Tag Archives: education

Irish Choice Network.

I’ve been prochoice from my teens and have been a pro choice activist for the last 20 years.

It hasn’t been easy at times, I have easily been called a ‘baby murderer’ a thousand times.
I’ve given information to women, I’ve sent them to where they can get real information and real help and not be held hostage by pro life agencies.

This year has seen a resurgence of pro choice activism, many more people are saying out loud and to other people that they are pro choice. They are breaking that taboo, women are sharing their stories, we are making Art and making sure we are heard.

One of the meetings I went to (which I wrote about here) resulted in the setting up of the Irish Choice Network http://www.irishchoicenetwork.com to forge links between the many different pro choice groups around the country.

It has been wonderful to work with and draw inspiration from to learn and share with so many pro choice people.
It is empowering to see people who want the make our country a better place. Unfortunately our efforts didn’t come soon enough to put in place the legislation which would have saved Savita Halappanavar.

How ever we will fight on and the more people join us to the better, the line had been drawn please join us.

http://www.irishchoicenetwork.com

Third of pupils got no sex education | Irish Examiner

Third of pupils got no sex education | Irish Examiner.

This needs to change.
One of the infuriating things about it is that there is a comprehensive sex & sexuality education program which was developed to tackle this, but due to it clashing with the christian ethos of the overwhelming majority of school in the country it has not been rolled out by them or distributed to parents via the schools.

Those resources can be found here.
http://www.crisispregnancy.ie/publication/sex-education-resources/

School code of conduct amended to include ‘cyberbulling’.

We got a note home to day stating that the school’s code of conduct has been amended.
It’s a brave move, not sure how it will be implemented but it’s certainly drawing a line.

Online privacy and code of behavior.

Circulating, publishing or distributing (including on the internet) material associated with school activities including but not limited to material in relation to staff and students were such circulation undermines, humiliates or causes damage to another person is considered a serious breach of school discipline and may result in disciplinary action. As part of such disciplinary action the Board of Management reserves the right to suspend or expel a student or students where it considers the actions to warrant such sanctions.

That is the amendments and then letter goes on further to state.

At this point the Board of Management have ratified it and now staff parents and pupils have been informed that rull will come into effect immediately and will included in our official school Journal when the next set are ordered.

I think it does read to be heavy handed but having heard of some of the incidents which have inspired this, including the Photoshopping of pupils and students I can understand it.

While part of me is thinking of the rights of teenagers, rights come with responsibilities and in my experience the majority of parents don’t know how to teach their child to be responsible online and what is and is not acceptable. The best way to teach kids how to behave is to model that behavior and if parents aren’t doing that online, other people are, and often those other people are their peers and that can be problematic.

Having read the letter, again I am glad neither of my kids have a Facebook account, and long may that last.

Marie Stopes Northern Ireland to provide medical abortion.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1010/breaking57.html

The first sexual and reproductive health centre to offer abortion services on the island of Ireland will open in Belfast next Thursday.

Marie Stopes Northern Ireland, based in purpose-built city centre premises on Great Victoria Street, will offer contraceptive options, HIV testing, STI testing and treatment, ultrasound scanning, and medical abortion up to nine weeks gestation.

Anyone over the age of 16 can access the centre, including people from the Republic, and services are available by appointment only. Marie Stopes International, which is a not-for-profit organisation, is the UK’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive healthcare services. It has been established for over 30 years, and works in 42 countries around the world.

It will be medical abortions only which means for some women living up there they won’t have to travel to the mainland UK. It’s a start, hopefully we will have similar services here too.

Inspiring quotes needed.

Start of the new year and with it comes the two homework journals.These days they are very swish compared to what I had secondary school. The school my brats attend have opted for the 4Schools.ie’s student journal.
Which their site http://www.4schools.ie/student-journal states

The 4Schools.ie’s student journal is a learning focused journal which can be tailored to reflect the unique culture and ethos of your school.

Our standard A5 student journal includes:

A choice of hardback or spiral binding
A choice of five attractive full colour cover designs with your school name and crest overprinted in black
Either 8 or 16 pages of your customised content printed in one colour
A choice of two learning modules
A full colour weekly diary featuring facts, quotes and think-links
16 pages of notes for communication between parent/guardian and school.

It really is a kick ass resource, with inserts on the school rules, parental contact sheet, log tables, maps, info about college courses, all the school polices laid out in it so that they are easily accessible by parent and students. The homework journal which a parent has to sign off once a week is a good way of keeping track for parents, teachers and students. Just above the space for a note from a teacher or parent and the sign off it as an inspirational quotation.

journal

I was flicking through them with my daughter, her first thought was cool and then we noticed a pattern.
Can you spot it?

