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WorldviewReality Check is a quick and easy way for you to find out more about the facts behind the THRIVE perspective.
Get your school to adopt green practices that are good for people and the planet.
Manhattan Country School Farm, Roxbury, NY. Photo by 350.org.
Schools are a great place to create lasting change. By adopting green practices you can teach students about important issues while creating a healthier and safer learning environment. There are a lot of resources available to make the necessary changes.
Get Better Cafeteria Food
Do you know where your cafeteria food comes from? Most schools have frozen, canned, genetically modified food. Not exactly food to feed the brain or stay healthy. Many schools throughout the country are transforming their cafeterias, introducing more local, fresh, organic foods. You can do the same.
Use this Toolkit with step-by step instructions to get healthy, local, sustainable food in your school cafeteria.
Link up Local Farms with Your School – A national program, called “Farm to School” helps connect local farmers with schools, to get fresh, local food in cafeterias around the country. They also help educate kids about the value of local, sustainable agriculture.
Start an Edible Schoolyard or a Life Lab Garden Classroom – The edible schoolyard in Berkeley, California is one of the original garden programs for students to grown their own food on site. You can learn more about their program and other affiliate programs on their website. The Life Lab Garden Classroom is similar. The California based organization “helps schools develop gardens where children can create ‘living laboratories’ for the study of the natural world.” This often includes education about growing your own food.
Become Energy Efficient
Schools have a big carbon footprint – they are usually powered by nuclear, coal, or natural gas, which are bad for the environment and our health. You can switch to renewable energy, like wind and solar, to lessen your impact on the environment and save on electricity costs. The “Alliance to Save Energy” has a Green School Program that works with students to come up with a plan to save energy in their schools.
Reduce Waste
Schools are filled with recyclable materials – papers, cans, bagged lunches, boxes, art supplies, etc. Most of this stuff can be recycled. Make sure it doesn’t end up in the dump and start a recycling program.
All the food that students don’t eat, can stay on campus and fertilize your soil, rather than go to the dump. Lots of schools have successful composting programs – you can learn from them and start your own.
Re-label Trash Cans as “Landfill”
By labeling trash cans as “landfill” you can cut down on waste and get students to think about where their trash is actually going.
Build Green
The U.S. Green Building Council offers a wealth of information to transform schools into healthy environments that are “conducive to learning while saving energy, resources and money.” Check it out and make your school a Green School.
Join the Green Schools Initiative
The Green Schools Initiative “integrates efforts to reduce schools' ecological footprints, make school environments healthier, and get the whole community thinking about solutions to the problems we face.”
Parents are forming powerful networks and cooperatives that bring a new approach to education. Take a look and consider joining or starting your own program.
The Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO)
This site provides a comprehensive list — organized by countries and states — of schools that pose an alternative to mainstream education.
AERO's "Start a School" Program
This program allows you to access educational tools and network with others who have started their own successful schools.
How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining School's That Work Author, teacher, and parent, Chris Mercogliano, provides a "how-to" support guide for anyone starting a school, while maintaining his belief that "no two schools should look alike."
Parents should be given the choice to opt-out of the public or private school system and educate their children as they see fit.
Is there a teacher you had who made a real difference in your life? Let them know.
How can we most efficiently and compassionately steward the transition from a tax-funded, mandatory system of schooling/indoctrination to a prosperous society of individuals who are able and free to choose the styles of learning best suited to each person’s needs and passions?
"A crucial fallacy... is confusion between schooling and education in general. Education is a lifelong process of learning, and takes place not only in school, but in all areas of life."
"Mandatory education is involuntary servitude."
Exploring your purpose and learning to align with it is the function of education. When we achieve this we become life long learners and have the stamina and perseverance that is required of an active and engaged citizen.
Educational freedom naturally optimizes human incentive, initiative, creativity, critical thinking, and meaningful citizen engagement.
“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”
Education is what’s left when you’ve forgotten what you learned in school.
