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Translated by Ben Krasner, Accademia Britannica, Arezzo
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Kampala, 12/12/05 Six
children who were sleeping inside their “home”, the mouth of a
large drainage outlet, died when somebody set fire to the cardboard
and paper which they had used to cover themselves. According to the
news agency MISNA, these young fire victims are representative of
around 20,000 children who have been made homeless
because of sickness, first and foremost AIDS, and because of
the conflicts which have bloodied Uganda in recent years. Islamabad, 11/12/05 A
vaccination campaign for 800,000 children has started off in the area
of Pakistani Kashmir which was devastated by the earthquake of October
8. The report in the daily paper, The News, says that the campaign is
aiming to prevent tetanus, measles, diphtheria and whooping cough.
More than 73,000 were killed in the quake which also left half a
million homeless, and meanwhile the harsh local winter has arrived.
The international community has promised aid of more than 5 billion
dollars. Paris, 9/12/05 One
hundred years after the law which separated church and state, thus
making France a secular nation, a long period of official hostility
towards private education may now be considered over. When passing
comment on the anniversary, the news agency France Presse noted that
tolerance is not only widespread but this fact in itself is a good
argument for secular education. Paderborn, 8/12/05 Because
there is too much talk about sex at school, a group of Baptist
families in the Paderborn district have decided to take their children
out of school. The weekly Der Spiegel reported that, after protesting
in vain against the sex-education lessons, some Baptist families have
chosen to send their children to private religious schools while
others, indeed, have decided to move abroad. Chicago, 7/12/05 What
is certainly a much-changed production of Hamlet, and one revised for
our times, has been put on stage by the Alternatives, a group of
Chicago young people. We learn from a CNN report that the play’s
main character is no longer
a prince but the son of a nightclub manager who chats
animatedly with Ophelia on his mobile phone. As for the famous
soliloquy To be or not to be, our Hamlet from Illinois recites this in
a kind of rap rhythm. Washington, 6/12/05 If
students of Asian origin do better than average students at high
school, this is not because they are more intelligent but because
their families take school a lot more seriously. This, at least, is
the thesis put forward by two Korean scholars, according to a report
written by Jay Mathews, columnist of the daily newspaper Washington
Post. One way this may be seen is the way Asian parents customarily
check their children’s homework and keep informed about
how well they are doing in class. La Plata, 27/11/05 “Dream
World” is the name of a school in this city specialising in teaching
kids with cognitive problems. It has been operating for 25 years and
has always retained an intimate, family atmosphere close to the
founder, Susana Lopez. Now, however, it has need of space to expand
because its well-known success story means the demand for entry has
increased and multiplied. As reprted in daily newspaper Clarìn, so
far the education authorities have not heeded the appeals. Bangalore, 14/11/05 The
Indian district around Bangalore is waging a campaign against child
brides. The Times of India reported what one woman had to say: “When
I reached puberty, my mother told me it was time to leave school and
look for a husband.. I protested, I wept but my relatives threatened
me and in the end I had to give in to their demands.” Buenos Aires, 6/11/05 Even
the school system in Argentina has to face the problem of juvenile
violence. The newspaper Clarìn reports that more than 14,000 acts of
physical aggression between students were recorded in the past four
months. In the capital alone, this school year has seen 176
particularly serious episodes. The problem
usually starts with a dispute over something quite banal which
then blows up out of proportion. New Orleans, 5/11/05 The
first schools have now opened in New Orleans after the destruction
caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent collapse of the levies.
