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MARSOUN: My name is Mike Marsoun, and my address is P. O. Box 650,
<br />Kealakekua.
<br />GRAHAM: Go right ahead with your comments.
<br />MARSOUN: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I consider it a
<br />privilege to be here and to speak on behalf of Alliance Redwoods. I’m married. I have six
<br />children, and we are a home school family. And the reason I say “a home-school family” rather
<br />than “a family that home-schools” is because it’s a life style; we try to integrate learning into
<br />everything that we do. And we’ve learnt quite a bit about education over the last many years –
<br />my oldest is 17 right now. And one of the things that we’ve learnt is with children to get them to
<br />learn effectively, we do an approach which is called delight-directed education, which is where
<br />you will find something that the child already has a passion for, and then weave into that the
<br />reading, writing, arithmetic and all that. And it makes them be self-motivated, and they get it
<br />done, and they have an application to what they are learning, so it sticks a lot more. The reason I
<br />bring that up is because we’ve found with our own children, and just about every child that
<br />we’ve observed, is that the love of nature is ingrained into the soul of children, into the soul of
<br />man, and it does that work for you; it helps to teach them. And I believe that nature is God’s
<br />classroom and there is just so much to be learnt by nature, and that getting out in the light and to
<br />the illumination of the sun has a healing effect, the calming effect on children and all people,
<br />rather than the illumination from a, you know, computer screen or television or Nintendo, what
<br />have you.
<br />I don’t know your religious beliefs; I assume that they’re probably varied. But I think I could be
<br />bold enough to say that we would say that the Bible has some good moral and ethical teachings
<br />in it. And I just want to make the point that in those teachings in the Bible, almost all of the
<br />parables are in the context of agriculture; a man sowed seeds, and some fell on rocky ground,
<br />some fell on good soil, some fell between the thorns, you reap what you sow, on and on.
<br />They’re just everywhere. And that’s because it was agricultural society, but I also think it’s
<br />because it’s something that everybody understands, and people at that time could understand. I
<br />think it still applies today that one of the most effective ways that we can teach our youths
<br />character is through agriculture. And I’ve heard it said that this is not, you know, everybody is
<br />complaining that this is not to the prime land ag use. But it really is; I mean you are not only
<br />teaching them about the character qualities of getting your hands dirty, but also about farming.
<br />And if there is more of an awareness to what happens when you get your hands dirty and the
<br />fruit of that, then I believe there is going to be much more of a respect for the land in general.
<br />The lessons taught to these young people going to this camp will be patience, waiting, working
<br />hard to prepare something for the future that will bear fruit, diligence, discipline, team work and
<br />the rewards that come from all that, reaping the harvest, seeing something that comes out months
<br />later. This is character lessons with an application, and this is going to go deep into these
<br />children. And it’s going to be effective. There’re going to -, the lessons can be applied to
<br />education, higher education, their personal finances, investing, building a business, relationships;
<br />everything that you need to get on in life. This may be a stretch, but you can really glean a lot of
<br />– I’m trying to use ag terms “glean”, okay? And so I really believe strongly in this. Is my time
<br />up?
<br />GRAHAM: Thank you.
<br />EXHIBIT B
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