Aug 10

Learning leadership from the most impoverished of women

I recently attended a dinner in aid of The Hunger Project and their work in seeking to end world hunger by empowering people – and especially women – in poverty-stricken areas to make change happen. In the course of their work, they have discovered something that should not surprise us, but might nonetheless challenge our view of the world: that the women leading change in developing communities, poor and deprived by our standards, have an enormous amount to teach us all about leadership.

Some of the hurdles faced by women in rural villages in India, from where one of the key speakers on the evening came, seem insurmountable. Violence and the cultural exclusion of women might stand in the way of many a strong individual, but the lessons learned from observing these women, empowered by the ‘I can/we can’ approach of the work of The Hunger Project, are remarkable. Community workers on the ground begin the process, seeking to build self-reliance, to empower women as change agents, and to forge relationships with local government to enable effective partnerships; from there on, the women move forward, translating into action their determination to bring water, health and proper education to their villages. They need strong motivation, but also creative thinking, and an absolute commitment to their cause; when this is seen in action, it is incredible what can be done.

Women in rural India who are empowered to seek change are actually effecting change, and in this there are great lessons for us all, wherever we are in the world, and whatever our circumstances. Women make a difference; no hurdle is too great to overcome in pursuit of a fundamentally important goal; working together we are stronger than working alone. Crucially, too, when we reach out beyond the self to understand others in life, we can transform not just our understanding, or their understanding, but the understanding and activity of entire communities.

Change is powerful; and although these women have few resources, they teach us that change is always possible. These are lessons we need to make sure that all of the next generation learn – wherever they are in the world.

 

 

Aug 03

Countering bullying on and off Twitter: why learning how to behave well is an essential part of education

A Twitterstorm has been in full flow this past week or so, reacting to revelations that Caroline Criado-Perez has been subjected to appalling threats of rape and violence through the medium of Twitter. Ms Criado-Perez led a successful three month campaign to bring a female face – that of Jane Austen – to the new UK £10 note; when the news was announced, this sparked a venom online which included, in her words, “up to fifty threats an hour” over a sustained period of 12 hours. This venom was extended to her defenders, including Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, who has a great track record in standing up for what is right. Two people have since been arrested, and Tony Wang, the General Manager of Twitter UK, has since apologised and promised to make it easier for users to report abuse; the fact remains, however, that – idealistic though this may sound – in a civilised society, this kind of behaviour should never occur. That it does so is of grave concern, particularly to those responsible for the education of our future generations; it indicates to us that we must place a high value on education in how to behave with others, and how to change behaviour that is unkind or bullying.

This is not simply a question of etiquette online, although teaching our young people how to behave in their online interactions is essential as part of this process; this education reaches far deeper, into how we respect and treat ourselves and others. Since the days of Aristotle, who observed the innate ‘goodness’ of human beings, but who emphasised that this ‘goodness’ needed to be developed through practice into habits and character, philosophers have wrestled with how to enable people to grow into the best of themselves, in a way that allowed them to develop and contribute to a harmonious society. Sanctions and punishments alone are not the answer, although there is intense value in learning that actions have consequences; the real opportunity lies in changing behaviour through intervention and education.

And we need to spend more time on this in schools, in active programs, but also through role-modelling, intervening, exposing and discussing values, and helping our young people to grow. As the Dalai Lama pointed out in his recent public talk in Sydney, in words that will resonate with most belief systems throughout the world: we spend time learning letters to enable us to be proficient readers; why then should we not expect to spend time learning about how to be in relation to others? Studying – and practising – good behaviour is essential to our development as human beings. We need to learn how to interact with others if we are to grow a civilised world, and this is particularly important when our young people do not have the strong messages or role models around them in society to help show them what they should be doing. Bullying and unkindness abound amongst those in the public eye, and violence and cruelty are to be found represented in the media at every turn.

