Originally posted on the Common Threads Blog
Centre Daily Times, Sept 30, 2008
I do not fully understand the financial mess our country seems to find itself in.
As a layperson, who is slowly gathering information, I am beginning to understand that both Democrats and Republicans share some blame for getting us here.
And that both the Executive branch including President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson, and the Legislative branch including the House and the Senate bear some responsibility for getting us into this mess.
Some of those who appear to have had a hand in getting us into a corner, are now calling for drastic action, in the form of a $700 Billion Bailout. And are surprised at not getting our enthusiastic support.
My own feelings about this situation are complex – there is surely anger and frustration at this mismanagement of our economy, but I am also saddened because I do not know which politician, from either party, to trust on this matter.
I feel cynical, and don't expect any of them to tell us exactly what is going on, or to own up to any mistakes, let alone to investigate several options of benefit to the taxpayers.
I keep wishing for a “Mr. or Ms. Smith” amongst our Washington politicians - a real leader, modeled after the Mr. Smith played by Jimmy Stewart, in "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." Preferably, a very Independent Smith, who would not worry about the identity politics of being a Democrat or a Republican.
An Independent Smith, who would simply be American first, would not care about party loyalty or election year party politics, and actually put the interests of American citizens ahead of the interests of other special interests.
But can there be an Independent Smith in Washington, without Independent voters all across the country?
Let us get rid of our partisanship first - not think of ourselves as being either Democrats or Republicans, and find our common thread of being only American. And with that strength, we can surely hold our politicians accountable to all of us Americans.
Showing posts with label Global Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Economy. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A wonderful movie for all ages
Originally Posted on the Common Threads Blog
Centre Daily Times, July 7, 2008
I took my daughter and her friend to see the new movie, "Kit Kittredge: an American Girl," on opening day – which was Wednesday of last week.
As I was entering the theatre, two adults and a child exited from the previous show, and the woman took the time to whisper to me that it was a FABULOUS movie.
The three of us settled down in the theatre for the movie, the sole audience for that showing.
And loved every minute of it.
All of us were familiar with the “Kit books,” and the story of Kit Kittredge, a spunky girl who wants to be a reporter, and whose family’s life unravels during the hardships of the depression. The Kittredges find the inner strength to creatively meet their challenges through ingenuity, sacrifice, hard work and love.
Kit’s life changes, as her father moves in search of work, and as she is forced to devote most of her spare time to chores and helping out her family to survive from day to day. The movie also explores class bias – the negative attitudes against hobos and against kids at school, who are going through hard times are particularly revealing.
This well made movie (Rated G) by Canadian director Patricia Rozema is a gentle sensory experience of what was, several years ago.
And a reminder of the timeless values of honor, hard work, compassion, familial and community love. It showcases the dignity of living within one’s means, and of fulfilling our responsibilities, and of not giving up on our dreams.
As I left the theatre, my only wish was for more people - boys, girls and adults - to see this movie, which is so relevant in today’s world - as we read about and experience rising prices, an uncertain economic future, foreclosures and layoffs.
So if you are looking for a movie to watch, with or without your kids, in the next couple of weeks - Kit Kittredge, portrayed by the talented Abigail Breslin, may be a worthwhile choice – you may find it a couple of hours well spent.
Centre Daily Times, July 7, 2008
I took my daughter and her friend to see the new movie, "Kit Kittredge: an American Girl," on opening day – which was Wednesday of last week.
As I was entering the theatre, two adults and a child exited from the previous show, and the woman took the time to whisper to me that it was a FABULOUS movie.
The three of us settled down in the theatre for the movie, the sole audience for that showing.
And loved every minute of it.
All of us were familiar with the “Kit books,” and the story of Kit Kittredge, a spunky girl who wants to be a reporter, and whose family’s life unravels during the hardships of the depression. The Kittredges find the inner strength to creatively meet their challenges through ingenuity, sacrifice, hard work and love.
Kit’s life changes, as her father moves in search of work, and as she is forced to devote most of her spare time to chores and helping out her family to survive from day to day. The movie also explores class bias – the negative attitudes against hobos and against kids at school, who are going through hard times are particularly revealing.
This well made movie (Rated G) by Canadian director Patricia Rozema is a gentle sensory experience of what was, several years ago.
And a reminder of the timeless values of honor, hard work, compassion, familial and community love. It showcases the dignity of living within one’s means, and of fulfilling our responsibilities, and of not giving up on our dreams.
As I left the theatre, my only wish was for more people - boys, girls and adults - to see this movie, which is so relevant in today’s world - as we read about and experience rising prices, an uncertain economic future, foreclosures and layoffs.
