Minutus

Dear Lisa,

I will agree with you on only point. That is that when an institution becomes impersonal and uncaring, the climate tends to develop negativity. Further, in public schools' the conflicts that arise come from the contradictions between what the institution is doing and the real needs of the students. It is certainly true that smaller schools, or classrooms, make it easier to do one-on-one work with students. But this is far from the whole truth. Homeogeneity in this day and age is usually a code word and an excuse for pure and blatant racism. The same argument has been used against women, and every other group of people in our culture for that matter. I do not want to take minutus time with a long analysis of this, but suffice it to say there is a huge body of material describing the effects of such stuctures.

My concern here is the implicit racism and prejudice in your comments. Multiculturalism is NOT the cause of the problems in your public school. Racism is the illness. And the institutional racism that was probably operative in your school is part and parcel of the attitudes of the administration, perpetrated throught the teachers with students reacting.

You speak of how one receives the case. I think you did not receive that case very well. Despite the feelings you may have had as a young person, I would encourage you, as an adult now, to review the data with an unprejudiced eye perhaps using much of the material that educational research has made easily available to us all. If you would like some material references, I would be happy to send them to you privately. The question your comments raise for me is how do you deal with heterogenity in your cases? Or do you hand a shingle out that says 'only people like me need apply?'

tanya

OH MY GAWD! I cannot believe you took offense to this. :(:(
If so, then it is YOUR issue, Sue. Please think about it.

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH **MORALITY OR SUPERIORITY**!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Further to that: as one who went to public schools AND through private
education (the last 4 years of my schooling were private) I can tell you
FIRSTHAND the kids ARE better behaved. There IS a HUGE difference in the
atmosphere of the school environment. And it has nothing to do with morality
in the way you seem to think or superiority.
The only thing 'moral or superior' is that children in a smaller school will
be seen as individuals - will tend to have a sense of common values. And,
private school is often a superior learning environment. That is the ONLY
way I can see it
would be *more moral or superior* to public education.

Why?
The school is much smaller.
Less kids in each classroom
Less tolerance for non-sense; for example - comparing the public high school
that I went to versus the private school which I switched over to in my 9th
grade year:

**PUBLIC SCHOOL** (this is ONLY one example): kids were smoking cigarettes
AND doing drugs in one
particular bathroom - daily - and the, teachers/staff KNEW 'not to step one
foot it there'. There were incidences over the years of teachers having been
physically attacked for trying to enforce the rules. Finally, they gave up
turned a blind eye out of self-preservation (lack of support could be thrown
in...lack of resources for the real problems that were going on).

There was NO discipline.
The school had over 10,000 students - how could they police all toilets?
They couldn't. This school was in a wealthy-ish neighbourhood - I say *ish*
because of the
FORCED integrated from outer lying areas.
Result: children from varying
backgrounds were forced together. Another factor being that TOO MANY kids
were in one school (doesn't matter that the 'facilities' were big enough -
i.e. need more schools that are smaller!!!).
Kids weren't seen as individuals....need I spell out what happens to people
when the sense of
'community' is lost and they are crammed together (rat study comes to mind)?
There IS NO community-value when there is 'diversity', 'multiculturalism',
etc.
It's impossible.
Community-value means that people have SIMILAR values - of which has been
lost in
the last 50 years in many places around the world due to everyone becoming
more mobile (i.e. the wee village down the road where everyone holds the
same religious thinking is gone, etc). It's a fact we deal with in our
modern times. (this does NOT equate to being racist, or being against mixing
cultures. facts are facts - values that are different between one group and
another means that *community values* no longer exist, instead, they become
diluted - common factors are gone, finito, caput - so please don't
misunderstand what I'm getting at here)

Kids were regularly beat up (I mean the shit was beat out of them - they
sometimes were injured quite badly). The worst was the fear of going to
school each day - especially if you looked at the wrong person - the wrong
way. We went
to school in fear of 'getting on the bad side' of a large group of kids'!
Everyone steered clear of them; including ALL staff (teachers, cafeteria
staff who had a glass window which separated them from students; cleaners;
counsellors, etc).

