First, Abdel Malek Outas's teachers taught him to write math equations in Arabic, and embrace Islam and the Arab world. Then they told him to write in Latin letters that are no longer branded unpatriotic, and open his mind to the West.

Malek is 19, and he is confused.

"When we were in middle school we studied only in Arabic," he said. "When we went to high school, they changed the program, and a lot is in French. Sometimes, we don't even understand what we are writing."

The confusion has bled off the pages of his math book and deep into his life. One moment, he is rapping; another, he recounts how he flirted with terrorism, agreeing two years ago to go with a recruiter to kill apostates in the name of jihad.

At a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Algeria's youth are in play. The focus of this contest is the schools, where for decades Islamists controlled what children learned, and how they learned, officials and education experts here said.

Now the government is urgently trying to re-engineer Algerian identity, changing the curriculum to wrest momentum from the Islamists, provide its youth with more employable skills, and combat the terrorism it fears schools have inadvertently encouraged.

It appears to be the most ambitious attempt in the region to change a school system to make its students less vulnerable to religious extremism.

But many educators are resisting the changes, and many disenchanted young men are dropping out of schools. It is a tense time in Algiers, where city streets are crowded with police officers and security checkpoints and alive with fears that Algeria is facing a resurgence of Islamic terrorism.

There is a sense this country could still go either way. Young people here in the capital appear extremely observant, filling mosques for the daily prayers, insisting that they have a place to pray in school. The strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, has become the gold standard for the young.

And yet, the young in Algiers also appear far more socially liberal than their peers in places like Egypt and Jordan. Young veiled women walk hand in hand, or sit leg to leg, with young men, public flirtations unthinkable in most other Muslim countries.

The two natures of the country reflect the way in which Algerian identity was cleaved in half by 132 years of French colonial rule, and then again by independence and forced Arabization. Once the French were driven out in 1962, the Algerians were determined to forge a national identity free from Western influence.

The schools were one center of that drive. French was banned as the language of education, replaced by Arabic. Islamic law and the study of the Koran were required, and math and science were shortchanged.

There is a feeling among many Algerians that they went too far.

This year, the government is beginning to make substantive changes. The schools are moving from rote learning — which was always linked to memorizing the Koran — to critical thinking, where teachers ask students to research subjects and think about concepts.

"Before, teachers used to explain the lesson," Malek said. "Now they want us to think more, to research, but it's very difficult for us."

Malek says he hopes to graduate from high school next year and now wants to join the military, just like his father. He is a long way from being the person who had accepted what he says the terrorist recruiter told him — that soldiers, like his own father, are apostates and should be killed. His resolution lasted for three days, until his imam found out and persuaded him not to go.

But the call to jihad still tugs at him. In his world, jihad, or struggle, is a duty for Muslims, but as Malek explains, the challenge is who will convince young people of the proper form that struggle should take.

"They really convince you," he said of the extremists.

In Algeria, your sense of identity often depends on when you went to school.

Hassinah Bou Bekeur, 26, enjoys watching the Saudi satellite channels and the news in Arabic. She watches with her mother and four younger sisters in one room. But her father, Nasreddin, 60, stays in another room so he can watch in French, the language of his education.

"He is not very strict," she said of her father, with a touch of affection and disappointment in her voice. "We have more awareness of religion now."

The Bou Bekeur family illustrates the outcome of Algeria's school-based Arabization project. The family is close but the generation gap is extraordinary. It is not solely the result of schooling — but the history of the education system here helps explain the distance between the generations.

It begins with occupation and schools designed to train people for a French- run system. Even after independence, the schools needed to continue to train in French because the government needed managers and experts to replace those French citizens who had left the country, officials here said. In 1971, officials said, the Arabization project began in earnest, when French was prohibited as a language of education.

But there were not enough educators qualified to teach in Arabic, so Algeria turned to Egyptians, Iraqis and Syrians — not realizing, officials say now, that many of those teachers had extreme religious views and that they helped plant the seeds of radicalism that would later flourish in a school system where Arabization became interchangeable with Islamization. In the Bou Bekeur house that meant children far more religious than their father — and their mother.

"We would never have imagined Algeria could one day be faced with violence that would come from Islam," said Fatiha Yomsi, an adviser to the minister of education.

Students go to school amid subdued tension because many educators do not like the changes that are coming.

