education - Robert Maguire on Diigo

09 Dec 09

A United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen is ground zero for heated political disputes about global environmental policies. But one American evangelical minister at the talks wants to bridge political divides with a religious appeal. We explore "Creation Care" and the issues that divide religion and science.
Matthew Nisbet

Assistant Professor, School of Communication, American University; author of the blog Framing Science.

Richard Cizik

President of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good and Fellow at the Open Society Institute. Formerly Vice President for Government Affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals.

Eric Chivian

Founder and Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard. Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Co-founder of the organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

04 Dec 09

The Climate Change Emails: Implications for Public Education and Engagement : Framing Science

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Not unexpectedly, the storyline offered by these commentators simplistically defines the event as yet another effort by the conservative movement to manufacture doubt and to wage a "war on science."
Yet this predictable storyline overlooks the fact that scientists, science reporters, educators, and their institutions may have unintentionally created the conditions that helped a single focusing event turn into a global controversy and media frenzy. Reaction to the content of the East Anglia emails is so intense because it shows scientists talking and behaving in ways that cut against the stereotypical image of impartial, Vulcan-like high priests of reason. For too long in school and in news reporting, we have portrayed a cartoon image of how science is done, its connection to policy debates, and how scientists participate in these debates. This has worked for scientists in the past, but as the types of questions that society faces and as modes of communication change, the public is expecting and demanding greater involvement in science-related decisions and greater accountability on the part of scientists.
6 more annotations...
- The East Anglia emails are a wake up call that we need to shift modes to educate, communicate, and report on how science really works and its role relative to societal decisions.
- opinion article at the BBC
- we mean a more concerted effort to explain and engage the public in understanding the processes and practices of science and scientists, as much as explaining the substance of their knowledge and how (un)certain it is.
- "civic science literacy"
- for majors and non-majors alike
- [The module] would introduce students to quality online news sources about science, teach students about how to constructively use participatory tools such as blogs and other social media applications, educate students on how to critically evaluate evidence and claims as presented in the media, introduce students to the relationships between science and institutions as they are often covered in the news, and socialize students into enjoying and following science by way of digital media after they complete their formal science coursework. In short, this type of media literacy curriculum would not only potentially grow the audience for science media, but also impart the skills, motivation, and know-how that students need to be participatory citizens in the online and real worlds.

Key to Afghan crisis: tea and education | csmonitor.com

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greg mortenson politics waronterror military counterinsurgency education women charity schools pakistan afghanistan statedept mullen mcchrystal petraeus obama

