Mary Liston Liepold – USA – World People's Blog

Linked with Peace, Prayer, and Protest; The World-Uniting Force of a New American President, with What Women want: RESPECT, with Peace x Peace.org, and with Christine Ntahe – Burundi.

Mary Liston Liepold, Ph.D., has 30 years of experience writing and editing a wide range of materials for national nonprofits, federal and state agencies, and individual authors, and 10 years raising funds for major nonprofits. Before coming to Peace X Peace Dr. Liepold spent 14 years at the Child Welfare League of America, where she developed, and for eight years, edited the magazine Children’s Voice. From 2000 through 2005 she wrote speeches for CWLA President Shay Bilchik while raising several million dollars in federal and foundation grants and developing the organization’s first individual giving program. She earned her doctorate in American Literature and Linguistics from the Catholic University of America. Mother of four, grandmother of four, and a daycare mom for 15 years, Dr. Liepold believes with Gandhi that if we want peace, we have to begin with the children. She also believes that if the people lead, the leaders will follow, and she lives that maxim daily at Peace X Peace … (full text).

Mary Liston Liepold set her hair on fire reading under the covers with a swiped cigarette lighter when she was five. At 63, she’s a passionate reader, writer, activist, wife, mother, and grandmother. In her view, the second and third flow from the first as naturally as kids have kids. Once you know what’s going on, it’s almost impossible not to tell others and to act on what you know. Her activism for peace and justice includes working for the international nonprofit Peace X Peace, where she’s a host on the weekly interview series Women’s Global Roundtable and blogs on Week X Week, and attending demonstrations to let history and the rest of the world know our government doesn’t speak for all Americans … (full text).

She is Senior Writer and Editor for Peace x Peace.

Mary Liston Liepold – USA

Her publication: Earthquakes: A Teacher Package for K – 6, 2nd ed.edited by Mary Liston Liepold. Containing five units that contain materials at three levels (K-2, 3-4, and 5-6) that contain activities to help teach children about earthquakes. IML Prof QE 535.2 .U6 E265 2002 (on uw.platt.edu).

Find her and her publications on amazon; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

She writes:

… With a global economic crisis making it harder for millions of the earth’s people to meet their basic needs, one pointless war is winding down in Iraq and another is heating up in the Gaza Strip. The Iraq war is such old news that the media have almost stopped covering it, but it’s still costing $500,000 a minute—enough every day to fund 35,000 four-year college scholarships, or Head Start for more than a million pre-schoolers. Those same pre-schoolers are going to lack lots of essential services if we keep this up—or we move the troops and dollars to Afghanistan—while also continuing to fund “bottomless bailouts” for multinational corporations with no accountability to any nation. And this is the world’s richest government. What about the rest? Isn’t it high time we all turn our attention to solving the environmental, educational, and health challenges that cross every border, and can only be solved by concerted global action? … (full text, December 30, 2008).
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I’m not the only one who’s choosing the start of the new year to visualize peace. Pope Paul VI declared January 1 the World Day of Peace in 1967, and his successors have proclaimed it again each year. New Years Day is also Global Family Day, set aside for recognizing our common humanity. Ironically, given this week’s news, Global Family Day was first celebrated by Palestinians and Israelis in Nablus in 2000, after an uncommonly peaceful 1999, as One Day of Peace and Sharing. It was taken up by the United Nations and given its new name in 2001. US ex-president Bill Clinton and President George Bush were among sponsors representing 20 nations. So, how would YOU like to start the new year? Why make timid, personal resolutions like losing 10 pounds when we could resolve together to end the madness forever? We are half the human race, after all. Peace on earth will begin with us, the women … (full text);

