Blog session 8: How green are you?

I think that the main place where you can learn about the recycling is the school, and probably in the home and the town council too. But our society doesn't worry too much about this issue, and maybe we need more educational programs to teach to the new generations how to be good with the planet.

I live in Ñuñoa, and the town council has a few options to recycle. In my building, the administration asked the neighbors to separate some elements (papers, cartons, aluminum, glass, tetra packs, etc.), and you can leave them in special places so municipal tracks can pick them up. Also, a very good initiative is that  there is a huge box where the community keep all the papers and the cartons and then, when the box is full, some people comes to get it and they change it for money and after all this process they gave the money to San José foundation.

From the beginning me and my family separate the papers, but three months ago we start to try to separate the other things too.

We didn't know too much about our carbon footprint, but my father always teach my sister and me that we have to disconnect the electronic appliances that we aren't use it, prefer the public transport and bicycle instead of cars.

Because of that I go to the university in my bike, and when I can’t do it I do the same route walking. I do this because I study near from my home so I prefer to do that instead of taking a bus, but this is a special case, because the majority of people live very far from their work places so they can’t do it walking or riding bicycle. Also, the cycle lanes aren't very good in Santiago, so moving around the city in a bike it’s very difficult.

I never joined or supported any eco-organizations because I don’t make myself the time to try it. But I think that someday I would do it, especially in an organization that helps animals. 

Mafalda

Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite characters, Mafalda.

Mafalda is a little girl from Argentina created by Joaquin Salvador Lavado Tejón, Quino, a cartoonist from the same country, in 1963. At the beginning Mafalda was created to promoted a bran of washing machine, but this never woks and in 1964 Quino decide to published the comic in the weekly magazine Primera Plana.

Mafalda it’s an idealistic person, she believes that a better world could be true but sometimes it’s very pessimistic because of the political situation in the 60’s. She is always thinking about the problems in the world -sort of poverty and famine- and it's always worried about world peace and human race.

She was born in a typical middle-class family and lives with her parents who don’t always understand the thoughts of her daughter. She also has a little brother, Guille, who is very innocent, restless and sometimes even irreverent.

Mafalda is always hanging around with their friends: Felipe, Susanita, Miguelito, Manolito and Libertad. They are all very different, Manolito and Susana are very conservative, Felipe and Miguelito are dreamers and Libertad is even more Utopian and progressive than her friend Mafalda.

I really like Mafalda because I think that she is very critical but funny at the same time. Also, read their comics makes you think a lot, because even the comic strip was made fifty years ago, the problems are still here and that makes Mafalda very contemporary.

If you don’t know her, in this blog you can find amazing comics of this beautiful character: http://toda-mafalda.blogspot.com/

Low levels in educational prison systems of England

The educational system in England’s prisons had unacceptable standards according to the inspectors and watchdogs. They say that is completely unacceptable that the education programs had poor grades during the last four years.  This situation is so critical that the prison’s inspector threaten with a national strike if the conditions do not change.

Mathew Coffey, national director of the education division in prisons of England, says that the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail it’s the same of an enrollment in a prestigious school, around £34,000. The thing that Coffey doesn't understand is that if is the common interest the resettlement of the prisoners, how the people in charge of this doesn't worry about the low levels of standards in education and practicing, one of the most important factor of rehabilitation.

There are some examples of prisons working in these aspects, but they were rare. Actually, only one prison of three was judged with good qualification.

This lack of interest could be seen in the fact that prisoners go out without employability skills, and that cause the reoffending, because they couldn't find a job and the easier thing it’s to get back to their old habits. The inability to find a job is one of the most important cause of recidivism in the England society but also could be a good factor to reduce the danger of reoffending by between 30% and 50%.

The principal problem is that “half of men and nearly three-quarters of women in jails in England and Wales have no qualifications at all, and about half of inmates have literacy skills below those of most 11-year-old” and apparently nobody wants to do something about it. In the sentences never appears the order of complete educational levels during the imprisonment.

Coffey added that the focus of prison policies must be improved the prisoners vocational and employability skills. With that in mind, it might be possible to reduce the recidivism level, currently 50% for adults and 72% for young people. 

More information: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/10/prison-education-standards-ofsted