Graham Leicester: Excellence requires vision and courage

[Sheila Struthers]

Corporate Global System Speak Bullshit Alert!

We certainly are leading the way but it makes me ashamed to be Scottish

Once again I say: give Scotland a chance - we are leading the way in refashioning education reform for the 21st century.

Ah! Thought so - here is the guy's website.

Some of this is very worrying and some of this is just ridiculous.

A snip at £37 quid Wonder how many schools will be buying?

[Elaine Kirk]

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Sheila said W

onder how many schools will be buying?

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Quite a few I would imagine, this looks like a low tech version of the NSPCC Promethean system

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from Sheila's International Futures Forum link
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Kitbag for Schools
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IFF is proud to present a totally new product to help children grow up calm and confident, building relationships in Schools both natural and reconstituted. Developed by health professionals and award-winning designers, Kitbag for Schools can be used from the age of three to adulthood. Kitbag for Schools contains 10 ml of calming oil, Presence cards and a one-minute egg timer. It also has Animal cards which offer children opportunities to learn about different human qualities through thinking about them in animals. The animals can provide solace and encouragement as well as offer opportunities for children to talk about values and attributes that they think are important. There is a Feelings Card to help children talk about their feelings, finger puppets for play and dialogue and a visualisation exercise, told to music, called Wonder Journey. A full set of instructions is also included.

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Kitbag for families
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What’s in it?
Kitbag for Families contains 10 ml of calming oil, Presence cards and a one-minute egg timer. It also has Animal cards which offer children opportunities to learn about different human qualities through thinking about them in animals. The animals can provide solace and encouragement as well as offer opportunities for children to talk about values and attributes that they think are important.
Exclusive to Kitbag for Families is a Feelings Card to help children talk about their feelings, finger puppets for play and dialogue and a visualisation exercise, told to music, called Wonder Journey. This story is helpful for bedtime, providing children with a routine for getting to bed, but can also be used as for relaxation at any time of the day.
A full set of instructions is also included.
Kitbag for Schools
There is a variant of Kitbag for Families called Kitbag for Schools for use in a classroom setting. It contains the same items as Kitbag for Families only the instruction booklet is different as it is designed with primary school teachers in mind.
What’s in it?
Kitbag for Schools contains 10 ml of calming oil, Presence cards and a one-minute egg timer. It also has Animal cards which offer children opportunities to learn about different human qualities through thinking about them in animals. The animals can provide solace and encouragement as well as offer opportunities for children to talk about values and attributes that they think are important.
Kitbag for Schools contains a Feelings Card to help children talk about their feelings, finger puppets for play and dialogue and a visualisation exercise, told to music, called Wonder Journey. This story is helpful for bedtime, providing children with a routine for getting to bed, but can also be used as for relaxation at any time of the day.
A full set of instructions is also included.

[Sheila Struthers]

Thanks Elaine Could you do me a favour and put this pic up too? My mouse has lost its right click

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The future is far too open and far too mysterious to rely only on the western science paradigm of evidence based research. We must also reach into unprecedented regions where evidence is yet to be discovered with new visions and new holistic insights using the instruments of deep intuition and positive imagination.
Now it is emerging that people ranging from transition communities to international policy makers are seeking clearer frameworks for bringing a holistic overview to bear on the focus of their immediate concerns. The immediately practical and ultimately sustainable can no longer remain unconnected. The IFF World Model is a contribution offered to those who seek such a connection in order to guide their affairs.

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[pendlewitch]

You guys have the ability to make me heave my breakfast most mornings it seems

[Sheila Struthers]

The IFF World Model is the brainchild of Tony Hodgson and draws on several antecedents and disciplines. It has been developed with the assistance of many hands, inside and outside IFF. It is our hope that this first working model will help encourage others to contribute to further developments. Lurking inside the model is a whole global research agenda, and a global teaching curriculum.

The model draws on early work on deep systems and structures by the philosopher J G Bennett. The Club of Rome, initiated in the late 1960s by Aurelio Peccei, Don Michael and others, suggested a similar approach to penetrating the deeper structures of what they called ‘the global problematique’. Jay Forrester worked on a system dynamics world model, subsequently developed by Dennis and Donnella Meadows and Jorgen Randers. One direct inspiration was the diagram below representing the global problematique in the work of Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider (The First Global Revolution,1994).

The First Global Revolution


Page 75 is quite interesting....

The common enemy of humanity is man.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.

Or how about Page 71 on the limits of democracy...

The Club of Rome are a UN think tank.

You can read more about the Club of Rome here ( I haven't checked all the references).

With regard to all the New Age Spiritual stuff - I have made a start checking the references on this page.

Lucis Trust

The Lucis Trust has consultative status (roster level) with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

The Aquarian Age Communityare right at the heart of the UN.

AAC United Nations page

The Spiritual Foundation of the United Nations

Actually if you read just one link, make it that one... one example...