ask American schoolchildren how often they talk with their grandparents about the important events of history in
the past
maybe 10 percent
31 more annotations...
- erected 80 schools
- In rural villages where the Taliban has not exerted its will on the community
- perhaps 80 percent of kids
  respond affirmatively
- in areas where home-grown and foreign Taliban fighters have established brutal strongholds
- no child raises a hand
- It's a message that has sparked a paradigm shift in the attitude of top US military brass, one that began during the last
  years of the Bush administration.
- Adm. Mike Mullen, President Obama's handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, found a copy of "Three Cups of Tea"
  awaiting him on his nightstand. It had been placed there by his wife, Deborah. "Three Cups of Tea" also reached the hands
  of Gen. David Petraeus, leader of the US Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who recently requested 40,000 additional
  troops. It is required reading for US officers in the region.
- Mullen and Petraeus summoned Mortenson to meetings at the Pentagon, and he used maps to give them a virtual tour of the country,
  pointing out some areas that have been virtually impenetrable to US ground forces, telling them the names of shuras and mullahs
  they needed to contact.
- "Many of the elders I know are really angry at the Americans," Mortenson says. "It has less to do with our presence and more
  to do with the huge outcries caused by drones and bombers attacking suspected Taliban hangouts but killing a lot of innocent
  people."
- What mystified Mullen was how Mortenson was able to build schools in places where the US has suffered its stiffest resistance
  and casualties. Just one of Mortenson's schools has been attacked by the Taliban at a time when fundamentalists opposed to
  women's empowerment have violently tried to thwart girls' education.
- Since 2007, according to UNICEF, 850 schools have been bombed, burned, or destroyed in Afghanistan and 600 in neighboring
  Pakistan. Former President Clinton has said of Mortenson: "He is effective in an area where Americans are not popular, because
  he relates to people as human beings."
- says the Joint Chiefs chairman has been
  "riveted" by Mortenson's grasp of tribal nuances. The two men often exchange e-mails.
- Mullen
- 'Why don't you come and see it for yourself?' "
- "The community must want the school," he says. "It's not ours
  to give them. What they're really doing is consciously choosing to create a different future."
- "God does not like terrorists. Terrorism is not promoted in the Koran," says Muhammad Azan from Maidan Wardak Province in
  central Afghanistan. "They are not only the enemy of America; they are our enemy. All of us have to work together to stop them."
- But if "the other kind of soldiers are sent," he says, referring to National Guard troops with
  expertise in civil engineering and farming, their presence as teachers would be welcomed.
- Part of McChrystal's request specifically asks for soldiers with skills beyond warfighting.
- He explains Mortenson's influence by telling a story: When his unit first deployed during the summer of 2007, rocket attacks
  were launched daily from a valley on the east side of the Kunar River near the Pakistan border, a nettlesome hiding area for
  Al Qaeda.
- Instead, US officers requested a face-to-face meeting
  with the shuras.
- Local elders told them that, earlier, a US platoon had stormed into the same town in the middle of the night and forcefully
  searched villagers' homes, infuriating them. Soon, in response, shelling began of the US military outpost.
- As Kolenda listened, the topic turned to the value of education. Not long afterward, Kolenda's unit returned – not with loaded
  weapons, but bearing truckloads of school supplies.
- The dynamic changed instantly. The formerly hostile elders made their own trip to the US base.
- "They brought with them about 100 thank-you notes written in Pashtun from children," Kolenda says, noting that he had contacted
  Mortenson and inquired about setting up a school in the village. It became the first one built in Kunar Province. Once the
  classrooms opened, the shelling magically stopped.
- "Despite our differences, caring for children and our families and communities are examples of things we truly hold dear to
  our hearts and in common" with Afghans, Kolenda says. "Doing our best to see the world through their eyes and working together
  with them to meet their core needs often forms a very important foundation to a relationship based on mutual trust and respect."
- This is not a war that will be won with superior firepower, Kolenda says. "You must work on the smaller issues first to build
  mutual respect and credibility," he says. "Once you reach that point and all parties are confident in the relationship, then
  you can move on to more sensitive issues. Insurgents tend to prey on disaffected groups and communities."
- "Community, community, community. It is the social nexus rather than the individual," Kolenda says. "The shura and jirga [circle of elders] are examples par excellence of Afghan community decisionmaking at work."
- "If you sweat for it, you protect it," is a saying of local tribal leaders. The schools Mortenson has helped bring are not
  merely new buildings, they act like old-fashioned community barn raisings.
- Two summers ago, a girls' school in the village of Lalander, Afghanistan, received written warnings from the Taliban. Then
  came death threats. They culminated in a dozen men ransacking the school and warning that if any girl or family member returned,
  they would face severe consequences.
  
  Angered, the schoolmaster rode his bicycle 20 miles to alert the presiding tribal elder, who had a daughter attending a similar
  school. The elder responded, Mortenson says, by having the equivalent of "a local posse" round up the offenders. A few were
  killed. Armed guards were then assigned to protect the school around the clock. Not only did the threats disappear, but support
  for the school grew stronger.
  
  "There are many different kinds of Talibans, some extremist, some not," says Shoukat Ali, a former Taliban who teaches at
  one of Mortenson's schools in Pakistan. He joined the Taliban as a teenager to fight against the Indian Army in the disputed
  region of Kashmir. He was enticed because he had no job.
  
  "The extremists are small in number," Mr. Ali says. "They can be minimized. If the people have opportunities for jobs, to
  own land, and go to school, most of the problems with the Taliban will go away."
  