"You see, all these classes are mixed," she said. "It is very important. We fought for this. That is why I am targeted for death."

At stake are the identities of young people like Malek, Amine and Lamine — and their futures.

The young men focused on trying to pass their exams, because Algiers is full of examples of those who have not. More than 500,000 students drop out each year, officials said — and only about 20 percent of students make it into high school. Only about half make it from high school into a university. A vast majority of dropouts are young men, who see no link between work and school. Young women tend to stick with school because, officials said, it offers independence from their parents.

Algeria's young men leave school because there is no longer any connection between education and employment, school officials said. The schools raise them to be religious, but do not teach them skills needed to get a job.

This is another cause for extremism, and it is one reason the police do nothing to stop so many young men from illegally selling everything from deodorant to bread at makeshift stands.

It is a scene Myanmar's ruling generals are unlikely to see played out for themselves: As a convoy of trucks carrying relief supplies, led by Buddhist monks, passed through storm-devastated villages, hungry children and homeless mothers bowed in supplication and respect.

"When I see those people, I want to cry," said Sitagu Sayadaw, 71, one of Myanmar's most respected senior monks.

Recently, people who had taken shelter at monasteries or gathered on roadsides waiting for aid to arrive were being displaced again, this time by the junta, which wants them to stop being an embarrassment to the government and return to their villages "for reconstruction." UN officials said Friday that refugees were also being evicted from government-run camps.

"In my entire life, I have never seen a hospital. I don't know where the government office is. I can't buy anything in the market because I lost everything to the cyclone," said Thi Dar. "So I came to the monk."

Nay Lin, 36, a volunteer doctor at the Kun Wan clinic, one of the six emergency clinic shelters Sitagu has opened in the delta, said: "Our patients suffer from infected wounds, abdominal pains and vomiting. They also need counseling for mental trauma, anxiety and depression."

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have become even closer to the monks while their alienation from the junta grows. This bodes ill for the government, which brutally cracked down on thousands of monks when they took to the streets last September appealing to the generals to improve conditions for the people.

Village after storm-hit village, it is clear who has won people's hearts.

Monasteries in the delta - those still standing after the storm - were clogged with refugees. People went there with donations or as volunteers. Monasteries that served as religious centers, orphanages and homes for the elderly were now also shelters for the homeless.

"The monks' role is more important than ever," said Ar Sein Na, 46, a monk in the delta village of That Kyar. "In a time of immense suffering like this, people have nowhere to go except to monks."

Kyi Than, 38, said she had traveled 25 kilometers by boat to Sitagu's camp.

"Our village monk died during the storm. I felt so good today having my first chance to talk to a monk since the storm. Monks are like parents to us," she said. "The government wants us to shut up, but monks listen to us."

"Meditation cannot remove this disaster. Material support is very important now," Sitagu said. "Now in our country, spiritual and material support are unbalanced."

However, like other senior monks here he must strike a careful balance. He has the moral duty to speak out on behalf of his suffering people but he must also protect his social programs and hospitals, which provide free medical care to the destitute in a country whose government views such private undertakings as a reproof.

But, speaking at his shelter as an afternoon monsoon rain drummed against the roof, Sitagu sounded frustrated with the government.

"In my country, I cannot see a real political leader. General Than Shwe's 'Burmese way to democracy?"' he said, referring to the junta's top leader. "What is it?"

Still, a 40-year-old monk at Sitagu's camp said that "monks are very angry" about the government's recent move to evict refugees from monasteries, roadside huts and other temporary shelters, even while the state-run media are filled with stories of government relief efforts. "The government doesn't want to show the truth."

A young monk in the Chaukhtatgyi Paya monastery district in Yangon predicted trouble ahead. "You will see it again because everyone is angry and everyone is jobless," said the monk, who said he joined the September "saffron revolution" and had a large gash over his right eye from a soldier's beating to show for it.

A monk from Mon State in southern Myanmar, who was visiting the delta to assess the damage and arrange an aid shipment, said: "For the government, these people are no more than dead animals in the fields."

The interdependence between monks and lay people is age-old. Monks receive alms - food, medicine, clothes, cash to buy books - from the laity. In return, they offer spiritual comfort. In villages without government schools, a monastic education is often the only one available for children.

