Ackley, Joan

BETTER EDUCATION The Story of Malala Yousafzai

16 Year Old Nobel Peace Price Nominee and Educational Activist

What’s Wrong with the Educational System

With Sir Ken Robinson and Anne Sweeney

Artist’s Biography Page 1 Meet Joanie Ackley & learn about her love

TABLE OF CONTENTS

of art and family!

Interview with Ken Robinson and Anne Sweeney page 2 & 3

Courtesy of sirkenrobinson.com

Joanie Ackley My name is Joan Christine Ackley, and I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio into a giant, close-knit family. I still live in Columbus, in the same suburb I’ve always lived in, about 10 minutes away from downtown Columbus. My brother and sister were always the athletic, outgoing types of people who communicate themselves in a very vocal manner. I was the quiet one, who has much lighter skin and darker hair, which always lead me to believe I was adopted. Luckily, my family is very open-minded and accepting and my cousin, who is 7 years older, was an excellent role model. We lived two blocks away from each other for almost 5 years, and our families travelled to Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal together. Needless to say, I mirrored everything she did.

Eventually, she left to college, and I was left with a lasting love of art and design as a way of expressing my emotions and memories.. By that point, I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer. I knew by second grade, actually, and ever since then, i have made it my mission to be involved with as many fashion and art-related activities as possible.

I have bounced around art classes, which I was fortunate to have readily available at my public school system, and at a great art college nearby. i also joined a fashion board at a giant clothing store chain, an art club through my school, and started a fashion club as well. I began working in retail when I legally could, and have loved every second of watching trends pass through the store and blogs.

At some point, I want to have my own fashion brand that represents quality and everything fabulous, but i still believe that is a goal I can wait on. At this point, I am inspired by so many things, from various cultures to dreams to songs and books and other designers that I find it hard to express a worthy concept without having to move on mid-sketch to the next inspiration.I want to learn to channel my inspirations and skills to create pieces that not only i love, but that others will love as well. Art is a love that I can never see myself giving up or fading away.

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EVERY CHILD IS AN ARTIST WHAT DO DISNEY TELEVISION HONCHO ANNE SWEENEY AND INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED EDUCATION THEORIST SIR KEN ROBINSON HAVE IN COMMON? IDEAS FOR UNLOCKING CREATIVITY IN BOTH CHILDREN AND ADULTS.

By Chuck Salter

Anne Sweeney: When I saw your TED Talk, I was struck by the story of the little girl who couldn’t sit still in the classroom. The teacher turned to the parent and said, “Get her into ballet lessons.” It’s that realization that when you don’t go toward the obvious, you go deeper into the person and really look for her potential.

Sir Ken Robinson: Did you have any idea when you were a kid that this is what you’d end up doing?

AS: No. I was a theater kid who loved the arts, played the piano, played the flute. My parents had three very different kids to raise. My sister was good at sports and my brother . . . we used to call him Nature Boy. He just lived outside.

KR: I’m often asked how parents can help kids find their way. What did your parents do?

AS: I think it’s the positive side of indulgence. They made sure if there was a production in town, we went. I tried out for every play, and they never said, “No, don’t do it, because it’s going to be a pain to pick you up after rehearsals.” They insisted upon creating opportunities for us. When my high school brought back Latin, my parents--they’re retired educators--were so excited. “Of course you’re going to take Latin,” they said. And I said, “But none of my friends are.” So there were two of us, two freshmen, and I had a terrible time, absolutely terrible. I remember saying to my mother one day, “You think I’m smarter than I am.” And she looked at me and said, “You don’t know how smart you are.”

KR: It’s important to note, especially for parents, that there just isn’t a straight line between what you do at school and what you go on to do. I argue in my new book it’s like being on the ocean. You keep correcting your course according to things that happen to you. And we end up writing a résumé, which makes it look like it was a plan.

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There was a study by a professor at Duke University looking at the degree majors for leaders in 500 companies in Silicon Valley. Forty percent were in math, science, or engineering, but 60% were in the arts and humanities.