Thomas Edison, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Fredrick Nietzsche, Henry Ford,
Mathatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Ralp Waldo Emerson, Aristotle, Plato,
Solon, Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespear, Edwin H Cahplin,
Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathon Swift, Henry B Adams, Jermy Collier, Napoleon Bonapart,
Arthur C Clarke, Alber Einstein, Aristotle Onassis, Brian Tracy, Brack Obama,
Franklin D Roosevelt, Napoleon Hill, Alber Camus, Lawrence Peter, Francis Bacon,
French Proverb.

She spotted it before I did. There are 41 term weeks so that is 41 quotes and 1 of them is attributed to a french proverb but the remaining 40 are all men. They range from Plato to Obama, over 2,300 years and not one woman included.

So yes I will be sending a note to the school and to the provider of the journals but we decided we would write in quotations by women along side the quotations by men, I might also send them to the school and provider.

So we are asking for help in compiling a list of suitable quotations, we have a few already, but we need more.

Quotations:


“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead

“Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.”
Rosa Parks

“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back – but they are gone.
We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.”
Marian Wright Edelman

“Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.”
Iris Murdoch

So please share with us your favorite inspiring quotes by women.

New emergency contraceptive, 120 hour window.

There is a new emergency contraceptive which has been approved for use.
It is called Ella one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulipristal_acetate
http://ec.princeton.edu/pills/ella.html

It can be taken up to 120 hours after intercourse rather then the 72 hour window for what is known as the morning after pill.

The morning after pill is most effective 93% if taken with in 12 hours, and how effective it is decrease until it’s about 50% if taken at it’s 72 hour limit.

Ella one can be taken up until 120 hours later and will stop 60% of unwanted pregnancies.

I know it’s not as good as contraception or the morning after pill if taken with in 12 hours but, if you can’t get to a chemist for what ever reason with in the 72 hour window it’s an option.

Ella one is not available over the counter you will have to see a dr to get it prescribed. But hurrah for more options but please remember if there is a chance you could end up pregnant there is a chance you’ve gotten an STI, do don’t forget to get tested.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2012/0717/ireland/number-of-women-attending-sexual-health-clinics-falls-201045.html

The average age of a woman having a first child in Ireland is now 31 and Dr McQuade said many young women in their 20s — the age group which has seen the largest fall in numbers attending the clinics — had no intention of having a baby until they were in their 30s.

The availability of over- the-counter contraception in pharmacies has also contributed to the fall in numbers attending the clinics, but Ms Begas said: “It may still be better for these women to discuss their family planning needs with a family doctor or GP.”

She said a new emergency contraceptive called ellaOne — which can be taken within five days of unprotected sexual intercourse and which more than halves the chances of pregnancy — is now available from GPs.

A recent study found that 12% of young women were now opting for longer-term forms of contraception.

There is no yes or no.

When helping my parents clear out their attic, we found many things, one of the was a series of interviews they did with the 5 of us over the years. It was was a list of questions which were part of a parenting course when they had taken part of and had gone on to train and give in various primary schools in the area.

Reading them was like a time capsule and looking back on what our likes were at ages 7 10 and 13 and how we’d changed. My daughter wanted to read over mine and had more then enough fun teasing me about some of the answers. One of which to the question what do you want to be when you grow up my 10 year old self had answered with Polyglot, yes I was all manner of precocious having had a reading age a good few year beyond my actual age.

So I had to explain to my now 11 year old what a polyglot was. Two languages is bilingual, three is trilingual and hyperpolyglot is six or more so polyglot is four/five languages. She asked me why I stopped, that I already had three, English, Irish and Germany that I only needed one more, but it would have to be a real one and not Klingon, and yes smartarsery does run in the family.

That converstaion stuck with me and the notions wouldn’t go away, but there was no way I could take on a brand new language with out brushing up on Irish and German.
She didn’t forget either, so when a notice came home from the school about Irish classes for parents on Wednesday morning she pressed me about it, so I signed up.

This morning I found myself in portacabin classroom which is the parent’s room, with 8 other mothers. Five of use who had been through the Irish school system all having done at between 11 and 13 years of being taught Irish as a subject and four who had not. The other ladies first languages were Filipino, Latvian, Polish and Croatian. Some of them also had a smattering of Russian, our tutor giving the class also spoke Russian so it was interesting class with many cross references.

