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TED TALK WITH TRASCRIPT / FOR LANGUAGE PRACTICE

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Transcript of "Street art with a message of hope and peace"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: What does this gorgeous street art say? It's Arabic poetry, inspired by bold graffiti and placed where a message of hope and peace can do the most good. In this quietly passionate talk, artist and TED Fellow eL Seed describes his ambition: to create art so beautiful it needs no translation.

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Breaking News - lessons (listen and reading with transcripts)

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Breaking News English - Easier News Lessons

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English News Lessons in 7 levels with graded multi-level listening and variable scrolled-reading, and all-skills activities.

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Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 | Montgomery Bus Boycott for Kids | Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King

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First black author to win the Booker Prize, in 2019 Bernadine Evaristo

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NEW BOY / Short film

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New Boy | Oscar® nominated film about a young boy living in a strange new country

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Angela Davies

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t is 1972, and Angela Davis is answering a question about whether she approves of the use of violence by the Black Panthers. She is sitting against a backdrop of powder-blue breeze blocks, the walls of a California state prison cell. Dressed in a red turtleneck, with her signature afro and a lit cigarette, she stares at the Swedish interviewer - almost straight through him - as she delivers her reply: "You ask me whether I approve of violence? That just doesn't make any sense at all. Whether I approve of guns? I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs - bombs that were planted by racists. I remember, from the time I was very small, the sound of bombs exploding across the street and the house shaking ... That's why, when someone asks me about violence, I find it incredible because it means the person asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through and experienced in this country from the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa."

Watching the short clip explains Davis the icon in an instant: the image, the intent, the intellect. She was immortalised in the 2011 documentary The Black Power Mixtape, and clips of the interview have been shared on social media as the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has triggered global protests against police violence. Her 1981 book, Women, Race and Class, is being shared widely as essential reading for anyone wanting to learn about being actively anti-racist, alongside James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

Angela Davis ... 'We've never witnessed sustained demonstrations of this size that are so diverse.' Photograph: Agencia Efe/Rex/Shutterstock

Now 76, she speaks over Zoom from her office in California. Does she feel now that, after so many years, meaningful change is possible? "Well, of course, it could be different," says Davis. "But that's not guaranteed." It's an understandably cautious tone from Davis, who has seen everything from the Watts riots and Vietnam to Ferguson and Iraq. "After many moments of dramatic awareness and possibilities of change, the kinds of reforms instituted in the aftermath have prevented the radical potential from being realised."

She is, on the whole, buoyed up by the vast protests triggered by Floyd's death. Although there have been large-scale protests as recently as 2014 - after the death of Michael Brown, and others including Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner - Davis thinks that this time, something has changed. This time, white people are beginning to understand.

"We've never witnessed sustained demonstrations of this size that are so diverse," says Davis. "So I think that is what is giving people a great deal of hope. Many people previously, in response to the slogan Black Lives Matter, asked: 'But shouldn't we really be saying all lives matter?' They're now finally getting it. That as long as black people continue to be treated in this way, as long as the violence of racism remains what it is, then no one is safe."

If anyone is qualified to make an assessment on the current situation, it is Davis. She has spent five decades as an intellectual campaigning for racial justice, yet the causes she has pursued - prison reform, defunding the police, restructuring the bail system - had, until recently, been considered too radical for mainstream political thinking. There was a feeling that she was frozen in time; that she belonged to a 60s brand of so-called radical chic and that her ideas were outmoded. In a profile written in 2016, a Wall Street Journal interviewer asked colleagues if they knew who Davis was. No one under 35 did.

Davis may have become a pinup for social justice 50 years after she rose to prominence, but she insists she gets just as much out of the new generation of protesters and political thinkers. "I see these young people who are so intelligent, who have learned from the past and who have developed new ideas," she says. "I find myself learning a great deal from people who are 50 years younger than me. And to me, that's exciting. That keeps me wanting to remain in the struggle."

"I think it's really important to point out that, while the immensity of this response is new, the struggles are not new," she says. Davis doesn't want the impact of community organising, educational workshops and food banks - the grassroots work pioneered by the Black Panthers in the 60s - to be ignored now. "The struggles have been unfolding for a long time," she adds. "What we are seeing now bears witness to the work that people have been doing that has not necessarily received media attention."

Davis cites the militarisation of the US police after Vietnam, and the potential for prison reform after the Attica prison uprising in 1971, which did not materialise, at least not in the way she imagined. Prison populations in the US exploded from around 200,000 at the time of Attica to over a million prisoners by the mid-90s. "Looking back at that period, we realised that the reforms actually helped to consolidate the institution itself and to make it more permanent," she says. "And that is the fear right now."

Davis in 1974, with her signature look. Photograph: Everett Collection/REX/Everett Collection/Rex

So what advice would she give the Black Lives Matter movement? "The most important thing from where I stand is to begin to give expression to ideas about what we can do next," she says.

This is, of course, a big question, and a harder one to answer in the heat of growing protests around the world. One thing Davis is clear on is that moments such as the burning of a police precinct in Minneapolis or the removal of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol aren't the ultimate answer. "Regardless of what people think about it, it's really not going to bring about change," she says of the statue's removal. "It's organising. It's the work. And if people continue to do that work, and continue to organise against racism and provide new ways of thinking about how to transform our respective societies, that is what will make the difference."

Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944. At the time, Alabama was controlled by the notorious white supremacist politician Bull Connor. Davis was friends with some of those who died in the 16th Street Baptist church bombing in 1963 - a Ku Klux Klan act of terrorism that killed four girls, and for which no prosecutions were brought until 1977. "We knew that the role of the police was to protect white supremacy," says Davis.

She moved to New York at 15 to attend high school there, went to West Germany to study philosophy and Marxism under Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt school, and, back in the US by the end of the 60s, was active in the Black Panthers and a member of the Communist party. Her links to communism meant that the then California governor, Ronald Reagan, had her sacked from herposition as acting assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA.

Then, in 1970, things shifted gears. A shotgun Davis legally bought was used in an attempted courthouse escape. A judge who was taken hostage was killed, as was Jonathan Jackson - the student who attempted the breakout - and the two defendants. Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder" because she had purchased the gun. She went underground and was arrested in New York. Aretha Franklin helped publicise her case by offering to pay her bail, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon wrote songs about her, she became a cause celebre around the world and was cleared of the charges after spending 18 months in prison. It turned Davis from a radical academic and community leader into an international figurehead for political activism of all stripes. "I'm really thankful that I'm still alive," says Davis. "Because I feel like I'm witnessing this for all of those who didn't make it this far."

Davis knows how close she came to not surviving. When the 1972 interview took place, she was still being held on a charge of murder and could - in theory - have been executed. Many of Davis's fellow Panthers did meet violent deaths at the hands of the state: Fred Hampton was killed in a police raid in Chicago, while Bobby Hutton was shot while surrendering in Oakland (Marlon Brando delivered his eulogy). Many more are still in prison (Mumia Abu-Jamal) or exile (Assata Shakur). "I know that I could have been one of those ... several didn't make it," says Davis. "I could be in prison, I could have been sentenced to spend the rest of my life behind bars. And it was only because of the organising that unfolded all over the world that my life was saved. So, in a sense, my continued work is based on the awareness that I would not be here had enough people not done the same kind of work for me. And I'll continue to do this until the day I die."

