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

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: My opinion, first, we have to prevent the import and export of arms, ammunition and drugs. And I think we have to give the youth education -- proper education, [family] education so that all these issues so as to motivate and mobilize them to be a better citizen.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, I think one way that we can actually stop gang violence and motivate young people to place importance on education instead of killing each other is actually by respecting and honoring the young people. If we actually respect and honor them, we are teaching them to respect and honor the other. We have to make sure that we have an education system that is actually educating. We would need a different kind of education system, not one which is different at inner city areas compared to the fancy public schools in richer areas in the suburbs. So, we will have to build an education system which can deal with the existing inequities, an education system, a public education system where taxpayers money goes to actually build a rich educational system, which can deal with the hypocrisies of the society that the young people are confronted with, an education system which respects and honors them as individuals, as human beings so they learn to value each other. So, it is really about not just an education system but actually honoring our younger generation. It is time that we not just see them as leaders of tomorrow but to recognize they can be leaders of today; and they are leaders today.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I think the question of gang violence in the inner cities again is symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the culture at large. And we should look at it in that context. Because if we are going to stop gang violence, we need to stop the kind of mentality that is behind and generates gang violence as a particular symptom of a larger cultural illness. And again, I keep going back to the diagnosis of an egocentric, ego-mental, ego-based culture in which the ego is separated from its true connected self and separated from the other, which already is the beginning of gang violence. Whether in the inner city of wherever you are, the ego mind is always living a gang violence. A cultic form of life that is always going to gang against the other. So there are many levels and layers and metaphors of gang warfare and cultic life, where it’s us against them. And, it doesn’t have to be just with knives and guns and chains and whips and all the weapons. But it could be in the words, which you use against each other. as one cultural gang, gangs up against another or one portion of a culture, gangs up using its wealth and elitism and so forth against the other. So we should see it in this more expanded sense. So that to truly stop gang violence and the alienated youth. And it’s not just gangs in the inner city. There are cults and gangs and cliques within the most elite high schools, for examples, junior high schools. We know there is tremendous clique violence going on amongst groups within. That’s all part of the same dynamic of egocentric us versus them thinking. Me versus you, that comes from egocentric culture. Rather than a culture of awakened global citizenship and compassion, where one discovers one deep connectivity with the other and is not alienated. Where we find true meaning and true life flowing. When that is interrupted, we get to the deep source of gang violence and the alienation that comes in that particular form. So if you see it in this generic sense, as a symptom or wider malaise, the key to stopping gang violence is to transform the ego-based culture that produces that kind of alienation across the culture. Then we could just redirect the power of the youth.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: We have to understand the dynamics of gang violence. What is it that motivates people to belong to gangs? What role and function are gangs providing and fulfilling that our educational institutions, our cultural and societal institutions are not? And to the extent that gangs provide a sense of self-esteem, a sense of identity, a sense of belonging but in ways that are potentially damaging and violent and not productive, then we really need to see that that is not -- those, the gangs are not promoting the kinds of values that we want our children to have and yet what is picking up the vacuum in our children's lives that would promote their belonging to gangs in the first place? So this is really a societal condition, a social ill that needs to be studied and remedied and see how we can as a community provide our children with ways of enhancing their self-esteem, of empowering them in productive ways that value their lives, that enhance their lives, that gives them a sense of identity that's positive and that will ultimately nurture not only themselves but their families, communities, and the bigger global family. -- This also is not taken within the context of a void, because we also have to look at the entire economic, political, and societal structures that create these disparities of wealth and poverty, that don't allow for parents and families to be on board for their children because they have to, mothers and fathers have to work. Or to not even live with their children, to find jobs in other countries. So this is not something that takes place in isolation but is connected to a bigger picture.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: This is a question of education and possibilities in life. If every young person has the same possibilities in life like the other, possibilities in education, in work and development, they won't join gangs. They won't follow a false prophet. You follow a false prophet, if you don't have any prospects, if you are frustrated, if you are hopeless. Unfortunately, a part of the young people is still in such a situation today. They are growing up in such a situation. So it is really the job of the states to organise economy and society in such a way, that every young person has some kind of hope in their life. And if they have hope, they are not looking for something different. Naturally, there are some, you cannot educate. There are some, you cannot convince. There are some you cannot give hope, these people you have to fight with the help of the police. It seems that we'll always need police. But for most of the young people there is an alternative. Free enterprise is indispensable for economical development. But it needs to have some guidelines too. It shouldn't be like a jungle. If it really has the right guidelines, controlled by the state, without limiting the initiative of the individual, then I believe we will arrive at a point where all young people have a future und then they won't follow a false prophet any more.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: To stop gang violence in inner cities, we need to give them something to else to do. We need to provide alternatives to the streets. We need to provide alternatives to the way in which they function, and the way in which they are -- the boxes in which they are put into. We need to stop dismantling the family core. Why people turn into gangs is to feel included, is to feel inclusions within their local peer groups, to feel they have a purpose and to do something to take some action. We gave alternative to this that would turn their focus, to whatever it is that we are providing. If we work on strengthening the family bonds, that provide a good stable family support and if we give alternate models of, let’s say, growing food in the inner city. To provide for good health for these people, because if you feed someone processed foods, if you feed them garbage, and you give them not clean water, or good air to breath, you pollute their minds, you pollute themselves, they will then pollute their environment through graffiti, through killing each other. Graffiti is an art too, right? That’s how I view it. But, I’ll go back to providing good examples. If we have some good ways that they can channel all that energy, all that youthful energy into where there is growing food, or providing trainings to be economic leaders or community leader within their groups. This can have huge ripples out and to harness that youthful energy in a good positive way. Man, you can make some changes because that is really why we were all here as for this youth and for the future that we’re leaving behind. Yeah, let's grow more food in the inner city, some more healthy organic food. Education, improving the family bonds, and having good education.

by Benjamin Fahrer