If the young are not initiated into the village,
they will burn it down just to feel its warmth
[African proverb]
they will burn it down just to feel its warmth
[African proverb]
photo: public intelligence
Wednesday 10 August 2011
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Riots
The Guardian
"The cutting of youth services in the area is not an excuse to go out and loot shops. However, the younger teenagers drawn into gang activity and petty crime or looting do so in deprived areas of the inner city. Without jobs, any social or educational aspiration, the youth services were a means to distract them. Youth offenders who try to turn their back on a life on the streets are constantly hampered by prospective employers doing CRB checks. An offence can dog them for years. It is only the London mayor's scheme that seeks to employ young people regardless of their previous offending. These young people do not feel part of a society. "When the city is on fire the prime minister and mayor don't even come back from holiday," my source told me. "It just shows they don't care about us."
"Before the cuts squeezed youth services, there was evidence of hope provided by social enterprise and youth-based initiatives. In deprived areas with deteriorating high-density social housing, troubled young men no longer needed to eek out a sense of identity in violent life on the streets. Violence happens in deprived areas where domestic violence, family breakdown and addiction issues are also rife. Younger boys are intimidated by teenagers and men to join gangs. The media stereotypes groups of urban teenagers as feckless thugs. This judgment and distancing only exacerbates the problem. Media attempts to blame the Tottenham riots on a network of organised thugs is the latest way to distance ourselves from the problems of this community and our young people who desperately need a voice."
photo: public intelligence
photo: public intelligence
Tuesday 2 August 2011
adolescent rites of passage - interesting organisations
PassageWorks Institute in Boulder, Co.
V interesting Senior Passage course, detailed by Shelley / Rachael Kessler in Crossroads.
The curriculum for the course is available for $1000, and taking the foundation course with passage works (22h, $450/ $350 earlybird) is a prerequisite. All together $1350, or £823.
The full information is here.
I emailed about reading and training and a member of the team, Laura, wrote back to me:
The Ojai foundation
Offers training in being a council facilitator, and has a book called The Way of Council. They do an intro to council training weekend including room and board for $600 (£365) in California.
Animas Valley Institute
Perhaps for an older demographic, the Animas institute does a training for Soulcraft initiation guides. Total training costs are around $16,000.
V interesting Senior Passage course, detailed by Shelley / Rachael Kessler in Crossroads.
The curriculum for the course is available for $1000, and taking the foundation course with passage works (22h, $450/ $350 earlybird) is a prerequisite. All together $1350, or £823.
The full information is here.
I emailed about reading and training and a member of the team, Laura, wrote back to me:
Soul of Education is a deeper dive into this work and I think you will really enjoy it. We also have many other articles that speak to the ROP model and our work--one chapter on school-based ROP that just came out in the book Educating from the Heart. Our website has links to articles by Rachael and others http://passageworks.org/
Our Foundation Course offers an introduction to our approach to education and working with young people in ways that create a sense of meaning, purpose and deep connection. Our curricula, (especially our senior passages curricula) are based on a rites of passage model--however, some facilitators and teachers make this model more explicit than others. As we have worked more and more in mainstream education--we often talk about this ROP model as a Transitions model--a way to navigate change and shift. Our senior passages curricula (which is a curricula that comes from the course Rachael describes) is available to purchase for $1000 (which includes coaching/consulting support), with our Foundation course being a pre-requisite. Let me know if you are interested or have more questions.
Best of luck with all you are involved with!
warmly,
Laura
Offers training in being a council facilitator, and has a book called The Way of Council. They do an intro to council training weekend including room and board for $600 (£365) in California.
Animas Valley Institute
Perhaps for an older demographic, the Animas institute does a training for Soulcraft initiation guides. Total training costs are around $16,000.
Rites of passage and prevention / social wellbeing
Matt
I think I've figured out a preventative approach to fostering social wellbeing. Not figured out myself, but identified.
It's not all there but the backbone is.
It's all in Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. Understanding life stages and development. Rights of passage and supported transition between them. The only question is how. How to facilitate, exactly? What kind of forums for bringing facilitators and practices together with people would work? It used to be church. Now what?
It's not the whole story but a major, major part of it. Right now the invisible but crucial aspects of our wellbeing are slipping through the cracks in our visible, material world and priorities.
