EIS Amnesty Club and The Practice of Vidomegon in Benin: Amnesty International marks 50 years of fighting!!!

I long for the day when Amnesty is needed NO MORE! Human beings inflict on one another uninmaginable horrors!

I have started an Amnesty Club in the Middle school two years ago and I am so proud to see the Middle School and High School students taking their role of freedom fighters so seriously!! Through Socratic dialogues, I try to raise their consciousness and awareness of problems in our society.

Our club has re-energised the idea of the global citizen in our English International School of Cotonou.

The students and I care about individuals and we are all together united in action, standing in solidarity. We care about children and oppressed minorities. We fight torture, campaign against the death penalty, defend prisoners of conscience and the right of refugees, and calls oppressive regimes to account (by writting letters).

We yearn for a world in which every person enjoys the freedom of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This year our play is about the Practice of Vidomegon in Benin. Doxa, one of my students in Year 9, has written a wonderful play script about the Vidomegon problem in Rep of Benin which I promise to put on the blog next time.

Poor, rural families in Benin and elsewhere in Africa often engage in vidomegon, a social practice whereby a child, usually a daughter, is sent to live as a servant with a wealthier family. 

The practice has fallen into the realm of child traffickers, who go from village to village to collect children and sell them to other nations. Benin has become a supplier of illicit child labour. 

The students and I want our cry, STOP THE PRACTICE OF VIDOMEGON NOW, to be heard all over the world.

Through our plays and stories, we hope that our voices will become a worldwide chorus.

"La persistance du phénomène Vidomègon: Les droits des enfants toujours bafoués en dépit des efforts consentis. 

Dètondji Déguénon est originaire de la région d’Agonlin, et âgée de dix ans à peine. Mais, la voilà depuis confrontée à tous les travaux domestiques, voire plus à Cotonou chez sa tutrice, une fonctionnaire du même village qu’elle à qui elle a été confiée depuis environ trois ans par ses parents. 

Chétive, Dètondji Déguénon, toujours habillée en haillons est la première à se lever et souvent la dernière à se coucher. Elle a le devoir tous les jours de balayer la cour, la devanture de la maison, de faire la vaisselle, la lessive." (laraignee.org: http://www.laraignee.org/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=6944)

The students and I called an urgent action to encourage people around the world to send letters and emails to President Yayi Boni who has the power to intervene and stop the practice of Videmegon in Rep of Benin. 

We must stop children abuses, we must stop the practice of Vidomegon in Benin!

Education and Democracy

"Education is the guardian genius of democracy.It is the only dictator that free men recognize, and the only ruler that free men require."

Teachers must find all sorts of new ways to instill democratic values in their students.

Ataturk said, "Teachers, the new generation will be your devotion." Indeed, if the students internalize the democratic values and principles in their behavior at school, they will be able to build a democratic society free of corruption! Therefore, teachers must create democratic attitudes and attainments in children. A democratic society can be achieved only by means of a democratic education.

Critical pedagogy uses knowledge to raise students' political and social consciousness and it encourage students to question the government. In our Amnesty Club, students learn about democratic values by openly discussing issues and I encourage them to hold different perspectives. I always make sure to create a supportive climate of high expectations!

Teachers must engage students in thinking critically about their society by giving them writing prompts, guiding questions, and opportunities to meaningfully discuss the readings that we use in class about human rights and democracy.

Teachers need to give their students subjects and assignments regarding democracy, human rights, peace, citizenship education, and environmental awareness. Teachers play a crucial role in laying the foundations of democratic institutions.

Democracy Now!

Democracy! We are discussing this word every week with the members of our Amnesty club and with the middle school and high school students!

What makes a Democratic classroom??

Charles Dickens published Hard Times in London in 1854, over 150 years ago! In the opening paragraphs, Dickens describes with raging fidelity the following to teachers:

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Sticks to Facts, Sir!"...
Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens' description of nineteenth century English schooling sounds resonant, oddly close at hand, a bit like the school-world teachers face here and now in the twenty-first century world!

School leaders even in Apartheid South Africa, Saudi Arabia, fascist Germany, communist Albania, agreed that their students should behave properly in school, stay away from drugs and crime, do their homework, and study hard!...

Well, this the common ground we should find in our Democratic classrooms!

Democracy is a form of associative living in which people make the decisions that affect their lives. "Every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force, each born free and equal in dignity and rights, endowed with reason and conscience, and deserving , then, a community of solidarity, a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect."

In my Democratic classroom, I want my students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own. I want them to learn to ask essential questions: Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices and my chances? What is my story, and how is it like or unlike other stories? What is my responsiblity to others?

As Democratic teachers, we must keep these questions vital, alive, and fresh as we, ourselves, are searching for answers!

Respect for persons, for teachers and for students and community members, is at the core of good democratic classrooms!

To be continued...
With our discussion with William Ayers who said "We reach toward freedom, we crawl toward love"

Dickens, G. (1990). Hard times. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1854)

Amnesty International Club: Democracy

Every Tuesday, I have got a group of determined and kind-hearted students who really want to make an impact.

Last Tuesday, we started discussing the word democracy: a definition of democracy, the conditions that are necesary for democracy to flourish, and the current challenges facing the creation of democracy in many countries in this world.

1. democracy [Gr.,= rule of the people], term originating in ancient Greece to designate a government where the people share in directing the activities of the state, as distinct from governments controlled by a single class, select group, or autocrat. The definition of democracy has been expanded, however, to describe a philosophy that insists on the right and the capacity of a people, acting either directly or through representatives, to control their institutions for their own purposes. Such a philosophy places a high value on the equality of individuals and would free people as far as possible from restraints not self-imposed. It insists that necessary restraints be imposed only by the consent of the majority and that they conform to the principle of equality.

(from the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia)

Then, we discussed this excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address on March 1, 1801.

From Thomas Jefferson's first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

"During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussion and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."

Then, we have discussed the conditions which are necessary for a democracy to exist and flourish.

· functioning civil institutions
· free press
· educated middle class
· generally open economy
· increased prosperity
· free elections
· pluralism
· respect for law
· independent judiciary
· rule of law
· freedom from oppression

Which, if any of these conditions exist in Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Togo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Egypt...

A suivre...