Odd little bit of human interest

The Japanese news this morning had a short piece about a "teacher" in Bangladesh. Apparently he's a Japanese young person who volunteered to go teach there. Right now he is teaching youngsters who are refugees - living in the streets, carrying packages (to earn a day's tips of about 100 yen - roughly a dollar), sleeping on a sheet of newspaper in the train station (apparently one of the better places). It showed his very young class in the park - he had a plastic sheet spread on the sidewalk, and about a dozen little kids. He was teaching them the days of the week and counting. His blackboard . . . was his hand. He wrote on it with a ballpoint pen. He also gathers the older kids together at the train station where they beg and carry packages, and teaches them in between trains.

I gather he really enjoys trying, and has a regular group of kids who listen to him.

I was trying to imagine -- his teaching seemed to combine storytelling and getting the group to respond. And he has to do this in the interstices between these kids making a living and other interruptions.

I think most teachers would just give up, say that it's impossible to teach in that environment. And they would miss the point that these kids appear to have a real thirst for learning, even if it is hard to get it to them.

My hat's off to the street teacher. There are going to be some kids down the line who will be just a little bit better off because of his dedication.

Whole lot of shaking

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. The news reported on a bit of research someone here in Japan has embarked on. Basically, Mexico, Iran, Pakistan and other places have had earthquakes in the recent past, and someone noticed that we really don't have good studies of how adobe buildings collapse. So, they obtained an adobe building in Pakistan and brought it to Japan. Here it was set up (with sensors) on an earthquake simulator and subjected to shocks while being recorded in detail. Apparently it dealt relatively well with low level shocks, but then collapsed as they raised the level.

Not that you would particularly want to try to build an earthquake proof building with adobe, but I suppose the results will both suggest what can be done to improve such construction and what to expect when earthquakes hit.