One of the key tenets of Davis's post-prison life has been ensuring women's contribution to the civil-rights struggle is not ignored. That's something she sees echoed today, as people fight for female victims of police violence - people such as Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, after they used a battering ram to enter her apartment - to be given the same coverage as their male counterparts. "This masculinisation of history goes back many decades and centuries," says Davis. "Discussions about lynching, for example, often fail to acknowledge not only that many of the lynching victims were black women, but also that those who struggled against lynching were black women, such as Ida B Wells."

Campaigning against the Vietnam war with Jane Fonda. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images

"I think it's important to understand why this tendency towards masculine representations of struggle happen, and why we fail to recognise that women have forever been at the centre of these struggles, whether as victims or organisers."

It's not just Davis's ideas on police reform and social justice that are taking hold; her ideas on how that change comes about are proving equally influential. For decades, she has promoted feminist thinking that pushes back against hypermasculine political leadership and forms of resistance. She thinks the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements, which have not put an emphasis on or - in some cases - even formed recognisable leadership groups, are breaking new ground.

My mother told us that things would change. And that we could be a part of that change

"There are those here in this country who are asking: 'Where is the contemporary Martin Luther King?', 'Where is the new Malcolm X?', 'Where is the next Marcus Garvey?'" says Davis. "And, of course, when they think about leaders, they think about black male charismatic leaders. But the more recent radical organising among young people, which has been a feminist kind of organising, has emphasised collective leadership."

But isn't there a tension between Davis's ideals of collectivity and her own status? "I can't take myself too seriously," she says. "I say that over and over again. Because none of this would have happened if it were only up to me as an individual. It was the movement and the impact of the movement."

Davis has tried to pull that movement into the mainstream before. She ran for office herself in 1980, as the vice-presidential candidate for the US Communist party. In a lecture in 2006, she despaired at the George W Bush administration, and now she can't even bring herself to say Trump's name, instead opting for "the current resident of the White House". Does she think US democracy at present has room for radical ideas about social change? "I don't think it can happen," says Davis. "Not with the leadership of the current political formations - not the Democrats, and certainly not the Republican party."

Speaking at the Women's March in Washington in 2017. Photograph: Noam Galai/WireImage

But what about the Democrats taking a knee and wearing kente cloth in solidarity? Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats wore the Ghanaian fabric, which was given to them by the Congressional Black Caucus, to show "solidarity" with African Americans, a crucial voter base that their presidential candidate, Joe Biden, is struggling to connect with."That was because they want to be on the right side of history," Davis says, dismissively. "Not necessarily because they're going to do the right thing."

Davis sometimes tells a story at her lectures about how, as a young child in Birmingham, she asked her mother why she couldn't go to the segregated amusement park or libraries. Her mother, who was an activist before her, explained how segregation worked, but didn't leave it there. "She continually told us that things would change," says Davis. "And that they would change, and that we could be a part of that change. So I learned as a child to live under racial segregation, but at the same time simultaneously, to live in an imagined new world and to recognise that things would not always be as they were."

"My mother always said to us: 'This is not the way things are supposed to be, this is not the way the world is supposed to be.'"

This article was amended on 6 July 2020 to clarify that four girls were killed outright by the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church.

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Angela Davis: 'We knew the role of the police was to protect white supremacy'

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The veteran civil rights campaigner on growing up in segregated America, the opportunity of the Black Lives Matter movement and what inspires her to keep fighting

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Neil Gaiman answers in The Guardian. 9.2.21.

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A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens

t's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living through my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I'm biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.

And I'm here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it's that change, and that act of reading that I'm here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it's good for.

I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons - a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth - how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.

It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Literate people read fiction.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end ... that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I've seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King's Carrie, saying if you liked those you'll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King's name is mentioned.)

And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

You're also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this:

The world doesn't have to be like this. Things can be different.

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child's love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children's library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children's' library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader - nothing less or more - which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories - they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we've moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That's about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before - books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It's a community space. It's a place of safety, a haven from the world. It's a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now.

Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.

According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the "only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account".

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce.

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.

I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us - as readers, as writers, as citizens - have obligations. I thought I'd try and spell out some of these obligations here.

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time.

We writers - and especially writers for children, but all writers - have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were - to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers' throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves.

We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we 've lessened our own future and diminished theirs.

We all - adults and children, writers and readers - have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I'm going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It's this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things.

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we've shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.

We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy. This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

* This is an edited version of Neil Gaiman's lecture for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday October 14 at the Barbican in London. The Reading Agency's annual lecture series was initiated in 2012 as a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share original, challenging ideas about reading and libraries.
Topics

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Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

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A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens t's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort.

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Year 11 & 12 : read about

Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and learn about BAME (Black, Asian and Other Minority Ethnic).

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Present and discuss your future job in health and care

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Present and discuss your future job in health and care

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Year 10, 11 & 12

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COMPREHENSION - SLAM & POETRY:Aija Mayrock & Rupi Kaur

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ENGLISH poetry video comprehension women poets 

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Comprehension

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SUFFRAGETTES & VOTE FOR WOMEN

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PREMIERE BAC PRO

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Prix Nobel 2020, Louise  Glück - texte bilingue anglais-français

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Prix Nobel 2020, Louise  Glück - texte bilingue anglais-français

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Discours de Louise  Glück avec une traduction inédite de Cécile (Vinca Alba Minor) & Thierry Gillyboeuf

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LECTURE - Poème d'Amanda Gorman à Washington pendant l'investiture de Joe Biden -bilingue anglais-français

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LECTURE - Poème d'Amanda Gorman à Washington pendant l'investiture de Joe Biden -bilingue anglais-français

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avec lien vers la vidéo de la performance

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While there is no formal legal definition most experts agree that an What is the difference between a migrant and a refugee? international migrant is someone who changes their country of usual residence, irrespective of the reason for migration or legal status.

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Before the Flood, presented by National Geographic, features Leonardo DiCaprio

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Welcome to Before The Flood, your trusted ally in understanding and combatting climate change. Our mission is to inspire change and foster a more sustainable future by creating a platform dedicated to providing valuable, up-to-date insights into the world of climate change and environmental sustainability.

Before The Flood was born from a deep concern for our planet's well-being and a strong commitment to sustainable development. Our team consists of dedicated climate scientists, environmental enthusiasts, writers, and communicators who believe that knowledge is the catalyst to change. We come from all corners of the globe, united by our passion for the environment and our shared mission to combat climate change.

We exist to shed light on the complexities of climate change, giving our readers access to the latest research, innovations, policy discussions, and expert opinions in the field of environmental sustainability. We strive to present the science in a language that everyone can understand and engage with, making the complex issue of climate change more accessible to all.

Our blog features a rich tapestry of content ranging from in-depth articles, interviews with experts, thought-provoking op-eds, to comprehensive guides on adopting sustainable practices. Each piece of content is meticulously researched, crafted, and presented with the objective to educate, inspire, and empower.

At Before The Flood, we also believe in the power of community. We encourage open dialogue and collaborative problem-solving, nurturing a community of change-makers who are dedicated to creating a sustainable world. We foster constructive discussions on our platform, enabling readers to engage with experts and each other, broadening our collective understanding of the challenges we face and the solutions at our disposal.

Our commitment to combating climate change doesn't stop at raising awareness. We are firm believers in walking the talk. To this end, we work hard to ensure our operations are as sustainable as possible, limiting our carbon footprint and supporting initiatives that offset the environmental impacts of our activities.

We are all in this together. Climate change affects every person on this planet, and each one of us has a role to play in safeguarding our home for future generations. At Before The Flood, we equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to be an active participant in the fight against climate change.

