There are at least two alternatives to scientific studies. One is to ignore the science and go straight for myth, magic and superstition. The other is to start with a scientific study and then twist it to suit your own purposes. This second appears regularly in the world of science and, unfortunately, is becoming more common.

Take the example of mercury amalgam fillings in teeth. In Britain and America a good proportion of the population has already got these ’silver’ fillings, and it would be reassuring for them to know that there were no problems associated with such a procedure, even though it means having mercury (a known poison) in your mouth, often for many years. A recent study, we are told, says exactly that: we have nothing to worry about.

Let’s look at this Study. It came out in 2006 and involved a group of 1,000 school children, over a period of 3 years. Hmm, pretty impressive. However, there are several things to note. One is that the age range was 7-10 years old. That tells us something about these children, but there is no way to predict their future health. We can’t be sure what will happen to them from the ages of, say, 17-20 or 27-30, and we certainly can’t work out from this study what is happening to 27 year olds right now. In my case, I’m a good deal older, and I want to know what effect the fillings are having on the 47-50 year olds, or even the 57-60 year olds. Trying to extrapolate from this one Study to that age group is silly but, amazingly, that is exactly what some writers have done. One, a columnist in the Guardian newspaper in London, has tried to assert that this study is ‘reassuring’ for all age groups.

Worse, though the Study was limited to a small geographical area, the writer tries to say that the results apply to all school children, everywhere. Would you believe that? Young people in China and Japan have a completely different health profile to those in Europe. Why, there are studies that show children in the South of England have a different experience to those in the North of England. This writer ignores that. The Study shows these children are healthy, he says, therefore all children will be healthy. No, that’s Bad Science.

There’s more. If this Study looked at the children’s health, you might imagine that when they met up with the scientists conducting the work, (every two months, as it happens), the man in (or woman) in the white coat would be writing down facts about the child’s health on their clipboard. If the child said they had headaches, or infections, or sleepless nights, the information would be noted, right? Not a bit of it. The Study was focussed on neurological development, which meant, basically, three tests: one, was the application of IQ tests on a regular basis; the second area involved brain scans, MRI’s and stuff like that; the third topic was reaction times – You’ve tried ‘Whack the Rat’? They do it on computers these days, but the principle is the same: a light comes on and you have to hit a button. If you do it quickly you’re fine, if you’re slow, there might be something wrong. Well, that’s all good and it tells us something, but it’s bad news for parents; some want to know if amalgam ’silver’ fillings are related to such childhood illnesses as asthma. The Study had nothing to say on that, because it didn’t look at it. If somebody said, ‘This report showed no link between amalgam fillings and the increase in asthma amongst young people’, it would be correct – but totally misleading. There is ‘no evidence’, in this case, because none was sought. Is there a link? We don’t know. We’re waiting for that study to be done.

There’s more. Think about kids aged 7 to 10. You’ve had them? Then what happens during those years? You’re right: their teeth fall out. The early ‘milk teeth’ are replaced by adult growth. Which means, unfortunately for the Study, that some of these children started the investigation with teeth that didn’t last. Those teeth might have had fillings in, but the teeth dropped out before the end of the 3 years. Worse, the new teeth that grew may or may not have required fillings during this period. Either way, very few of the children would have had fillings for all of the time scale; if a child defined as ‘with fillings’ only had them in for 3 months, 6 months, or a year of the study, that tells us nothing about the long-term effects of silver fillings. And, in particular, tells us nothing about an adult who’s had the same filling in their mouth for 20 or 30 years!

