ISSUE 13 FEBRUARY 2000 •  CONTENTS •  HOME PAGE

 EDITORIAL

Quite an audience

Author

There is a powerful line in Robert Bolt's Play about Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons.
Richard Rich (an opportunist and not very highly principled) asks Sir Thomas for a place at court and Thomas refuses. "Be a teacher," he suggests. "You could be a good teacher."

But Rich would prefer political fame, so he asks "But if I were a good teacher, who would know it?"

Thomas More's reply: "Your friends would know it, your pupils would know it, you would know it and God would know it — and that's quite an audience!"

We have been interested to see who is CYC-NET's audience — who visits this web site. In January 2000 the "hit parade" of the 25 top level domains (sorted from most to least numerous) has looked like this:

ca - Canada
net - Network
com - US Commercial
za - South Africa
?? - Unresolved domains
edu - US Educational
nz - New Zealand
uk - United Kingdom
il - Israel
no - Norway
ie - Ireland
us - United States
au - Australia
zm - Zambia
org - Non-Profit Organizations
se - Sweden
gov - US Government
fr - France
pl - Poland
es - Spain
sg - Singapore
de - Germany
mil - US Military
sk - Slovakia (Slovak Republic)
nl - Netherlands

Quite an audience. And the six most-visited pages of the web site say much about child and youth care workers around the world:

1. Home page
2. CYC-ONLINE
3. The Journals
4. Newsdesk
5. Theme 2000: Relationships
... and number 6 — Schulz's cartoons in the January issue!

*    *    *

With this issue of CYC-ONLINE we also celebrate our first birthday. The first issue was published in February 1999. In our introductory editorial we noted:

"We (both involved in the editing of journals in the field) strongly promote formal reading in the field, and we felt that CYC-ONLINE would provide the ideal opportunity for less formal writing and ideas and news and exchange than we would expect in the scholarly journals.

So that's CYC-ONLINE — the beginning of what may become a useful "alternative press" for those around the world who work with troubled kids and youth at risk, offering opinion, ideas, writing and news — and perhaps some of the inspiration to complement the perspiration — of this truly remarkable profession of ours which, throughout the world, is like no other profession.

Feel free to participate — read, copy, share what's here — and do let us have your own contributions."

We would like to renew that invitation for you to participate. (What me? Yes, you!) The less formal nature of CYC-ONLINE means that colleagues at all levels of the child and youth care profession can feel comfortable about contributing. Teachers and students, on-line workers and supervisors, administrators and the young people themselves, whoever, we share a noble and exciting profession and all of us constantly learn from each other.

You (as an individual, a staff team, a concerned group) could —

• review a book or journal article

• recount a learning experience

• illustrate a concept

• tell us of a film we should see

• complain about some irritation

• share a funny story

• suggest a helpful way of doing something

• start an argument

• tell us about some aspect of your program

• compose a poem

• send a recipe (says Thom)

• explain your view on some issue

• tell a story

• write about someone who inspired you

• other!

In return we can promise you (because it is in the nature of our profession) to give you a hearing and to take you seriously — unless you're being purposely ridiculous.

And we can promise you something else: quite an audience!

Happy birthday.
Brian and Thom