Join us in this journey. Together, we can turn the tide, fostering a future where human development and environmental sustainability go hand in hand.

Welcome to Before The Flood. Here, knowledge empowers action.

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Welcome to Before The Flood, your trusted ally in understanding and combatting climate change. Our team consists of dedicated climate scientists, environmental enthusiasts, writers, and communicators who believe that knowledge is the catalyst to change.

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'The right to learning should be given to any child'

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Malala Yousafzai - The right to learning should be given to any child

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With more than 130 million girls out of school today, she needs your help breaking down the barriers that hold girls back.

Your gift today is an investment in Malala Fund programmes that help girls around the world go to school.

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With more than 130 million girls out of school today, she needs your help breaking down the barriers that hold girls back. Your gift today is an investment in Malala Fund programmes that help girls around the world go to school.

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'Deeds not words' : audio drama following Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton as she protests for women’s right to vote.

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Learn about the leader of the Suffragettes.

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An American nurse reports

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The demand for travel nurses in the US has skyrocketed due to the pandemic, from 8,000 openings in January to 32,000 in December. They've played a crucial role in places overwhelmed with Covid patients.

Laura Liffiton, a nurse from Phoenix, Arizona, has been travelling for six months following Covid spikes across the US. She's worked in ICUs and emergency rooms from New York to the Midwest.

"I want my kids to ask me where I was and I want to be able to show them that if you can help somebody, you should," she says.

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Fighting Covid on the road across the US

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The demand for travel nurses in the US has skyrocketed due to the pandemic, from 8,000 openings in January to 32,000 in December. They've played a crucial role in places overwhelmed with Covid patients. Laura Liffiton, a nurse from Phoenix, Arizona, has been travelling for six months following Covid spikes across the US.

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Studies Show

Credit... Illustration by Ori Toor

Roughly a third of all adults in the United States have high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. It's a condition that can be largely controlled with diet, exercise and medication, yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only about half of the 75 million people who have high blood pressure manage to keep it in check. In November, Eric Loucks, director of the Mindfulness Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, and colleagues published a study in Plos One, a science journal, that put forward a possible solution: an eight-week mindfulness-based program.

Their experiment seemed to show that such intervention could help those with high blood pressure lower it substantially and maintain that improvement for at least a year. Funded by the Science of Behavior Change program at the National Institutes of Health, it was also more evidence that the medical establishment is starting to consider mindfulness - originally an Eastern spiritual practice that Western marketers have co-opted in recent years to sell everything from yoga leggings to Ford Explorers - a legitimate form of treatment. The Plos One paper was one of more than 7,000 studies published last year that included the word "mindfulness," according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine; in 2007, roughly 70 scientific articles were published on therapeutic uses of the practice, JAMA noted the following year. "The fact that almost every single day there's a study coming out showing the benefits of mindfulness training creates this level of confidence that this is valuable," says Michael Mrazek, director of research at the University of California's Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential.

But in order for physicians to be able to "prescribe" mindfulness as a therapy, it would help to be able to quantify it. Compared with a pill, say, mindfulness - often described as the practice of paying attention to your present experience without judging it, sometimes but not always through techniques like meditation - is far more difficult to define. What constitutes a "dose"? And how can you be sure people are getting it? Despite the growing excitement about the potential for mindfulness to treat or supplement therapies for almost any health problem imaginable - including depression, smoking and chronic pain - without the same risk of side-effects that many pharmaceuticals have, studies on its impact have generally returned mixed results, perhaps in part because they have been experimenting with slightly different versions of it in different contexts.

Loucks and his colleagues wondered whether a mindfulness regimen designed specifically to reduce blood pressure would work better than general mindfulness programs, which previous studies have shown to have mixed results when it comes to lowering blood pressure. They started with one of the most widely used mindfulness curriculums, a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, first developed in the late 1970s at the University of Massachusetts to help hospital patients manage chronic pain. Participants typically take a group class two and a half hours a week for eight weeks, in which they learn to train their attention on their present experience with equanimity by using techniques such as yoga and meditation; they are also supposed to practice mindfulness skills at home for at least 45 minutes, six days a week, and take part in an orientation session and a daylong retreat. Loucks focused each weekly mindfulness session on a behavior that contributes to high blood-pressure, like inactivity or eating too much sugar and salt. One week, participants practiced mindfully eating something sweet or salty in class: Loucks asked them to describe how they felt emotionally and physically before, during and after taking a bite; then they did the same for foods from a variation on the Mediterranean diet.

Image

Credit... Illustration by Ori Toor

Forty-three volunteers with high blood pressure completed the one-year trial. To measure the effects, the researchers gave their subjects questionnaires to gauge how well they identified and controlled their emotions as well as tests to assess their ability to pay attention to a task before the program began and again three months, six months and 12 months after it ended. The study also evaluated its subjects' physical-activity level, diet, body mass index, perceived stress, alcohol consumption, medication adherence and blood pressure. Those who weren't following official guidelines on heart health at the outset all showed improvements when it came to physical activity, diet and alcohol consumption; all participants reported lower stress. On average, a year later, the study participants had lowered their systolic blood pressure by six points and their diastolic pressure by an average of one point, a significant overall improvement.

But the study also illustrates the difficulties inherent in trying to judge the health effects of any psychological intervention. The scientific method, in comparison, is well suited to testing drugs like blood-pressure medications: One group of trial subjects gets the medication, another gets a placebo and neither the researchers nor the participants know who gets what until the clinical trial is over, eliminating the possibility that their expectations about the drug's effectiveness influence the results. In other words, the conditions for each group are exactly the same, except for the chemical makeup of the pill they are ingesting. In theory, then, any difference in health outcomes between the groups must be a result of that difference in chemicals.

It is impossible, though, for persons practicing mindfulness not to know whether or not they are doing it, so how do you create a "placebo" for a control group? Loucks's study compared participants with themselves before and after the mindfulness training, but it's impossible to be certain whether the training itself caused the observed changes. It could be that simply meeting in a group for two hours a week (or 10 minutes a week, for that matter) improves health. To find out, you would need to convene such a gathering for the same length of time as the mindfulness training group and then "give them something to do," Loucks says. "What is that content?" - taking a health class? - "and is it messing with our question?" To put it another way, can you say what the precise difference is between the mindfulness training and that health class, which is the behavioral equivalent of the chemical difference between a drug and its placebo, that accounts for a difference in outcomes?

That difference, the aspect of mindfulness that impacts health, may become clearer as researchers develop increasingly specific mindfulness-training programs and test them on larger, more diverse groups of people. In Loucks's study, as in many mindfulness studies, most of the participants who responded to advertisements seeking volunteers were white, college-educated and by definition interested in trying the practice, so it's not clear if the results apply more widely. Loucks is currently running a randomized trial of his mindfulness-based blood-pressure program with 200 volunteers; those in the control group work with a physician to manage their blood pressure and receive a blood-pressure monitor to keep at home along with training on its use, which has been shown to improve how well patients manage their condition. (Not having all the answers yet doesn't mean we shouldn't act; health officials approve many drugs without knowing for whom they will work best, at what dose and why, or what their long-term effects might be, variables that even the most rigorous trials can't always determine.)