But there’s yet another problem. The Study set out to look at half the children having no fillings and half having some, (not many, as we see above), but even those with some, (and for a short period of time), weren’t found to be totally ‘healthy’, not completely! Even the journalist in the Guardian couldn’t claim that. He said that the differences between those with fillings and those without was ‘negligible’. Well, sorry, but my Dictionary defines negligible as ’some’, a small amount, admittedly, but some. It might be a very, very small amount, say a couple of percent, which is fine, if you are reassured that when you’re told that, say, ‘90% of people are unaffected’ it automatically means that you’ll be in that group! Okay, it might be more than that: it might be 95% or even 97%, but that still leaves a small number with problems, possibly, and the reason that’s important is that you can’t confuse percentages with absolute numbers. 3% of the population might sound like a small number, but in a country the size of Britain, that’s 2 million people! If even half or a quarter of those were ill at any one time, the whole health system would be stressed to the point of collapse. In Britain we often have 100,000 people going down with flu every winter. If there’s 200,000 it’s officially classified as an ‘epidemic’. Imagine ten times that amount of people reporting to their doctors, or trying to find advice from their local hospital or clinic, or knocking on the doors of their dentists. The system couldn’t cope.

Well, you might say, that’s a bureaucratic problem, not a scientific one. Maybe that’s why some of us might suspect that the so-call ’scientific’ evidence is being tampered with, or why public discussion is being stifled. Anyone who questions issues like mercury amalgam fillings is instantly labelled a ‘quack’ or some kind of Alternative Therapist. Such defensiveness is revealing, but unhelpful; it would be better if we could concentrate on the evidence and see what that has to tell us, without being misled by politicians, or journalists with an agenda. People who are, even know, using scientific studies for their own purposes.

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Title: The Churchman’s Prayer Manual : for Use at Prayer Meetings, Mission Services, Conventions, Bible Classes, Study Circles and Other Occasions of United Prayer, as Well as for Private Use Publisher: London : [s.n.] Publication date: 1913 Subjects: Church of England Prayer-books Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free… More >>

The Churchman’s Prayer Manual; For Use at Prayer Meetings, Mission Services, Conventions, Bible Classes, Study Circles and Other Occasions of

Pratique – England

As we attempt to analyse dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something, which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than just an instmment that makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its constructive elements. Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction thai if one is scarified – even in part – fhe other immediately suffers. There is no ime word that is not at the same time praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. (Freire, 1996) This article covers study circle history, tradition, research, practice, development and challenges for the future. As a method for ‘liberal adult education,” the study circle has existed for a hundred years. The study circle is a democratic and emancipatory method for leaming. *For the people, by the people’ became the study circle slogan influencing adult learning in Scandinavia for years. The article is based on a presentation at the Umguayan govcmmental conference on leaming for youngsters and adults in Montevideo, June 2006.

Study circles may – when they are functioning at their best – offer leaming without humiliation, leaming without guilt and bad consciousness, non-violent leaming, a humble way of leaming and leaming for self-confidence and selfesteem. But there was a long way to go to here. As a Nordic traditional method for liberal adult education, the study circle has been active for more than a hundred years. From the beginning, the Study Circle has been seen as a democratic and emancipatory method and arena for leaming, particularly among adults. Study circles were bom in New York in the 1870s. By their peak in 1915, 700,000 people were participating in 15,000 study circles in the USA. People close to the union, co-op, the temperance movement, and the Social Democratic Party carried the idea to Sweden to educate their followers. Even though study circles have more or less passed away in the USA, they have flourished ever since in Sweden and Scandinavia. Still nearly three million Swedes participate in more than 300,000 study circles annually, partly funded and subsidised (but not controlled) by the public sector and the govemment. Scandinavian communities have even convened study circles to work through major issues facing their local areas and towns, with study circle participants turning into activists who then have a significant impact on events. In the last ten years, there has been a renewed and blooming interest in study circles in the USA also.’ The study circle followed the ‘top-to-botfom approach’ for enlightenment developed in the eighteenth century, expressed, for example, through the University Extension movements in France, England and Scandinavia,- to become a ‘bot1om-up’ method. The so-called founder of the study circle, the Swede Oscar Olsson, expressed that ‘the emancipation of the working class should be a task for the workers themselves.’ ‘For the people, by the people’-’ became the political slogan that infiuenced the study circle and the adult education system in Scandinavia for years. The close links between the method study eircle and the tool for democracy study circle may also be exemplified with the expression by the former Swedish Prime Minister OIov Palme: ‘Sweden is to a great extent a Study Circle democracy’ (1998). The study circle is a human, easy, and fearless way to leaming for adults with low self-esteem and self-confidence. But the study circle method is also demanding. It claims activity and dialogue between its participants (members), and just occasionally you can rely on a teacher or an expert joining in. Normally the study eircle is a group of equals, the leader the ‘primus inter pares.’ The pedagogical idea may – in my words – be summarised by ‘leaming by sharing,’ relying on each member’s experience.