I am a lifelong peacebuilder, in my private life and in my work with Peace X Peace, which connects women through the internet across all borders to build peace together (wiser earth.org);
… “Punishment refocuses the child’s feelings of anger towards the parent, so contrition gets short circuited. Being hurt or deprived of a privilege has no natural relationship to the offense; it simply reinforces the child’s awareness of the adult’s superior strength and power. In this context “getting away with something” … becomes like a victory over an opponent, and guilt, one of the most educational of natural consequences, is canceled out”. Many adults utilize punishment as a way to sooth their own negative feelings, and fulfill their own need for retribution. Do you want to set up a situation in which your child views you as the opponent? Earlier I emphasized the value of avoiding the creation of an adversarial relationship between parent and child. Do you want to set up a dynamic in your relationship in which you are each trying to “win”, battle after battle? The fact is that punishment, particularly punishment that is unrelated to the infraction, as a means to shape behavior, is not particularly effective. It may work in the short term, but what it has a tendency to do is drive a behavior underground as the child learns to become adept at circumventing your control by sneaking and hiding. Any first year psych class will teach you that positive reinforcement is a lot more effective than negative reinforcement, when it comes to long term retention of a learned behavior. It is also true that ignoring a behavior (one that is not self-reinforcing) causes it to extinguish faster than punishing it. That is true in lab rats, and it is true in human beings. So what to do? Natural consequences are a good place to start … (full text).
As 2009 approaches, I have been entertaining a fantasy that is altogether too delicious to keep to myself. What if this is the year when the world’s heads of states decide they can no longer afford to fight wars? It seems so clear and logical that it just has to be more than a fantasy. Is it mine alone? Scanning the internet, it’s easy to find lists of the lessons of 2008 in every area from energy policy to Indian electoral politics to soccer in South Africa. The lessons that seem blindingly obvious to me aren’t on any of them. Maybe they’re too obvious? Just in case anyone has missed them, this year’s events show two things quite clearly: 1. The rich and powerful aren’t any smarter than the rest of us. They just make their mistakes on a larger scale. 2. There are no borders of any real significance in the world of the 21st century. With a global economic crisis making it harder for millions of the earth’s people to meet their basic needs, one pointless war is winding down in Iraq and another is heating up in the Gaza Strip. The Iraq war is such old news that the media have almost stopped covering it, but it’s still costing $500,000 a minute—enough every day to fund 35,000 four-year college scholarships, or Head Start for more than a million pre-schoolers. Those same pre-schoolers are going to lack lots of essential services if we keep this up—or we move the troops and dollars to Afghanistan—while also continuing to fund “bottomless bailouts” for multinational corporations with no accountability to any nation … (full text, December 30, 2008).

Found in the net with the keywords poors and schools:

Swampscott Middle Schoolers learn geography through letters … The school serves a very poor community with high unemployment and crime. Most of the children cannot afford supplies and the school does not charge fees, Feb 12, 2009;
Current education system is sowing seeds of discontent … poor quality of education at school in Uganda, Feb 11, 2009;
BANGLADESH: Report blasts primary school education: DHAKA, 11 February 2009 (IRIN) – Around 70 percent of children in Bangladesh who complete their primary education are unable to read, write or count properly, according to an internal report by the Department of Primary Education (DPE). Sixty-nine percent of students who had completed five years of primary school were unable to read news headlines in Bangla newspapers properly, while 87 percent of pupils failed to do simple mathematical calculations, the study, entitled National Assessment of Pupils of Grades Three and Five – 2006, said … Many poor students come to school half-fed. They cannot pay attention to their studies in the afternoon classes as thirst for knowledge is replaced by hunger for food … 11 Feb 2009;
More no-fee schools on the way … Government will increase the number of no-fee schools this year to help poor families … 11 February 2009;
Some wealthy districts would gain school aid, poor ones lose it, February 8, 2009;
Independent school call for poor, 30 Jan 2009, 29 Jan 2009;
Poor parents should get credits to choose school for children, 30 Jan 2009;
Saturday school for poor children, 17 July 2007;
Thousands going to poor schools, 7 October 2006.
Elite French Schools Block the Poor’s Path to Power, December 18, 2005.