The Independent – Two IT workers at a suburban Philadelphia school district that secretly activated webcams on students’ school-issued laptops are on paid leave amid an FBI wiretap investigation. Lower Merion School District officials insist the move is not meant to suggest wrongdoing by the veteran employees. They have said the webcams were only activated to find missing laptops, and not for any rogue purpose. Read Article
BBC – Australians have expressed outrage that a company which uses schools for weekend war games has promoted them as being “perfect killing fields”. One parents’ association described the promotions, in the state of Queensland, as totally inappropriate. Read article
Daily Mail – Heads will be forced to list children as young as five on school ‘hate registers’ over everyday playground insults. Even minor incidents must be recorded as examples of serious bullying and details kept on a database until the pupil leaves secondary school. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Paul Buckland refused to pass students who didn’t understand the basics of archaeology – and he’s just one of many academics under pressure to raise the marks of undeserving students. So will Buckland’s legal victory halt the destruction of standards in some universities?, asks Julie Henry. Read Article
Washington Post – Energy released by an earthquake is measured on a moment magnitude scale. Read information
Washington Post – The mother of a 13-year-old Montgomery County middle school student is demanding an apology from a teacher who had school police escort the youngster from a classroom for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The unidentified student was mocked by other children in her class and has been too traumatized to return to [her school] in Germantown, according to Ajmel Quereshi, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is representing the family. Read Article
Ed. – This comment was actually used in the WP to attract attention to this article: “Freedom to choose — or choose not — to display your expressions of reverence to the symbols that represent your form of government is generally seen as a pillar of DEMOCRACY. FORCED expression of reverence to the symbols that represent your form of government is what you call a DICTATORSHIP.” jeffatgzg, 7:42 A.M. » Mother wants apology over Pledge of Allegiance|Weigh in.
Washington Post – For those who believe that performance pay and charter schools pose a threat to public education and that a cult of testing and accountability has hijacked school reform, an unlikely national spokeswoman has emerged. … In her book, Ravitch writes: “I wanted to believe that choice and accountability would produce great results. But over time, I was persuaded by accumulating evidence that the latest reforms were not likely to live up to their promise. The more I saw, the more I lost the faith.” Read Article
Universities should consider introducing random tests to combat the rising use of legal “smart drugs” being taken by students, a neuroscientist warned. Brainpower-enhancing substances such as Ritalin and modafinil, which can be bought online, heighten the mind’s alertness. An increasing number of students are taking them before exams to help them focus, according to research from the US. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Two thirds of graduates think teaching is a dead-end job, the Government’s teacher training agency has admitted. It is also considered poorly paid, with 80 per cent of final-year university students underestimating the starting salary of a teacher, a survey by the Training and Development Agency (TDA) found. Read Article
Ed. – This is a rather worrying statistic. The measure of a society is not in its buildings, but in the value it invests in teaching its young. It is to be hoped that they don’t just correct the misconception, but turn it around.
Daily Telegraph – Fundamental steps must be taken to protect pupils and teachers from deadly asbestos in schools, a new study urged. The report by the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association, entitled Assessment of Asbestos Management in Schools, claimed the majority of schools are ”not managing their asbestos effectively or safely”. The findings were based on an initial sample of 16 schools which agreed to be inspected on a voluntary basis after being contacted by their respective authorities. Read Article
AP — The FBI is investigating a Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly activating webcams inside students’ homes, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press on Friday. The FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Days after a student filed suit over the practice, Lower Merion officials acknowledged Friday that they remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing student laptops. They insist they never did so to spy on students, as the student’s family claimed in the federal lawsuit. Read Article
Courthouse News Service – A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The named plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.” The families say the Lower Merion School District issued Webcam-equipped personal laptop computers to each of its approximately 1,800 high school students: in Harriton High School in Rosemont, and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore. The schools issued the computers as part of a “one-to-one” laptop computer initiative lauded by Superintendent Christopher McGinley as an effort that “enhances opportunities for ongoing collaboration, and ensures that all students have 24/7 access to school based resources and the ability to seamlessly work on projects and research at school and at home.”But the parents and students say that, without their knowledge, the access went both ways. Read Article
ITAR-TASS — A comeback of Russian science to world leading positions is hindered by the problem of what he described as “the infrastructure of people’s minds,” rather than financial or material factors, President Medvedev declared at a meeting with students held at Tomsk Polytechnic University on Thursday. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Under the Montessori method, developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori in the early 20th century, children spend as much time as they like on topics of their choice, allowing them to develop according to their instinct. The move to open a state primary [school] operating along these lines would provide a direct contrast between its liberal teaching philosophy and the rigid national curriculum used in state primary schools. Read article
Ed. – Related OYENews article:education-systems-too-narrow
Indiana Daily Student – IU statistics professor Stanley Wasserman points at the map of the “Celebrity Twitter Ecosystem” from the New York Times that he has tacked to his bulletin board. “Networks are hot,” he says. Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, have pervaded almost every aspect of our society –they help us make friends, get jobs, and now, thanks to a new military effort, they could help us catch terrorists. The project, sponsored by the U.S. Army, will urge researchers, including two professors at IU, to come up with new ways to analyze data surrounding networks. The project is designed to aid military operations, including anti-terrorism efforts, and to explain how knowledge is spread between peers in the modern military, according to the IU press release. Read Article
The West Australian – All children should learn to read music while they are at school, says violinist, composer and conductor Richard Tognetti. Mr Tognetti, who has been appointed an officer in the Order of Australia (AO), celebrated 20 years as artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra in 2009. … “You find in countries that do have that kind of comprehensive musical education, that they go better at everything else.” Read Article
Ed. – That children do better overall, when movement has been an integral part of the learning process has certainly been proven. So it likely is for music. It also gives people the chance to make their own pleasure (and other’s) later in life – gives a real boost to whole communties.