The New York Times story relates how the Catholic schools, which have
always had a prominent role in the city’s scholastic life, have been
especially quick to reopen. Before the disaster, these schools had
25,000 students. Jerusalem, 5/11/05 Ahmed
al-Khatib, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died after being shot by some
Israeli soldiers. They thought the toy pistol he was aiming was a real
weapon. The Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post explained that the boy’s
parents have donated the boy’s organs for transplant and that these
may be gievn to whoever may have urgent need, ne they Arab or Jew. London, 4/11/05 Students
need a wide range of educational experiences and should have at least
one school excursion each year. This was announced, according to the
BBC, by the English Minister for Education, Andrew Adonis, who
explained that the government is working with the unions to eliminate
the main obstacle to organising excursions which is the teacher’s
responsibility in the case of an accident. Paris, 4/11/05 “A
new approach to brain circulation”: this is how Nicolas Sarkozy, the
French Minister for Education, will present his plan for the
“selective immigration” of students at the beginning of 2006. The
news was reported by the agency AFP mand it seems that the minister’s
criterion for selection will consider not only the student’s
curriculum but also the needs of both France and the student’s
country of origin. Karachi, 4/11/05 The
Pakistani press gave prominence to the appeal launched by Queen Rania
of Jordan for the world to intensify its aid to the people hit by the
earthquake of October 8. The newspaper The Nation in particular
underlined how the Queen had insisted on the urgent need to help
4,000,000 children with vaccinations, medical care, housing, food and
education. Harrisburg, 1/11/05 Some
families in Dover, Pennsylvania, have demanded that the local school
authorities delete every reference to “intelligent design” in
biology syllabuses. This is the creationist version of evolution as
opposed to the Darwinian theory. CNN explained that this legal action
is based on an appeal to the US Constitution which guarantees the
separation of state and religion. Berlin, 1/11/05 Berlin’s
school structures have been pared to the bone and, worse, many
teachers are often absent through sickness. Certain areas of the city,
for example Reinickendorf, are showing up to a 50%
reduction of lessons. The weekly Der Spiegel reports that one
group of parents has decided to solve the deficiency by organising
private lessons in premises available for public use. Cairo, 31/10/05 For
the fourth time since the Taliban were ousted from Afghanistan, a
school for girls has been burnt down. This happened, according to the
Egyptian newspaper Middle East Times, in Logar province, 60 kilometers
from Kabul. The fundamentalists even burnt down the tents where
lessons were being held while the classrooms were being rebuilt. The
Taliban believe education is reserved for men only. Buenos Aires, 6/11/05 Even
the school system in Argentina has to face the problem of juvenile
violence. The newspaper Clarìn reports that more than 14,000 acts of
physical aggression between students were recorded in the past four
months. In the capital alone, this school year has seen 176
particularly serious episodes. The problem
usually starts with a dispute over something quite banal which
then blows up out of proportion. New Orleans, 5/11/05 The
first schools have now opened in New Orleans after the destruction
caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent collapse of the levies.
The New York Times story relates how the Catholic schools, which have
always had a prominent role in the city’s scholastic life, have been
especially quick to reopen. Before the disaster, these schools had
25,000 students. Jerusalem, 5/11/05 Ahmed
al-Khatib, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died after being shot by some
Israeli soldiers. They thought the toy pistol he was aiming was a real
weapon. The Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post explained that the boy’s
parents have donated the boy’s organs for transplant and that these
may be gievn to whoever may have urgent need, ne they Arab or Jew. London, 4/11/05 Students
need a wide range of educational experiences and should have at least
one school excursion each year. This was announced, according to the
BBC, by the English Minister for Education, Andrew Adonis, who
explained that the government is working with the unions to eliminate
the main obstacle to organising excursions which is the teacher’s
responsibility in the case of an accident. Paris, 4/11/05 “A
new approach to brain circulation”: this is how Nicolas Sarkozy, the
French Minister for Education, will present his plan for the
“selective immigration” of students at the beginning of 2006. The
news was reported by the agency AFP mand it seems that the minister’s
criterion for selection will consider not only the student’s
curriculum but also the needs of both France and the student’s
country of origin. Karachi, 4/11/05 The
Pakistani press gave prominence to the appeal launched by Queen Rania
of Jordan for the world to intensify its aid to the people hit by the
earthquake of October 8. The newspaper The Nation in particular
underlined how the Queen had insisted on the urgent need to help
4,000,000 children with vaccinations, medical care, housing, food and
education. Harrisburg, 1/11/05 Some
families in Dover, Pennsylvania, have demanded that the local school
authorities delete every reference to “intelligent design” in
biology syllabuses. This is the creationist version of evolution as
opposed to the Darwinian theory. CNN explained that this legal action
is based on an appeal to the US Constitution which guarantees the
separation of state and religion. Berlin, 1/11/05 Berlin’s
school structures have been pared to the bone and, worse, many
teachers are often absent through sickness. Certain areas of the city,
for example Reinickendorf, are showing up to a 50%
reduction of lessons. The weekly Der Spiegel reports that one