SPIRITUALITY AT THE UNITED NATIONS

A single species, the human, has indeed gained dominion over the earth, and having collapsed time and space, in communication and travel, to the speeds of sound and light, the humans have become a continuous and globe-uniting species. In this setting, the nation-state is dysfunctional, and states are facing incorporation into a world being, of which they will be subsidiary organs. When such a meta-organization occurs, there must be an organizing center, there must be an organizing energy, a synthesizing energy never before registered by the parts, and evoked by the coming emergence of the whole. This is true of the alignment of atoms into crystals, of cells into tissues, or of organs into a human form, and it is true of the subordinate elements of a society. Now we face the next evolutionary imperative. We are forming the world society.

The synthesizing energy for the world society is focussed through the United Nations. It courses through the halls, through the meeting rooms, through the offices of the United Nations. Blessed are those who are fortunate enough to work there for they are in touch with a new reality in the process of descent and manifestation. Hundreds of thousands of applicants are turned away each year from those who want to work there-why? Basically, because they have heard the sound of humanity becoming whole and because they have sensed the new reality and have touched something of the energy of human convergence.

It is wearying, it is disappointing, it is tiring, but it is also thrilling, rewarding, and meaningful. The UN has its free loaders, its empire builders, its easy riders, and its CIA and KGB representatives, but it also has dedicated and inspired builders of the new world, spinning the future out of their own spirit, out of their own souls.

We have an informal network at the UN, a humanity underground. It consists of those who are committed, aware, and striving to bring the New World to birth. It consists of people in high places and in low-of the patient secretary who has been 30 years with the UN, but lives with the vision and the spirit; of the professionals, and undersecretaries and heads of departments who are acting out the imperatives that their own inner vision gives them. Some few are conscious of the sources of their inspiration; most are not. They are the Karma Yogis of our time-those whose path of spirituality is to achieve through doing-to grow through serving. They are found not only in the secretariat but also in the delegations to the UN, among the diplomats and their staffs, and also among folks like us, representatives of non-governmental organizations around the UN.

Sheesh...

[Ali Admin]

I have just vomited over my keyboard.

Who are these people? They can FRO!

[s836apg]

http://www.internationalfuturesforum...r_families.php

Ha! Put on shelf next to the healing crystals :-)

R

[llondel]

What's "calming oil"? Is that for pouring on troubled waters?

[Sheila Struthers]

I laughed when I read about the kit - almost splattered wine all over the screen - but seriously - and I hope without boring everyone to death...

This unelected and no doubt very expensive crew have been influencing the direction of our so-called democracy for years. This is only one of many links from their own site.

Their previous re-incarnation was the Scottish Council Foundation and before that Scottish Council for Development and Industry if the first page of this article is correct.

REVIEW: PUBLICATIONS OF THESCOTTISH COUNCIL FOUNDATION
Fred Twine
Things to Come - new Thinking for a new Scotland. Graham Leicester. 1997.
Paper No. 1. 20pp. £5.00.
Scotland's Parliament - a Business Guide to devolution. Graham Leicester. 1997.
Paper No. 2. 52pp. £5. 00.
Three Nations - Social exclusion in Scotland. James McCormick and Graham
Leicester. 1998. Paper No. 3. 28pp. £7.50.
Voting in proportion - Electoral reform for Scotland's councils. Andrew Adonis.
1998. Paper No. 4. 16pp. £5. 00.
Holistic government - Option for devolved Scotland. Graham Leicester and Peter
Mackay. 1998. Paper No. 5. 40pp. £7.50.
All published by the Scottish Council Foundation. 23 Chester Street. Edinburgh EH3
7ET Tel: 0131 225 7911.
These are the first five papers published by the Scottish Council Foundation,
now an independent think-tank but previously linked to the Scottish Council
for Development and Industry. It operates with its own research capacity but
maintains close links with the Council's policy unit.

Now I haven't read any of these (pre devolution) articles but the titles sound a lot like what has actually happened since.

[Sheila Struthers]

Okay, another couple of articles...

At last Holyrood is learning how to think outside the box

Education, although the issue where Leicester takes the policy lead, is the subject on which it has been harder to make an impact, as the blueprint for change is so radical that the wonks now need to find a way of getting from where Scotland's schools are to where they need to be. And that is such a long journey that it needs better planning.

But it is in that area of devolution that the SCF has proved and will continue to be of particular interest to the rest of its international network. Scotland is seen by policy wonks elsewhere as a fascinating experiment in creating new institutions. And many of the problems being wrestled with in Scotland - new technology, a skilled workforce, and private-public partnership - are exactly the same as elsewhere.

Putting Scotland on the map of this internet-fuelled network of policy debate has more potential than is sometimes realised among those struggling to get these new political institutions bedded in. And some of that potential is to be unveiled as a grand, international project later this month. Watch this space.

Scottish Enlightenment: the sequel

The parallel with the Scottish Enlightenment at the start of the industrial revolution attracted a group from 11 countries including India, Brazil, South Africa and Australia. Scotland is seen internationally as a test-bed for new ideas, currently running a democratic experiment that grows out of the old British state, a mainstay of the old system.

Now that explains a lot...