Scotland: Clarifying the Truth to Teachers in Glasgow

On Saturday 2nd November a small group of practitioners, including those from Scotland and England and one of the founder members of Friends of Falun Gong UK attended the AGM of the Modern Studies Association at Glasgow University.

The Modern Studies Association is made up of teachers who teach Modern Studies in secondary schools all over Scotland. The event attracted 170 teachers from a wide range of Scottish schools. They gathered to listen to new teaching methods and to network with each other. The Association had invited Falun Gong to the AGM to attend after it had found the Friends of Falun Gong website.

Practitioners set up a stall with Falun Gong leaflets, booklets, Cdrom’s called "The Truth of Falun Dafa", and magazines, which were all available for the teachers to take away. As soon as the teachers were having a break from their seminars they swooped on the Falun Gong stall all very eager to take the materials to use in their schools and to talk about Falun Gong. The practitioners were surprised to learn that many of the teachers were teaching the persecution of Falun Gong as part of China studies included in the Modern Studies curriculum at Higher level (equivalent to A level). The teachers were extremely happy that there was information for them to take away with them, and one said,” you’ve saved our lives!", in reference to the material provided.

The practitioners offered to go into schools and give a presentation on Falun Gong and the persecution in China. Many teachers were very keen on the idea and noted down our contact details as it would bring the China Studies to life and make a more real impact on the pupils. One teacher said that she knew of a student who was doing a dissertation on Chinese people's attitudes towards human rights in China and asked if Friends of Falun Gong could help to provide her with contact information so that she could send out a questionnaire.

As a very generous gesture, the Modern Studies Association offered that they would send out Falun Gong information to all the Modern Studies departments in schools in Scotland. This was a very positive response from the Association to Falun Gong and the event opened a door for the truth of Falun Gong to be spread in education in Scotland.