"There is a relationship of reciprocity between monks and the lay people," said Desmond Chou, a Burmese-born scholar of comparative religion in New Delhi. "If a fire breaks out in a Myanmar village, it is usually the monks, not firefighters, who arrive first to rescue the people."

Related:

Doctors Without Borders Providing Aid in Myanmar and China.

Anger Grows over Myanmar Aid Block.

Myanmar Disaster And The Human Tragedy of Global Capitalism.

Dalai Lama Offers Support to Myanmar Monks.

Young Japanese people are evolving a new lifestyle for the 21st century based on the cellphones that few are now able to live without.

They are using their phones to read books, listen to music, chat with friends and surf the Internet -- an average of 124 minutes a day for high school girls and 92 minutes for boys.

While the wired world they now inhabit holds enormous advantages for learning and communicating, it also brings a downside, say experts who point to a rise in cyberbullying and a growing inability among teenagers to deal with other people face to face.

"Kids say what's most important to them, next to their own lives, is their cellphone," said Masashi Yasukawa, head of the private National Web Counselling Council.

"They are moving their thumbs while eating or watching television," he said.

The passion in 20-year-old Ayumi Chiba's voice backs up this assertion.

"My life is impossible without it," she says of her cellphone. "I used to pretend I was sick and leave school early when I forgot to take it with me."

As the multi-faceted cellphone takes centre stage in teen life, it plays a number of roles -- including a weapon that children can wield against each other with no thought for the consequences.

Yasukawa recalls the case of a 15-year-old girl who regularly received messages telling her: "Die," "You're a nuisance" and "You smell".

They turned out to have been sent by a friend in whom she had confided and who told her not to take the messages too seriously.

"The girl who was doing the bullying confessed it made her feel good to see the unease spreading on her friend's face," Yasukawa said.

Most middle school cellphone users rarely used their phone to talk, the survey found. Saito, of Kawamura Gakuen Women's University near Tokyo, said children seemed to want the security of communicating with someone, without the bother of dealing with a real person.

"Communication ability is bound to decline as cellphones and other devices are now getting between people," he said.

Saito's survey found that students can also use their cellphones as an emotional crutch, and the more problems they have at home, the more dependent they seem to become on their phones.

More than 60 percent of students who said they do not enjoy being with their families send 20 or more emails a day, compared with 35 percent of those happy with their families.

Related:

South Korea Opens Boot Camp to Confront Internet Addiction.

It has taken more than two years, but the One Laptop Per Child initiative has finally released its much-anticipated laptop: the OLPC XO-1.

The XO-1 costs $200 each to donate, but for a limited time — until Dec. 31, 2007 — people can avail themselves of the "Give One, Get One" promotion to give a $399 donation ($200 of which is tax-deductible).

One laptop goes to a disadvantaged child in a developing nation, while OLPC gives you another one as a thank-you gift of sorts.

Just be advised, this limited-time offer is the only way you'll be able to get your hands on the XO-1 for the foreseeable future. After the end of the year, people can still donate the laptops, but they won't be getting one as a gift.

The OLPC XO-1 has an LED backlit screen; it's compatible with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; and it also offers 802.11s "mesh networking" — a type of peer-to-peer ad hoc networking that requires zero configuration. And it uses so little power that an external hand generator or a solar panel can power the system.

..

A drop from child height is unlikely to break the impact-resistant plastic case.

The keyboard has a lot of new symbols on it, including a row of buttons representing the neighborhood, classroom and individual.

These buttons modify the GUI so that you see the world in general (over Wi-Fi or mesh networks), local users (if you are in a classroom environment with an OLPC XS school server) or the activities you are working on now or in the past.

So far it's up to the individual countries' respective departments of education or local organizations to get the laptops actually into students' hands.

You don't get to choose what country your charitable laptop goes to if you buy an individual unit, but if you donate 100 to 10,000 units or more, you get to choose where they go.

Our Stories was founded by UNICEF, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and Google, and to help collect, preserve, and share online the stories of the world's people and their cultures and communities. The OLPC initiative, partnered with existing UNICEF projects, gives children the tools to interview, record, and share the stories of their parents, grandparents, and others in their families and communities. The focus during this phase is on children in developing countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where OLPC computers are available. Eventually, children and others will be able to share and access recorded stories directly through the Our Stories Children's site.