A five year old girl was paralyzed from the waist down in a corner shop shooting up the road from me. It's in the papers this week. Her dad, the store owner, was shot in the face.
Three men aged 18, 19 and 20 are being charged for attempted murder.
Would they have done it if they had a clear sense of purpose, coupled with hope and social support, perhaps a relationship with a wiser older person? I doubt it.
Hope you're well,
Briony x
I think I've figured out a preventative approach to fostering social wellbeing. Not figured out myself, but identified.
It's not all there but the backbone is.
It's all in Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. Understanding life stages and development. Rights of passage and supported transition between them. The only question is how. How to facilitate, exactly? What kind of forums for bringing facilitators and practices together with people would work? It used to be church. Now what?
It's not the whole story but a major, major part of it. Right now the invisible but crucial aspects of our wellbeing are slipping through the cracks in our visible, material world and priorities.
A five year old girl was paralyzed from the waist down in a corner shop shooting up the road from me. It's in the papers this week. Her dad, the store owner, was shot in the face.
Three men aged 18, 19 and 20 are being charged for attempted murder.
Would they have done it if they had a clear sense of purpose, coupled with hope and social support, perhaps a relationship with a wiser older person? I doubt it.
Hope you're well,
Briony x
Bri,
Thoughts:
Rights of passage have been a key notion in the work I've done with youth. In Utah, we'd have a lot of ceremonies, and expose young people to the wilderness and the raw realities of facing themselves there, and then guide them through and out the other side. It was flawed as a preventive model only because the youth were forced to be there after having already, generally, dive-bombed. Of course, catching youth at that age is still preventative of further calamity.
Animus Valley Institute--Bill Plotkin's place, I believe--employs a couple of my old colleagues.
Truly preventative rites of passage must be organic, I think. I want to take my kids and their friends backpacking regularly. I want my friends and I to lead these trips, with our kids and whomever else we have the capacity for. The wilderness facilitates rites of passage. Travel facilitates rights of passage. Going out to meet the world on its terms and offer oneself up entirely to what awaits. I have had mine. Not only once, but many times over. They occur at various life stages. They require that I be open, paying attention to how the world interacts with the narrative of my own life, and willing to rise to the challenge of the next level. Hell, I haven't always been willing, so maybe that's not an absolute criteria.
Forums and fora... I don't know. I have a distrust of programs, but then, that's what we operate in, that's what I'm learning to run. The military provides a powerful rite of passage but it is incomplete. I spoke to an ex-marine the other night who, after a couple of beers, had no problem ripping the military to pieces with me for its absolute idiocy when it comes to developing people holistically and transitioning them back to regular life. We are a deeply specialized society, and within our silos we lose track of the whole so easily. "one hand on the laptop, one hand on the spade" is a good start. Enacting rites of passage within the meaningful relationships of one's own community (geographically or otherwise) is a great start. Rights of passage can be subtle, too.
I think about these things from the point of view of social policy, economic development, youth development, and education these days. I'm not sure what role the government has. I'm not sure what role schools have. Bureaucracies are so deadingly inept at these sorts of things. Meaningfulness gets lost quickly at scale, you know? It seems to me more and more to be true these days. I find myself wanting to focus on my self, my own development, the example I can set, what I can come up with to offer, how I'm going to show up for the people around me, the impact I want to make on a daily basis. I'm in the constant project of trying to pull my big ideas down to my daily life and enact just a little bit at a time, but regularly, and see if that way starts to yield results and offers some genuine satisfaction.
Sorry to write so much. It's easier than writing more concisely, and in the midst of finals right now, I knew I'd never get around to crafting a better answer.
Matt
Hey Matt
no need to apologise for writing so much! It was a great email, great to hear from you.
Humm yes I don't think the response is about bureacracy. I look more at something like my yoga teacher's economic model of doing a few workshops a week at like £15 a workshop, then doing a few retreats throughout the year where deeper work is done. Some model like that, led by the individual or collective guides, could be cool.
Organic sure but that requires a 'soulcentric' society for the practices to emerge out of. I think we have to be a little more intentional about it in the egocentric society we have around us. At least in London. Maybe less so in Seattle. I don't know.
Anyway. This stuff is fascinating. It's grabbed me by the balls that I don't have and captured my heart. Particularly the ritual side of things.
Good luck with the exams.
All the best,
Bri x
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Matt Smaus