Developing global citizens with curriculum for excellence

Curriculum for excellence introduced into schools by the Scottish Government aims to provide children with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required to live and work in a global society. They claim that this involves a different approach to education. This approach turns out to be less about subject matter and more about generating emotions of caring for and perceiving an interconnected world.

The 21st century has presented us with new opportunities and challenges and requires a different approach to education. In our fast-changing world, it is necessary for children and young people to acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to adapt and to thrive. Their education should prepare them for living and working in a global society. The big issues affecting our planet, such as climate change and global poverty, require an innovative generation that knows how to find solutions. Our democratic societies need creative people who recognise the importance and value of participation and making their voices heard. The injustice and inequalities in society require people who care about human rights and who recognise that our lives are linked together in our increasingly interdependent and globalised world. 

 http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/DevelopingGlobalCitizens_tcm4-628187.pdf

Our global leaders have left the next generation with an awful mess then, have they not? So much for their advice !

Julie Andrzejewski and John Alessio presented some of their ideas about the problems facing education for global citizenship in 1999: (before global warming was debunked)

It is widely acknowledged that education rarely challenges the prevailing paradigms and interests of national governments, wealthy elites, or dominant groups, whatever the economic or political system.

There is no indication in the Scottish Government document that national governments, wealthy elites, or dominant groups and their role in world affairs will be covered in Curriculum for Excellence. Meanwhile pupils are encouraged to be concerned about an impending global catastrophe, participate in group discussions and make their voices heard - and this is democracy. Well no ! Not if their education withholds the knowledge base with which to come to an understanding of global affairs that must include the role of the elites.

Julie Andrzejewski and John Alessio cover some of the major catastrophes in their article:

As the millennium nears, people all over the world are struggling with problems of a magnitude no other generation has faced. Even in the most affluent nations, millions of people suffer from hunger, homelessness, and unattended health problems. Wars, civil conflicts and invasions take the lives of millions more. .. Human projects continue to despoil the land, water and air. For example, millions of tons of hazardous waste generated by industrial countries are exported to non-industrialized areas of the world (Sachs, 1995, p.7). Over three billion pounds of pesticides a year are used globally causing "human poisonings, harm to fish and wildlife, livestock losses, groundwater contamination, destruction of natural vegetation, and more pests resistant to pesticides" (Jacobson et al, 1991, p. 45). Deforestation, soil erosion, destruction of habitat, extinction of species, depletion of aquifers are but a few of the many attacks on our planet. 

While natural resources are stripped from the earth, new "species" are genetically engineered by corporations for profitability and monopolized through complex international patent laws with few constraints for releasing them into the environment. Ancient knowledge of plants and animals, and even human genetic material, are stolen from indigenous peoples and used to generate wealth for a few while the cultures which generated the knowledge are decimated (Shiva, 1997). As these examples demonstrate, human rights and environmental issues are clearly intertwined. 

http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/monographs/glomono.html#Education 

It should be noted that the ordinary citizen played no part in the decisions that have infected the globe. The range of problems are so diverse that they must require different specialisms in order to investigate them if there are to be solutions - not a mindless concern across the curriculum that will leave children vulnerable to manipulation by authorities. It is clear where the thrust for global citizenship comes from:

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)  This is a final, advanced version of a chapter of Agenda 21, as adopted by the Plenary in Rio de Janeiro, on June 14, 1992. 

In order to meet the challenges of environment and development, States decided to establish a new global partnership. .. It is recognized that, for the success of this new partnership, it is important to overcome confrontation and to foster a climate of genuine cooperation and solidarity. It is equally important to strengthen national and international policies and multinational cooperation to adapt to the new realities. 

We are told that sustainable development should become a priority item on the agenda which is why children of the world are being indoctrinated in schools as Education for all, another United Nations` document reveals.  How are they to achieve the transformational change in global attitudes they are looking for? They believe that education for global citizenship and a worldwide concern about the planet is a way forward. UN partners include world banks and multi-national corporations, the very organisations which caused the world`s problems.

The Children and Families Act

"The Children and Families Act, which received royal assent last week, is a far-reaching piece of child legislation that involves a significant shift in the role of the state in family life.
For example, section 2 (fostering for adoption) enables a local authority to place a child with a prospective adopter, without there even having been court proceedings, to consider whether the child should be removed permanently from their parents – and without the parents having had legal advice about their options."

"Reflect on that for a moment and you’ll start to realise the potential injustices that are likely to arise as a result. But despite lobbying from us, the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), The College of Social Work and many other organisations of good repute, the government pressed ahead with applying foster for adoption not only to children on a care order, but also those in care with the voluntary agreement of their parents."