It may be the case, too, that scientists need to develop new metrics to analyze a potential medical intervention that's rooted in ancient Buddhist philosophy. "Buddhists didn't talk in terms of anxiety and depression," the language clinicians use to define a collection of symptoms, like insomnia or diminished interest in activities, diagnosed through standard survey questions, says Judson Brewer, the director of research and innovation at the Brown Mindfulness Center. "They used words like 'clinging' or 'attachment.' That's what we're talking about, getting caught up in our experience - that's where suffering comes from." Alleviating that "stickiness," Brewer says, is what mindfulness is actually supposed to do. So, to tell if it's working, "we need a stickiness measure."

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Can Mindfulness Evolve From Wellness Pursuit to Medical Treatment? (Published 2020)

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Studies Show Roughly a third of all adults in the United States have high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. It's a condition that can be largely controlled with diet, exercise and medication, yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only about half of the 75 million people who have high blood pressure manage to keep it in check.

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What is systemic racism? Kids’ questions answered

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Black Lives Matter: What is systemic racism? Kids’ questions answered - BBC News

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22 years old poet a few days before Joe Biden's inauguration Day on 20th January 2021.

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Poet tapped for inauguration to spread a message of unity

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Le combat continue | Les Etats-Unis dans tous leurs Etats | (5/5) | ARTE

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Le combat continue | Les Etats-Unis dans tous leurs Etats | (5/5) | ARTE

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Le combat continue  | Les Etats-Unis dans tous leurs Etats | (5/5) | ARTE

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A Christmas Carol MISSION 2 WRITE A LETTER

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First woman vice-president of the United States in 2021

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Kamala Harris savoured the moment she became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be vice-president-elect, with a very hearty laugh.

In a video posted to her social media she shares the news with President-elect Joe Biden: "We did it, we did it Joe. You're going to be the next president of the United States!"

Her words are about him but the history of the moment is hers.

Just over a year ago, as the senator from California hoping to win the Democratic nomination for presidency, she launched a potent attack on Joe Biden over race during a debate. Many thought it inflicted a serious blow on his ambitions. But by the end of the year her campaign was dead and it was Mr Biden who returned the 56-year-old to the national spotlight by putting her on his ticket.

"It is a big reversal of fortune for Kamala Harris," says Gil Duran, a communications director for Ms Harris in 2013 and who has critiqued her run for the presidential nomination.

"Many people didn't think she had the discipline and focus to ascend to a position in the White House so quickly... although people knew she had ambition and star potential. It was always clear that she had the raw talent."

What she has demonstrated from the moment she took the national stage with her pitch for the presidency - is grit.

Born in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents - an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father - her parents divorced when she was five and she was primarily raised by her Hindu single mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist.

She grew up engaged with her Indian heritage, joining her mother on visits to India, but Ms Harris has said that her mother adopted Oakland's black culture, immersing her two daughters - Kamala and her younger sister Maya - within it.

"My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters," she wrote in her autobiography The Truths We Hold. "She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women."

Her biracial roots and upbringing mean she embodies and can engage with and appeal to many American identities. Those parts of the country which have seen rapid demographic change, enough change to alter a region's politics, see an aspirational symbol in her.

But it was her time at Howard University, one of the nation's preeminent historically black colleges and universities, which she has described as among the most formative experiences of her life.

Lita Rosario-Richardson met Kamala Harris while at Howard in the 1980s when students would gather in the Yard area of the campus to hang out and discuss politics, fashion and gossip.

"I noticed she had a keen sense of argumentation."

They bonded over an aptitude for energetic debate with campus Republicans, their experience growing up with single mothers, even just both being the Libra star sign. It was a formative era politically too.

"Reagan was president at the time and it was the apartheid era and there was a lot of talk about divestiture with 'trans Africa" and the Martin Luther King holiday issue," Ms Rosario-Richardson says.

"We know that, being descendants of enslaved people and people of colour coming out of colonisation, that we have a special role and having an education gives us a special position in society to help effect change," she explains - it was a philosophy and a call to action that was part of the university experience Ms Harris lived.

She returned to address students at Howard in 2017 and took them on a journey from the Ferguson race protests of 2014 to the halls of Capitol Hill in just one sentence:

"You students have joined the fight for justice - you protested. From the streets of Ferguson to the halls of the United States Congress, you have lived the words of James Baldwin, 'There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.'"

But Ms Harris also operates with ease in predominantly white communities. Her early years included a brief period in Canada. When Ms Gopalan Harris took a job teaching at McGill University, Ms Harris and her younger sister Maya went with her, attending school in Montreal for five years.

Ms Harris says she's always been comfortable with her identity and simply describes herself as an "American".

She told the Washington Post in 2019, that politicians should not have to fit into compartments because of their colour or background. "My point was: I am who I am. I'm good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I'm fine with it," she said.

Kamala, 'Momala', history-maker

In 2014, Senator Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff - now a fixture at her campaign stops - and became stepmother to his two children.

Last year she wrote an article for Elle magazine about the experience of becoming a stepmother and unveiled the name that would then come to dominate many headlines that followed.

"When Doug and I got married, Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn't like the term 'stepmom'. Instead they came up with the name 'Momala'."

They were portrayed as the epitome of modern American "blended" family, an image the media took to and one that occupied many column inches about how we talk about female politicians.

On becoming vice-president-elect, she is unlikely to lose this nickname but many argue she should also be seen and recognised as the descendant of another kind of family and that is the inheritor of generations of black female activists.

"She is heir to a legacy of grassroots organisers, elected officials, and unsuccessful candidates who paved this path to the White House. Black women are seen as a political force of nature in democratic politics and the Democratic party," Nadia Brown, associate professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue University, told the BBC.

Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and Septima Clark are some of the names she follows in the footsteps of, Ms Brown argues.

"Her win is historic but it is not hers alone. It is shared with countless black women who made this day possible."

But from the very earliest, as her friend Ms Rosario-Richardson attests, she showed the skills that allowed her to be one of few women to break through barriers.

"That is what attracted me to get her to join debate team [at Howard University], a fearlessness."

Wit and humour is part of that armoury. The laugh she greeted the president-elect with, when making that first momentous phone call, was one her friend recognised immediately and intimately.

"It clearly shows her personality, even in the short time she has been on the campaign trail."

"She has always had that laugh, she has always had a sense of humour too, she had a sense of wit - even in the context of a university debate - to get those points across."

The ability to deliver zingers to her opponents in live debate was very much part of the momentum behind the start of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wasn't afraid of confrontation as in this Twitter exchange with Donald Trump Jr last October.

"Why is @KamalaHarris the only person that laughs at her jokes... always way to long and way too hard?" Mr Trump's son asked.

"You wouldn't know a joke if one raised you," she wrote back.

A simple burn on social media, but a popular shorthand for the kind of skills that meant a career in law and politics was a natural fit.

Although her career as a prosecutor is what made her a politician, it brought with it political benefits and risks.

She began work in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and became the district attorney - the top prosecutor - for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected the first woman and the first black person to serve as California's attorney general, the top lawyer and law enforcement official in America's most populous state.

She gained a reputation as one of the Democratic party's rising stars, using this momentum to propel her election as California's junior US senator in 2017.

But straddling the line between pleasing left-leaning California Democrats and being a politician for a nation where the left does not decide who gets to be president has been hard.

She gained favour among progressives for her acerbic questioning of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but as a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party her adept debate performances were not enough to compensate for poorly articulated policies.

Walking the fine line between the progressive and moderate wings of her party, she ended up appealing to neither.

Despite leftward leanings on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty, she faced repeated attacks for not really being progressive enough.