AS: Really?

KR: It’s a really important point because the education system is being strangled by this culture’s standardized testing. It’s leading school districts to cut arts and humanities programs. There are lots of kids now who never get to pick up an instrument, never get to perform in a play. There’s a nationwide project called Art on a Cart, where people push these trolleys with crayons and papers because there’s no art in the schools. They go from school to school pushing the cart, do some art with the kids, and then move to the next school. Because there is this perception that somehow these subjects aren’t relevant: We’ve got to get the kids through the tests so that we can get competitive again economically.

AS: Right. STEM [science, technology, engineering, math studies].

KR: It is the most toxic attitude, really, because these school restrictions are being brought in what politicians believe to be the interest of the economy, but actually companies need people who can think differently and adapt and be creative. A company like Disney--in fact all companies--depends on this great multiplicity of talents.

AS: This is where the “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi” comes in, because how do you do that?

KR: The continuum, as I see it, starts with imagination. It’s the most extraordinary set of powers that we take for granted: the ability to bring into mind the things that aren’t present. It’s why we are so different from the rest of life on earth. That’s why we’re sitting in a beautiful building, drinking from these cups. Because human beings make things. We create things. We don’t live in the world directly; we live in a world of ideas and of concepts and theories and ideologies.

AS: But do you think there’s a point where we get off track? Picasso said, “Every child is an artist,” but does there come a point where we lose sight of that? And how do we get it back?

KR: We do, but you’re asking the right question: How do you tap into that?

It’s what you’re saying about your parents. If your parents hadn’t encouraged you, maybe required you, to play the piano and the flute, how would you know if you could have done that? We have all these latent talents, but you need circumstances to show it. You have people sitting around with all kinds of untapped potential. In Venezuela, kids across all the favelas and barrios are provided musical instruments for free. They go through a rigorous program called El Sistema, funded by the government, and it’s produced extraordinary results. These kids from the slums are playing

obsessed with portraiture, deconstructing faces and putting them back together. And in some way, that has helped me at work in deconstructing problems: Looking at them from different angles and realizing that sometimes when you turn something upside down it’s easier to figure out than if you were looking at it straight on.

KR: How often do you paint?

AS: I paint every weekend without fail.

KR: That’s what finding your element is all about. You get energy from it. And you get that from your work and from your art.

AS: You’re so engaged you hate to leave it. If you have a great day at work and you’ve been hit with all these great ideas and there’s a lot of excitement on your team, your mind doesn’t turn off. For years I’ve kept a pad of paper and pen by me at night, because things just occur to you.

KR: A lot of creative thinking doesn’t happen by forcing it. There’s this whole other processing that goes on if you leave it.

AS: It’s interesting you say that because a couple of weeks ago I just had time on my hands. I never have a couple of hours in the office that aren’t totally scheduled. And I just asked a couple of people to come in and sit. And they came in, they all had their notebooks or their iPads. After about half an hour, everybody relaxed and realized no, this really isn’t a meeting. This is really just sitting around, talking. When they left, I thought it was one of the most enjoyable meetings, maybe the most enjoyable meeting, I’d had in a long time. I loved how much we’re going to accomplish because we had this very unstructured, very meandering conversation about many different things.

www.cnn.com

Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. This has produced a generation of classical musicians, including Gustavo Dudamel, the director of the L.A. Philharmonic. But for that scheme, these kids would have gone the rest of their lives never knowing they could do that.

AS: When I was in graduate school [at Harvard Graduate School of Education], I had a wonderful professor, Dr. Robert Kegan, who did a lot of work on adult development. He wrote a book, The Evolving Self.

And he became one of the pillars of the way I manage, based on the very simple belief that adults continue to learn. Too many times adults walk into situations and people have already put them in a box: “Oh, you write comedy.” Or, “You’re the development woman.” And it’s not just our profession. It’s hard to look at someone and say, “What else is inside?”

