Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Education”
Introduction The cost of higher education has been rising steadily in the past four decades, essentially doubling in real terms from 1970 to 2010, and it is expected to skyrocket by 2030. This will not be limited to the US, but it is expected to be a global phenomenon. Moreover, the high cost of college education will coincide with a …
The workers’ rights movement has exploded in the last few years, with fast food, agricultural and other workers staging strikes and other nonviolent actions to demand increased wages, benefits and better working conditions. One group of workers that has received far too little attention is adjunct college professors. According to data collected by the Chronicle of Higher Education, adjuncts at …
The inadequacies of charter schools have been confirmed by many recent studies. Even CREDO [3], which is part of a conservative think tank funded by the pro-privatization Walton Foundation, recently found that in comparison to traditional public schools “students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics.” Another recent CREDO study [4] of California schools reached mixed results, with charters showing higher …
Israel is seeking to bring dozens of church-run schools under government control, a move that community leaders have warned will curb the last vestiges of educational freedom for the country’s large Palestinian minority. Most of the 47 schools, which are among the highest-achieving in Israel, were established by Christian orders more than 100 years ago, before Israel’s creation in 1948. …
Norway has been named the world’s best place to be a mother in an annual report released by Save the Children. Save the Children is an independent organization dedicated to helping children throughout the world and has been producing the State of the World’s Mothers report for 13 years now. The rating system takes into consideration factors such as the overall health …
A Progressive Stimulus Package for America’s Future Sustainability by Gary Null, PhD April 7, 2009 There is no doubt that a stimulus package is urgently needed at this critical time of a global economic meltdown. Although there is great reluctance across all financial, political and media sectors to use the “D” word, there are certainly signs that the nation …
First, You Kill the Schools: Behind the Racist Attack on Public School Education
Just about every major city in the United States with sizable nonwhite populations is experiencing a crisis with its public-school system.
This is not accidental, says our guest, Dr. Thomas C. Pedroni, associate professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne State University and co-director of the Detroit Data and Democracy Project. Education policy, he says, is aligned with and reflects a historically racist philosophy and mindset that, despite pronouncements to the contrary, oppose equality and democracy.
Add to this, Pedroni says, is the “threat” and “inconvenience” these populations pose to the power elite. Not only are they increasing in number, but they’re living in areas marked for planned “turnarounds.”
Pedroni explains the connection between the fight for public-school education and the parallel struggle for grassroots political power.
“The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month. Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the …
The federal government has spent more than $3.3 billion over the past two decades creating and fueling the charter school industry, according to a new financial analysis and reporters’ guide by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). (The new guide can be downloaded below.) Despite the huge sums spent so far, the federal government maintains no comprehensive list of the charter schools …
Research at Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education shows that formal compassion training increases both mental focus and caring behavior. The practice of compassion meditation may be a powerful antidote to a drifting mind, new Stanford research shows. Compassion meditation focuses on benevolent thoughts toward oneself and others, as the researchers noted. It is different in this …