"Kamala is a cop" became a common refrain on the campaign trail. But those same law enforcement credentials proved beneficial on the national stage when Democrats needed to win over more moderate voters and independents.

She was "someone with a law enforcement background, and perceived in her own state as being insufficiently progressive... and trying to project an inauthentic self", Mr Duran says, but adds "that looks very different in a vice-presidential slot".

As the US grapples with an ongoing racial reckoning and there is scrutiny over police brutality, Ms Harris has taken a front row seat, using her sizable microphone.

On talk shows she calls for changes to police practices across the US, on Twitter she calls for the arrests of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman from Kentucky, and she speaks frequently about the need to dismantle systemic racism.

She has the law enforcement background but she has often said that her identity makes her uniquely suited to represent those on the margins.

Now she has the chance to do just that and from inside the White House.

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Kamala Harris: The many identities of the first woman vice-president

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Kamala Harris savoured the moment she became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be vice-president-elect, with a very hearty laugh. In a video posted to her social media she shares the news with President-elect Joe Biden: "We did it, we did it Joe.

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Nobel speech, French translation by Cécile (Vinca Alba Minor) & Thierry Gillyboeuf.

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activities

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POETRY COMPREHENSION 4

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POETRY COMPREHENSION 3

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POETRY COMPREHENSION 2

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poetry comprehension 2 TEACHING RESOURCES WITH ANSWERS

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Discovering POETRY in Year 11 & 12

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10 minutes documentary

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The Man Behind a Mysterious Miniature Town | Short Film Showcase

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Listen to carers/ one key word !

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Miniature furnitures

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Cardboard Living Room Furniture!! DIY with Free Patterns!!

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Anne Frank's Diary - Feature Animated Film

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ANNE FRANK'S DIARY - Animated feature film (English version)

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Poet and playwright in exile in Nantua from Sri Lanka, writing in English and Singhalese.

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MANJULA WEDIWARDENA

Manjula Wediwardena is a Sri Lankan creative writer, poet and a journalist who works actively against war. Although he was born to a Sinhala family he wrote against the inhuman suppression and violation of human rights of the Tamils and Tamil journalists during the ethnic war in Sri Lanka. As a result he was forced to flee from Sri Lanka to escape from life threats and now lives as a political refugee in France since 2009.

In early 1990s Manjula started his career as a journalist in a popular newspaper in Sri Lanka and lost his job in 1995 after fighting against the unjust management actions on the employees. Then he started working for two main tabloid political newspapers and a television channel, script writing and presenting a controversial program called "The warrant" from 2003-2007. Manjula became the first editor in chief of one of the first newspapers started according to media ethics in Sri Lanka and left the job opposing the unfair management interventions into editorial work. Not giving up on journalism even

while living as an exile, Manjula became one of the pioneers of the organisation called

"Journalists for a Democratic Sri Lanka" in 2009. He is actively involved in the

organisation and works as an editor of their website.

In 1997 Manjula published his first poetry book, "Clueless heart" with Shane

Mackelvie and started his journey as a creative writer. His second book was called

"Maria named Mary" a collection of short stories that had been banned by the

government responding to a request of the Catholic Church.

Thereafter Manjula has published six more poetry books attracting four main

awards and becoming short listed for many other awards and prizes. "Landless

motherland", published in 2010, the poetry collection was the first Sinhala

poetry collection written by Manjula about Tamil ethnic life within Sri

Lankan society. The book has been translated into Tamil in 2012 and it was

the only Sinhala poetry book translated into Tamil in Sri Lanka. Manjula's

poetry has further been translated into English, French and Rumanian.

After his short stories collection being censored, Manjula has

published another two books called "Saint Judas" in 2010 and

"Beauty of viciousness and other stories from Rathmalana" in 2016.

The two novels he wrote, "Baththalangunduawa" and "My

beloved demoness" became very popular in Sri Lanka and placed

in the top five books for the "Golden Book" award. Although

there had been religious and ethnic protests against "My

beloved demoness", the book was accepted and praised as a splendid piece of work.

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Concept The show proposed as its main theme the life of the last woman on earth and specifically the desire, the carnal love and sexual violence against women. The theme, delicate in many countries including Sri Lanka, has been a taboo for centuries and is still one of the topics that provoke such emotions as shyness and curiosity.

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Create a new poster for your school.

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Coming Out (2018) is a Documentary by Denis Parrot who came to Xavier Bichat High School in Nantua in 2018 !

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Reading the script of Brave Girl Rising (short film)

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Reading the script of Brave Girl Rising (short film)

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Short film showing a Brave Girl in India.

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Brave Girl Rising (short film) tells the story of Nasro, a Somali-born girl living in a refugee camp in Kenya, through Warsan Shire’s poetry.

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Please note that this poem includes language and topics that require special consideration from the teacher and students. We believe that the best way to prepare to encounter these topics is to create a class contract outlining guidelines for a respectful, reflective classroom discussion. Teachers should read Addressing Dehumanizing Language from History and plan how they approach the "N" word when reading and discussing Shire's poem. Finally, "Home" alludes to the sexual violence that some refugees face on their journeys. It is important that teachers preview the materials, know their students, and build in time and space for individual reflection in journals so that students can respond emotionally to what they are reading and learning.
Warsan Shire was born in Kenya to Somali parents and lives in London. She is a poet, writer, editor and teacher. In 2013-2014, she was the Young Poet Laureate for London. Shire wrote "Conversations about home (at a deportation centre)" in 2009, a piece inspired by a visit she made to the abandoned Somali Embassy in Rome which some young refugees had turned into their home. In an interview, she told the reporter that "The night before she visited, a young Somali had jumped to his death off the roof." The encounter, she says, opened her eyes to the harsh reality of living as an undocumented refugee in Europe: "I wrote the poem for them, for my family and for anyone who has experienced or lived around grief and trauma in that way." This poem became the basis for "Home," printed below. "Home" has been shared widely across the media and has been read in a range of public spaces, including London's Trafalgar Square. Commentators have noted that "Home" has touched a nerve among people, that it has offered a way to give voice to refugees and to provide some authentic understanding of the crisis.
Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it's not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn't be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i've become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

In an interview after she won the Brunel University African Poetry Prize, Warsan Shire was asked to talk about her sense of commitment to substance and urgent subject matter in her work. In response, Shire said:

I'm from Somalia where there has been a war going on for my entire life. I grew up with a lot of horror in the backdrop - a lot of terrible things that have happened to people who are really close to me, and to my country, and to my parents; so it's in the home and it's even in you, it's on your skin and it's in your memories and your childhood. And my relatives and my friends and my mother's friends have experienced things that you can't imagine, and they've put on this jacket of resiliency and a dark humour. But you don't know what they've been victims of, or what they've done to other people. Them being able to tell me, and then me writing it, it's cathartic, being able to share their stories, even if it is something really terrible, something really tragic. Sometimes I'm telling other people's stories to remove stigma and taboo, so that they don't have to feel ashamed; sometimes you use yourself as an example.

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British-Somali poet Warsan Shire gives voice to the experiences of refugees in this poem about "home."

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Discuss your placement with your supervisor. Year 10, 11 & 12

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Check the NHS video clip and research jobs in care.