The compound - part boot camp, part rehab center - resembles programs around the world for troubled youths.

Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming.

South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. In fact, perhaps no other country has so fully embraced the Internet. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the "PC bang," dim Internet parlors that sit on virtually every street corner.

But such ready access to the Web has come at a price, as legions of obsessed users find that they cannot tear themselves away from their computers.

It has become a national issue here in recent years as users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.

Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong Hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem.

They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.

To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

The rescue camp, in a forested area about an hour south of Seoul, was created to treat the most severe cases. The camp is entirely paid for by the government, making it tuition-free.

During a session, participants live at the camp, where they are denied computer use and allowed only one hour of cellphone calls a day, to prevent them from playing online games via the phone. They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one. "It is most important to provide them experience of a lifestyle without the Internet," said Lee Yun Hee, a counselor. "Young Koreans don't know what this is like."

South Korea's gaming addicts. (BBC News)

Experts say the definition of an addict is less to do with the number of hours spent online, but more about the central role computers and the internet can play in someone's life.

Symptoms include:

• Preoccupation with the internet
• The inability to perform normal tasks in everyday life
• Losing control over yourself
• The disruption of daily routines and lifestyles
• Feeling nervous and anxious when not online

Visualising their dreams can help addicts wake up to reality and reduce time spent at the computer, counsellors believe.

In this old, dusty village, two cousins -- Ghassan and Samer Alayan -- wearing sweat-drenched PeacePlayers International shirts sit and talk about the history of Beit Safafa. They speak of resistance and cooperation, roots and exile, the joy and the despair of everyone, on both sides, who chooses to live in this place. Both have just spent the past week running coexistence and leadership basketball camps in Israel and the West Bank.

Ghassan's father ambles up the stairs and joins the conversation.

He looks at the PeacePlayers shirts with a furrowed brow.

"This word 'peace,' " he says, pointing to the shirts. "We [Palestinians] hate this word. Peace, peace, everyone always comes talking about peace. You know the problem with this word? Everyone talks about peace. No one does peace. We are tired of hearing a word that is not real."

In August, I spent a week in Israel and the West Bank following up with a program that we covered last year: PeacePlayers International (formerly Playing for Peace). PeacePlayers is a program that, through the game of basketball, brings together young people living in communities of conflict.

Here, the main activity of PeacePlayers is the Twinned Basketball Clubs, a program that brings together Palestinian and Israeli youth on a weekly basis. The youth participate in basketball, life skills and leadership training, in addition to activities that facilitate intergroup relations and dialogue. Ideally, children begin the program at age 10 and continue until age 16, when they have a chance to become coaches and role models for the youth in their communities.

While PeacePlayers has created deep roots in Northern Ireland and South Africa, the Middle East poses unique challenges that make it harder to measure success. Still, PeacePlayers is experiencing tremendous growth in the Middle East, having worked with more than 2,000 youth. Last year, 600 children enrolled in its yearlong program, with some 40 local coaches employed and 15 interns trained.

The following are the stories of the dedicated volunteers in the region who are planting those seeds. They range from the general manager (R. C. Buford, Spurs General Manager) of the NBA champs to a former Israeli solider (Yoav Shapiro) who once raised tigers in Thailand to a 13-year-old Jericho girl who made a splash this summer in North Carolina when she was named to an All-Star team of 16- and 17-year-olds.

Each one, in his or her own way, is taking the sport of basketball and using it as a tool for peace.

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..

While serving in the army can harden a soldier's view, it had a different effect on Yoav. "I had many chances to kill them, but I couldn't do it," he says with a pained expression. His reddhish hair is in dreadlocks, his facial hair a Fu Manchu.

"I would see them taunting us, and it made me angry. But then, after while, I began to understand why he hates us. We destroyed his neighborhood. We took his things from his house. We mistreated him at the checkpoints. Everyone, Israelis and Arabs, were behaving the wrong way."

..

Later, Yoav was a camp counselor working with 10 Israeli and Arab children at the basketball camp.

The first day was rocky. By Day 2, things began to change. After a night of movie-watching and swimming, and with competitive games on the line, the kids were starting to get along.

As the camp prepares to end, an ecstatic Yoav is bouncing around the gym. "Can you believe this? They are playing together. Passing to each other. High-fiving! If you had asked me if this was possible yesterday, I would say it was impossible. Today, everything is possible."

