Children with superficial information about board games, stop by a window displaying many of these games and recognizing them all, they choose and buy chess. They learn the instructions; understand how to move the pieces on the board and the objective of the game. They practice this form of learning through mechanic or random method. After a few games with experienced players, children realize that in chess there is no room for luck or chance, and that the knowledge of the game, the understanding of the movement of the pieces and proper application of these fundamentals during the game do not guarantee success. While Learning what it takes to observe and analyze the opponent's actions in relation to their positions they will be predicting and even creating strategies that will lead to future moves of the opponent, the articulation of the next attack or the consolidation of the defense. Only after evaluation of this set of nearly endless possibilities in
a chess game, they can vote and make a conscious move.
Applying a checkmate, the ultimate goal of the game, new players come to a higher level of their relationship with chess. Starting from the basic knowledge, which enabled them to distinguish it from other games displayed in the window, they come to understand, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate bids and the start, becoming familiar with different ways of thinking. Learning the game of chess is an interesting analogy to illustrate the gradual acquisition of intellectual skills by the individual in their preparation for life. In today's world, where information sources are multiplying, we must find new educational goals for the school to be edifying: interesting for students and rewarding for the teachers.
The school, acting as a mere reproducer of knowledge offers a heritage that is of little use to explain the growing complexity of life. The media, which comprise different ways of expression by the man, carry on the dissemination of information with more quality and amplitude than the teacher in the traditional classroom. To regain prestige as a relevant social institution, schools must change the focus of their curriculum: From information to formation, from dissemination of knowledge to knowledge production. This transformation requires the development of the students’ intellectual skills, leading them to evolve from a more primitive level of relationship with things and phenomena (knowledge) to enable them to evaluate. A citizen able to assess this will experience more freedom to choose. Based on the knowledge acquired, they will apply their learning, make analysis and synthesis, propose hypotheses, experiment, formulate theories, test results and
criticize his or hers own activities.
Among all the benefits gained from the capacity assessment, the one which gains immediate social resonance and that makes the individual a major political citizen is - the election of the guild, association, trade union, Legislative, Executive - the choice of candidate. Wise persons who think independently, do not accept halter or form flock to be driven by staff, barking dogs, bribery, or advertising. To educate students to develop their cognitive potential, affective and psychomotor skills is to prepare them for the life of chess. Played with identity, freedom and critical thinking it does not always lead to victory, but will keep us safe and happy in all matches.
Galvêas, Kleber. Painter – Brazil Phone (27) 3244 7115 - www.galveas.com - 11/2009

THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

On a small dirt road where neighborhood children used to play street soccer every afternoon, one of the neighbors had his glass window broken. He ripped the ball and scolded his son who was one of the players, then walked off to the home of the "author of the feat" and in a fit of anger threw the shriveled ball in his neighbor's yard. Abusive language was exchanged. Not satisfied, he sued his neighbor. Today two fathers do not talk to each other, while their children keep on playing together away from their sight and under unknown influences. Years earlier a similar occurrence had a different ending. After a kid's strong aimless kick, a ball broke the glass window of a fisherman's home. He went out to the street and negotiated: "I'll fix the window and you will pay me by cleaning my yard and painting my wall." He now lives in peace, though he worries about his grandson who also has to play ball far from home.
Civilized beings frequently lose their elegance: during the last Century, looking for the murderer of the famous "Suitcase Crime", the Paris police exhibited the suitcase in which the corpse was found. This exhibit, which lasted a month in the Paris Morgue, was visited by a public which surpassed that of a one year's exhibit at the Louvre.
Anthropologists state that our species decimated the Neanderthals because we were more violent than our competitors of up to 30,00 years ago. Uncivilized Indians who used to live at war, as cannibals, looking forward to a "beautiful" death, seem to confirm the thesis that civilization represses the aggressive instinct of the animal called man. However, some institutions of our civilization are unconcerned about shared living, promoting disdain for life and indifference for one's neighbor. History, politics, economics, sports and religion display little civilized attitudes. History valorizes war to the detriment of peace. (We know more about Napoleon than about Pasteur or Ghandi.)
Economic policies have maintained privileges and amplified differences (propitiating conflict, disappointment and crime.) We pay for – and even award Olympic medals to
men and women who engage in rink fights right in the middle of their audiences, and fights which sometimes lead to fatal results. (If instead of punches they exchanged caresses, they would be censored and looked at whimsically, or sentenced for indecent behavior in public.) Christian churches worship warrior saints, virgins and magical gods, which is far from the ideal of peace, fraternity and love Christ preached. (Our Lady of all Pleasures, venerated in Espírito Santo since the 16th Century, had her name changed to Our Lady of Happiness or Alacrity, and is now our State Patron Saint under the name of Nossa Senhora da Penha - Our Lady of the Rock – all this without any positive emotional feeling. The "multiplication" of the loaves of bread and fish performed by Jesus is vulgarized as a miracle instead being presented as an act of solidarity. The appropriate attitude for the religious leader who, through his words moves our hearts so that we bring to the altar our contributions and perceive that together we have more than enough for everyone, is thus impaired.)
Among neighboring countries, close national relations are promptly established if the motivation is for war. In case Argentina invaded Brazil, the efficient national media would instantly impel the Nation to war. Volunteers would enlist for military service, gold would be collected through public campaigns. If the event occurred we would sell more newspapers, but would lose lives, goods and much money. Now (2002) that our neighbor is financially ruined (by the spoliation of the dominant minority) Brazil
advocates in her favor at international organizations. That is difficult, but it's easier than a war. It is time we have a backyard fence talk. If we imagine what we would lose by fighting and the costs for the security of our borders, we would willingly cooperate more with our peaceful neighbor, who's so good at soccer.
We accept violence instead of affection with more naturalness; we accept the uncommon or unusual morecasually than love and solidarity.
Kleber Galvês - 05/2002 tel. (27) 3244 7115 atelie@galveas.com

SEX AND VIOLENCE

Mulembá (the devil’s fig tree) is like violence: it deals well with repression, radical trimming, fire, water, cold, drought, and parasites. When it is attacked it survives and even multiplies. It is only killed if it is pulled off the ground with all its roots. In order to minimize violence, traditional methods which have been tested everywhere, are in vain.
Innovation is necessary, injecting happiness in the roots of the social tree, which, according to Freud, is pivoted by sex.
The conjugation of love and sex is the “pluperfect” – more than perfect. However we know that these are independent attitudes. The pill has revolutionized customs since the 60’s, and sex has become inconsequent, without logic or a product (that is love and reproduction), and it has gained its space. Even a neologism has been created for it: to
make love!
Promoting love by simplifying sex, the lesson of affection left us by the hippies, must be understood as a strategy against violence. Whoever feels well with him or herself tends to do good unto others.
The erroneous way in which we deal with sex in our society today results in the valorization of prostitution (which is the fastest growing segment of want-ad columns in the press). If there is work to be undertaken an assistants to be hired, preferably professional ones are chosen so we can be at ease and sure we are not going to be guinea pigs for those who are only “curious”. Requiring quality we search for information and decide for the most experienced candidate. However, in the case of sexual activity, the evaluation is inverted and the most sought after solution is to choose the inexperienced ones.
Although a completely professional, hot and pretty prostitute (from a paper ad) costs less, people go after the unprepared amateur ones. At a time when sex should be safe, this dangerous inversion of values, which only occurs in the area of sex, generates problems.
Long before men existed, even prior to the appearance of the australopithecus, before any artistic manifestation was even sketched, our forefathers reproduced themselves.
The first being was the “first” one because he was able to cross and have fertile descendents. Sex is a natural function, as essential to life as breathing or digesting, and if we observe beyond our belly buttons, if we observe it through the perspective of the preservation of our species. Humans deprived of the five senses are able to live. Without sex, they will disappear.
Pleasures obtained through our sensory organs (vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell) are discussed, but are generally are not repressed. We can see, hear, eat, touch and smell
without constraint, at ease. We have made sex so complicated that we talk and analyze this activity more than do we practice it with naturalness. In the disputes for mating animals reveal a disposition that leads them to leave , to fight for that objective. The one who’s defeated bows down. This does not happen among civilized people, and victory does not guarantee peace, the respect for the loser. The conquest is often lethal.
There is no greater dissatisfaction than prison, the absence of freedom. No prison is more efficient than the one we create for ourselves. Our hypocrisy has made of sex a captive of honor, religion, customs and ignorance. Being repressed it has sown pain and lovelessness. A sexually well resolved society converts its member to the religion of peace and love. The prostitute will not be one’s priestess, neither will she be Pandora, Eve ,Venus or the virgins; mystification and taboos will be forgotten.
Free from prejudices, love and sex will find each other and aid in the pacification of the world. Lasting and universal peace are not brought about through wars, prayers, nor decrees, but by the summing up of hearts filled with happiness. 04/2003