It started with the very basics of greeting someone. You’d think that would be pretty standard and not controversial right? Not a hope. When Irish was standardised into the modern form taught in school it was done so with a certain bias.
So hello became “Dia duit”, which translate directly to “God be with you”, tricky, is your god is not my god or if you have no god. Then there is the response and children are all taught to reply saying “Dia is Muire duit” “God and Mary with you”, yup Mary mother of Jesus, and if your into out doing the person you can end up with “Dia is Muire is Padrig duit” God, Mary and St Patrick be with you.

The Irish parents didn’t blink an eye at this, but the others questioned it, which reminded me of one of my grandmother’s neighbours, she used to greet him “Dia duit” but he’d always replied “Maidin maith” as he was not a catholic. So thankfully the tutor was happy to deviate from her lesson plan to include “Maidin maith” “Good morning”, “Trathnóna maith” Good afternoon and “Oiche mhaith” Good night.

Which lead into a discussion on gender and Irish nouns. As “Maidin maith” is cos the morning is deemed masculine and it’s “Oiche Mhaith” as the night is feminine. I can’t really recall ever in an Irish class with gendered nouns. Sure it was done in German class but not in 13 years of Irish.

This spun the discussion off into the different sounds of words, and the use of the fada and the tutor had some wonderful examples. That Seán is a name and sean means old. The fada putting the emphasis on that part of the word and changing the vowel sound. So that it can change the word entirely, briste means trousers and bristé means broken, so you end up with “Ta mo briste bristé” my trousers are broken.

And then it was back to the greetings and how are you “Conas atá tú?” and the replies and every answer echos back the question asked, for there is no, yes or no in Irish. There is “sea agus ní hea” but that translates as it is and it’s not.
Which mean we have an echo language that we echo back the words spoken to us so that there’d be hopefully less misunderstanding and not doing that, to not give a full reply would have been considerer ill mannered.

There is no yes or no, but there is a maybe, this I do remember and it was often used by my grandparents, b’fheidir, maybe or more correctly translated as possibly.
So “Is feidir linn” does not mean Yes we can, it translates directly as it is possible for us.

Which is what started this for me, it’s still possible for me to be what I wanted at ten, even with it being a little over two and half decades from when that was an aspiration. When we think in absolutes we can close our selves off to possibilities.
Hopefully this basic class will start to brush away the cobwebs and I can try think more as gaeilge, is feidir liom.

Silly bitches bringing dogs to school.

Seriously what is your damage?
The school’s policy states no dogs on the school grounds, that means don’t bring the bloody thing when collecting the kids.
Standing at the edge of school property is taking the piss.

How selfish are you, walk the dog before doing the school pick up or after,
plenty of kids are scared of dogs and school should be a safe place and they don’t need to have gone back to school and then try and get passed you and your mutt to get to the lollipop lady.

Don’t be bringing a huge fecking dog with you have some sense, I saw one child nearly knocked out on to the road by a boxer dog who’s owner wasn’t in control of the dog.

Don’t be bringing your little yappy snappy dog either, lil vicious breeds which were bred to hunt rats, they make so much noise it pissed everyone off, well done your inconsideration had 3 terrorised kids holding their hands over their ears.

Don’t be brining your mutt out around a throng of school kids when you cant’ control the damn dog and are being pulled around by it, esp when it objects to some other idiot’s dog and tries to start a fight snarling. Don’t try and blame the other dog, get you and the dog away instead of trying to tough it out at the school gate.

Leave the dog at home.

bibles, mass and school continued…

I had two scheduled meeting in the school today, one was with my child’s tutor and SNA
the other was with the head mistress re the bible and a few other things which have cropped up re having a non christian child in thier school.

The first one went well and as I was walking away told my son that I would see him at lunch time as the school has a half day on Wednesdays and and his tutor said ‘Well after mass, as the school as a mass on.” “Excuse me” was my reaction “Oh yes, did he not tell you the whole school is going to Mass at 12:40 for the remember in November the parish priest was in to talk about it yesterday and the kids gave up names for the list of those gone.”

I looked at her and looked at my son and asked him if he wanted to go and that he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to but if he did as his classmates were going I was ok with it. He said he didn’t want to and I then asked the Teacher did he need a note and she said no as it’s out side of school hours…..WTF.

Out side of school hours but the students are being told to go, expected to go told the mass is for them and that they are going directly when school ends.

I told her that my son is not part of the parish, is not christian and that he doesn’t have to attend any masses what so ever. I am raging.

As for the other meeting it was cancelled, grrrr they tried to fob me off with the home school illsason teacher who barely had 5 mins, didn’t know what the meeting was about and when I asked for a copy of the schools policy about non christian children wasn’t sure if they had done and then couldn’t think of were to look for it.

I have a new appointment again on friday morning.