"These include vulnerable parents, including care leavers, who may without advice, consent for their baby to be looked after, for what they may assume will be just a short time. Currently, family members do not always come forward as potential carers for a child until care proceedings are underway. They may not be aware about the child’s circumstances or they may feel reluctant to jeopardise the parents’ case."

"The acceleration of care proceedings arising from the now-statutory 26 week timeframe is therefore likely to result in many otherwise suitable placements with relatives being ruled out, due to the speed of the process rather than an assessment of their suitability. To address this, we lobbied for there to be a duty on local authorities to identify and explore suitable family options before proceedings are issued, for example through family group conferences. Unfortunately, the government didn’t accept this amendment."

"I am somewhat baffled as to why there has been such little fuss over such potentially far-reaching reforms. I fear that families involved in the child welfare system have been ‘othered’ to such an extent, that they are deemed undeserving of the rights that families like ‘ours’ assume. But many families contacting Family Rights Group for advice never thought it would happen to them, never thought their daughter would get mixed up in a violent relationship, never thought it would be them having a breakdown and struggling to cope."

"It is somewhat ironic that at the same time as politicians were passing legislation that undermines the child’s chances of being raised safely by their families, Supreme Court judges were upholding the importance of the human rights of all children and their families. This included the principle that to sever such a relationship through adoption is a draconian step, which should only be pursued if all other options have been considered and ruled out."

The positive parts of the Act

"It would be wrong to portray these significant concerns as indicating opposition to the entirety of the Act. Parts of it are extremely welcome, including the right of children in care to remain with their foster carers beyond 18, improved provisions for adopters and a new framework of support for children with a statement of special educational needs."

"Yet at the heart of it is a grave injustice: whereas the Act rightly secures improved support for adopters, including paid leave from work akin to maternity leave, similar help for family and friends carers is missing. There are around 30,0000 children who cannot live with their parents who are being raised by family and friends carers, most commonly grandparents or older siblings."

"Research shows these children have suffered the same adversities as those who are in the care system or adopted, yet the vast majority of these children and their carers, including special guardians, are left to fend for themselves."

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2014/03/19/potential-injustices-likely-arise-children-families-act/

Petitioning the European Parliament

 Here is Christopher Booker:

Last June, under the heading "Dutch social workers catch the English disease", I reported the extraordinary case of the 11-year-old Antonovs twins: a Russian-Latvian brother and sister forcibly snatched by Dutch social workers from their mother and older brother Ilja, primarily on the grounds that at home they spoke Russian, not Dutch. A chilling video of the twins being carried kicking and screaming to a police van is on YouTube ("Kidnap of children from their mother by Dutch social services"), recording a scene not dissimilar to ones that unfold here in Britain, many times every week.

Last Wednesday in Brussels, this video, shown to a roomful of visibly shocked MEPs and officials, was the highlight of a day-long hearing by the European Parliament’s committee of petitions into the way thousands of children in EU countries are each year being removed from their families for absurd reasons. Ilja Antonovs told the story of how his brother and sister are being kept miserably in a "living facility" run by a private company, Jeugdzorg, at a cost to Dutch taxpayers of £65,000 a year for each child. Twice the Dutch appeal court has ordered the return of the twins to their family, but each time this has been overruled by a lower "children’s court".

Among the witnesses in Brussels, for 23 petitioners from eight countries, was the Association of McKenzie Friends, led by Sabine McNeill, congratulated by the committee for her "flawless" presentation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/10715806/MEPs-must-investigate-this-child-snatching-scandal.html

Here is Sabine McNeill one of the petitioners who presented the case on behalf of the UK Association of McKenzie friends to the European Committee.

VIDEO HERE

Now we have an indication of how out of touch social workers have become about the social realities and the part they play in devastating lives as they look forward to celebrating Social Work Day.

Like millions of others worldwide I am proud to be a social worker. Proud to be a part of a profession that acts decisively on its deep understanding of human behaviour. We assist people in difficulty and support them and their families to regain confidence, to fulfil their sense of responsibility as parents, community members and citizens – and at the same time we influence social policy and political outcomes. I am proud to be a member of a profession that makes contributions of consequence.

http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/mar/18/world-social-work-day-inequalities-poverty

2014 is children`s rights year in Bulgaria

 

State Agency for Child Protection declared 2014 the children's rights year in Bulgaria. Following the example of the United Nations, the State Agency chair Eva Zhecheva launched the initiative which dedicates each month to the protection of two specific children's rights, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) informs. The initiative includes information campaigns, children's competitions, conferences, discussions and meetings between the responsible institutions in different cities in Bulgaria. It will include refugee children in the country, as well. "We are one of the first countries to introduce the definition of children's best interests in our national legislation. Progress has been made in the coordination of the Law on Child Protection with the UN Convention," Zhecheva told BNR. The campaign will be held under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister Daniela Bobeva and is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

http://www.novinite.com/articles/159045/Bulgaria's+Child+Protection+Agency+Devotes+2014+to+Children's+Rights


What is clear is that the United Nations through its Convention is involved in the child protection system which is burgeoning out of control, particularly in the UK. A Bulgarian child has recently been placed for forced adoption in the UK because the mother was judged as incapable of protecting the child from the father, as was the grandmother, because she was too nice.

