How can we make every day a World Book Day?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2012/jan/30/world-book-day-book-doctor

'Schools need more time for reading aloud, choosing and sharing the pleasure of reading books and not just extracts'

World Book Day always generates huge enthusiasm for reading in my children's school. The children love dressing up as a book character and the £1 voucher means they end up owning a new book and so reading more. All the teachers suddenly seem very excited about reading too. Do you have any suggestions as to how schools can keep that excitement about reading going all through the school year?

Schools need more time for reading aloud, choosing and 

sharing the pleasure of reading books and not just extracts

I quite agree about the stimulation and success of World Book Day, which falls on March 1 this year. Every year it seems to get bigger and better and it means that schools have the chance to concentrate on the pleasure of reading in its widest sense. Knowing different authors, finding out who you like – and who you don't - plays a key role in becoming a confident and enthusiastic reader.

Whether you spend the £1 voucher on a special World Book Day title or on any other book means every child can add a title to their book store. All research shows that owning books plays a key role in encouraging reading and we need to do all we can to make that happen.

But it is not just because children end up owning books that World Book Day inspires. It is also because it concentrates on stories and, as you say with the dressing up, the characters in them. Ensuring children have a whole view of books in terms of the stories and the parts played in them is the surest way to raise enthusiasm for reading.

Schools need more time for reading aloud, book choosing and sharing the pleasure of reading whole books and not just extracts. Just some of those could make reading exciting all through the year.

Resurrecting Empire

by Rashid Khalidi



After searching and reading about 'Neocolonialism' I came to a conclusion that what is going on right now all over the world especially Muslim World is not coming under 'Neocolonialism' but we need to create new terminology 'Re-colonialism'. Neocolonialism - USA and Western Countries control other worlds indirectly influencing in their economical and social activities. Re-colonialism - It is like colonial power. Conquer other nations and occupy them (Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq etc) - Ismail

Passage from this book:

Page 26

Palestine was almost as hard for Great Britain to conquer in World War I as Iraq, obliging it to wage a hard campaign that took even longer than that in Iraq. After a series of disturbances and riots, the country erupted into a lengthy and bloody nationwide popular revolt against the British from 1936 until 1939. This revolt eventually succeeded in the rebels' taking over several urban centers, and could only be mastered by means of the largest single pre-World War II colonial deployment of British Forces. The Syrians resisted the French in similarly stubborn fashion, obliging them to bombard and subjugate Damascus three times in the course of major military efforts, in 1920, during the nationwide Syrian revolt of 1925-26, and again in 1945.

The numbers of people killed by colonial forces as they suppressed this resistance were so high. In the most lethal of the French bombardment of Damascus in 1925 in revenge for having been driven out of much if the city, French forces killed over 1,400 people, almost all of them civilians. Earlier in 1925, after a similar humiliation in Hama, the French had killed 344 people, again mainly civilians, during a punitive aerial bombardment of the town. french forces later to kill a mans as 1,000 in a similar attack in May 1926 after they once again lost control of the Damascus neighborhood of the Maydan. The number of those killed in the Syrian country side, especially in the Jabal Druze regioen where the revolt began, are much harder to determine, but were also undoubtedly very high.

Iraq, Morroco, Libya, and Syria were the laboratory where the military high-technology of the post-World War II era was first tried out, and where the textbook on the aerial bombardment of civilians were written. One Royal Air Force officer wrote of the 1920 Iraq campaign that after "the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish" had been chosen, "the attack with bombs and machine guns must be unrelenting and unremitting and carried our continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, corps, and cattle. The RAF's "Notes on he Method of Employment of the Air Arm in Iraq" stated of this air campaign that "within 45 minutes a full sized village...can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed and injured by four or five planes which offer them no real target and no opportunity for glory or avarice. Not surprisingly, at least six thousand and perhaps as many as eighty five hundred or even ten thousand Iraqis were killed during the suppression of the 1920 revolt, many of them civilians. The casualities in Morocco and Syria among civilains during the French military campaigns were similarly high.

Overview

Begun as the United States moved its armed forces into Iraq, Rashid Khalidi's powerful and thoughtful new book examines the record of Western involvement in the region and analyzes the likely outcome of our most recent Middle East incursions. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the political and cultural history of the entire region as well as interviews and documents, Khalidi paints a chilling scenario of our present situation and yet offers a tangible alternative that can help us find the path to peace rather than Empire.

We all know that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Sadly, as Khalidi reveals with clarity and surety, America's leaders seem blindly committed to an ahistorical path of conflict, occupation, and colonial rule. Our current policies ignore rather than incorporate the lessons of experience. American troops in Iraq have seen first hand the consequences of U.S. led "democratization" in the region. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems intractable, and U.S. efforts in recent years have only inflamed the situation. The footprints America follows have led us into the same quagmire that swallowed our European forerunners. Peace and prosperity for the region are nowhere in sight.

This cogent and highly accessible book provides the historical and cultural perspective so vital to understanding our present situation and to finding and pursuing a more effective and just foreign policy.

Meet The Author

Rashid Khalidi, author of three previous books about the Middle East - Origins of Arab Nationalism, Under Siege, and the award-winning Palestinian Identity-is the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He has written more than seventy-five articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics including pieces in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many journals. Professor Khalidi has received fellowships and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Rockefeller Foundation; he was also the recipient of a Fulbright research award. Professor Khalidi has been a regular guest on numerous radio and TV shows, including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Nightline.

Table Of Contents: 

Introduction : the perils of ignoring history
Ch. 1 The legacy of the Western encounter with the Middle East 1

Ch. 2 America, the West, and democracy in the Middle East  37
Ch. 3 The Middle East : geostrategy and oil 74

Ch. 4 The United States and Palestine 118
Ch. 5 Raising the ghosts of empire 152