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In these, workers do not interact with patients but provide the support and guidance that are needed to run a unit. Any role that you can think would be needed to run an organisation, such as IT Managers, Digital Marketers, and Customer Support. ​

Software Developer: responsible for developing, delivering, and maintaining a range of digital products that are used across Health and Social Care improving patient experience and making patient records more secure and easier to update.​

This job is ideal for those who enjoy coding and problem solving. There are many pathways within digital technology in the sector, and the job opportunities are on the rise!​

Administrative Assistant: often the frontline contact for patients, responsible for booking appointments, keeping patient records, and managing correspondence.​

This job is ideal for someone who enjoys organisation and helping others. It can lead to other Management careers such as those within HR or Finance functions. ​

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In these, workers do not interact with patients but provide the support and guidance that are needed to run a unit. Any role that you can think would be needed to run an organisation, such as IT Managers, Digital Marketers, and Customer Support.

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PBS masterpiece article about adaptation.

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Discuss the film adaptation of Small Country, film by Eric Barbier (2020), based on the novel by Gaël Faye. Year 9

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Visit New York Public Library.

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The New York Public Library (NYPL) has been an essential provider of free books, information, ideas, and education for all New Yorkers for more than 100 years.

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Create a mini-book ! Year 11 & 12

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showcases Arab North African art experience.

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London gallery showcases Arab North African art experience | | AW

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A virtual exhibition featuring five Arab artists provides an overview of the changes in North African societies in recent history.

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Xavier Bichat High School Library Virtual Wall :

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Xavier Bichat High School Library Virtual Wall :

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Page virtuelle du C.D.I. du lycée à Nantua. Trouvez des idées de lecture et des liens !

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Manchester, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom.

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Mini Book Making Tutorial 📚 DIY Mini Hardback Book with Binding!

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for your exam (Year 12).

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Why should you read Margaret Attwood's books? 

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Why should you read Margaret Attwood's books? 

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What is the fuss about 'The Handmaid's Tale'?

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When US vice-president Mike Pence visited Philadelphia on 23 July, he was greeted by a now familiar sight: a wall of women dressed in scarlet cloaks, with oversize white bonnets obscuring their faces.

The outfit worn by Margaret Atwood's handmaids in her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale and its recent TV adaptation has been in evidence from Argentina to the US, the UK and Ireland, and has emerged as one of the most powerful current feminist symbols of protest, in a subversive inversion of its association with the oppression of women.

Why are protesters dressing like The Handmaid's Tale in Argentina? - explainer

It has been donned by pro-choice protesters during Ireland's successful referendum to revoke the eighth amendment of its constitution and by abortion rights campaigners in Buenos Aires.

In London, protesters put on the cloak and bonnet to protest against Donald Trump's visit to the UK and the policies of his administration.

Why the handmaid's uniform has come to represent a constellation of issues affecting women is as telling as the phenomenon itself, with Atwood among those reflecting on why the costume she imagined as the most visible articulation of the subjugation of women by the imaginary state of Gilead has become such a potent medium for dissent.

The Canadian author believes the use of the handmaid's uniform is both flexible and powerful, allowing women to protest in locations where they do not have a right of audience.

What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state?

Margaret Atwood

"The handmaid's costume has been adopted by women in many countries as a symbol of protest about various issues having to do with the requisitioning of women's bodies by the state," she told the Guardian.

"It has even been used on posters in the context of the Trump-Putin relationship, with Trump as the handmaid. Because it's a visual symbol, women can use it without fear of being arrested for causing a disturbance, as they would be for shouting in places like legislatures.

"No one can accuse them of being immodest: they are well covered up. But everyone seeing these groups of women know what they mean in the context of the individual protest, whether it be Ireland, Argentina, or Arizona."

She added: "In countries that prohibit birth control and reproductive health information, the state claims ownership of women's bodies through enforced childbearing. What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state?"

First introduced in her novel in the form of "some fairytale figure in a red cloak", it is a uniform - as Atwood's heroine Offred explains - designed to be understood in terms of violent oppression and the fertility of the handmaids in a largely infertile world.

The version adopted by protesters is the one made concrete by designer Ane Crabtree for the television series of the book.

She told the Guardian: "I came at it from a very masculine, white male, 1% of the population design-mind. It was really twisted. It really did a number on my head."

Crabtree was returning to the US, when she first saw pictures of demonstrators in Handmaid's Tale costumes on social media, she said.

"It was a nanosecond of: 'Oh my god.' I had to sit down. It didn't really occur to me it would speak to people in such a highly personal and political way, as a group. It was a beautiful re-entry into the United States, because I was struggling to understand what I thought to be a new world in the US."

Keishia Taylor is among those who first started wearing the handmaid's uniform about a year ago during the campaign to overturn Northern Ireland's abortion law.

"In Ireland, it was used in context of the ban on abortion, because women had a sense that the state thinks of us like vessels and incubators," said Taylor.

"The image used in The Handmaid's Tale cuts right to heart of the toxic relationship between church and state.

"When we started using these costumes ... we thought, we can't sit back. So we put out a call to people who could help make the costumes, and there was a huge response. It shows this symbol strikes a chord."

She described the physical experience of wearing the outfit, the feeling of being transformed into an object. "The bonnet makes you feel very vulnerable, because your hearing is cut off," she said.

But it is in the US, perhaps, where the costume has been most visible, not least because the April 2017 premiere of The Handmaid's Tale on television collided with efforts by US Republicans, emboldened by Trump's election, to roll back reproductive rights and health protections for the poor.

In state capitols across the country, silent women wore the cloaks and stark white bonnets to protest against decisions being made by the majority-male representatives.

One of the women who helped organise the demonstration against Pence, Samantha Goldman, an activist with the group Refuse Fascism, said the moment the activists took off their costumes was an essential part of the protest.

"A lot of times these protests, as beautiful as they've been, they've been in the handmaid's costume the whole time," Goldman said.

"So there has been this permanent submission, even though people are doing it as an act of protest. We really wanted it to be like throwing the cloaks off of the white supremacy and patriarchy of this regime."

M'Evie Mead, director of policy and organising for the reproductive rights group Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri, helped organise one of the first Handmaid's Tale demonstrations last summer, when the state legislature was trying to stop people with Medicaid, the federal health insurance for low-income people, from accessing Planned Parenthood health centres.

"The Handmaid's tale was being really lived out in Missouri, with those legislatures trying to take the agency of those Medicaid patients away," Mead said.

"We really wanted to jolt some attention to it and the handmaids were really effective in generating attention and press coverage."

Helen Lewis, the associate editor of the New Statesman, who is currently working on a book on the history of feminism, argues that the handmaid's outfit is effective in part because of the aesthetic impact of the scarlet cloaks in the locations where they have been employed.

"I think the reason that the costumes work so well is because where the protests are happening is places like courts, places dominated by men in black or navy suits, or parliament. They are pretty drab places, where the slash of lipstick red stands out and gives a group identity in the same way the suffragettes did 100 years ago with their purple, white and green sashes."

It has been in Argentina, however, where the journey from Atwood's imagination to the author's own intervention in the debate about abortion has come full circle.

When dozens of demonstrators wearing the handmaid's uniform converged on the country's congress to protest, Atwood supplied a letter to be read out.

"Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It's not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions, either. What to do?"

The answer, for many, is to put on Atwood's red cloak.

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How The Handmaid's Tale dressed protests across the world

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The red-and-white costume from Margaret Atwood's novel has been donned by women from Ireland to Argentina

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Research facts and learn to write a biography !

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Sabrina Cohen-Hatton: From homeless teenager to top firefighter | Video clip

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Sabrina Cohen-Hatton: From homeless teenager to top firefighter | ITV News

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Activities and links to discover 4 poets.