‘The Study Circle, which voluntary organisations claim to be their special method, from both ideological and educational reasons, has very much been taken for granted,’ says the Norwegian researcher Hallgjerd Brattset in her study (1982, p. 13) on how to describe and analyse the experiences from methods of planning and organising study circles. Because the Norwegian Act on Adult Education”* (NOU, 1976) requires students’ involvement in contents and method in the courses, Brattset thought it was of special interest to find out to what extent this is practised in study circles.

Scandinavian Background
The study eircle was developed in late-nineteenth-eentury Sweden. It is usually dated to 1902, the year Oscar Olsson, ‘the father of the study circle,’ started his first circle in the Lund branch of the Intemational Order of Good Templar and named it a ’study circle.’^ The most distinctive features of circle studies, as Oscar Olsson (quoted in Brattset, 1982, p. described them, were that: * * * people studied in small groups, ofren at home; study material was rare; teachers were not considered a necessary prerequisite of study. The leader of the group was an organiser, and he possessed no theoretical qualifications; people supplemented their group studies by attending lectures or meetings; circle members had no previous theoretical qualifications but a good deal of practical experience; members leamt to discuss, argue, show consideration for others, accept defeat, and share responsibility; members experienced a sense of community and identity; the knowledge members acquired could be directly related to their everyday lives; and studies began at the initial cognitive level of the members and were guided by their needs.

* * * * * *

According to Oscar Olsson, the most important features of study circles were that they operated independently of teachers, were based on the reading of fiction, and used conversation and discussion as methods. His definition of a study circle was ‘a circle of friends who come together to discuss problems or subjects of common interest’ (quoted in Brattset, 1982, p. 9). From this definition it follows that the leader should be more a guide to the members than a traditional teacher. A practical consequence of this is the terms applied: circle members or participants, not pupils or students: circle leaders. Convergence, Volume XXXIX. Number 2-3. 2006 51

not teachers, circles or groups and meetings, not clas.’ses or lessons. This use of tenninology has been considered quite important, because the participants should not associate the studies with ‘bad previous school experiences.’

Voluntary Organisations
Historically, study circles and popular movements are inseparable concepts. Oscar Olsson’s study circle exemplifies the close links that have always existed between popular movements and the study circle, and also that adult education has always been strongly associated with the voluntary sector in Scandinavia. The aim of their educational activities was to promote changes in society, according fo their values. Therefore adult education can be described as instrumental to reach their goals, and the study circle their tool to do so. The study circle is a fiexible tnethod. Several terms are therefore in use, such as: ‘ * * * * * * circles with or without a teacher; circles combined with lectures; circles based on prcproduced plans; correspondenee eireles; combined circles – members taking correspondence courses individually, supported by circle studies with teacher; multimedia courses, studies integrated in a pre-produced scheme, including usage of media; and, finally and most recently, ‘E-circles,’ in which the members communicate on the Intemet.

Research
The study circle as an aeademic field of research has been rare. Most of the research being done in recent years is known from Sweden and the University of Linkoping (see, for example, Andersson et al., 1996). The most comprehensive study was conducted by Jan Bystrom (1976). The aim of Bystrom’s study was lo investigate and discuss the reasons why study circles develop differently and to pay special …