One of the comments reads:

I think I will be writing a long letter to the Deputy Prime Minister and the nonsense of the UNCRC, which doesn't protect a single child in the world. In the world today you have child poverty, slavery, marriage, hunger, death and other crimes against children, all happening in countries that have ratified the UNCRC.

Also, could someone please give me a legal, scientific and moral value of "Best Interests"? In reality the Best Interest Principle (BIP) is nothing more than a slogan, it's defined as "an empty vessel into which adult prejudices and beliefs are poured". If the DPM was serious about protecting children he would immediately change the BIP to; "To the demonstrable and measurable benefit of the child", anything less is child abuse. 

Children should know why they are separated

"Children separated from their parents in secret family court judgments must be able to find out the reasons for the court's decisions when they grow up, the most senior family judge has said. Sir James Munby, the President of the Family Division, said it was "great concern" that the judgments of all family court judges were not routinely transcribed and published."

"This is a "major issue" for the children affected by judgments, he said, who are then unable to find out at a later date why a judge came to a decision that may have affected the course of the rest of their life. He said that there was a "pressing need" for a "definitive record" for concerned parties to refer to if future contentions over the judgment occur."

"Sir James added: "More importantly, in future years: five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years or fifty years into the future, a child who may, for example, be subject of adoption proceedings, is able to see what the judge actually said."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10705913/Children-separated-from-their-families-by-courts-must-know-why.html

Paedophile MPs are mocking British law

From the Express:

"We now know that MI5 actively covered up MP Cyril Smith’s abuse of children and it appears far from an isolated case."

"I recently interviewed Andrea Davison, a former intelligence officer now on the run in South America following her whistleblowing on the arms-to-Iraq scandal of Tony Blair’s Cabinet."

"Ms Davison was adamant that paedophiles are a staple of parliamentary life and have been for some decades. She claimed that MPs have been filmed abusing children and this footage is used to blackmail parliamentarians into acquiescing on issues of global importance."

"If this is true, we must ask just how ingrained in political life is a paedophile agenda?"

"Despite reporting to the relevant child abuse investigations all the MPs who have been named to me, I’ve heard nothing more and neither have there been any arrests."

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/462601/Paedophile-MPs-are-mocking-British-law

A joined up approach with the named person

How the public sector plans and delivers its responsibilities is now embodied in the new Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill passed by the Scottish Parliament on the 19 February 2014. The Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector explains the Joined up Approach.

This requires those delivering children's services to work together using a common framework to improve the wellbeing of children, identify any concerns and plan together to meet needs. A key aspect of GIRFEC requires this to be delivered through a named person role located with identified staff from statutory organisations at various times during a child’s and young adult’s life.

All of Scotland’s children will have named persons to support their development. It is recognised that most will not require any formal assistance beyond what their parents and wider family will provide. Most of the professional named person support will therefore be concentrated in helping those facing more serious problems in their lives and early intervention will seek to address these quickly and prevent those becoming worse.

Increasingly, the third sector supports vulnerable families alongside statutory organisations in provision of services and specialist support to parents and young people in many of the city’s most vulnerable communities

http://www.gcvs.org.uk/engagement/everyones_children/getting_it_right_for_every_child 

One health visitor who has been practising for 12 years believes that the Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) approach means that her role is more widely recognised by other professionals. As a named person she can work more closely together with them, and she is more aware of what is happening with families. Local police now tell her if there has been a domestic violence incident and hospitals inform her about visits to accident and emergency.

There is another way of looking at this: If the health visitor is learning more about families because of the imposition of GIRFEC does this not indicate that some families never saw her as a trusted person to begin with; only now it is a relationship which is forced on them? Can that really be for the best?
 
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0043/00435539.pdf

The net closing around families is truly suffocating and includes voluntary workers who have contact with the child as well as an army of different professionals. Ever ready to intervene at the earliest possible moment, they must consider what information to keep in confidence and what information to share; and be alert to the needs and risks of each child in the context of their relationships and wider world . But without information about their relationships and wider world how is a person to judge? This has got to involve the sharing of a whole lot of information - just incase.  Is this the true purpose of GIRFEC and the eCare framework which supports information sharing?  It would be naive to think not.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/06/5565/5

Forced adoption of newborns

More than 900 newborn babies are now being taken from their mothers each year, a 300 per cent increase in little more than a decade. The number of children aged between a week and a month removed from their parents has risen to 1,300 annually, a rise of 141 per cent in the same time.