So if you are looking for a movie to watch, with or without your kids, in the next couple of weeks - Kit Kittredge, portrayed by the talented Abigail Breslin, may be a worthwhile choice – you may find it a couple of hours well spent.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Teaching Foreign Languages and More...in School
Originally posted in Common Threads Blog,
Centre Daily Times, April 5, 2007
The State College School district is seeking our input on “opportunities and challenges in preparing students for their futures,” as part of their 2007–2013 strategic planning process. I gave my input by filling out their online survey “Strategic Response Survey Form,” at www.scasd.org.
As I did so, I kept in mind the National Governors Association meeting held in February, 2007, which called for “a national commitment to changing our education to meet the challenges of globalization and international competition.”They suggested that we change our current mindset, overhaul our education system nationally and focus on teaching math, science, technology, engineering and foreign language proficiency.
My recommendations - please start teaching a foreign language in elementary school, strengthen the math and science curriculum, foster global understanding, teach students to rebuild local communities – it would be a wasted opportunity if we do not attend to these.
Learning language as a child is relatively easy. I grew up in India, where children are routinely exposed to multiple languages as a matter of course, especially in bigger cities. In Mumbai (Bombay), I spoke Malayalam at home, since my parents came from the southern state of Kerala. My parents spoke Tamil or Malayalam with a few neighbors, and Hindi (the national language) or Marathi (the state language) with the other neighbors who also spoke Kannada, Konkani, or other languages, depending on the state they originally came from.
Growing up in this environment, I quickly learnt Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi from home and neighbors, and English at school starting at age 3. Kids who did not go to English Medium schools start learning English around age 7.
Schools in India also teach Hindi, the national language around age 8, and the regional language of the state (in my case Marathi) at age 9 or 10. Many people who grow up in Mumbai, end up speaking 4 to 5 different languages. Some of us were also lucky to learn other foreign languages like French or German in high school, if our schools offered that option.
If SCASD introduces a foreign language in elementary school, it would be joining a local charter school, Young Scholars of Central PA, and a host of other countries that do so already.
On March 12, 2007 the United Kingdom announced that all school children will start learning a modern foreign language at age 7, from 2010.
The March 29, 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor reports the ages when children in some parts of Europe start learning a second language: France: 5; Austria, Belgium, and Sweden: 6; Italy: between 6 and 7; Germany: 6 and 8; Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands: 8; Denmark: 9; Finland: 10, while in the US, many kids start learning foreign languages at age 13.
Of course, learning a foreign language is only one step towards preparing students for the global economy, we also need to build empathy and understanding of other cultures.
Add to that a study of ethical behavior and respect towards our fellow human beings and the planet – both locally and globally - helping us perhaps figure out how to stay self sufficient locally in a global environment.
Add to this a strong focus on science and math, and a healthy respect for achievement in these areas.
From these, will come the answers to meeting the challenges of increasing energy demand, global warming, increased materialism and - may even help us find a way to end strife in the world.
For those who want to contribute your thoughts to SCASD, please go to “Strategic Response Survey Form,” at www.scasd.org.
Centre Daily Times, April 5, 2007
The State College School district is seeking our input on “opportunities and challenges in preparing students for their futures,” as part of their 2007–2013 strategic planning process. I gave my input by filling out their online survey “Strategic Response Survey Form,” at www.scasd.org.
As I did so, I kept in mind the National Governors Association meeting held in February, 2007, which called for “a national commitment to changing our education to meet the challenges of globalization and international competition.”They suggested that we change our current mindset, overhaul our education system nationally and focus on teaching math, science, technology, engineering and foreign language proficiency.
My recommendations - please start teaching a foreign language in elementary school, strengthen the math and science curriculum, foster global understanding, teach students to rebuild local communities – it would be a wasted opportunity if we do not attend to these.
Learning language as a child is relatively easy. I grew up in India, where children are routinely exposed to multiple languages as a matter of course, especially in bigger cities. In Mumbai (Bombay), I spoke Malayalam at home, since my parents came from the southern state of Kerala. My parents spoke Tamil or Malayalam with a few neighbors, and Hindi (the national language) or Marathi (the state language) with the other neighbors who also spoke Kannada, Konkani, or other languages, depending on the state they originally came from.
Growing up in this environment, I quickly learnt Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi from home and neighbors, and English at school starting at age 3. Kids who did not go to English Medium schools start learning English around age 7.
