Date of Education

If you're looking for some ideas to raise some money for a school trip, you are reading the right article. I have got lots of money making idea to help you in your quest, whether you are a school looking to raise cash or a individual struggling with the cost of organised school trip.

Garage Sale

Garage sales are more popular in USA compared to the UK but they are a great way of having a clear out as well as raising cash. You could go through your old clothes and if you haven't worn them for at least a year then you are not likely to wear then again. Be ruthless and have a good clear out. To advertise your sale you could post some leaflets through your neighbours doors or sick some posters up around your area. You should also use the power of social networking sites like Facebook to advertise your sale. You could also offer tea/coffee and cakes for those that show up. If you don't fancy a garage sale, what about using eBay to get rid of unwanted clothes or items.

Gardening

Offering yourself to your neighbours to help with maintaining their gardens could be a good little money spinner. Many old people struggle to keep their gardens tidy and their lawns short and would be welcome of some helpers.

Talent Shows - Fashion Shows

With the success of hit TV shows such as Britain's got Talent and the X factor, you could arrange a school talent show. This could be just a bit of fun and not taken too seriously. You could even get some of the teachers to dress up as the judges, if one dresses up as the famous Mr Cowell, remember to wear the trousers high! You could charge a small fee for entrance and have tea/coffee and cakes on sale as refreshments.

Mini Olympics

Schools could hold a mini Olympics and invite parents to watch. Children could be put into teams and compete against each other. Again refreshments could be on sale and a small entrance fee will help with raising cash.

Get Crafty

Have a go at making things which you can sell. You could make some unique birthday cards to sell on or have a go at salt dough. Salt dough is very easy and cheap to make and you can use it like clay. You can find sites on the internet which will give you the recipe. Once you have your dough, what you make is up to you. You could make some pictures frames or wall plaques. These are very easy to make once cooked in the microwave or oven can be painted. Paper flowers are another idea which are cheap to make. Use YouTube and the internet to find how to videos to make unique sellable items.

Raban's special interest was the prairie. His book 'bad land' is beautifully crafted, and completely unputdownable.

Jonathan Raban recaptures and tries to recreate the unique ninety-year history of the Montana plains. 'bad land' is part history and part memoir. He reconstructs the whole scene so vividly - people who had read the propaganda, believed it, uprooted themselves from their villages and towns, and came to eastern Montana was with a dream, determined to put down their roots. They learnt how to farm the unforgiving land, deal with inclement weather, and create a society. After a few successful years, though, life became near nigh impossible with conditions becoming harsh and raw, forcing them to move again...

Describing life on the prairie, he talks about education, for all children must go to school....As soon as the homesteaders got their homes going, they would put up the school house, and their place of worship. The schoolhouse was actually at the center of their lives, and in a way it took on the importance of the seat of government - all important topics that related to their life on the prairie, were talked about, discussed, and debated here. The schoolhouse also knitted the group that came from widely different backgrounds into a community.

This is what Raban found:

With schools going up all over the prairie, and there being no qualified teachers, teenage sons and daughters of the homesteaders pitched in, for as long as their labor was not required on the farms. The child-teachers were as much in need of instruction as the children they taught. State-approved textbook were detailed, laying out lessons complete with stage-directions and props for the novice teacher. Educating the educators, thus, was an important part of textbook writing. Randall J. Condon, Superintendent of the Cincinnati Schools and general editor of the Atlantic Readers series, deals with this issue. Talking about the criteria for textbooks, he says: "Are these books intended as 'basal texts'? By all means, for they deal with the most fundamental things in life: character, courage, service. These books teach peace founded on justice, but they teach also the beauty of a willingness to die if need be for the sake of truth and honor, for freedom, conscience and of country."

Since the first homesteaders were an intrepid lot, and came from diverse backgrounds, and a variety of ways of living from great cities to tiny villages, the classrooms were full of kids with foreign accents. They were perfect strangers to the kind of 'strong, self-reliant nationalism' that was required.

Condon continues: The aim of education was to achieve the shining paradox of American nationalism - that it must be multicultural, a nationalism of all-the-nations. Textbooks had selections that would help deepen a sense of good will and fellowship and kindly consideration for others by emphasizing the fine qualities of all mankind. Education endeavored to teach that our pledge to the flag, 'one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all,' means a national unity of spirit that cannot be divided into groups or sects or races - into rich and poor, into weak and strong, into those who weak on farms, in factories, forests, and mines, and those who do not have to toil - this nation to include all with liberty of conscience and conduct for each; and that full justice must be done to all if America were to realize the great dream that great dream that our fathers dreamed, of social amity, with religious and racial equality for all the people.

The nationalism that Cordon talks about is a simple pride in America for having gathered so many traditions under one flag and for incorporating so many beautiful landscapes in one political geography. Cordon's thoughts reaching out to include Germans, Norwegians, and Irish, among the eclectic group, showed as much sensitivity to the complex fate of being an American as to the traumatic process of becoming one.

Thus it was through secular, progressive, rational, scientific, and can-do practical textbooks that the idea of America was ingrained in every child in the belief that as adults groomed in the tradition of faith in the flag and the land, they would contribute their bit to making America a great country.

So how were you educated? Did you endure tests? Grades? Lessons? For shame! Those backwards concepts are catamount to child abuse! It never ceases to amaze me that Alfie Kohn's writings still get attention, years after No Child Left Behind's implementation. Often his writings show up in college education programs as if they are the gospel. Kohn is known for taking extreme stances on education issues and he's well known for arguing the very purposes of schooling, grading, and merit pay. Kohn has a way of making talked-about issues even more talked about. For example, lots of experts banter on about the issues of standardized testing in schools. Kohn turns the issue on its side by questioning the presence of grading systems at all. He relentlessly shapes issues in a way that causes experts to pause from the normal course of intellectual deb to look at educational issues in ways they have not been looked at before.

Myth: Vocational education is a waste. 

Kohn maintains that it isn't the school's place to train students for their future jobs. The reality is that many students stay in school because they see a connection between their futures and their educations. Two-thirds of all high school students attempt college or university, but only one-fifth of students end up with a four-year degree. Nowadays, a university education is a huge financial burden to take on without knowing what the return on one's investment is going to be.

Myth: Schools are too much like businesses. 

Kohn finds fault with the accountability movement's premises that competition among schools will lead to eventually better quality education for young people. Kohn argues that schools lack a worthy purpose. He lashes out against the memorization of facts. His solution? "To be well educated, then, is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends." Ok, I get that Mr. Kohn, I really do. He calls for universities to get more involved in education reform. Good stuff.

Myth: Schools overemphasize achievement. 

This is Kohn's pill that I can't swallow. Kohn writes that authentic learning is stifled by pushing students to excel according to grades, especially standardized testing. He doesn't agree with the SAT. He attacks grade inflation and even teacher praise of students in general.

Kohn is to educational reform what Malcolm X was for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. That is, as far as reform goes, they both were important propelling sources who affected the mainstream way of thinking but were not always accepted by the mainstream. I appreciate Kohn's brilliance, but only in a wow-that-makes-you-think kind of way. Yes, too much of our financial and human resources seem to be devoted to educational reform policies that blow with the political winds, seemingly in a different direction each election. Kohn may be the Gargamel of public education, but his arguments are important because us educational smurfs come up with the best potions under pressure.

Jane Thursday is a freelance writer, a mother of two young children, and an elementary school principal. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership, a master's degree in school administration, and 6-12 English Language Arts teaching licensure. She has studied public education in the United States, South Africa, the Philippines, and England.