Industry funding of education has surged in recent years, which influences the outcome of research.
The current American school system took root around the turn of the century. In 1903, John D. Rockefeller founded the General Education Board, which provided major funding for schools across the country and was especially active in promoting the State-controlled public school movement.
Why do we accept that the most naturally curious time in our lives, when everything is new and our brains are poised to learn, we instead require kids to sit still for 18 years in a row learning rote, standardized information?
American education is failing. Corporations fund University research and therefore influence curriculum, while state elementary and high schools promote obedience above critical thinking. We promote creating independent schools that meet the needs of individual learning styles and passions, and which inspire the thinking, discipline and creativity we need to crate real solutions to our many problems.
Sedona Skywatch has been proactively organizing since March 2012 and gathering in public community spaces for the sole intention of educating ourselves and the community. It is our goal to understand the ”man-made cloud phenomenon," its purpose, risks, and possible ties to community illnesses. We are examining positive and proactive ways to approach the subject at the community-level.
ThriveTaos has more than 600 active members who are helping to transform their small community in New Mexico. They’re an inspiring example of how much we can get done when we’re organized and committed to thriving!
It's a win/win.
If current laws aren’t protecting your community from corporate pollution or other environmental harms, draft your own laws.
Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program, shop at the farmers market, and whenever possible buy local, organic produce at the super market.
What are humans doing that would be causing a vast percentage of bees to die off, and how can we save them?
How does climate change relate to the banking elite's effort to transcend national sovereignty, establish global governance and create a global tax to fund their dominance?
Governments and corporations are deliberately manipulating and altering Earth's climate, endangering the lives of people all over the world. Two of the most extreme cases of geo-engineering are "chemtrails
Most judges are appointed by politicians (even the Supreme Court), who in turn are controlled by corporations, who are beholden to major banks.
So the bankers at the top of the pyramid can use the justice department and the courts, even the Supreme Court (as in the “Citizens United” case giving corporations free reign to bribe politicians), to do their bidding. (Guantanomo, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques...were all “OK’d” by the Justice Department)
A fuller exploration into Following the Money in our Justice system will be forthcoming. Meanwhile here is a story that gives a sense of the power structure unethically and illegally using the “justice” system to keep itself in place.
Catherine Austin Fitts, a highly successful financial executive, had a first hand run in with what she calls “The Myth of the Rule of Law.”
Here is what happened to her when she started to use her talents to “follow the money.”
"After a successful career on Wall Street, I moved to Washington, DC, to serve as Assistant Secretary of Housing in the first Bush administration. After I left the administration, I was invited to join the Federal Reserve as a governor. I declined the invitation in order to start my own investment bank, Hamilton Securities"
"Cleaning up Iran-Contra period fraud had persuaded me that democracy and markets depended on citizens having access to government financial disclosure contiguous to the political jurisdictions in which they elected officials."
"After the seizure of the Hamilton offices, I became for all intents and purposes a prisoner in my own home…I was living with physical harassment and surveillance while various people around me were trying to persuade me that the dead animals on my doorstep, the break-ins, the people following me on foot or by car, and the clicking noises on my telephone were one ongoing coincidence. I determined that my life depended on learning as much as possible about who was really in charge."
"I have emerged a more seasoned and knowledgeable investment banker with membership in a new and evolving global network. Litigation with the US government and its informant have helped me develop the skills required to survive and thrive in the midst of growing lawlessness and economic warfare."
From Department of Defense (DoD)...
David K. Steensma
Acting Assistant Inspector General
for Auditing for the DoD
February 26, 2002
From Housing & Urban Development (HUD)...
Susan Gaffney
HUD Inspector General
March 22, 2000
To see more about Catherine’s exposés about how “justice” works behind the curtain, check out these links:
The Myth of the Rule of Law
or
How the Money Works: The Destruction of the Hamilton Securities Group
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0202/500055.htm
Dillon Reed & Co., Inc. And the Aristocracy of Stock Profits