group of parents has decided to solve the deficiency by organising
private lessons in premises available for public use. Cairo, 31/10/05 For the fourth time since the Taliban were ousted from Afghanistan, a school for girls has been burnt down. This happened, according to the Egyptian newspaper Middle East Times, in Logar province, 60 kilometers from Kabul. The fundamentalists even burnt down the tents where lessons were being held while the classrooms were being rebuilt. The Taliban believe education is reserved for men only. New York, 9/09/05 The first day back at school for more than a
million New York students went off calmly and in an orderly fashion. The New York Times reported how Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor, paid a
visit to three of the approximately 1400 schools. He saw a grade school in Brooklyn and two high schools, one in Queens and one in the
Bronx. The Mayor up for re-election, but some of his rivals also managed to use the new school year to get the media's attention. This new scholastic year sees the Marco Polo school
in Prato creating an Italian record: the first grade in one elementary
school is entirely made up of immigrant children. The daily newspaper La Repubblica pointed out that, while most of these children are
Chinese, there are also Pakistani, Indian, Albanian and Latin American
students in the class too. Many of them need to learn not only how to read and write Italian but also how to speak the language. The effects of hurricane Katrina, which devastated a
number of American states, have also had a heavy impact on schools. According to CNN, in the state of Louisiana alone, 135,000 students of
public schools and 52,000 private school students cannot attend lessons either because their schools were damaged or destroyed or
because they were evacuated. These students are scattered throughout a
number of states from Georgia to California. Even though the government has allocated a billion
pounds over the last ten years in an attempt to fight the problem, truancy continues to undermine the effectiveness of the UK school
system. The BBC quoted a report resulting from a recent investigation which showed how an average of 70,000 students are absent for no
reason from lessons every single school day. Germans are debating a Stuttgart
magistrate's verdict whereby families and students are denied the right to choose
their own school. The weekly paper Der Spiegel explained how, when a number of families requested schooling in one high school, their
children were sent to another, less crowded school. When they protested through legal channels, their protests came to
nothing. The students in a college near Chandigarh called
a three-day strike in order to protest the XXX that one of them had
received. The authorities reacted by denying all of them access to classes and services. However, as The Times of India reported, after
the strikers had spent a night in tents set up outside the college, an The Minister for Education in Argentina has
distributed 1,200,000 copies to the families of students attending the
second cycle of primary schools. The daily newspaper Clarìn explained
that the idea was to involve parents in the education process by creating closer relationships between schools and families, both of
whom are involved in educationg yougsters.. The decision of the school council of an Anglican
secondary boys' college, Mentone Grammar, to accept girls into the school has provoked strong reactions from the boys' families. The
newspaper The Australian reported that the head, Timothy Argall, called the police after receiving threatening phone calls. He has been
called a revolutionary by even his mildest critics. During their twice-yearly conference, French teachers
who follow the methods of Charles Freinet illustrate their vision of what education is about. It is based on the principle that a student
is an active participant in the learning process. The newspaper Le Monde summed up the basics: no official marks but only self assessment
and self correction, complete freedom to students in their choice of
subjects, and collective conflict management. With
more cases of polio being reported in Java, the Indonesian government
has decided to carry out a massive vaccination campaign involving over
5 million chldren under five years of age. The news agency MISNA
reported that the strain of this polio virus comes from Nigeria and
that the disease was probably contracted by pilgrims in Mecca and then
brought to Indonesia. Paris, 26/05/05 As
a result of the recent demonstrations against the school reforms
bearing the signature of the French Education Minister, Fillon, around
40 students have been remanded for trial. Le
Monde reported that they are accused of violence against the
police and damage to property. In some quarters, this is seen this as
an example of repression of the student movement, while others have
asked the judges to show clemency since many of these young people are
about to do their baccalauréat examinations. Hamburg, 25/05/05 With
school closures and staff cuts, the German economic crisis is starting
to affect the education system. Der
Spiegel reports that teachers, parents and students are already up
in arms in three laender: Hamburg, Saxony and the Saar, while unrest
is growing in others. In some cases the protests are about the
lengthening of journeys to school which result from the concentration
of schools and institutes in a single area. Rockville, 24/05/05 Our
children are suffering from educational discrimination. This is one of
the slogans being used by the crowd of parents demonstrating outside
the school district office in Montgomery county, Alabama. According to
the Washington Post, the demonstrators are asking for the gap to be
closed between what black and hispanic students achieve scholastically
and their white or asian counterparts. Buenos Aires, 18/05/05 Argentinian
schools are experiencing the worst crisis in their history, according
to Hugo Yasky, the general secretary of one of the national teachers'
unions, whose views were reprted in the daily newspaper Clarìn.
