Sep 10, 2006 12:32:54 PM cite

By offering young people the resources, and in a new light. The old archaic system of education needs to be replaced with one that the youth of today can design. The popularity of websites like myspace shows that this is a generation of interaction, and yet the education system requires that every student take a passive approach to the learning process. This system sets kids up to fail, if we give them a system in which they are more likely to succeed they wouldn't be forced to turn to the other disheartening option.

by indie_young

Sep 9, 2006 4:44:17 PM cite

Hello Stephanie: I truly believe, the better the education is in the first place (not only for wealthy people) and the more jobs are offered, the less violence we will find. We may never get rid of all of it, but certainly dramatically reduce it. Think about Cause & Effect. Unfortunately, politicians do not have the right programs to address properly the issue. Because of that, we civilans must get more and more active around subjects like peace, social and environmental responsibilities, right for food. All the best. Alf Giebler

by alfgiebler

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: I have a deal with a lot of young people because I am working [inaudible] as art director and regisseur [director]. I am working now to make some piece about integration, and I am speaking with young people who are working with me “how is the situation in the school?” because in the school of Germany there grow up a lot of different nations. In the school, in the class – for example, my son who studies in the school in Germany – there are fifteen pupils, only five Germans and others from different countries. They find their own language, and I am working in circus as a clown and I am driving in every country in the world and I meet a lot of people and artists from different nations. And we come together and our children after two or three hours they play together speaking some language, a wonderful language of understanding, you know. It is no Italian, English or Russian or Polish. They are speaking some people language, you know, they understand together. It means they have no aggression, because after a little [time] they understand it is better to play together and they have wisdom from childhood. It is a clean wisdom, wisdom for all people. And the young people who do it they need, they have deficit of love; they have a deficit of attention. They have a problem with dignity, because this big danger - adult people who have their own ideas - they make this because young people don’t become this idea. They have very much energy, and they have a very big potential and it’s a problem from people around them, from family, pedagogues to rule them, rule this enormous big positive energy in a good side, in a good position. It’s time. The people grown up with love they never become criminal because they become a lot of love for growing up because their souls are flowing … [video ends]

by Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Abbas Beydoun: I think that this question is simpler than it should be; because education can not stop crimes... there are many educated killers. I guess that the reasons for this problem are cultural, historical, economical and social. Of course young people in inner cities take the biggest responsibility and I do not want to justify what they do, but the society and the country generally take also part of this responsibility. Obviously, ethnic integration policies are now wrong in France and England, so new policies should be created.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: We can not ask young people to place importance on education, mainly when this education doesn't place importance on young people. We can not demand young people's interest if we don't provide them with any attractive and pleasant educational process, if we are not able to inspire them. I am usually asked at our Colegio del Cuerpo School in Cartagena de Indias about how do we involve young people in the educational process. We talk about terms like [school retention] or [school desertion], about the incapacity of schools and educational process to provide young people with a sort of refuge in life. Schools generally try to domesticate young people, but not to inspire them. Education is the only way to make young people to develop their own capacities, to make them know what are they good for and how worth they are. Education should be a way to happiness, to freedom, as Pablo Freire said. I think we should strongly introduce the notion of pleasure in the educational process. That's the only way to provide young people with a refuge at school.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea:

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Andries Botha: Hi Stephanie. You know gang violence evolves out of the kind of toxic environment within which young men and women grow up. When they no longer have an investment in anything. When they no longer see that they have a future. Their only sense of belonging comes from the kind of sense of the clannishness of belonging to a group of people who values their lives for what that’s worth. And the only way we’re going to stop that is by understanding why it is that people turn to violence in the first place. They turn to violence because their lives are [inaudible], because they have no future. There’s no economic foothold for them. There’s no ways in which they can really participate meaningfully in a way where they can establish their own integrity. People kill themselves because they are dead already. They kill other people because they are dead already, in themselves. And one needs to understand why they are – why they feel so completely dislocated. They are abandoned. There’s no way for them to participate. So we have to understand that that is the root course of it. And usually gangs are run by older people. Organized crime is a business. It’s run by older men, usually, of which young people merely become the willing foot soldiers, no more than a government is run by older men as a rule, and sends younger men to war. So older men run organized crime and send younger men to do their bidding. And usually these young men do not have a stake, and these older men give them a stake. They give them a stake. That’s why it happens.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Gangs are usually created by people in desperate needs. A need there is from place to place. Needs comes from the basics of getting the food to controlling the anything, distribution of food, distribution of drugs and illegal activities to extreme violence, to control people, to create fear. So those are the basics of the gangs everywhere on Earth. How do you get rid of them? You and I we need to do better than we have done. Whatever we have done has not helped. We continue having gangs and difficult times in which we lose life unnecessarily every single moment of every single day of every single year. So when those people, the individuals become educated and trained in human experience, hopefully we will be able to lift them up to new level of reality within them. So they will see a better use of the energies for advancement of mankind. Stephanie, the world needs your help. I pray to the Great One that you are willing to come forward and help people. Me, I’m willing to help you to the best of my abilities to stop the unnecessary violence within our homes, within our communities, within our nations and within our Earth. Thank you.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: I think the danger of the question is that it plays into potentially the idea that the main source of violence in inner cities is gang violence or that it is an individual question of a choice between participating in gang activity or valuing education, placing importance on education. We live in a society that denigrates education and then also glorifies violence of a particular kind, when it serves the interest of powerful groups in the society, when it is carried out by the state or by the police or by the army or by the military, and then violence is acceptable; it’s glorified. And the glorification of violence is not just hypocritical, but goes hand-in-hand with very racist ideas about the source of violence in inner cities, which are predominantly people, colors -- communities of color and really the source of violence in communities of color is first of all overwhelmingly violence against those communities, violence by police, the daily violence of inequality and oppression, oppression in the workplace, oppression in structural violence that exists in those communities, and then on top of that structural violence, on top of the oppression of police forces, the sources of violence that exists in these communities overwhelmingly leads to poverty, inequality, block of job opportunity. Every increase in the rate of unemployment is correlated directly with an increase in violence in our communities. If you could provide full employment, you could eliminate much of the violence that exists today and also, you could take much greater resources and put them into education, and it’s not a question of individual’s value, education is a question of – as a society to evaluate and we do not.

by Anthony Arnove