Rui Bras

The fight for Freedom and Justice cannot justify an arbitrary use of force by a foreign power against a sovereign state. First and foremost the responsibility of overthrowing a dictatorship belongs to the people of that country. Democratic states should support the movements that truly want to want to change the political structure, without any intent of profiting from that support. This may be a romantic point of view in this day and age. But the struggle for Freedom and Justice must not be stained by calculism and hypocrisy. Moreover this struggle won't be for real if it implies the replacement of a repressive government by another repressive government. To oppress a people in the name of Freedom and Justice is an absurd, like we see in Iraq! The world will always need Freedom fighters whether to defend the rights of the people against tyranny, or whether to prevent the preversion of their fight by imperialist powers.

I wonder... Why five thousand?!

I don't think that the use of force by a foreign country to remove dictators from power can be justified. We have the case of Iraq to prove that there are always other motives (economic, for instance) behind the so-called "fight against human rights abuses". Saddam Hussein was a dictator. Everybody knew that. But under the international law, who gave the right to the USA and the UK to invade a country and change its government? Couldn't this become dangerous? Which are their criteria? Iraq was not a menace to the world and yet it was invaded. Who's next? The government of my country because the Foreign Affairs Minister was against the war on Iraq?

[However, I am aware that most of the best work I have seen as a teacher has been produced outside of the classroom. This is partly due to the kind of open-ended task that can be set for homework. This is especially true of the high ability student who often finds this kind of task very stimulating. It also enables students in classes with an anti-school culture to work without peer group pressure being applied.] I agree with John Simkin. From my experience, whenever the teachers make an effort to innovate and define stimulating tasks, the results are rather good. Both from high ability students and anti-school culture students. But I came to realise that the social evolution in Portugal and political inability to deal with education, have damaged younger generations. The devaluation of culture is a real problem here. Culture and education are not priorities in Portuguese society. And when governments go along with this...

I teach in Portugal, and here we have a peculiar situation. Most parents think that homework should be mandatory at least every week and in all the matters teached! Why? They say it's the only way to make their children study! I don't know whether Portuguese students are particularly lazy and not interested, for instance, in History or Literature. I do know, mandatory homework is not the solution to make them better students.