That evening, Yoav commits to working in the program in Jerusalem for the entire year.

"I'm not sure I was ready for this when I came," he says in a subdued voice later that night. "My family doesn't like Arab people. I didn't like them either.

"But when you see things like this, it causes you to re-examine your assumptions. Maybe I do believe that peace can still come. Maybe the problem is, we just don't know the way. Seeing basketball used like this makes me think that maybe there's a way."

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During an adidas Streetball tournament in 1997 in Jerusalem, Ghassan's team made it to the semifinals. They lost in the semifinals, but the difficult conditions won him and his team a few admirers. Even though some fans wanted him dead, Israeli players congratulated him and his team for their play. (Ghassan Alayan, Palestinian Player and PeacePlayers Coach)

"Playing basketball, for the first time in my life, brought me some respect," Ghassan says. "I didn't forget this."

Ghassan admits that the basketball part of PeacePlayers is more important to him than the peace part -- a common reality for many of the participants.

This means PeacePlayers is preaching not only to the converted, the liberal, the open-minded children who already want peace. PeacePlayers is engaging coaches and children who might not initially be open to integration or conciliation. As a general rule, "encounter programs" suffer because the participants are self-selected to fit the program. The fact that PeacePlayers overcomes this hurdle attests to the power of sport to bring together people who otherwise would not be open to meeting and interacting with each other.

Still, given the circumstances, Ghassan remains skeptical that peace can be made via basketball or anything else.

He notes the disparities between the two groups still serve as a wall. Most of the Israeli kids play in new, air-conditioned gyms. Only two such gyms exist for Arabs in the country. The Arab kids almost always have to travel to the Israeli towns when the teams mix. The Israeli parents won't allow their kids to visit the Arab areas -- which leads to less understanding among the Israeli players about the conditions that many Palestinians face.

..

Despite the problems in making peace in the region, Ghassan has noticed changes in his kids, the Israeli kids and himself since starting the program.

"I think we've learned respect for each other through the game," he says. "This conflict is about a lot of things, but clearly a lack of respect is at the heart of it. If this program builds even a little of that, I've seen what it can do."

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"PeacePlayers is a great opportunity to be around kids using basketball to bridge damaged relationships in areas that need some good things to happen," Buford says.

As the GM for the Spurs, Buford is known as a guy who can see the big picture. From the sound of things, that trait has helped PeacePlayers.

"Basketball is a game where all five players need to share the ball," Buford says. "If it is played with great teamwork, the sum of the parts is greater than the individual. It's a great forum for building trust. A lot of the game happens with things you can't see. Communication and trust with teammates is the key. It seems to me that the same can be said of peacemaking."

Buford's support of PeacePlayers isn't the only area in which he has given kids a chance. ..

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Khaled took the role of mentor to many of the younger players in the camp. He made sure everyone's needs were taken care of and even earned a nickname: Coach Khaled.

Khaled's leadership during the camp illustrated one of the PeacePlayers ideas that makes the program sustainable -- making mentors and coaches of the older players in the program.

With several others, Khaled will pilot the new Leadership Development program this fall.

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Another success story is PeacePlayers' new girls' program. The girls' program was launched last September as a partnership with the Jerusalem Girl's Basketball League. PeacePlayers' involvement signified the first time Arab girls were included in the league. With the support of coaches like Osnat Ginati, an Israeli women's basketball player from Jerusalem, the demand for the program has been enormous.

"I think with girls it's easier," Osnat says. "I think the biggest issue is culture. Many of the Jewish girls from the poorer neighborhoods dress in ways that the Arab girls find immodest. That's been the biggest obstacle."

..

"I was thinking that Jewish people were cold and didn't like Palestinians," Serene remembers. "But Bar was warm and cared. I think she trusted us, and that was great."

The story of Bar and Serene, says Osnat, has an important effect not only on the kids, but also on the adults.

"I think kids like that, who are willing to open themselves up, despite real danger of being rejected, inspire us all to be better," Osnat says with tears in her eyes. "Some of my family tells me I'm crazy to believe a program like this will ever work. That Arabs will never change. But I see this, and I say to myself, maybe both of us are capable of change."

