My brother teaches ethics, and he also spent a year teaching in Japan some years ago. If you’re involved in education, you might want to read a great suggestion he has for how school children might respond to the Japanese tsunami.
It is linked with the story of Sadako Sasaki, the girl who wanted to make a thousand cranes as an act of peace after the dropping of the atomic bomb. In Japanese tradition a crane lived for a thousand years and it was said that if you made a thousand cranes your wish would come true. Sadako wished for a nuclear free world of peace. She died of leukemia, from the bomb, before she finished her task so her school friends finished it for her. Now every school in Japan participates in this act of peace in her memory and in the hope of peace.
I would like to inspire some schools in England to take up this tradition as an act of solidarity with the school children of Japan and in the hope of peace for them and for the world. If stories were to reach Japan of school children from across the seas making cranes for Japan then it might just give them a little hope.
There’s a PDF here with more details.