Writing assemblies for young students is a very good discipline. When I was planning my beginning of term assembly for Kindergarten to Year 2, I knew that I wanted to tell them about the Dalai Lama and the messages about values that he had to communicate when he gave his public talk in Sydney. I knew I had to distil into a few simple words what he wanted to communicate – messages about values that the girls would understand and remember. I wanted to make sure that they were at their very simplest level, so our children could understand, and this was what I came up with:

  • Naturally, people are very kind.
  • We often hear things around us that make us less kind – we read stories about unkind people, or watch television about unkind people.
  • This all makes us forget a bit that we need to be kind.
  • So we need to remind ourselves all the time to be kind.
  • And – all the time – we need to practise being kind.

If we all learned to abide by these messages – and it will require discipline and action for us to learn to do so – we would go a long, long way to making the world that better place that we all know it can be.

 

Jul 27

“When did protecting guns become more important than protecting people?”

I don’t think I have ever written specifically about gun control before, but I am moved to do so by a link I was sent recently to a new video on YouTube. In it, a former National Rifle Association member, now living in Australia, expresses his deep disappointment and concern about the position that the NRA in the US is currently taking on guns, in the name of ‘freedom’. As he puts it, “when did protecting guns become more important than protecting people?”

This is an issue that directly affects women. According to 2010 FBI data, reported in the Huffington Post in May this year, almost two thirds of women who are murdered each year die at the hands of a family member or partner. In fact, in situations that involve domestic violence, “having a gun in the home makes a woman eight times more likely to be killed.”

This infographic is stark and clear – Women in the U.S. are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other high-income countries; the presence of a gun in domestic violence situations increases the risk of homicide for women by 500 percent; people with a history of committing domestic violence are more likely to subsequently murder an intimate partner, and firearms significantly increase the risk of homicide for women.

When it works properly, the background check system keeps guns out of domestic abusers’ hands; the proof lies in the statistic that in US states that require a background check for every handgun sale, 38 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners.

With such a strong link between domestic violence homicides and firearms, it seems only commonsense that doing what we can to make it more difficult for people to own guns will go some way to reducing deaths of women. In this context, it doesn’t make sense at all to oppose universal background checks.

Chris Komor’s message in his YouTube video is simple – this issue affects us all. His approach is an entirely commonsense one, as is his call to action. Wherever you are in the world, do try to do something about gun control.

Jul 19

Online or offline – preparing girls to manage social media

At Ascham this past week we held an excellent CyberSafety Forum, led by Susan McLean, well-known for her no-nonsense approach to how we protect children from the dangers on online activity. Her presentation and the subsequent discussion, while looking at all the possibilities for online engagement which lie in wait for young people, had a few simple messages – parents need to be aware of what is out there, parents need to be involved with what their children do online, and parents need to be prepared to say “no”: “no” to underage use of Facebook, “no” to unlimited access to the internet, “no” to online technology in private spaces like bedrooms.

Undoubtedly, there is much that is good about social media and the opportunities that easy connectivity brings; they are here to stay, and on balance – provided that we use them wisely and teach our children to do the same – then they can be a positive addition to our lives. When parents see how much danger and damage that lies within them when they are NOT used wisely, however, they are quite rightly shocked into action, and it is together, armed with the same messages and the same firm boundaries, that as schools and as parents we can work together most effectively to help train and educate young people in how to manage this aspect of their lives and to protect themselves and others from the cruelties and harshnesses into which the online space can descend when it is unboundaried, unmonitored and unregulated (as – to our shame as a society – it often is).

But our young people can be a source of pride in this respect too. A comment piece in last week’s Sydney Morning Herald from a Year 11 girl called for her peers to wake up to the damage that ‘selfies’ – those pictures of oneself, taken often in sexually provocative poses and posted online – can do. And when I heard two of our senior girls speak with an interviewer yesterday about how they managed social media – how they recognised the dangers (of timewasting, of inappropriate communications, of the dangers to their digital image) I was really proud of them. Admittedly, our girls at school are the product of an education in which we stress the need to be respectful of self and respectful of others, and responsible for self as well as responsible for others; we certainly want them to learn appropriate behaviour, and we expect them to do so. Teenagers in their early years, of course, will also make mistakes – sometimes huge and damaging ones – partly because they need to push boundaries, to test them, as a step in their growing up process; partly because they have yet to develop the cognitive, emotional and social skills necessary for them to be able to manage themselves and their relationships without making a mess of it. (While ensuring that the consequences they face are enough to ensure deep and lasting learning, as well as behavioural change, let us not be unremittingly harsh on them – adults mess up too and have to repair their lives.) The senior girls who spoke about their use of online connections have learned how to use the medium, they understand its potential and its pitfalls, and they have acquired a genuine sense of balance and perspective. They know that real life matters far, far more than online life.

