Did You Know?
Education, Part 2
 

Public school teachers complain that their creativity is stifled.
******************************************************
The Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Society is a Buddhist organization, with around 25 million members worldwide. It works for Kosenrufu (Peace) through education. We have Universities in Japan, USA and Brazil, dozens of secondary schools and approximately one hundred primary schools and nurseries. The Japanese Komei Party, supported mainly by Buddhist members of Soka Gakkai (practising the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin) and one of the parties in the present Japanese coalition, has ALWAYS opposed-and it still opposes today)the Armed Forces.

Tsunetsaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda, respectively 1st and 2nd Soka Gakkai Presidents, spent many years in prison, Makiguchi actually dying in prison, for opposing war. A few years back, our present president, Dr. Honoris Causa Daisaku Ikeda visited the President of Argentina and within one week of that 2 hour meeting, Argentina declared there would be no more military service.

Soka Gakkai meetings experience people in the same room from every African country, from every European, Asian, or American country as good friends, all respecting and loving each other. To see Palestinians and Israelis chanting together, Serbians and Croats, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese all praying together is simply a marvelous experience!
Provided by Alberto Portugheis.
************************************************
Students locked up after refusing to watch Channel One

When Ohio teenagers DJ and Carlotta Maurer walked out of their classrooms in October to protest the compulsory viewing of Channel One, a television program with commercials which is shown in schools across America, school officials realized they had a couple of dangerous radicals on their hands. Principal Patrick Calvin invoked the truancy provision of the school's code of student conduct, and 13-year-old DJ and 14-year-old Carlotta were whisked away to the Wood County Juvenile Detention Center, where they had all day to consider their crime.

Since then, Commercial Alert and Obligation, Inc., two national  anti-media groups, have taken up the Maurers' cause. The groups wrote to Ohio Governor Bob Taft, urging him to remove Channel One from all public schools.

"When the government sends children to a juvenile detention center because they don't want to watch advertising, that is both Orwellian and more than a little sick," reads the letter. "The public schools ought to be a sanctuary from the noxious aspects of commercial culture."

The governor has not responded to the letter. But the school is in negotiation with the Maurers, who have religious objections to  television. It seems a day in the lockup didn't cool their heels enough to keep them from kicking.
Provided by Eliza Strickland