LA MARSELLAISE OF THE TUPINIKIN INDIANS

When the Romans arrived in Brittany – England (56 B.C.) the island was inhabited by people who owned few objects, had simples housing, no bureaucracy, not the least language sophistication, nor commerce, law or diplomacy. Their primitive religion required sacrifices, and people were burned alive at stakes. They learned a lot from the Romans, and today British English owes more than 50% of its vocabulary to its Latin origin. Thanks to this enrichment brought about by the Latin language the English language of the Bretons surpassed all the various dialects spoken on the Island.
Celtic Brittany wound up being fragmented in the 6th Cent., when it was occupied by the Anglos and Saxons (Germans). The invaders disdained the British culture however they adopted their language, so England, which means the country of the Anglos (Germans) speaks British English the language of their Celtic enemies. And this is the language which was the vessel for Shakespeare, Newton, Joyce, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, and which is still blossoming.
While a member of the State Council of Culture one of our peers proposed that the teaching of French be required in our schools, in order to counterbalance the influence of English. Although I am fond of the sonority of the French language, of La Marsellaise. and the French culture, the project represented a high cost in education, which still has not invested in discovering our natural and cultural environment, a greater risk for the loss of our identity. I voted against the project and as my council colleague completed his say with an acid criticism to the multinational companies which use the English language, I proposed a direct and yet healthy attack to some of these enterprises, in their own financial language: the manufacturers of tooth paste. A product which has been incorporated into our culture, its use has become generalized as well as its incorrect usage as induced by the advertising which shows the paste being applied covering everyone of the bristles of the brush, along its full length. Tonight apply the toothpaste on the bristles of your brush at a point of its width. You will be using less than half the amount proposed in the commercial. Brush your teeth and then mouthwash several times before spitting out the foam, as you normally do. Next brush your teeth again without toothpaste on the brush. You will observe the formation of foam and this will happen a few more times if you repeat the procedure.
By using ¼ of the quantity of toothpaste shown in the commercial, and with national consciousness, the demand will shrink, Heads will fall off their entrepreneurial ranks, which will please those who are radical or sadistic. Our health will be better guaranteed. It is possible that some people are ill today as a consequence of lead and of fluorite (heavy metals) which until a short time ago, were present in the formulas and packaging of every brand of toothpaste found in the market, or as a consequence of abrasives and detergents, which polish teeth and produce abundant foam. According to our community doctor, these products irritate the mucous membrane and may cause gastritis.
The curious thing is that the government and the media who are so diligent in their anti-tobacco campaigns, which is an optional problem, neglect the toothpaste, which is of frequent universal use, and of air pollution, which does not miss either the asthmatic elderly nor defenseless children.
Here in Vitória, ES, the dominant northeast wind brings in, from the region of Porto de Tubarão, about 50 tons/day of iron ore dust, from their open air stocks and from the loading process carried out without efficient protection, as well as iron itself, which escapes from the chimneys of steel mills. This is harmful to the health of everyone, as well as to electrical and electronic equipment, to our hygiene, and tourism. A loss which has not yet been estimated.
It is known that human beings lived for thousands of years in smoky caverns and tents, and we believe that the survivors were those who were better able to withstand
the smoke. There is no record in the history of humanity that men who have undergone constant pulverization of iron and gases let out by steel mills and selected products, have acquired resistance to these aggressions. We, the “capixaba” people, will be their guinea pigs until we raise our polluted banners written in Tupi and English, against
this economic tyranny, in remembrance of the Marsellaise.
Kleber Galveas, pintor. Tel.3244 711 atelie@galveas.com 07/2000