  If Mortenson has any advice for Mr. Obama, it would be to call together a large gathering of shuras and listen to them.
  
  "It would do more good than spending another $1 billion on combat operations or foreign aid. He would ingratiate himself,
  help calm down some of the lingering hostilities, and probably save some soldiers' lives," Mortenson says.
- Mortenson says his respect for US commanders has grown immeasurably. Half a decade ago, he wrote a scathing op-ed article
  excoriating the way that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was conducting the war.
  
  "Our military is now actually ahead of the curve, not behind it," he says. "When you hear the expression 'All politics is
  local' in this country, people get it. Well, in Afghanistan, all politics – as well as culture, cooperation, and the hope
  of any progress – is local, too."
- In September, Mortenson joined Afghan clerics in building a school in Deh Rawod, in the desolate Oruzgan Province in south-central
  Afghanistan, a region that has provided a haven for Taliban leader Muhammed Omar. The clerics wanted first to visit another
  school to get an idea of its possible impact, so they went with Mortenson to an existing school in a neighboring village.
  
  They strolled out into the school playground, which had a swing set, says Mortenson, showing photographs of clerics swinging
  and their usually stern faces smiling as their robes flapped in the breeze. "In that moment they discovered something else
  that schools can be, something they didn't have as children," Mortenson says. "It was like a light bulb went on."

Going to school on Afghans' problems | Marketplace From American Public Media

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greg mortenson politics waronterror military counterinsurgency afghanistan pakistan schools charity women education

21 Nov 09

Worst Place for the World's Children: Afghanistan | FP Passport

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US politics reference afghanistan children statistics education unicef waronterror obama

Where is the worst place for children to be born in 2009, especially girls? Surprise! Afghanistan. Today, UNICEF published a special report titled State of the World's Children; Daniel Toole, UNICEF regional director for South Asia, told a
news briefing in Geneva earlier today:
Afghanistan today is without a doubt the most dangerous place to be
born.
After eight years since the U.S. invasion, this is just one more incentive to encouarge the Obama administration to make a decision on its role in the region.
More optimistically, the reports highlights signatory countries of the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child who have shown marked improvement, including India, Serbia and Sierra Leone.

17 Nov 09

EducationUSA - Home

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Matthew Yglesias » Birth Control in Afghanistan

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The underlying idea that lowering Afghanistan’s fertility rate would help it develop economically makes a lot of sense. Especially in an overwhelmingly rural country, the tendency is for a rapid increase in population to lead to falling living standards.
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- In Brazil, for example, the wanted fertility rate in 1996 (the most recent year available) was 1.8; the actual fertility rate then was 2.5. In India the wanted rate in 2006 was 1.9, the actual one, 2.7. In Ghana the figures for 2003 were 3.7 and 4.4. The rule seems to be that women want one child fewer than they are having
- That points to another big reason why fertility is falling: the spread of female education. Go back to the countries where fertility has fallen fastest and you will find remarkable literacy programmes.

12 Nov 09

Matthew Yglesias » Better Lunch, Better Test Scores

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education diet US politics UK statistics reference health students children jamie oliver nutrition brain absenses

Tim Harford explaining that the combination of Jamie Oliver’s drive for better school lunches and the UK’s rather comprehensive testing let us put the proposition to the test:

Their answer – a provisional one, since they are still refining the research – is that feeding primary school kids less fat, sugar and salt, and more fruit and vegetables, has a surprisingly large effect. Authorised absences, the best available proxy for illness, fell by 15 per cent in Greenwich, relative to schools in similar London boroughs. And relative to other boroughs, the proportion of children reaching Level Four in English rose by four and a half percentage points (more than six per cent), while the proportion of children achieving Level Five in Science rose by six points, or almost 20 per cent.