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"You come here with one impression about the place and the people," Sigafoos says. (Sigafoos, Program Director) "But it's totally erased when you're here. The people are better than you'd think. The conflict is more complicated that it appears from the outside. But most of all, you just see a lot of people trying to create a normal life out of an extraordinary situation.

"My work for PeacePlayers has been so rewarding to me personally because of the challenges we face on a daily basis. It's hard to make a difference in the larger context of the conflict. We're not overreaching or deluding ourselves in that way. What we can do, as a small and passionate grassroots organization, is make a real difference in the lives of everyone we work with. PPI is succeeding and creating positive change among our players and coaches because of the talent and passion of the entire PPI staff, especially our local coaches, for change and for a better future."

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Enter Samer Alayan, Ghassan's cousin. Not only does Samer now coach three teams for PeacePlayers, a girls' team and two boys' teams, in Beit Sefafa, he also now heads up a new program for PeacePlayers: BasketPal.

The idea behind the program is to strengthen the basketball infrastructure in Palestine. As a Palestinian, he often was embarrassed when playing against Israelis. The lack of formal coaching and facilities often left the Arab teams underprepared. Out of addressing that concern, as well as the difficulty of Palestinian teams traveling to Israel, BasketPal was born.

The program started with seven teams in Tul Karem and two in Jericho, and is expanding to Ramallah and possibly Bethlehem this year. The goal is to spread the program throughout the entire West Bank.

"If the kids can't play, the respect won't come. In fact, the stereotype that Arabs are worthless just increases." Samer says.

Samer has been beating the bushes looking for support, and he's found a lot of it from a local Palestinian company: Hadara Technologies, the Internet service provider arm of PalTel, which provides broadband services to the 7 percent of Palestinian households that have access to the Web.

"For many Palestians, the Internet is the only way to reach the outside world," says Huda Eljack, Hadara's CEO. "They are so trapped, it's difficult for them to get access to new ideas or even entertainment."

"You can't have peace if people don't have jobs," she says, "so we've tried to create as many jobs in Palestine as we can the last few years."

Her support for the program is enthusiastic. "They aren't just creating basketball players," she says. "They are building life skills and gaining role models.

"Programs like this teach kids to deal with each each and connect them in important ways. Finding the right role models in Palestine, with all of the religious and political strife in the region, is very difficult. To have the coaches develop relationships with the kids may be the most important piece of this."

The BasketPal program itself already has produced its first star, a 13-year-old Christian girl from Jericho named Natalie. Natalie might be the best player in the PeacePlayers program, boy or girl, regardless of age, religion or nationality.

Her goal is to make it to the United States and play high school basketball, with an eye toward playing Division I college basketball. She has the potential to do it, and thanks to BasketPal, she might have the chance.

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Karen Doubliet (Middle East Managing Director) is one of the few Israelis who can say she actually has spent time on the other side of the wall -- in Tul Karem, Ramallah and Bethlehem -- in any capacity other than as a solider. Now Doubliet, with a strong academic background in conflict resolution, is taking PeacePlayers to new places as well. She has been working furiously as PeacePlayers expands its programs and adds new curriculum to provide better leadership and coexistence training to both the program directors and the coaches.

"I felt I was spending too much time on history when there was a real live conflict in front of my eyes," she says. "I felt a responsibility to contribute to something I can change. It was the beginning of new path for me."

She enrolled in Bar-Ilan University to study conflict management and negotiation.

"Bar-Ilan is a religious university, and I wasn't particularly religious," she says. "But I wanted to see the religious perspective of the conflict. I felt that, in order to totally understand the conflict, you need to understand the narratives of all sides: right and left, religious, and secular. You need to understand the perspectives of your friends and your foes. The program was professional and neutral, but the life experiences of the faculty and students gave me a deeper insight into a new way of thinking about the conflict."

"It is a miracle that we are even bringing Palestinian and Israeli youth together under these circumstances, and creating a forum where coaches from both sides can work together, creating a joint future. There is no doubt that the program has a significant impact on the lives of the children with whom we work -- many of whom would be playing on the street and getting into trouble if it weren't for the program and the positive role models.

"This is a necessary part of the process. Bottom-up peace-building is a gradual process; it's about changing attitudes and opening people's minds to other possibilities. These kids won't create the political agreements that need to be made. But it open minds and prepares them for the peace when it comes. If we impact even a few kids, it may not make peace in and of itself; it's another drop in the bucket. Eventually, we'll have a full bucket."