Yasky believes that this situation originated under the bad management
of President Menem's government in the 1990s. The union leader has
asked for a new set of laws
which will direct finances towards achieving equality of
educational opportunity. Washington, 28/04/05 The
second Bush administration has given the Educational Secretary,
Margaret Spellings, the task of responding to the very widespread
hostility to the No Child Left Behind program, by which the White
House intends to improve educational attainment in the American
system. According to the report in the New
York Times,
some experts are convinced that a number of basic points in
the law urgently need revision. Annapolis, 28/04/05 Of
the twenty one students from a Maryland Institute who went on a school
trip to Costa Rica, seventeen had to be disciplined for misbahavior
and five were eventually expelled for using marijuana. As the Washington Post saw it, many parents of students who did not go on
the trip because they could not afford the necessary $2500 were
feeling happy that, in so doing, they had kept their children out of
the way of temptation. Los Angeles, 27/04/05 A
Californian student was suspended from lessons for answering the phone
in classtime. The Los Angeles
Times reported that the boy's protests were to no avail, even
though the call had come from Iraq where his mother is serving in the
American armed forces. Some bitter reactions followed the inflexible
decision of the school's principal. London, 13/04/05 The
role of parents should be placed squarely in the center of the
educational system in any reform of Britain's schools. The Labor Party
made this one of the cornerstones of its recent electoral program and,
according to the BBC, Tony
Blair's government will give the School Inspector the power to close
any schools which fail to attain satisfactory standards. Beijing, 13/03/05 The
Chinese government has decided to gradually eliminate school fees in
country districts. An article in the newspaper, China Daily, reported how the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, announced
this during the Communist Party Congress. It is hoped that this
measure will help to counteract the growing tendency of country
youngsters to give up attanding school. New York, 12/03/05 According
to an article in the New York
Times, there is a new way of celebrating one's 21st
birthday when, for the first time, a young person can legally drink
alcohol in a bar. The ritual is called “21 for 21” and has already
resulted in some deaths. The birthday person goes to a bar at midnight
on the appointed day and drinks 21 shots of alcohol before the bar
closes, in other words in a very short time. It has been suggested
that the right to drink in a bar should have to start in the morning
rather than midnight, so that more time is available to assimilate the
alcohol. Kinshasa, 12/03/05 Street
kids have become a national problem in the Congo and in Kinshasa, the
capital, alone they number between 30,000 and 40,000. They live from
day to day at the minimum subsistence level. An Awareness Day has been
arranged to study the problem, according to a report from MISNA,
the news agency, and the aim is to get to the root of the problem
which is, first and foremost, the crisis situation found in the
family. London, 11/03/05 The fact that they already speak the universal language may be
the reason English people can speak so few foreign languages, and the
school authorities have decided to do something about the situation.
The BBC reports that £115 million has been made available to improve
language teaching in schools. Among other things, the program will
include employing 6,000 new teachers and providing refresher courses
for another 27,000. Luanda, 11/03/05 In
just one province of Angola, the province of Bie, which is about 600
km from the capital, Luanda, 35,000 people have been killed and 55,000
injured because of landmines. This is the tragic aftermath of
the civil war. According to figures reported by MISNA, there are 15
million landmines in the country, which means one and a half for every
citizen. There are about 70,000 mutilated people in the country,
including 8,000 young children. New York, 10/03/05 The
gap between the largest ethnic groups in America can be seen not only
in their relative incomes but also in the level of schooling.