FOX: Hannity & Malkin - Obama Child Indoctrination • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

11 Nov 09

Educate boys, or they'll go to war | FP Passport

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education youth statistics demographics middleeast africa youth bulge violence war conflict reference

A World Bank research
paper posted today finds that countries with a high proportion of young
males with low levels of secondary education are significantly more conflict-prone.
"youth bulges"
5 more annotations...
- Sub-Saharan Africa, as "the
  continent with the largest youth cohorts and the lowest levels of male secondary
  education, scoring on average nearly 30 percentage points lower than the world
  average."
- In Syria,
  for example, males 14 years old and younger make up nearly 20 percent of the
  population. Only 39.1 percent of secondary school-aged students are enrolled in
  school, making it the 101st lowest-ranking country of 135 surveyed. In the long run, Syria is facing
  declining oil production and rapid population growth - a recipe for violent
  unrest.
- The policy implications are clear. Programs that focus on
  primary education, like the U.N.'s Education
  for All and Millennium
  Development Goals
- must
  be more support for programs like the World Bank's own Secondary
  Education in Africa initiative.
- The total cost of a secondary education in Kenya is estimated at $6,865.
  A 2007 Oxfam report
  found that on average a "war, civil war, or insurgency shrinks an African economy
  by 15 percent," and conflict causes the continent to lose about $18 billion a
  year. You do the math.

10 Nov 09

The Jobless Rate for People Like You - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

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03 Nov 09

Secular Right » White men can’t be progressive?

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If Matt wants less educated candidates who have small vocabularies, then his concern is warranted. Otherwise, liberals have no problem at the commanding heights of education & intelligence. In fact, from what I have read and heard the Democratic electorate is often said to place more of a premium on educational and intellectual qualifications, or at least the appearance, than the Republican electorate.

31 Oct 09

Op-Ed Columnist - More Schools, Not Troops - NYTimes.com

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mortenson US politics waronterror statistics reference pakistan education women schools afghanistan bangladesh

For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.
It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.
5 more annotations...
- Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).
- These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.
- Since 9/11, the United States has spent $15 billion in Pakistan, mostly on military support, and today Pakistan is more unstable than ever. In contrast, Bangladesh, which until 1971 was a part of Pakistan, has focused on education in a way that Pakistan never did. Bangladesh now has more girls in high school than boys. (In contrast, only 3 percent of Pakistani women in the tribal areas are literate.)
- When I travel in Pakistan, I see evidence that one group — Islamic extremists — believes in the transformative power of education. They pay for madrassas that provide free schooling and often free meals for students. They then offer scholarships for the best pupils to study abroad in Wahhabi madrassas before returning to become leaders of their communities. What I don’t see on my trips is similar numbers of American-backed schools. It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist extremists.
- For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education.

28 Oct 09

Limbaugh: "So We Stand By The Fabricated Quote..." • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

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27 Oct 09

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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The academic studies show that what infants learn from watching a
family member once takes them four times as long to absorb in a DVD.
And the very act of watching a DVD with the pulsing refresh rate of the
screen can be at the same time soporific and stimulating, making it
more difficult for them to get restful sleep. The only thing they learn
from these DVDs is how to watch television.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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Confusion chart