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Biography of the 44th president of the United States

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Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story - values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. The framers of the Constitution always hoped that our leadership would not be limited to Americans of wealth or family connections. Subject to the prejudices of their time-many of them owned slaves-most would not have foreseen an African American president. Obama's father, Barack Sr., a Kenyan economist, met his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, when both were students in Hawaii, where Barack was born on August 4, 1961. They later divorced, and Barack's mother married a man from Indonesia, where he spent his early childhood. Before fifth grade, he returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents and attend Punahou School on scholarship.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995), Obama describes the complexities of discovering his identity in adolescence. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University, where he studied political science and international relations. Following graduation in 1983, Obama worked in New York City, then became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, coordinating with churches to improve housing conditions and set up job-training programs in a community hit hard by steel mill closures. In 1988, he went to Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Returning to Chicago, he joined a small law firm specializing in civil rights.

In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law. Their daughters, Malia and Sasha, were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the U.S. Senate in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention that summer, he delivered a much acclaimed keynote address. Some pundits instantly pronounced him a future president, but most did not expect it to happen for some time. Nevertheless, in 2008 he was elected over Arizona Senator John McCain by 365 to 173 electoral votes.

As an incoming president, Obama faced many challenges-an economic collapse, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing menace of terrorism. Inaugurated before an estimated crowd of 1.8 million people, Obama proposed unprecedented federal spending to revive the economy and also hoped to renew America's stature in the world. During his first term he signed three signature bills: an omnibus bill to stimulate the economy, legislation making health care more accessible and affordable, and legislation reforming the nation's financial institutions. Obama also pressed for a fair pay act for women, financial reform legislation, and efforts for consumer protection. In 2009, Obama became the fourth president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2012, he was reelected over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by 332 to 206 electoral votes. The Middle East remained a key foreign policy challenge. Obama had overseen the killing of Osama bin Laden, but a new self-proclaimed Islamic State arose during a civil war in Syria and began inciting terrorist attacks. Obama sought to manage a hostile Iran with a treaty that hindered its development of nuclear weapons. The Obama administration also adopted a climate change agreement signed by 195 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.

In the last year of his second term, Obama spoke at two events that clearly moved him-the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, and the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "Our union is not yet perfect, but we are getting closer," he said in Selma. "And that's why we celebrate," he told those attending the museum opening in Washington, "mindful that our work is not yet done."

Learn more about Barack Obama's spouse, Michelle Obama.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama pose with their daughters, Malia and Sasha

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Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story - values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

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Vous avez besoin de révisions pour progresser?

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Vous avez besoin de révisions pour progresser?

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Commencez par mon Padlet 'Learn English'.

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Make a paper toy! Our free papercraft models come in mostly PDF printable form and are available for download. Others include image form, such as jpg or png. Any type of paper can be used as long as you can print it. Some people want cardboard models, but this might be difficult to print on a standard printer. Some of the toys are very simple to make and others have instructions included online.

Choose a design, print it out, cut out the model, and start folding it together. We have lots of different models to print and create!

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Paper Toys - Free Printable Papercraft Models, Cut Outs & 3D Templates

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Learn how to make cool stuff out of paper with our free to print & download PDF paper model crafts!

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Toy theatres (or 'juvenile drama') were hugely popular in the 19th Century, and were collected by adults and children. Every successful production staged in London's West End theatres would be reproduced in miniature

Using the kit below you can assemble and decorate your own toy theatre as shown, originally published by Pollock's toy company in the 19th century.

The kit includes a paper model to cut out and colour, complete with characters and scenery from the pantomime 'Cinderella', alongside instructions to help you assemble your theatre.

There's also an original toy theatre script of 'Cinderella' for your characters to perform! Click on the links to download the three documents:

Toy theatre instructions (.pdf, 157.0 KB)

Toy theatre model (.pdf, 3.1 MB)

Cinderella script for toy theatre (.pdf, 140.2 KB)

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Toy theatres (or 'juvenile drama') were hugely popular in the 19th Century, and were collected by adults and children. Every successful production staged in London's West End theatres would be reproduced in miniature Using the kit below you can assemble and decorate your own toy theatre as shown, originally published by Pollock's toy company in the 19th century.

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Year 9 / Create a menu
Play a scene

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Mission 1: creating a poster
Mission 2 : discussing the poster in a care settting

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White House Facts:

The White House, the official residence of the US President, is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. The 132-room Neoclassical mansion was built (1793-1801) from the designs of James Hoban (1762-1831), who also supervised its reconstruction (1814-29) after it was destroyed by the British in 1814. Major restoration work was carried out in 1948-52 after the building was discovered to be in danger of collapse.

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Reproduction Rights Granted: Images may be reproduced for your own use as long as copyright notices remain intact. Images may be reproduced in any quantity for use in classroom and educational purposes. Content may be included and shared onto other websites only when linking to the original page where the content was discovered on papertoys.com. The images may not be sold. Under no circumstances should the actual .jpg or .gif image files be duplicated, used, stored, or altered in any way. All web pages and images copyright 2001 - 2019.

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Copyright: This property and content is solely owned by Papertoys.com. PaperToys™, PaperToys.com™, the PaperToys Man logo, and "Paper Stuff For Kids and Grown-ups" are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Papertoys.com. © Copyright 2001 - 2019.

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White House Facts: The White House, the official residence of the US President, is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. The 132-room Neoclassical mansion was built (1793-1801) from the designs of James Hoban (1762-1831), who also supervised its reconstruction (1814-29) after it was destroyed by the British in 1814.

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Students training: BTEC Health and Social Care

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Students training: BTEC Health and Social Care

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BTEC Health and Social Care at Cirencester College

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People at L'Arche in Manchester speak about their job.

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Explore careers: domiciliary care worker

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English news and easy articles for students of English

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News in Levels « World News for Students of English

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We write news in three different levels of English. We want to help you understand English more. Now all students can enjoy reading and listening to news.

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Less than 24 hours after the terror attack on Manchester Arena on 22nd May 2017, Tony Walsh performed 'This is The Place'.

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Manchester Attack: Vigil poem of defiance

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Defiant poem pays tribute to the spirit of Manchester, written and performed by poet Tony Walsh at the Manchester attack vigil.

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Nursery rhymes

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ABC Song and More Nursery Rhymes With Mother Goose Club

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The Best British Detective Series - IMDb

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Why home care workers struggle with low wages

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Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou | Poetry Foundation

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Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

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Havering College of Further and Higher Education

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Nursery Practitioner Shannon - Work experience success

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It looks like you're offline.

Around the Library

Here's what's happened over the last 28 days. More recent changes.

About the Project

Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. More

Just like Wikipedia, you can contribute new information or corrections to the catalog. You can browse by subjects, authors or lists members have created. If you love books, why not help build a library?

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Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Read, borrow, and discover more than 3M books for free.

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Iseult Gillespie: Why should you read "Hamlet"?

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"Who's there?" Whispered in the dark, this question begins a tale of conspiracy, deception and moral ambiguity. And in a play where everyone has something to hide, its answer is far from simple. Written by William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" depicts its titular character haunted by the past, but immobilized by the future.

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Copyright 2023 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.

In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.

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BBC Home - Breaking News, World News, U.S. News, Sports, Business, Innovation, Climate, Culture, Travel, Video & Audio

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Visit BBC for trusted reporting on the latest world and U.S. news, sports, business, climate, innovation, culture and much more.