Schools in India also teach Hindi, the national language around age 8, and the regional language of the state (in my case Marathi) at age 9 or 10. Many people who grow up in Mumbai, end up speaking 4 to 5 different languages. Some of us were also lucky to learn other foreign languages like French or German in high school, if our schools offered that option.
If SCASD introduces a foreign language in elementary school, it would be joining a local charter school, Young Scholars of Central PA, and a host of other countries that do so already.
On March 12, 2007 the United Kingdom announced that all school children will start learning a modern foreign language at age 7, from 2010.
The March 29, 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor reports the ages when children in some parts of Europe start learning a second language: France: 5; Austria, Belgium, and Sweden: 6; Italy: between 6 and 7; Germany: 6 and 8; Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands: 8; Denmark: 9; Finland: 10, while in the US, many kids start learning foreign languages at age 13.
Of course, learning a foreign language is only one step towards preparing students for the global economy, we also need to build empathy and understanding of other cultures.
Add to that a study of ethical behavior and respect towards our fellow human beings and the planet – both locally and globally - helping us perhaps figure out how to stay self sufficient locally in a global environment.
Add to this a strong focus on science and math, and a healthy respect for achievement in these areas.
From these, will come the answers to meeting the challenges of increasing energy demand, global warming, increased materialism and - may even help us find a way to end strife in the world.
For those who want to contribute your thoughts to SCASD, please go to “Strategic Response Survey Form,” at www.scasd.org.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
We all Smile in the Same Language
Several years ago, my then two or three year old daughter picked up a bright yellow smiley face sticker at the doctor’s office. As she debated where to stick it, I stood mesmerized by its message - “We all smile in the same language.” Yes, I thought – we all smile, cry, love and nurture, suffer sickness, pain, sadness and loss, all in the same language.
Day in and day out, in different parts of the world, we are mostly engaged in the same endeavors - trying to take care of ourselves, our families and our loved ones. Our lives differ in the details of how we go about these things, based on our economic, political, and other realities of our individual circumstances.
For most of us, the day begins with the rising of the sun – followed by a million individual routines – hitting the snooze button, milking the cow, searching for glasses, picking up the delivered milk, answering the call to prayer, praying and so many variations of the same. Some of us wake up in happiness, others in fear, some in pain, and others with a spring in their step.
We have so much in common, yet as President Clinton once said on Meet the Press, to interviewer Tim Russert, “the biggest problem confronting the world today is the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity." This illusion puts up many walls between us, and is limiting the ways in which we could interact with each other.
As we go about our daily lives, we are also more connected than in previous generations. Television, the internet, and the mass global exchange of goods has replaced the geographical isolation of people on our different land masses.
Over the last several months, my family and I have been keeping track of where all the things we bought were made. We discovered that most of the food we ate, except some fruits, was from the USA, but the rest was mostly made elsewhere.
We greeted our rare encounters with the made in USA sign with excitement.
Most of our clothing had been made in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Phillipines, or India.
Our Ziplock bags were made either in Brazil, Canada or USA; toothpaste and moisturizer in Canada, Bandaids in Brazil and shaving cream in the USA.
Our toys including Tennis Rackets, Matchbox bulldozers, puzzles, and American Girl Dolls, the straws we use for drinking, and some kitchen gadgets were all made in China.
Somewhere, during this process, a magical thing happened - our family replaced the thought “Made in Country X,” with “Someone in Country X made this.”
This change in semantics led us to visualize all the people involved in the process, manufacturers and consumers. This forced us to acknowledge their present economic and political realities, aspirations and common humanity.
We began to wonder about their daily realities - did they get rest breaks, do the factories have hazardous material regulations, and so on and so forth. This happened alongside our “why is so little of what we buy made in the USA” discussion.
This change in paradigm of visualizing the worker, albeit from another country, in the act of creating the product we are about to buy, took us closer to making conscious choices regarding what we were buying.
It made us look beyond the “good deal.” It led us to wonder whether we should recycle our electronics and print cartridges – to ponder what happens to them after we drop them off, and to get interested in the newspaper article that says they are shipped to countries where workers who work on them are exposed to hazardous materials.
Apart from this indirect connection to people through the goods we consume, we are also directly interacting with people from other cultures on an unprecedented scale. As my family wakes up in Pennsylvania, some others stay awake, possibly in India, well past midnight into the early hours of the morning. They work at the 24 hour call center and take our customer care calls to our DSL, cell phone and credit card companies; some even stay up and tutor our kids.