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26 Oct 09

Memo to grammar cops: Back off! | Salon Books

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According to Lynch, the very notion of correct English is only 300 years old; in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, the idea that native English speakers could be accused of using their own language improperly would have seemed absurd.
The infinitive form of any English verb almost always consists of two words: "to go," "to eat," "to walk," etc. The idea that those two words ought to be treated as a single, inseparable unit derives from the fact that in Latin the infinitive is one word. The imposition of Latinate grammar on English -- the edict against ending sentences in a preposition is another example -- is what the 18th-century grammarians have been condemned for by more liberal-minded linguists.
3 more annotations...
- Lynch does think that English speakers should be taught to avoid splitting infinitives in certain situations, not because splitting them is incorrect, but because other people, people in a position to judge and exclude, have been taught it's incorrect.
- And sure enough, the first guides to English usage promised to teach people to write and speak with greater "elegance" and "politeness," not greater correctness. These manuals, born of an age of increased social mobility, were intended for "a newly self-conscious group of people who were no longer peasants but still were excluded from the traditional aristocracy." The suddenly rich children of merchants and manufacturers needed instructions on the elegant grammar (and manners) of the aristocracy in order to blend in with their social superiors. Tellingly, the 300-year history of fulmination against improper usage is marked by diatribes against those "inferior" and upstart groups supposedly most prone to transgression: women, young people, racial and ethnic minorities and, of course, Americans.
- It is in the nature of language to change, and while teaching people to use standard English may help get them into a boardroom or cabinet chamber, chances are they'll teach English itself a few new tricks by the time they get out, not necessarily for the worse. For every groaner like "mentee" (i.e., "protégé"), there are awesome coinages like "aerobicized," "blowback" and "crunk" -- all recently added to the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary." Also, I rejoice to learn that "whom" (the objective case of the pronoun "who") may soon vanish from written English just as it has nearly vanished from casual speech, and students will have one less tedious rule to memorize. But dangling participles? Those I'll fight 'til the bitter end.

16 Oct 09

Matthew Yglesias » Poverty Matters, But Schools Matter Too!

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Op-Ed Columnist - Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No. - NYTimes.com

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Which is why it was no accident that Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — spent half a day in order to reach Mortenson’s newest school and cut the ribbon. Getting there was fun. Our Chinook helicopter threaded its way between mountain peaks, from Kabul up through the Panjshir Valley, before landing in a cloud of dust at the village of Pushghar. Imagine if someone put a new, one-story school on the moon, and you’ll appreciate the rocky desolateness of this landscape.
He was surrounded by bearded village elders and scores of young Afghan boys and girls, who were agog at the helicopter, and not quite believing that America’s “warrior chief” — as Admiral Mullen’s title was loosely translated into Urdu — was coming to open the new school.
7 more annotations...
- While the admiral passed out notebooks, Mortenson told me why he has devoted his life to building 131 secular schools for girls in Pakistan and another 48 in Afghanistan: “The money is money well spent. These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world. We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict.
- “When a girl gets educated here and then becomes a mother, she will be much less likely to let her son become a militant or insurgent,” he added. “And she will have fewer children. When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited.”
- It is no accident, Mortenson noted, that since 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls. This valley, controlled by Tajik fighters, is secure, but down south in Helmand Province, where the worst fighting is today, the deputy minister of education said that Taliban extremists have shut 75 of the 228 schools in the last year. This is the real war of ideas. The Taliban want public mosques, not public schools. The Muslim militants recruit among the illiterate and impoverished in society, so the more of them the better, said Mortenson.
- Where were they going to school before
- Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute and the U.S. State Department
- joined with the village elders to get this secular public school built? “The mosque,” the girls said.
- “The U.S. military has gone through a huge learning curve. They really get it. It’s all about building relationships from the ground up, listening more and serving the people of Afghanistan.”

Robert Maguire's Library tagged education → View Popular

Religion, Science and the Climate Change Divide | The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Matthew Nisbet

Richard Cizik

Eric Chivian

The Climate Change Emails: Implications for Public Education and Engagement : Framing Science

Key to Afghan crisis: tea and education | csmonitor.com

Going to school on Afghans' problems | Marketplace From American Public Media

Worst Place for the World's Children: Afghanistan | FP Passport

EducationUSA - Home

Matthew Yglesias » Birth Control in Afghanistan

Matthew Yglesias » Better Lunch, Better Test Scores

FOX: Hannity & Malkin - Obama Child Indoctrination • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

Educate boys, or they'll go to war | FP Passport

The Jobless Rate for People Like You - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

Secular Right » White men can’t be progressive?

Op-Ed Columnist - More Schools, Not Troops - NYTimes.com

Limbaugh: "So We Stand By The Fabricated Quote..." • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Confusion chart

Memo to grammar cops: Back off! | Salon Books

Matthew Yglesias » Poverty Matters, But Schools Matter Too!

Op-Ed Columnist - Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No. - NYTimes.com

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