KR: How did you realize that you could lead in this way?

AS: I wanted to be a teacher at one point, but I got into kids’ TV. My first big job in TV was as an assistant to [program manager] Gerry Laybourne at Nickelodeon. She was a former teacher and was about all of us learning. One day she said to me, “I’m going to negotiate to buy some movies. Sit across from me and write down everything I say, and I will tell you what the person on the p hone said.” This is 1981, so no speakerphones. Oh, it was hilarious. Then she mapped it out, not only the dollar amounts but the story of how the deal was made. This was like one-room schoolhouse training. That’s how I learned to negotiate. I remember thinking it was just so much fun. A good leader should focus on making sure everyone is being given the tools to do their job, not just expecting—poof!—that they’re going to produce great work.

KR: Would it work if you made that a regular thing, or is there something about it being impromptu?

AS: I think you could make it a regular impromptu thing. But I don’t think we allow ourselves a lot of that. We keep ourselves on schedules and agendas. There’s a lot to accomplish. But there’s something about introducing a new process that helps.

KR: You seem to be a very centered, calm person.

AS: On a good day. Yes. KR: To some extent the style of leadership you describe is because of the sort of person you are; you couldn’t be somebody else anyway. But what keeps you centered?

AS: Art has been good for my soul. And it’s been good for my brain. I think I’m a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas. Some weekends are just mind-blowingly difficult. I’ve ended up with a huge headache because I was struggling over how to express a face. I’ve become

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Pakistani Girl, a Global Heroine After an Attack, Has Critics at Home

SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan — The question for the class of 10th graders at an all-girls school here in this picturesque mountain valley was a simple one: How many of them, a district official wanted to know, had heard of Malala Yousafzai?

By SALMAN MASOOD and DECLAN WALSH

A policeman guarded a girls’ school. Some expressed pride in Malala Yousafzai’s bravery and chances at the Nobel Prize. Schoolchildren attend a class at the Malala Yousafzai Girls School in Karachi.

The students stared at the official, Farrukh Atiq, in silence. Not a single hand was raised.“Everyone knows about Malala, but they do not want to affiliate with her,” Mr. Atiq said on Thursday, as speculation grew that Ms. Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban a year ago, might win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the end, Ms. Yousafzai did not win the Nobel Prize. That went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. But after a week of intense news coverage, during which she released her memoir and won a prestigious European award for human rights, Ms. Yousafzai’s stature as a symbol of peace and bravery has been established across the world — everywhere, it seems, except at home.

It is not just that the schoolchildren fear becoming targets, though that is certainly an element in their caution. “I am against Malala,” said Muhammad Ayaz, 22, a trader who runs a small store beside Ms. Yousafzai’s old school in Mingora, the main town in the Swat Valley.

“The media has projected Malala as a heroine of the West. But what has she done for Swat?”

That sense of smoldering animosity toward Ms. Yousafzai, 16, in the Swat Valley — which she hurriedly left aboard a military helicopter for treatment last year after being shot — seems to be animated in part by the tensions of a rural community still traumatized by conflict.

Although the Pakistani Army forced the Taliban from Swat during a major military operation in 2009, pockets of militants remain, occasionally striking against soldiers or activists like Ms. Yousafzai.

Many residents fear the Islamists could one day return to power in the valley, an anxiety that, paradoxically, has stoked simmering hostility toward the militants’ most famous victim.

“What is her contribution?” asked Khursheed Dada, a worker with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which governs Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, including Swat.

That cynicism was echoed this week across Pakistan, where conspiracy-minded citizens loudly branded Ms. Yousafzai a C.I.A. agent, part of a nebulous Western plot to humiliate their country and pressure their government.

Muhammad Asim, a student standing outside the gates of Punjab University in the eastern city of Lahore, dismissed the Taliban attack on Ms. Yousafzai as a made-for-TV drama. “How can a girl survive after

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being shot in the head?” he asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The reaction seemed to stem from different places: sensitivity at Western hectoring, a confused narrative about the Taliban and a sense of resentment or downright jealousy.