The success has not gone unnoticed. Adidas's corporate foundation, the Adi Dassler Fund, recently awarded PeacePlayers a significant grant that will support PeacePlayers' programs in the Middle East and New Orleans.

Former President Bill Clinton mentioned PeacePlayers in his newest book, "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World," as a program that can foster communication, cooperation and leadership in the Middle East and around the globe.

The plan is to continue growing, adding a community a year as PeacePlayers receives more financial support.

More from ESPN:

2006 Chad Ford's first report from Israel and Palestine.

ESPN Mag: PeacePlayers making progress in Ireland, too.

陈有利博士：学校有 “太多的测验，太少的教育”.

.. 赖炎燕并没有这方面的烦恼，对她来说，学校不是唯一教好孩子的途径，她宁愿让孩子在家——在趋于理想的学习环境，以最适合自己的速度和方式，用最丰沛的学习能量汲取营养。

赖炎燕是本地少数选择“家学”（homeschooling）的家长之一。她在大学主修电脑系统分析，现为全职数学补习老师。先生许维龙从事房地产业，夫妻俩对子女的教育有共识，选择在家教育孩子，而放弃学校教育。

“家学”在本地并不普遍。所谓“家学”，是指不进入主流教育体制，而靠家庭和社会资源的学习方式，在西方国家相当普遍。据《纽约时报》报道，2003年，美国就有110万名学童在家上学，每年的增长率介于7%到15%。在新加坡，这个数目少之又少，根据教育部资料，过去五年在家接受教育的小学生（7岁至11岁）有200人。

家长们发现，大规模集体统一教育虽能普及民智，但因为是“集体教育”，很难因材施教，而且在全国教育政策下，不得不使用一套固定的教育理论，久而久之，难免失于偏颇。

赖炎燕说：“我因为工作关系经常跟学生接触，发现他们不管来自什么背景或学校，都对学习感到厌倦。功课把他们压得喘不过气，使他们没有时间去感受生活的意义和生命的精彩。我觉得这很可悲，我不想让我的孩子也陷入这种深渊。”

让孩子在家接受教育的好处在于提供孩子有别于约定俗成的学习环境与动力，而不会因为既有的学习机制，而限制了孩子的独特性与发展潜能。赖炎燕说：“家学不同，它非常灵活，我可以按照孩子的能力为他设计教学内容，也可以控制教学进度，还可以让他学到一些学校不教的东西。”

赖炎燕认为，制式教育最明显的缺失是，只注重知识、技能的传授，却忽略了人本与生活教育。然而知识永远学不完，教育的目的应该是教导孩子如何寻找、运用知识与资讯的能力，了解人与大自然的关系，以及如何欣赏音乐、文学、绘画、艺术，激发他们的想象力和创造力，并培养他们照顾自己、关怀别人的能力。

赖炎燕说：“比起学业成绩，我更注重孩子的品格，因此我先生每天都会花半小时跟孩子一起学习哲学，好比池田大作的每日指导。” 许家没有电视，也不需要电视，孩子每天的作息都有一套时间表：大声朗读故事和论语，学习绘画和数学，或者到野外做科学实验、劳作及游戏。“我们很注重孩子的游戏时间，对我们来说，学习不一定需要课本，活学活用才能让孩子享受学习的乐趣，而不是压力。”

陈博士觉得给孩子多一点时间和空间去探索和思考是重要的。然而，现有的制度让我觉得学校只注重最后的成绩和排名，而不是过程，也很少关心学生的身心健康。” 不同孩子用不同感官来学习。陈博士认为，学校的教育模式并不适合所有孩子，因为大部分学校只提供以听觉为主的学习方式。

新加坡的家学社群经常有往来，并定期举办群体活动，如参观博物院、科学馆、动物园，举办郊游、手工艺训练班或音乐会等，让家学的孩子频繁接触和往来。

赖炎燕说：“我们经常在家举行聚会，孩子们还自发成立自己的游戏俱乐部，群育活动的品质一点也不比一般学校的差。此外，他们因为不用上学，接触社会的机会更多，沟通能力和实际生活的技能，要比同龄的孩子来得强。”

新加坡家学社群网站为www32.brinkster.com/singaporehg/，提供许多相关的家学教材和各种活动咨询。