The education of young people is not just about their Maths and their Geography, important though these are; education is about preparation for life, for being a strong, well-rounded, decent, valuable human being. Schools, parents and our wider society have a joint and collective role to ensure that we are laying the groundwork. And one of the privileges of working with young people is seeing the magnificent outcomes.

 

Post-publication note: the interviews to which I refer were for two articles in the Sun-Herald. They can be found here and here.

 

Jul 14

Girls need inspiration in sport, not abuse

Melinda Tankard Reist’s column in today’s Sydney Sun-Herald, ‘The ugly truth is rules are different for girls in sport’ (to which I will add a link when I can track it down) is excellent. Well-known for her forthright views on the premature sexualisation of girls in particular, Melinda is passionate about speaking out and making a difference in how we as a society portray women, and how we stop objectifying women as little more than sex objects. I enjoyed meeting her recently, and we clearly share a common purpose in this area.

The premise of her article is that we seem to have come to a situation where sporting excellence by women is undermined by the perception of the wider world that “Women judged to not possess hot bodies, or who fail to exude sex appeal to the ogling masses, are unworthy of sporting pursuits”. She reflects on two stories to hit the news recently in this respect – the personal abuse, directed at her appearance, experienced by Marion Bartoli after her Wimbledon success; and the Roxy Pro surfing promotion which has elicited comment because it focuses less on surfing, and more on the sexiness of the model.

Both cases – public discussion of how successful sportswomen look, rather than their sporting prowess – have been incredibly damaging (once again) to how girls perceive their own bodies, and to how likely they are to take up or continue sport. Why would they do this, if they are to face criticism directed at their appearance rather than approval directed at their achievements? Sport and physical fitness are essential to wellbeing in life; so too is a healthy body image. None of these are supported when we allow, as if it were a normal part of our society, such objectification. Our girls deserve inspiration, not denigration.

The only glimpse of positivity in this debate is that there is a debate at all. Not everyone has been taken in; not everyone, by far, think that either Bartoli’s treatment or the Roxy Pro advert is right. There are voices out there talking common sense – we need to listen to them, and add our own in support. Our young people – and our world will be healthier as a result.

Jul 05

Listen out for Malala

Next week, on Friday 12 July – her 16th birthday – Malala Yousafzai will talk to the United Nations, and we should all listen.

Most people know Malala’s story: it began when she started to write a blog in 2009 for the BBC Urdu channel about life in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. At the time, private schools in the area had been ordered to close in a Taliban edict banning girls’ education. Militants seeking to impose their austere interpretation of Sharia law had destroyed about 150 schools in the past year, and Malala and her friends were afraid, yet rebellious – they wanted an education and believed that they had a right to be educated.

In her blog, Malala wrote about the challenges she faced, and the threats which she and her family endured. Although initially anonymous, she came out from behind the shadows to start to speak more openly, including to CNN and other news channels. In a 2011 interview with CNN, she said: “I have the right of education … I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”

These words caused her to become the focus of attention for the Taliban, who were behind the attack in October 2012 on her life; masked men boarded the bus in which she was travelling home, demanded to know which one of the girls was Malala, and then shot her at point-blank range. When news spread of this, the world was rightly horrified.

Although critically injured, Malala survived, and after several operations in Pakistan and then in the UK, she went back to school – a girls’ school in Birmingham, in the UK – and has continued to raise awareness (and now money) for girls’ education.

Her story is the story of a childhood which disappeared under threats of oppression and discrimination, but which, incredibly, she has turned into a force for good. Whether or not she ever intended for this to be the case, she has become a symbol for the power of educating women, and a reminder to us all that anything – everything – is possible if we only put our minds to it.