According to a study reported in the New
York Times, 81% of white children finish secondary school,
compared with only 45.4% for Afro-Amercians and still less, 42% for
Hispanic-Americans. London, 6/03/05 Differences
based on ethnic lines can also be seen in the United Kingdom and, as
an article in The Times
explains, it has been suggested that black youngsters whose average
marks are lower than their white schoolmates should be taught in
separate classes. Even though this proposal is supported by sound
educational arguments, it has obviously met a lot of opposition and in
fact it is clear that it will be unworkable.ile. Atlanta, 6/03/05 Mercury
is highly toxic and should therefore be banned from school science
labs. This is the proposal made by a number of environmental groups in
the US, as reported on CNN.
Recently, a school had to be closed for the second time in succession
because some phials of mercury broke, and environmentalists think
students should not have face such possible dangers. Beijing, 4/03/05 When
some dangerous materials exploded near a school, around twenty
children were killed and a number of others injured, some seriously.
These materials were in the keeping of a mine worker who lived near
the school which is situated in a small village in the Chinese
province of Shanxi.
The BBC report of the
incident explained that the Chinese follow the dangerous practice of
giving explosives to the safekeeping of a single person who then very
frequently keeps them in the home. Cardiff, 2/03/05 A
trip to school ended badly for a group of primary school children from
South Wales. The BBC reports
how their school bus had an engine breakdown and had to stop. Another
school bus came by and fifteen children could be transferred on board,
but there was no room for everybody. While the other children were
waiting for a third bus to arrive, the broken down bus was violently
hit by a passing truck. Twenty children were injured, one seriously,
and everybody suffered from schock. Buenos Aires, 11/02/05 The last three years of the
Argentinian high school will now conclude with marks given for
mathematics,language, social & natural Science. This reform was
announced by the Minister of Education, Daniel Filmus, and will
involve a million students. The daily newspaper La Naciòn reports
that the students living in Buenos Aires are not included for the
moment, as they are asking for a public debate about the new measure. Paris, 11/02/05 There will be no reform of the
Baccalaureate, the famous exam known simple as the bac, which is the
French high school leaving certificate. This was announced by the
French Minister of Education, François Fillon, after 100,000 high
school students had protested in Paris and in other cities. The
students are afraid that the exam will lose its prestige, according to
the news agency France Presse. Edinburgh, 10/02/05 Talking letters. This is what is
needed to be able to teach reading and writing English more rapidly.
The letters of the alphabet should correspond to the sounds, or so an
experiment counducted in 19 primary schools in the Scottish county of
Clackmannshire has led the authorities to conclude. The BBC explains
that children taught with this method are three years ahead when
compared to the norm. Kampala, 9/02/05 Around 25,000 children have been
kidnapped in Uganda in the last 18 months, according to the agency
MISNA, and they have been forcibly enlisted in Our Lord's Resistance
Army. This is perhaps the worst aspect of the civil war which is
scourging Uganda, where 100,000 people have been killed and at least a
million villagers living near the fighting have been forced to abandon
their homes. London, 21/01/05 Videogames have often been
accused of negatively conditioning young people if not actually
alienating them. But it seems they might provide good teaching tools.
This came out of a research study conducted by the prestigious London
Institute of Education. An appropriate use of electronic games so
widely in use can in fact accustom students to sum up a situation
rapidly, to solve problems and to learn through trial and error. Minneapolis, 20/01/05 Francisco Serrano is a young man
with no money, no job and no home. He thought his old school might be
able to help him solve his problems. Because he looks younger than his
age, he managed to mix with students, sleep in the school building and
take showers in his former Minneapolis high school over a three week
period. According to CNN he even took classes. Harrisburg, 19/01/05 Evolution is only a theory and
not a scientific truth. According to this belief, the heads of a
number of Pennsylvania schools have introduced a Project Intelligence
according to which the world is so complex that it must be the fruit
of some mysterious will. The agency Associated Press reports that the
evolutionists are protesting that this is simply a secular version
the creationist theory. Tokyo, 14/01/05 60 years after the end of the
war, the shadow of history continues to darken relationships between
Japan and its neighbours. A pilgimage by the prime minister Koizumi to
the shrine of Yasukuni, where those fallen in the war are honored, has
provoked portests from China and Korea. The memories of the Japanese
occupation are still very much alive in both these countries. The
newspaper Asahi Shimbun appealed to these former enemies to bear in
mind the fact that two thirds of today's Japanese were born after the
war had finished. Rome, 12/01/05 The
average age of Italian teachers is 48 and a half, and it is increasing.