In Swat, some critics accused Ms. Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin, of using his precocious daughter to drum up publicity and of maligning Pashtun culture. Others said the intense publicity had cast their district in a negative light, overshadowing the good work of other Pakistanis in education.

Dilshad Begum, the district education officer for Swat, said that 14,000 girls and 17,000 boys had recently started school after an intensive door-to-door enrollment campaign led by local teachers. The threat from the Taliban was exaggerated, she added.

“I have been working for female education for 25 years, and never received a threat,” she said.

Even fellow students seemed to resent the recognition Ms. Yousafzai has received. At another school, a group of female students, assembled by their headmaster, agreed that Ms. Yousafzai did not deserve a Nobel Prize.

“Malala is not the only role model for Pakistani girls,” said Kainat Ali, 16, who wore a black burqa.

Not all Pakistanis joined in the criticism. Many expressed pride in the bravery of their most famous teenager, who has had tea with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace and received a standing ovation at the United Nations. By Friday there was a groundswell of support.

Television stations broadcast songs lauding her work, and good luck messages flooded Facebook and Twitter. Students and women, in particular, said they had been inspired by her.

After the Nobel winner was announced, some openly expressed disappointment. In Swat, Shahid Iqbal, a music and movie store owner, said Ms. Yousafzai had made their district proud. “Malala is our daughter.

She should have won the Nobel,” he said.

Imran Khan, the former cricketer who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and has regularly faced criticism for his views on the Taliban, said Ms. Yousafzai represented “the struggle of girls and women everywhere against tyranny and oppression.”

One of the more poignant scenes unfolded in the port city of Karachi, where Atiya Arshad, an 11-year-old girl who was also shot by militants, waited at her home for news of the Nobel Prize.

Atiya was shot twice in the stomach in March when people suspected of being Taliban militants armed with guns and grenades attacked her school in Ittehad Town, a poor neighborhood of Karachi. The attack was part of a broader campaign of intimidation this year by the Taliban to assert themselves in Pakistan’s largest city.

Some students were watching a magic show when the attackers struck, but Atiya was lining up to receive an academic award at a prize

ceremony. The school principal, Rasheed Ahmed, and an 11-year-old girl were killed.

Atiya is now in a wheelchair, though her doctors are confident that with treatment and therapy she will be able to walk. She recalled how she was inspired to excel by a visit to the school by Ms. Yousafzai a year earlier, as part of the campaign to promote education for girls.

“I was so happy to see Malala,” she said in an interview. “I don’t know why these people don’t want us to go to school.”

Her father, a flour mill worker, noted that in contrast with Ms. Yousafzai, no politicians or campaigners had rushed to help after his daughter was shot. “We are arranging her treatment with great difficulty,” he said.

In interviews this week, Ms. Yousafzai said she was undeterred by the criticism at home, attributing it to the well-founded cynicism many Pakistanis harbor toward their political leaders. Still, she told an audience in New York on Thursday, her goal is to become prime minister of Pakistan one day.

“I can spend much of the budget on education,” she told Christiane Amanpour of CNN, drawing loud applause. But few think it would be safe for her to return home any time soon.

Repeated Taliban threats to kill Ms. Yousafzai should she set foot in Swat again were being taken very seriously, said Mr. Atiq, the district official. “More fame brings more danger,” he said. “The threat is greater than ever.”

Ms. Yousafzai has the consolation of knowing that her message of education for girls now resounds across the world. When the Taliban gunman boarded her bus in October 2012, he called out, “Who is Malala?” Now, as she noted in an interview this week, her voice is heard “in every corner of the world.”

Yet she insists that, come what may, Pakistan will always be her home.

“Even if its people hate me,” she said in one interview, “I will still love it.”

Salman Masood reported from the Swat Valley, and Declan Walsh from London.

Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting from Karachi, Pakistan, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore, Pakistan.

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Courtesy of saic.com 5

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