Cyprus-Forum.com

[Cypriana22]

Are you trying to find out if its a good ideas so you could open a school in Cyprus?
Anything that helps the two communities communicate ,its a good thing
http://p205.ezboard.com/bcyprianascorner73624

[anlarm]

Dear Chapman
This is a very interesting project: opening a bi communal school in Cyprus. As a conflict resolution trainer and a teacher I find it very stimulating. You may be right in saying nothing has been done for children (in conflict resolution training), however there have been numerous groups of young people coming together, even a group of children last year (2003) met at a camp on the mountains for a week. I personally initiated the first youth groups (YEP 1&2) together wih Nicos Anastasiou and some other friends. I began conflict resolution work in May 1994. If there has been no incidents after the opening of the borders, I believe it is partly due to our work that we have trained and helped others to train thousands of people in Cyprus. Taken into consideration the small population of the island, it is no wonder that so many people just "knew how to communicate" with each other.
However, your project of educating 2 year olds and waiting for 20 years for them to grow up and attain decision making positions is a far away dream. I do not want to wait that long. 45 years of my 55 in this world has passed with the Cyprus problem. I want peace now!

[anlarm]

[/b] Dear Chapman, could you e mail me your project about the school and related topics such as cooperative learning, etc.?
As a teacher/teacher trainer, I am interested to learn more.
One question about your ideas: you have mentioned senior citizens going into the class to talk about pre55 Cyprus. According to your project, by the time those 2 year olds grow up to study history of Cyprus (i.e. when they become 12-13) there might not be any "senior citizens" left to remember those years

[Mills Chapman]

Dreamer, thank you for kind words and for the link to the NICIE site. I bookmarked that and will have to check it out in greater depth when I have time.

Cypriana22, thank you for your message as well.

[brother]

Nice one mills, you are a good man.

[Mills Chapman]

Thanks, Brother. Mr. Anlar (anlarn), thank you for your two supportive messages. I will try to keep these messages shorter even if it means I have to make more posts.

I would like to thank you, Mr. Anlar, for the conflict resolution work that you have done for Cyprus. It is easy for me to sit thousands of kilometers away from Cyprus and type conflict resolution ideas into the computer, but it is another thing to be on the “front line” and to be vulnerable to people in your community who might not like the work that you are doing. The word we use in the U.S. for someone like you is a “trailblazer.” You cleared the trail for those following behind you – or at least cut down a lot of the thorn bushes.

[brother]

I always read with interest your posts and understand where you are trying to go with this.
Your ideas for sowing the seeds of peace today in the minds of our children to benefit us in the future has much potential but the implimentation of such an idea is harder to achieve than you can imagine.
Should your next stratergy not be how to get a majority of people on board to make it happen, these are what we should be concentrating on now.

[Mills Chapman]

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[Alexandros Lordos]

Mills,

I have recently conducted a survey of the Turkish Cypriots, asking about what they would require from a Solution Plan, and one of the questions was whether it would be good to have "Bicommunal Schools under Federal Government Supervision, for parents who might wish to send their children there." The responses were as follows:

Totally Unacceptable: 21%

Tolerable if necessary: 24%

No Response: 6%

A helpful improvement: 17%

Absolutely Essential: 32%

Just thought you might find this result interesting ...

[Mills Chapman]

Alexandros,

Thank you for putting together this interesting survey. I have been following your thread, and the results give one a lot to think about. Having completed a survey last spring for a graduate thesis, I know how tiring they can be and how many drafts one has to go through before reaching a version that is easily understood by the participants.

Thank you also for sharing this question and its answers with me. When I conducted my survey, I was advised by my professors to then interview a selected sample of the participants in order to get richer (more detailed) information. It was one thing to know that the person "agreed" or "strongly agreed," but what was behind their decision? That is the weakness of surveys: while they allow us to get answers from a large number of people, we usually don't get the more qualitaitve information that is driving their choices.

I thought I would bring to your attention that this question was a double-barelled one, one with two questions inside of it. You asked whether it would be good to have "Bicommunal Schools under Federal Government Supervision, for parents who might wish to send their children there."

I'm not sure if I mentioned in an earlier post that I had applied for a Fulbright scholarship in Cyprus for this year ('04-'05) and that I was going to conduct interviews and surveys on both sides of Nicosia to see what prospective parents' concerns were about sending their children to my envisioned school. In my application essay I hinted that the Annan Plan was flawed (for saying nothing about integrated schools post-settlement). Since the Fulbright Commission was supervised by the U.S. State Department, which of course was sponsoring the Annan Plan, I suspect that this might have been one of the reasons why my application was turned down.