What YOU can do for YOUR community

Let's try to answer this question! Hey, it's been a while since you were asked: "what you could do for your country", did you come up with an answer for that?

I didn't, but that is mostly because countries are way to difficult to relate to, and a fictive creation, lines in the sand/dirt/water/whatever.

So let's zoom in on the local community first, action starts there, later we'll zoom out, and eventually create the galactical civilisation envisioned by people like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

I found my answer in education and doing voluenteer work, and that wasn't even in my own local community, but in a community that needed it the most, Mjølnerparken in Copenhagen.

For me this was a journey that started with the idea that I could help other people, where the need seemed to be the highest, eventually I made a difference and an impact on other people's life, but, most imortantly, it changed my own life.

My work as a voluenteer teacher/tutor for troubled inner city kids, actually also got me a job as a professional teacher, but I'm an amateur at heart, and I failed to pass on my passion and love for education to the children, ending in defeat as a professional teacher - these kids need the best in life, something I wasn't able to handle, I have a small hope that I might have sewn a small seed in their minds, and when they grow up, they'll remember me, and wonder what that was all about.

As an amateur I've bascially been aiding underprivileged children with their homework, but I'm a product of the 70ies where a lot of experimentation was going on the Danish Schoolsystem, we were, for instance, not subjected to homework until we reached 5th grade.

As a result I've always hated homework, making it difficult for me to fit into the traditional edicutaional system that you meet at the university.

Recent studies suggests that homework can be damaging, and with underpriviliged children doubly so.

With underprivileged I'm especially refereing to children of 1st generation immigrants.

So I'm proposing rethinking education with the passion of the amateur...Insh'Allah