Simon Mitchell

The Cut and Paste Generation

Cutting and pasting essays from the internet is a wholly rational response to an education system that is now an indoctrination system. The word �education� has its origins in the root word �educare� � meaning to �draw out and extend�. Modern education no longer does this. It imposes a curriculum on students that has its basis in making us look economically superior to the Germans. The purposes for modern mainstream education are built around economic objectives and are not about the development of human beings as individuals, their potential, values and identity in a changing world. Real education starts where you are � it is grounded in real, personal and lived experience. Real education gives you the tools to reflect on your own experience and make your own sense of it. It helps you to adapt to a new reality in the face of changing circumstances.

Green hedonism

In reality I view my values as a green person as relatively meaningless in the scheme of things. I know that at a global level for everyone of me, a person who makes careful choices about what they consume and tries to limit consumption, there are probably 100,000 people who don�t, many of them because they are simply unable to have this wealth of choice. I know that even if every person in the UK became carbon neutral overnight, it would take China just 83 days to make up the difference in global pollution terms.

A truth about being Green

When you look around, it seems that �green� is just another colour of consumer capitalism. Often it is the more expensive option in a choice to buy goods. Somewhere along the line corporate consumerism has already hi-jacked many of the real intentions beyond being �green�. Surely recycle, reduce, repair and re-use are the essence of the green message?

A Global Context

The first section from 'Report on Employment and Housing Prospects in Lostwithiel'. Written for Lostwithiel town Forum in October 2003. This report puts Lostwithiel, an ancient capital of Cornwall, UK in a global, national, regional and context in �sustainable economics�. It presents existing plans and information about the economic life of the town. It indicates areas for development in local economic affairs. It identifies grant, loan, education and information services in Cornwall, for stimulating small enterprise locally.

Learn English in Cornwall

Eco-linguistics meets biodiversity in my language school in the ancient Cornish capital of Lostwithiel.

I am a Cornish person with a life-long love of Cornwall and a deep concern for green issues. My business involves offering a year-round combination of residential and non-residential language courses. I also provide organic vegan and vegetarian Bed and Breakfast.

Hazelnut Delight

It felt like the first touch of autumn today and my mind turned to getting in some wood for the winter. On the way up the hill I noticed there were many windfall hazel nuts on the ground and picked up a few to take home for later as my teeth aren�t up to cracking them any more. In fact I crammed so many into my elasticated trousers that they kept falling down on the way down the hill with the firewood. It seems to be a good year for �Cob nuts� and many of them had delicious kernels just ripe enough to inspire a bit of research and a cooking session.

Beyond Maslow

Abraham Maslow’s model of human needs, showing a ‘motivating hierarchy’ has been a strong influence in several sectors of our culture since the 1950’s. It is used in advertising to predict and manipulate needs and motivations, in health and social services as a sort of scale of personal well-being and in cultural and business studies as a reference to personal development in relation to employment. But a close look reveals that this particularly Western cultural model is missing important elements for those who believe life on earth has a purpose.

Earth and World Healing Meditation

I was walking down from Bob�s Enchanted Croft to Penpoll Creek, to check my kayak was alright, when this lady called Pam jumped out of the hedge and invited me to a party on her land to celebrate her husband�s, David�s birthday. Before I knew where I was, I was involved in an Earth and World Healing Meditation in their cabin, which I reprint here with David Stringer�s permission because it was rather fun.

Dew Ponds

A cute book I picked up in a second-hand bookshop contains a collection of scraps and oddments about the many strange but interesting objects encountered on ramblings and wanderings in the British Countryside. In a time of water shortages and hose pipe bans, Dew Ponds could be a practical way to ensure a localised supply of water for gardening or livestock as this article by E. Mansell describes.

The existential tortoise

Winston the tortoise paused. He thought - 'Today would be a good day to go the whole five yards'