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William Shakespeare|TED-Ed"All the World's a Stage"

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William Shakespeare|TED-Ed"All the World's a Stage"

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William Shakespeare: "All the World's a Stage"

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This animation is part of the TED-Ed series, "There's a Poem for That," which features animated interpretations of poems both old and new that give language to some of life's biggest feelings. [Poem by William Shakespeare, directed by Jeffig Le Bars and Jérémie Balais, music by Raphaël Pibarot].

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Seacole was a pioneering nurse and heroine of the Crimean War, who as a woman of mixed race overcame a double prejudice.

Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mother a Jamaican. Mary learned her nursing skills from her mother, who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers. Although technically 'free', being of mixed race, Mary and her family had few civil rights - they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions. In 1836, Mary married Edwin Seacole but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844.

Seacole was an inveterate traveller, and before her marriage visited other parts of the Caribbean, including Cuba, Haiti and the Bahamas, as well as Central America and Britain. On these trips she complemented her knowledge of traditional medicine with European medical ideas. In 1854, Seacole travelled to England again, and approached the War Office, asking to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea where there was known to be poor medical facilities for wounded soldiers. She was refused. Undaunted Seacole funded her own trip to the Crimea where she established the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide 'a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers'. She also visited the battlefield, sometimes under fire, to nurse the wounded, and became known as 'Mother Seacole'. Her reputation rivalled that of Florence Nightingale.

After the war she returned to England destitute and in ill health. The press highlighted her plight and in July 1857 a benefit festival was organised to raise money for her, attracting thousands of people. Later that year, Seacole published her memoirs, 'The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands'.

Seacole died on 14 May 1881.

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Seacole was a pioneering nurse and heroine of the Crimean War, who as a woman of mixed race overcame a double prejudice. Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mother a Jamaican.

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Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy to Frances Nightingale and William Shore Nightingale. She was the younger of two children. Nightingale's affluent British family belonged to elite social circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed from a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people of prominent social standing. Despite her mother's interest in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the center of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence often butted heads with her mother, whom she viewed as overly controlling. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. "I think I am got something more good-natured and complying," Florence wrote in her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship.

Florence's father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landowner who had inherited two estates-one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park-when Florence was five years old. Florence was raised on the family estate at Lea Hurst, where her father provided her with a classical education, including studies in German, French and Italian.

From a very young age, Florence Nightingale was active in philanthropy, ministering to the ill and poor people in the village neighboring her family's estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it to be her divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them about her ambitions to become a nurse, they were not pleased. In fact, her parents forbade her to pursue nursing. During the Victorian Era, a young lady of Nightingale's social stature was expected to marry a man of means-not take up a job that was viewed as lowly menial labor by the upper social classes.

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from a "suitable" gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Nightingale explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he stimulated her intellectually and romantically, her "moral...active nature...requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in this life." Determined to pursue her true calling despite her parents' objections, in 1844, Nightingale enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex hospital for ailing governesses. Her performance there so impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to the superintendent within just a year of being hired. The position proved challenging as Nightingale grappled with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital in the process. The hard work took a toll on her health. She had just barely recovered when the biggest challenge of her nursing career presented itself.

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. The British Empire was at war against the Russian Empire for control of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in Crimea. The poor reputation of past female nurses had led the war office to avoid hiring more. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not only lacked sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, asking her to organize a corps of nurses to tend to the sick and fallen soldiers in the Crimea. Nightingale rose to her calling. She quickly assembled a team of 34 nurses from a variety of religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, nothing could have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw when they arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople. The hospital sat on top of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and the hospital building itself. Patients lay on in their own excrement on stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her endless supply of compassion, took to calling her "the Lady with the Lamp." Others simply called her "the Angel of Crimea." Her work reduced the hospital's death rate by two-thirds.

In addition to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital, Nightingale created a number of patient services that contributed to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the creation of an "invalid's kitchen" where appealing food for patients with special dietary requirements was cooked. She established a laundry so that patients would have clean linens. She also instituted a classroom and a library for patients' intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based on her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other military hospitals operating under poor conditions. The book would spark a total restructuring of the War Office's administrative department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise, she was met with a hero's welcome, which the humble nurse did her best to avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale's work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that came to be known as the "Nightingale Jewel" and by granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria, Nightingale helped create a Royal Commission into the health of the army. It employed leading statisticians of the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases-not battle. But it was Nightingale's ability to translate this data into a new visual format that really caused a sensation. Her polar area diagram, now known as a "Nightingale Rose Diagram," showed how the Sanitary Commission's work decreased the death rate and made the complicated data accessible to all, inspiring new standards for sanitation in the army and beyond. She became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale's Impact on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas' Hospital, and within it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of public admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine's honor. Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow her example, even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrolling at the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come to be viewed as an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted "Crimean fever" and would never fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder of her life. Fiercely determined and dedicated as ever to improving health care and alleviating patients' suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed.

Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors from her bed. In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to best manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public sanitation issues in India for both the military and civilians, although she had never been to India herself.

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of honor by King Edward. In May of 1910, she received a congratulatory message from King George on her 90th birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill but seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week later, on the evening of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed an array of troubling symptoms. She died unexpectedly at 2 p.m. the following day, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at her home in London.

Characteristically, she had expressed the desire that her funeral be a quiet and modest affair, despite the public's desire to honor Nightingale-who tirelessly devoted her life to preventing disease and ensuring safe and compassionate treatment for the poor and the suffering. Respecting her last wishes, her relatives turned down a national funeral. The "Lady with the Lamp" was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.

The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the site of the original Nightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life and career of the "Angel of the Crimea." To this day, Florence Nightingale is broadly acknowledged and revered as the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

Florence Nightingale: Saving Lives With Statistics. BBC.
Florence Nightingale. The National Archives, UK.

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Florence Nightingale - Biography, Facts & Nursing

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Florence Nightingale (1829-1910) was an English social reformer who is considered the founder of modern nursing.

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Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen - Full AudioBook 🎧📖 | Greatest🌟AudioBooks

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Despite only six completed books to her name, Jane Austen nonetheless remains a lasting presence in the world of English literature.

Entry last updated on 04/16/2018; Authored by Renee Warren; Content ©www.JaneAusten.org

Jane Austen completed only six official works during her lifetime. While this may present something of a seemingly limited representation of her talents, today each work is well-known and recognized around the globe, highly regarded for their clear messages delivered by a memorable cast of characters. No doubt her actual life and personal interactions benefited her writing prowess for each work takes on a life of its own.

The listing below covers Jane Austen's six completed novels (of note is that two of them were actually published after her death), her two unfinished novels and her "Juvenilia" stories. Despite her short time behind the writing desk, Jane Austen remains one of the most well-known and admired writers in literary history.

Jane Austen's Official Works (1811-1817):

* These works were published posthumously (after death).
** this work was left unfinished at the time of the author's death.

Based on our certain statistical sources, the order of popularity (from most to least) for the novels in modern times is as follows: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park.

Juvenilia Stories:
Lady Susan (unfinished)
From Juvenilia:

Volume the First
Jack and Alice
Henry and Eliza
Volume the Second
Love and Friendship
The History of England
Volume the Third
Catharine; or, The Bower
Evelyn

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Entry last updated on 04/16/2018; Authored by Renee Warren; Content ©www.JaneAusten.org Jane Austen completed only six official works during her lifetime. While this may present something of a seemingly limited representation of her talents, today each work is well-known and recognized around the globe, highly regarded for their clear messages delivered by a memorable cast of characters.

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