sábado, outubro 13, 2007

Educação e Orgulho

A M. teve hoje um problema sério na escola.
O manejo aparentemente muito inépto da professora de um momento de estudo e de resultado escolar subsequente menos feliz produziu na menina uma ferida no seu orgulho pessoal e na sua relação honesta com a aprendizagem escolar de consequências ainda desconhecidas.
As nossas crianças merecem professores com sólida formação pedagógica. E todos os professores devem ter uma sólida formação pedagógica. Os verdes anos da profissão docente não deverão nunca servir de desculpa para não ter essa formação. Isso sim, deverão ser motivo de redobrado cuidado em a adquirir, de tão fundamental que ela é.
Sobretudo para esses professores de verdes anos, permito-me saltar por cima de copyrights e deixar aqui os versos de alguém que se sentiu feliz em escrevê-los e a interpretação de alguém que num dado momento da sua vida se viu neles espelhada: Whitney Houston .

The greatest love of all
I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They cant take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They cant take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all
And if by chance, that special place
That you’ve been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love
(Words and music by Michael Masser and Linda Creed)

quinta-feira, outubro 11, 2007

Tanzanian fellowship is really nice...


Como já disse algures, estive de férias na Tanzânia, na segunda quinzena do mês de Agosto. Num dos dias, numa longa viagem de autocarro entre Dar es Salaam e Arusha, uma simpática passageira teve a amabilidade de me emprestar o seu jornal. Tive assim ocasião para ler o artigo delicioso que a seguir transcrevo, tal qual me foi enviado pelo seu autor, a quem pedi autorização para o publicar. Prontamente o senhor jornalista acedeu, gesto que quero publicamente agradecer entusiasticamente.
O artigo é delicioso!... Diz muito, na minha opinião, a todos aqueles que, de uma forma ou de outra, se ocupam com a educação intercultural e a multiculturalidade.
E não me alongo mais.
Leiam… Disfrutem!...

Brevemente aqui deixarei uma tradução portuguesa do artigo, também autorizada pelo autor.

The Guardian on Sunday,
(Published by The Guardian Limited)
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania.

02.09.2007

My Friend Kukuru Kakara with Wilson Kaigarula

Tanzanian fellowship is really nice…

One prize-winning behavior of Tanzanians is that we don’t bother about tribes. We are Tanzanians first and foremost, and last and “behind-most”. And we shall remain thus till the end of the world. Amen.

Being born on the shores of lakes, the slopes of mountains, in valleys and the middle of forests represents geographical blessings and accidents over which no-one is too excited about or weeps over.

After murdering and burying tribal feelings, many of our children and grand children are ethnic half-castes, the surnames of their fathers being only incidental.

Names merely serve the purpose of distinguishing one person from another, in the same way as a donkey I distinguished from a horse, a baboon from a monkey and a leopard from a cheetah.

A Ruvuma man desperate to conquer bachelorhood and embrace “marriedhood” walks for nearly one million kilometres. He is sighted, with eyes as sharp as those of a healthy, middle-aged cat, and yet he doesn’t see any beautiful and well-mannered woman along the way.

He pretends to be blind and recovers the sight he had not lost in the first place, after reaching Musoma and sees a woman in respect of whom, like Jim Reeves, he would have declared:” My heart is in Rosario”.

Children born by that couple are neither Wangoni nor Wakurya and not even Wawa (Wangoni-Wakurya) but Tanzanians.

Likewise, a Mount Kilimanjaro slopes woman wanders around blindly for two yars and eventually re-surfaces as a sighted daughter of Eve on the shores of Lake Rukwa.

She opens her eyes just in time not to fall into and swim half-way across the lake. She could have ended up as a lunch-time delicacy for a friendly half-fish, half-animal called crocodile.

Ten minutes after opening her eyes, she sees a half-handsome, half-ugly man who stabs her heart like musician Marijani Rajabu`s “kuki moyoni”.

She marries him after digging deep into his family history and establishing that it is 100 per cent pure, by not only not practicing witchcraft, but not even knowing that it exists.

A child manufactured by such a couple is neither a Mpare nor a Mfipa but a pure Tanzanian.

But Tanzanian men and women are not just husband and wife hunters but social mixers as well.

Kukuru Kakara and I socialize in bars with people from various parts of Tanzania, but where our Kaigarula-ness, Kakara-ness, Massawe-ness, ole-ness, and all other “nesses” don’t matter.

Recently, we were at Upara Bar – so-named because the proprietor lost all his hair due to unavoidable circumstances which are too sensitive to disclose.

We were joined by a chap called Tony, a jovial stranger whom we gladly welcomed. We never bothered to establish his surname because doing so would have violated Tanzanian fellowship.

Tony dwelt on what he called spiritualism, saying he was alarmed by the trend of young people engaging in unholy things like drug abuse, prostitution and robberies.

He speculated that that this was because most people had ignored religious worship.

Before he gave us details of a new church whose construction he was the project chairman, his mobile phone rang.

Tony referred the person at the other end as God, and then proceeded to threaten him with death:
“Mungu wangu Godi n`takutoa roho. Usifanye mcheso na khela yangu, aisee…”

Translation, but minus God, because no-one can communicate with God on a phone: “I will kill you; don’t play monkey tricks with my money…”

He then moved a considerable distance away, apparently to prevent us from hearing what he would tell “God” next.

He didn’t return, and we continued to enjoy ourselves; or, rather, to enjoy the beer and the half-lies and half-truths we were exchanging free of charge.

Half an hour later, four police detectives politely asked us to accompany them to the police station to answer a few questions about a fellow called Tony, a notorious car thief who was reportedly in our company about half an hour previously.

We were released, but told that should the need arise, we would be summoned to help the police in their investigations.

Tanzanian fellowship is sweet, very sweet indeed! Long live Tanzanian-ness!

Wilson Kaigarula is the Associate Editor, The Guardian on Sunday.
wkaigarula@yahoo.com. 0713-450-633

Afinal, Deus não conhece tudo...

Às vezes, pegamos quase (é que completamente nunca é…) inadvertidamente num livro e folheamo-lo também quase automaticamente. E acabamos por ver o que antes não vimos… ou melhor, vimos mas não ligámos.
Foi o que me aconteceu hoje, com a seguinte passagem, se calhar, porque estamos outra vez ainda no início do ano escolar e mais uma vez insisto com os meus alunos para que escrevam. Aliás, já este ano, também, procurei que o enredo do pequeno Peter com o escritor Barrie, ficcionado no filme “À procura da Terra do Nunca”, lhes servisse de incentivo para isso, para escrever.
Eis então a passagem, extraída da abertura do livro de Bill Bryson, Breve História de Quase Tudo (A Short History of Nearly Everything), publicado em português em 2004 pela Quetzal Editores:
“O físico Leo Szilard anunciou certa vez ao seu amigo Hans Bethe a sua intenção de começar a escrever um diário.
- Não tenho qualquer interesse em publicá-lo. Vou apenas registar os factos para informação de Deus.
- Não te parece que Deus já sabe quais são os factos? – respondeu Bethe.
- Sim – disse Szilard, e prosseguiu: Ele conhece os factos, o que Ele não conhece é esta versão dos factos (Hans Christian von Baeyer, Taming the Atom)”


The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: “I don’t intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God.”
“Don’t you think God knows the facts?” Bethe asked.
“Yes,” said Szilard. “He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.”


Ora aqui está uma razão muito interessante para escrevermos até o que nos parece que outros já escreveram!...