In the past two weeks alone, eight newborn babies have been taken from their mothers at hospitals in Newcastle and North Tyneside. The number is so high there are not enough foster parents in the area. One baby - thought to be the ninth taken from its parents - is being cared for in a special hospital unit because there is no foster home available.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has demanded an explanation.

He said: "We are seeing a massive increase in the forced removal of newborns. Babies are being taken before they can even be breastfed. Social workers are seizing very young children on the flimsiest of excuses and giving them to other families.

"This smacks of social engineering on a grand scale. The offer of monetary rewards for meeting the targets has created a frenzy among social workers. There are council targets for recycling rubbish and now targets for recycling children."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-465563/Councils-making-millions-incentives-snatching-record-numbers-babies-adoption.html#ixzz2wJY6Lodh

"The Adoption and Children Act 2002 has been amended to give the Secretary of State the power to remove certain functions of the adoption agency from all Local Authorities and will take effect in March 2015. It had been expected that this might happen only for those Local Authorities who were not meeting their adoption targets."

"These functions include the recruitment, assessment and approval of adopters and matching of adopters to children. Once the amendments to the Act come into force any of these functions can be given over to private adoption agencies."

Good for the adoption industry perhaps but ominous for vulnerable families.

http://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/03/18/if-you-cant-do-what-youre-told-the-minister-will-take-your-role-away-from-you/

Misdiagnosis of child abuse

Studies have revealed that parents and caregivers worldwide are being falsely accused of child abuse when children develop the autoimmune disease, tissue scurvy, after vaccination. In a recent paper by Dr. Michael Innis, he stated that:

"Some doctors are unaware of the pathophysiological processes of autoimmunity, haemostasis and osteogenesis and are misdiagnosing vaccine induced tissue scurvy, absence of vitamin C within the cell, as non-accidental injury."

His paper, Autoimmune Tissue Scurvy Misdiagnosed as Child Abuse, outlined three cases of children suffering from symptoms mimicking those of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) whose parents were subsequently accused of child abuse.

However, it was later discovered that all three parents were innocent and far from being abused, their children had been suffering from the autoimmune disease known as tissue scurvy.

http://vactruth.com/2014/03/19/tissue-scurvy-not-child-abuse/?utm_source=The+Vaccine+Truth+Newsletter&utm_campaign=577da3e82b-03_18_2014_vis&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ce7860ee83-577da3e82b-408192312

Youth Select Committee launch inquiry into lowering voting age to 16

19 March 2014

The Youth Select Committee today announces a new inquiry into lowering the voting age to 16, where it will explore the issues and arguments around votes-at-16.

The Youth Select Committee (YSC) - a British Youth Council initiative supported by the House of Commons and now in its third year - will look at the following issues as part of its inquiry:

• Should the age at which people are allowed to vote be lowered? Why/why not? If yes, to what age?
• For what reasons is the voting age currently set at 18? What qualities mean that a person is ready to vote? Do 16 and 17-year-olds possess these qualities?
• Should the age at which people are able to vote vary between types of election? For example, should the voting age be different for local and General elections?
• What short term and long term effect would lowering the voting age have on voter turnout? Should the likely turnout of 16 and 17-year-old voters affect the decision on whether to lower the voting age?
• What can be learned from countries where the voting age is lower than 18 or where lowering the voting age has been proposed?
• What was the motivation for allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the referendum on independence for Scotland? What can be learned from this example?
• What would the practical implications of lowering the voting age be?
• How effectively does citizenship education prepare young people to vote? How could it be used to prepare young people to vote?
• What is the best way to engage young people with the political process?

In addition, the Committee would like to hear the views of people under 18 on the following questions:

• Would you vote if the voting age was lowered to 16? Why/why not?
• Do you feel ready to make an informed decision about who to vote for? What would help you feel prepared to vote?

Michael Hope, aged 17, Chair of the Youth Select Committee, from Dunbartonshire, said:

"With 16-year-olds in Scotland able to vote in this year’s Scottish Independence referendum, the issue of whether the voting age should be lowered in all UK elections has become a live political issue.
"What would be the practical impact of lowering the voting age? Would citizenship education need to be beefed up to prepare young people to vote? It’s important that politics engages with young people and as a Committee we look forward to hearing what people have to say about votes at 16."

The Committee call for evidence closes on 2 May 2014. The YSC will hold oral evidence sessions in the House of Commons in June and July 2014.  HERE