**PRIVATE SCHOOL**:
I thought initially I would hate it.
I loved it.
I wasn't as 'wealthy' as the other kids (this brought its own set of
discomfort, but compared to the other school.......piece of cake!), BUT I
was NEVER ever ever ever in
fear of ANYTHING other than someone maybe making fun of my outfit that day.
Ever. Not once.
Not once did I EVER see any kids smoking in our school toilet. Drugs? There
were a couple of kids who we SUSPECTED might be 'doing them', but NEVER at
school. Ever.

Fights? NEVER happened at our private school. EVER. Not once in my four
years there.

So, please, don't get on some high horse because a parent/grandparent chose
to send a child to a private school to lessen the obvious down-sides of
public schooling.

It's a whole other discussion as to why there is such a huge difference
between private and public education - but I'll leave that for off list.

Do you think the school I describe above happened recently?

Nope:
....the school experiences I share above - were back in 1979-1983.

I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
I will choose private schooling ANY day as long as public schools are HUGE
and
impersonal as I experienced from the time I was 6 until I was
14. And it has NOTHING to do with *morality or superiority*. Nothing
whatsoever.

I hope this gives you some sense other than your intial impression, Sue.

Also, having said all this; there are good public schools --- unfortunately,
there just isn't enough of them.

Lastly, I think all this is very relevant when we consider how we receive
information whilst taking a case; how our views can interfere or our
potential to judge when really we should try to understand better where
people 'are coming from' when they make choices.
Sincerely,
Lisa

Once again to all concerned - Please keep your prejudiced, politically
correct, uninformed poison off of this list. It is a list for studying and
sharing homeopathy. There is no need for any pc judgment and condemnation of
anyone's opinion. Please cut it out.

ALLEN CONIGLIO

make
an
against
do

And once again, it seems even more important to raise the issue of personal attitudes as one's attitudes DO influence how one perceives and treats cases. I have seen too much of this already in homeopathy as well as ineducation. The results are always the same: poor practice! So despite your emotional attacks, these issues need to be raised when it seems appropriate. Perhaps the shoe is fitting all too well with you.
tanya

Tanya, I agree with most of what you said in the beginning, but you
misinterpreted what I said when you brought racism into it! And, that I
don't appreciate, at all. More below in response to your ridiculous
misinterpretations and absurd suggestions that are wholly misguided and
self-righteous at that.

Have you ever attended an inner city "forced-integration" school ?

I think that you need to try to understand the difference between
recognizing cultural dissonance in action and racism.

All this talk about racism is very "PC" but ignores reality.

Also, your last remark seems uncalled for.

regards,
Dave Hartley
www.localcomputermart.com/dave
Santa Cruz, CA (831)423-4284

I have lived in inner cities and lived in racially targeted communities and have over 30 yrs of working on issues involving education, racism and prejudice. Multiculturalism refers specifically to race and ethnicity. Socio-economic diversity is a class issue. Lisa obviously doesnt know the difference. She also doesnt recognize prejudice when she sees it. And I will, again, state that as practitioners we have an obligation to learn about our own prejudices in order to practice with an open mind. Just because a person doesnt like to think of themselves as prejudiced, doesnt mean they have none to work on.

tanya

Dear All,

Sam the Man has set out clearly our ideal as a practioner of this healing art ...to be an
unpredjudiced observer

It is not our remit to judge other's lifestyles or even attitudes we can only hold up a looking glass for those who want to see, this includes our colleagues.

The world is rife with predjudice, because our opinions are our own interpretations of reality, my reality is not that of Dave, or Joy or even Lisa ... this is not a matter for sadness or anger. Appreciation of what our individual specialness could offer to create a deeper, truer picture of the human condition on boths sides of the homeopathic coin should make us feel more alive and dynamic.

To continue to undermine each other can only lead to a breakdown in communication of ideas, thoughts and ultimately stunting personal and professional growth, this forum serves not just one function but many, often the subtlety of some of these can lead us to forget that.

There are many lives out there yet to be engaged with ... surely learning to truly open our senses and minds to human diversity will put us in good stead in dealing with the ugliness, heartaches and trauma that exist for so many out there ?

Jas
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