Listen to Malala next Friday. We honour her and recognise the value of her cause as we do so..

Jun 29

Nelson Mandela and the education of girls

Nelson Mandela is a truly great man, and much has been, and will be written, I am sure, in the coming weeks and months, about his many achievements in his home country of South Africa, and throughout Africa and the world. In and amongst all of these tributes, we should not forget his deep-rooted commitment to education, and to the education of girls. In a video message to the launch in Berlin in 2005 of the United Nations’ Schools for Africa campaign, he said: “My dream is for all children of Africa to go to school. We must be unrelenting in our efforts to educate our children. There can be no excuse for not creating an enabling environment where all children throughout Africa can reach their full potential”. In 2007, aged 88, he spoke at the opening of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, and said: “It is my hope that this school will become the dream of every South African girl and they will study hard and qualify for the school one day”.

There is much more work to be done in South Africa. In a recent UNICEF report, it was noted that while South Africa spends a bigger share of its gross domestic product on education than any other country in Africa, and primary schooling is compulsory for children aged 7 to 15, with strategies in place to encourage poor, orphaned, disabled and vulnerable children to school, “performance levels are lower than in many other countries in the region. High levels of school attendance, gender parity in both primary and secondary education and pro-poor school policies are achievements that contrast with the poor quality of education”.

Much of this, according to the report, is related to the social and infrastructure difficulties experienced by children: “Many children experience a broken journey through school, interrupted by irregular attendance, absent teachers, teenage pregnancy and school-related abuse and violence. Around 27 per cent of public schools do not have running water, 78 per cent are without libraries and 78 per cent do not have computers. There is limited provision for preschool and special education.”

Nelson Mandela has made an enormous difference and left a great legacy. But it is far from accomplished; in his memory and in his honour, others must now take up the baton.

 

Jun 22

“Devious” girls? How the misuse of statistics undermines our girls.

My attention was caught earlier this week by an article in the Australian Daily Telegraph: in the print edition the headline read Study reveals devious girls lead way in tormenting kids; online, the headline read AIFS bullying study shows girls are more devious. The leading paragraph supported both these titles: “Girls are more devious than boys at tormenting classmates, Australia’s biggest childhood study reveals.” Devious … tormenting … what mean girls! Study shows girls are mean … Girls are mean! I would guess that this thought process and conclusion would not surprise most readers; we have been programmed over the years to believe that girls are significantly somehow more mean and more unkind than boys. Most people would not have given the article a second glance; it reinforced their world view.

We should not leave it there, however. Consider the following observations on this specific article:

  1. The study was a study on the experience of bullying by 10-11 year old children. It distinguished by gender those being bullied, not those doing the bullying. It does not say that girls are more likely to bully in a particular way; it says that girls are more likely to be bullied in a particular way. You can read it yourself here. The premise of the title of the Daily Telegraph article is wrong.
  2. A reading of the statistics suggests that the difference between the types of bullying experienced by boys and girls is not vastly different. The article states that “Four in every 10 girls had been excluded from a group, compared to one in three boys”; a hasty non-mathematical reading would assume that the difference was great, but of course ‘one in three’ is the equivalent of 3.33 in every ten, ie not so very different. If 46.5% of boys have experienced name-calling, and 40.2% of girls have experienced this, then again the difference is not enormous – in every group of 10 girls aged 10-11, about 4 of them will have experienced name-calling, while about 4 and a half boys will have had the same experience. There are gender differences, but these are not as black and white as the title and opening paragraph suggested.
  3. “devious” and “tormenting” are very negative values-laden word choices. By bringing them into the public domain and associating them with girls, connections are made in the public’s mind. As writers – or, more specifically in this case, I would guess, as sub-editors – , we have a responsibility to think through the effect of what it is that we write, and whether or not this reinforces existing stereotypes.
  4. As readers, we are often far too quick to jump, uncritically, to conclusions that accord with our world view. We have a responsibility to challenge ourselves not to accept at face value what we encounter in the media.