BBC – Teachers should let boys walk around during lessons to aid their learning, American research suggests. A report from the University of Virginia found boys learnt better when lessons were “high-activity” and presented ideas and concepts visually. The study also called for greater competition in schools, saying boys responded positively to it. Read article
Washington Post – When Hussna Azamy was 5, she began her schooling in the living room of her family’s apartment in Herat, Afghanistan. Her only classmate was a sister; their teachers were their parents. For up to five hours a day, they studied the Dari alphabet, fundamentals of math and science, and how to read the Koran. Hussna and her older sister, Farah, came of school age in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when it was forbidden to educate girls and most of the country’s schools had been destroyed. They yearned to see the inside of an actual school. Read article
The Times – Auschwitz is still largely intact, but it is crumbling. Knowledge of the Holocaust among the young is patchy and getting thinner by the year. So the question arises: is it better to use resources to prop up the buildings of an evil place in southern Poland — or into education to improve the understanding of the Nazis’ systematic massacre of Jews and other minorities? A survey found that one in six British 9 to 11-year-olds thought that Auschwitz was a theme park. We have to do better. Read Article
Ed. – In Nov, 2009, we ran an article about the proposed deletion of Hitler and Churchill from the curriculum, pointed out that the next generation are left bereft of knowledge of our past, knowledge that is vital to avoid the repetition of history. Recommendation: If possible, take your kids to Auschswitz or Dachau and/or any holocaust related museum,, when they are old enough to understand.
Researchnews – While genetics play a key role in children’s initial reading skills, a new study of twins is the first to demonstrate that environment plays an important role in reading growth over time. The results give further evidence that children can make gains in reading during their early school years, above and beyond the important genetic factors that influence differences in reading, said Stephen Petrill, lead author of the study and professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.Read Article
Daily Telegraph – A generation of schoolchildren is being failed because of the steady destruction of the traditional curriculum, according to research. The drive to make subjects more “relevant” – combined with the introduction of increasing numbers of practical courses – meant many pupils were unable to “access the world of high culture, which could transform their lives”, it was claimed. Prof David Conway, senior research fellow at the think-tank Civitas, said the trend had been fuelled by a rise in high-stakes tests, an overly-bureaucratic inspection regime and excessively prescriptive syllabuses in English schools. Read Article
The Grand Rapids Press – Aeriel Thorp likes junk food as much as the next Grand Valley State University freshman, but she likes the healthy stuff, too — when it’s readily available. So she likes the idea of the new, healthy-snacks-only vending machines placed in four residence halls this year. “Sometimes, you just want something good to eat and not have to go too far to find it,” said Thorp, 18, of Muskegon, on Thursday during lunch at the Kleiner Commons. Sitting across the table, Damon Fortney said he sees the new machines, installed this fall as part of a pilot program, and keeps walking. Read Article
Ed. – It is interesting how much progress there has/hasn’t been in this area. The last article about this was in May, 2009. link
LA Times – Seventy boys in khaki uniforms cram shoulder to shoulder into chemistry class, where there are no chemicals or test tubes, only the squeak of the teacher’s magic marker drawing diagrams and equations in the minutes before recess. If there is a genius among the rows of teenage faces, his gift may never be known. The boys are poor and many are undernourished, leaving class every afternoon to sell water and newspapers in the streets. The teacher earns about $200 a month, not enough to support his family, so he looks for odd jobs in the neighborhoods at the city’s edge. Read article
The Wall Street Journal – Is the Tooth Fairy real? How about the garbage man? Those questions may seem trivial, but how young children answer them is an important indicator of cognitive development. Is the Tooth Fairy real? How about the garbage man? Those questions may seem trivial, but how young children answer them is an important indicator of cognitive development. Read Article
Ed. – This article relates to the very first article I posted on Open Your Eyes News. link This tackled the threat our narrowing school systems pose to our very civilisation by squashing kids imagination. To support this; “Ayla watched [him] constructing and experimenting, fascinated as much by the concept of making something from an idea as [the way] of actually making it. …she had invented hunting methods and a travois from a similar wellspring of creativity.” quote from Jean M. Auel’s epic of life when Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon shared the Earth.
http://www.openyoureyesnews.com/2009/06/30/education-systems-too-narrow-sir-ken-robinson/
Washington Post – Jasia Smith, a 9-year-old fourth grade girl from Burrville Elementary School in the District, wrote the following poem, which won this month’s DC SCORES Poetry Slam! contest. She beat more than 300 other students from the District’s public elementary and middle schools. DC SCORES is an afterschool program for about 700 students from the city’s public schools. Jasia said she writes poems and songs all the time. The inspiration for the winning poem came from her love of nature and the Earth, she said. Read Poem
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