These new interactions have been thrust on us, by models used by large corporations, whose bottom line is to save money. The current financial crisis is a man made one, as are the interactions we have due to wars and terrorism. Add to these our shared interests of sharing the world’s resources, addressing global warming, and fighting illnesses.
We are connected, inextricably.
And while I personally prefer that any community or individual be locally self sufficient, I realize that this is not the model the world is operating on today.
Or perhaps it never did. Sarve Jana Sukino Bhavantu, or wishing all people well, is an old Hindu prayer, which realized long ago that our prosperity and well being is inextricably connected to that of our neighbor’s.
The flat world today fosters a new opportunity to celebrate the common links between all people, and to work towards our mutual well being.
But the hardest part of our journey towards this celebration of our common humanity, is to let go of the preconceived notions we have of each other. For although we all smile in the same language, we all stereotype in the same way too - arbitrarily forming opinions about entire groups, without realizing that they too are just like us, nothing more and nothing less than another collection of individuals.
Day in and day out, in different parts of the world, we are mostly engaged in the same endeavors - trying to take care of ourselves, our families and our loved ones. Our lives differ in the details of how we go about these things, based on our economic, political, and other realities of our individual circumstances.
For most of us, the day begins with the rising of the sun – followed by a million individual routines – hitting the snooze button, milking the cow, searching for glasses, picking up the delivered milk, answering the call to prayer, praying and so many variations of the same. Some of us wake up in happiness, others in fear, some in pain, and others with a spring in their step.
We have so much in common, yet as President Clinton once said on Meet the Press, to interviewer Tim Russert, “the biggest problem confronting the world today is the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity." This illusion puts up many walls between us, and is limiting the ways in which we could interact with each other.
As we go about our daily lives, we are also more connected than in previous generations. Television, the internet, and the mass global exchange of goods has replaced the geographical isolation of people on our different land masses.
Over the last several months, my family and I have been keeping track of where all the things we bought were made. We discovered that most of the food we ate, except some fruits, was from the USA, but the rest was mostly made elsewhere.
We greeted our rare encounters with the made in USA sign with excitement.
Most of our clothing had been made in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Phillipines, or India.
Our Ziplock bags were made either in Brazil, Canada or USA; toothpaste and moisturizer in Canada, Bandaids in Brazil and shaving cream in the USA.
Our toys including Tennis Rackets, Matchbox bulldozers, puzzles, and American Girl Dolls, the straws we use for drinking, and some kitchen gadgets were all made in China.
Somewhere, during this process, a magical thing happened - our family replaced the thought “Made in Country X,” with “Someone in Country X made this.”
This change in semantics led us to visualize all the people involved in the process, manufacturers and consumers. This forced us to acknowledge their present economic and political realities, aspirations and common humanity.
We began to wonder about their daily realities - did they get rest breaks, do the factories have hazardous material regulations, and so on and so forth. This happened alongside our “why is so little of what we buy made in the USA” discussion.
This change in paradigm of visualizing the worker, albeit from another country, in the act of creating the product we are about to buy, took us closer to making conscious choices regarding what we were buying.
It made us look beyond the “good deal.” It led us to wonder whether we should recycle our electronics and print cartridges – to ponder what happens to them after we drop them off, and to get interested in the newspaper article that says they are shipped to countries where workers who work on them are exposed to hazardous materials.
Apart from this indirect connection to people through the goods we consume, we are also directly interacting with people from other cultures on an unprecedented scale. As my family wakes up in Pennsylvania, some others stay awake, possibly in India, well past midnight into the early hours of the morning. They work at the 24 hour call center and take our customer care calls to our DSL, cell phone and credit card companies; some even stay up and tutor our kids.
These new interactions have been thrust on us, by models used by large corporations, whose bottom line is to save money. The current financial crisis is a man made one, as are the interactions we have due to wars and terrorism. Add to these our shared interests of sharing the world’s resources, addressing global warming, and fighting illnesses.
We are connected, inextricably.
And while I personally prefer that any community or individual be locally self sufficient, I realize that this is not the model the world is operating on today.
Or perhaps it never did. Sarve Jana Sukino Bhavantu, or wishing all people well, is an old Hindu prayer, which realized long ago that our prosperity and well being is inextricably connected to that of our neighbor’s.
The flat world today fosters a new opportunity to celebrate the common links between all people, and to work towards our mutual well being.
But the hardest part of our journey towards this celebration of our common humanity, is to let go of the preconceived notions we have of each other. For although we all smile in the same language, we all stereotype in the same way too - arbitrarily forming opinions about entire groups, without realizing that they too are just like us, nothing more and nothing less than another collection of individuals.
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