Finding joy in the everyday

66 million girls have NO access  to education across the world  ( UNESCO) Girls attend class at a school in Mingora, the main town of Swat valley in Pakistan. Mingora, Pakistan, 2013  Education is one of the blessings of life—and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations. We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which som...

Montessori school, 1917 Is higher education important for girls?  Yes.  No education is ever wasted. However I have read many blogs that do not support this. One of biggest reasons is the debt that young women accumulate once they finish university (college) and the other reason is “ why do young women need a university degree if they become a SAHMs ”.  Firstly, the system of higher education in Australia is very different to the USA. It is cheaper and many parents can afford to pay the cost of their children’s university up front or the student can take out a student loan which they defer paying until they start work.  However they do not start paying the debt until their income reaches a certain level. If they are not in the workforce they are not expected to pay the debt at that time. This makes gaining a higher education degree considerably easier in Australia and for women who choose to remain at home they aren’t faced with paying the debts ...

Photography by Joluise The AusDiab study was funded through a National Health and Medical Research Council grant and followed 11,000 Australians for 12 years. Researchers found the incidence of diabetes remained very high, with almost 270 adult Australians diagnosed each day, and people aged 25-34 were gaining more weight than other age groups. Patients with diabetes were also found more likely to suffer other conditions as well. Prevalence of depression in patients with diabetes was 65 per cent, which was much higher than those without diabetes. The report found that the average gain in waist circumference over the 12 years of the study was 5.3 centimetres and it was greater in women than men. "They've stopped doing exercise they did as a young single person - they've taken on a lot of family responsibilities - but they don't yet feel any great connection or risk of developing diseases such as diabetes. Source:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-19/aus...

Part of the quarantine areas I love finding out new things and sharing them with others (others might not find it as interesting!!). So when I discovered that in 1900 the city of Sydney (Australia'a largest city) was hit by the Bubonic Plague I was really interested.  This wasn't something I had learn in school, so I had no idea that within 8 months 303 cases of Bubonic Plague had been reported and 103 people had died.  Of course it caused panic and dread among the population of Sydney, but the health authorities were aware of the building evidence that plague epidemics were associated with an epizootic infection in rats and began to incorporate preventative strategies to prevent its entry through the ports. As a result of the plague, a cleansing and disinfecting operation took place (between the 24th of March and the 17th of July 1900) which resulted in the demolition of the "slums".  The disinfecting included: solid disinfectant (chloride of lime); liquid ...

E XPERTS have warned that parents who don't medicate children with ADHD could be referred to child protection authorities under controversial draft guidelines being considered by the National Health and Medical Research Council.  .  . However, child psychiatrist and Monash University lecturer George Halasz says the situation should not be seen as unique to ADHD and parents who fail to manage serious conditions such as their child's asthma or diabetes could also be considered to be failing their duty as a parent. ( source ) The guidelines, created by an NHMRC expert working group, state: "Consideration should be given to the ability of the child/adolescent and their caregivers to implement strategies. As with any medical intervention, the inability of parents to implement strategies may raise child protection concerns." ( source ) If Australia heads down this path, we are no different to a police state . Some parents will be loose their right...

Is handwriting a dying art? And does it matter? I no longer write letters (I use to be an avid letter writer), I don't write a diary (I did once), I am not a student (and most of them use the computer these days) so there isn't many opportunities to write the "old fashion" way.  Perhaps the only thing I write on a regular basis is my shopping list or instructions for my son such as "vacuum the house".  According to a newspaper article I read: Ample research coming out of the US and elsewhere supports handwriting for improving brain development, forcing children to write in full, cogent sentences and assisting with memory development. Yet in spite of the research, about 40 states in the US have adopted a national curriculum, known as the Common Core State Standards, that dumps mandatory teaching of longhand. The onus is now on individual schools to decide whether or not to teach handwriting. ( link ) Fortunately (but for how long) longhand is still taught...

Statistics — most people go into a spin when they hear this word.  Statistics are all around us, however they are used all too often to convince (or manipulate) the public.  Those in government use the numbers to tells us things are improving (this is particularly the case with economic statistics), whilst the opposition uses the same numbers to tell us things are going bad, downhill. Others use the data to convince us that we need to change — the way we think is no longer the norm and it is time to make some changes for the common good of the country.   So who is telling the truth?  The problem is, we live in a society that is not statistically literate.  Therefore many people would not have a clue if the statistics they are being fed are accurately or not.   This is particularly the case during elections — beware of any statistics you hear, they are used to manipulate the truth and both sides do it — in all countries . All of this gives statist...

In December I am attending a school closure—not something I would usually do, but this school is special, it was the one I attend as child for 8 years.  The school is a little country school and like so many, declining numbers has made it not viable to remain open.  The school was officially opened in 1879, only to be destroyed in the 1983 bushfires (known as the Ash Wednesday bushfires) that ripped through the Hills destroying many homes and properties.  After 8 years attending this little country school I thought about its impact on my life—what do I remember, good or bad about those 8 years. Quite a bit.  Some of it completely trivial others had a greater impact on my life, not that the teachers at the time realized!   Cucumber sandwiches and warm milk : Anyone who went to school in Australia in the 1970’s should remember the warm milk—as part of government policy of making sure we all drank enough milk, milk in glass bottles were delivered every morning and ...

Do parents these days expect schools to teach their children everything so nothing needs to be taught at home.  We have seen an increase of sex-educations classes being taught in younger and younger classes, we have seen classes on “bringing up baby” for teenage students and now in one state the introduction of “ethics classes”.  Once upon a time all these things were taught by parents in the privacy of the home.  Sex education was discussed with the children when the parents thought appropriate and as for “how to look after a baby” this lesson was often taught by looking after ones siblings — but not discussed in the context of a single teenage mum or dad. Parents had a choice about the delivery of these “lessons” and knew that they would not be overridden by the school their child attending. The new ethics classes are being introduced as an alternative to religious classes* in public schools and covers such topics as fairness, bullying, the importance’s of telling the ...