Those who bring news items and activity to the public attention will always face an ethical dilemma in positioning their pieces; striking and polarising headlines draw comment and sell papers, after all. And to what extent can they comfortably be change agents, seeking to alter public perceptions? But writers and editors have a real opportunity – and, arguably, a responsibility – to challenge our negative status quo as regards the portrayal of women and girls in our society. This negativity is holding us back as a civilisation. At the very least, their – and our – moral conscience should lead them to consider this.

 

Jun 14

Girls, girls, girls … how girls are changing the world

Yesterday turned into somewhat of a celebration at Ascham of how girls and women have changed and are changing our world, together with a reminder of what needs to be done still to make this world a fairer, more equal and more harmonious place. To a certain extent, every day in a girls’ school is both a celebration along these lines, and a reminder, but yesterday was especially pointed in this respect, and it was a heartening day.

The theme for the excellent Year 6 School assembly was Human Rights, with a particular focus on Women’s Rights, and we were taken on a whirlwind but highly effective tour through the ages from 1895, when women were first given the vote in Australia, right through to 2013, when (as the girls pointed out), there are still issues of gender balance on boards and in leadership roles. The girls’ amazement and incredulity on learning that until 1966, women were obliged to resign from their posts in public office when they married, was hugely encouraging; that they could not envisage a society in which married women were prohibited from working simply because they were married was worth a celebration in its own right.

Later the same day, the Senior School welcomed a guest speaker to its assembly – Jenny Orchard, who represented Room to Read, a very effective organisation working to raise literacy and education levels of children, and especially girls, in several countries in the world. She showed us an extract from the film ˜Half the Sky“, which reflects the aim of the eponymous movement (and book), to “turn oppression into opportunity” for women worldwide. The audience – a theatre full of girls – was reminded that when a girl is educated, a village is educated too.

This Sunday (or Monday, depending where you are in the world), CNN are showing a powerful film which critics have praised for its focus on the importance of girls’ education: ˜Girl Rising“. “Watch it if you can; watch ˜Half the Sky” if you can. While inequality and gender discrimination exist, we cannot afford not to remind ourselves, and to prompt ourselves to do something to make change happen.

We are surrounded by louder and louder voices that tell us what we have always known deep down: that educating girls makes a difference, that educating girls is the right thing to do, and that educating girls is what we should all take as a major focus in our lives, right now. The girls at my school know that they have a great education. They know too that they have a responsibility to effect change. And they are ready for the challenge.

Bring on the girls.

 

Jun 07

Floundering … or Fulfilling? Different Perspectives on Mothering.

Last weekend I flew from Sydney up to Dubbo, on my way to a schools’ riding expo at Coonabarabran; it was not a long flight, but there was enough time on the way there and the way back to read, cover to cover, Melbourne writer Romy Ash’s first novel, Floundering. This novel is worth a read – it has been shortlisted for the 2013 Miles Franklin award, a prize given to the “Novel for the year which is of the highest literary merit and which must present Australian Life in any of its phases”; moreover, it is powerful and intense, gripping the reader in a fear for the young narrator and his brother as they leave with their estranged mother (now returned) on a trip away from their normal, daily life. The presence of love but the absence of mothering makes for a subtly nerve-wracking journey by the reader; you will be unsettled by the novel and by the loneliness it contains … and for precisely this reason you should nonetheless read it.

What a contrast, then, to arrive at Coonabarabran and to find mothers (and fathers) working with love and care to look after their own, and each other’s, daughters. Around the campfire, preparing food, encouraging their daughters as they jumped the crosscountry course or prepared for the Polocrosse … these mothers were present for their daughters and giving them the support that they needed. Community, companionship, collaboration – the effect of these on the soul was all the greater for the insight that my reading material had given me into a life devoid of mothering. I was struck by what a difference mothering makes to young people, and I was grateful to be reminded of it in practice.

Mothers are special. They birth their children and they love their children. They feed their children and they nurture their children. They are instrumental in bringing up their children. Not every family has a mother, and many of these families find ways to recreate the love of a mother in alternative ways. When mothering is seen in action, it is wonderful.

To mothers everywhere – thank you.