sometimes it is an unrealistic picture (no poverty, no garbage, no political corruption in America), and sometimes they think “why should Americans even care about them?” I will give you one reason, we could all learn a thing or two from them about hope. “When we open our eyes, we first smell catastrophe”, Nazim, a local teacher tells me at the end of our training session today. He is twenty five years old and has lived through three wars/invasions. “Our last escape involved my family piling into one car with five other families and racing to the border. I still don’t understand how we all fit.” Yet, despite this, Nazim is daily teaching students the critical importance of talking directly with people from other cultures so they are exposed to new ideas and to take positive, effective local action. “It’s the only way we are going to make this world better for all of us”. And now, for the first time in his history, his students are doing just that. The internet is a great thing. It can connect families like mine when some member is half-way around the world in a war-zone, to ease any fears and joke about being held hostage as a teen in high school. And it can connect Kurds with Americans with Palestinians with Jews to get to know one another as human beings. That alone won’t solve the nasty problems we now face. But it’s a heck of a start. Yesterday, as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton left Cairo, her car was pelted with a few tomatoes. She said she wasn't particularly bothered by it, seeing it both as a sign of a growing democracy, yet also as an expression of political uncertainty many Egyptians currently feel. I wonder what is in store for me as I head to Cairo for a month this fall? I will be working with young leaders in Egypt and Morocco as part of a course I will be co-teaching at Seattle University called Social Tools for Global Change. The students will form global teams, working cross-culturally to identify and to help solve pressing problems faced by participating international organizations. Students will have team meetings using live skype video , and receive training in how to make their own videos and use social media to raise awareness about local issues and help address social problems. I will broadcast live from Tahrir square, using free streaming tools as we bring voices from the world directly to students in the US, and elswhere, so unfiltered questions and responses can be asked and heard. This is not the usual way our universities engage in global education. Mostly, we study about the world, not directly with the world.....except for those fortunate few who are able to travel to study abroad. Peter Blomquist, who has worked internationally for most of his distinguished career, and I, decided we wanted to teach this course in a dramatically different way. So, we will be demonstrating that with the new social tools available today, learning, meeting and working globally together live through the power of the internet is but a click away. Instead of teaching "about" Social Tools for Global Change, students will be using these tools both as part of the learning process and in applying them to address marketing, fundraising, and social problems faced by international organizations. As learners, we will be over 8000 miles away from each other, but we will all be in the virtual classroom together. I don't know what I will find when I travel to Morocco and Egypt this fall. Maybe I will see some flying tomatoes too. But you can travel with me and experience it, through this blog, through the live broadcasting I will do on You Tube Live, and in videos stories we will produce. Stay tuned. |
AuthorGreg Tuke teaches and travels internationally, working with university faculty in India, Indonesia and the MIddle East, sharing strategies for implementing international collaborations within course work. This blog chronicles key experiences and insights about those experiences. All opinions expressed are mine, and represent no other institutional affiliation. Archives
March 2020
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