In 2015, the average age will reach 54. These figures come from
a study conducted by UIL Scuola, a teachers’ union, and were
reported in the daily newspaper La Stampa. At present the employment
of new personnel is blocked which means that in 10 years only 1.7% of
teachers will be under 35. In
addiiton, the number of teachers with permanent contracts has fallen
from 722,000 in the year 2000 to the current 707,000. Buenos Aires, 12/01/05 A
new law will attempt to safeguard students in schools in Argentina.
One of the effects will be to establish routine inspections of
buildings and equipment and to make nominate a person to be
responsible for the safety aspects in each school. An article in the
newspaper La Naciòn explained how this innovation was adopted because
a young relative of ex-president Raùl Alfonsin was killed by glass
fragments from a door that had been slammed shut by the wind. Rome, 11/01/05 What
are Italian High School students’ favorite school subjects?
According to an inquiry referred to in the daily newspaper La
Repubblica, first place goes to physical education which was chosen by
70% of students interviewed. This is followed, but a long distance
down the list, by history and foreign languages (39%) and, even
further down the list, geography and math (33%). Italian and art
history are liked by only 30% and scientific subjects appeal to a mere
18%. London, 10/01/05 The
kind of petty crime which has been widespread for some time in British
schools usually reaches a peak in January. This is when youngsters
customarily bring their Christmas presents to school to show their
friends and classmates. In a BBC report we learn that the authorities
are conducting a campaign to put potential crime victims on the alert.
They are advising young people to keep their school bags securely
closed and to keep their money and their mobile phones separately. Colombo, 10/01/05 The
devastating seaquake of December 26 is causing further repercussions
now that schools are resuming classes. In Sri Lanka as few as 25,000
of the 100,000 students in the affected areas have gone back to school,
according to a BBC report. Many of the absent students are victims of
the disaster, others lost their families or their homea. The same
situation is to be found in the nearby Indian state o Tamil Nadu. Lima, 8/01/05 Children
in a desolate bidonville located in the Peruvian port of Callao have
lead concentrations in the blood that can reach as high as 60
micrograms per deciliter, six times the level described as saturnism,
a level of intoxication that can be fatal. The newspaper Le Monde
reports that the cause of this situation is in the pollution caused by
the local mining industry. Houston, 30/12/04 According
to Phyllis Wilson, a Houston kindergarten teacher, there is a
disturbing lack of speech therapists in Texas and in the other States
of the Union while, unfortunately, speech problems are widespread
throughout the school-age population. Teachers at present have to make
do with trial-and-error methods or must simply try and get on with the
job. CNN has calculated that by 2012 the USA will need no fewer than
120,000 speech specialists. Concord, 29/12/04 To
encourage children to drink more milk, plastic bottles are needed
rather then the present inconvenient cartons that are used. This is
what came out of an inquiry carried out in 320 New England schools and
is the opinion, quoted by Associated Press, of Steve Taylor from the
Agricultural Board of the state of New Hampshire. The advice was well
received and many school canteens have already made the changeover. Los Angeles, 21/12/04 An
investigation conducted into the LA school district has revealed,
according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, an alarming picture
of the psychological state of the teachers. Most of them suffer from
frustration, depression and panic attacks. Among the reasons for this
situation are severe social tensions which show up as lack of
discipline and bullying in multi-ethnic classrooms. Xian, 14/12/04 Inquiries are being made about a high school teacher in
this north western Chinese city who is alleged to have asked his students to
write their own epitaphs. According to the daily newspaper Xinmin Evening
News, the teacher, whose name is Geng Xiaohong, maintains in his defence
that writing one's own epitaph is an extremely useful exercise to help
develop a sense of values in young people and to encourage them to ask
questions about the meaning of life. The international survey known as PISA
(Programme for International Student Assessment) recently placed New Zealand students
midway in a classification of school achievers, between the best and the
worst. The situation has caused much discussion although The Dominion Post,
a local newspapr, pointed out that, with the exception of math where the
classification this time is lower, New Zealand's position has effectively
remained unchanged since the previous survey carried out in 2003. Three days without television for the youngsters of
Ragusa. This initiative, we learn from the news agency ANSA, was organised
by the Province and the local Olympic committee. They have adopted a slogan
saying "No to the sedentary life. No to obesity" and the idea is to encourage young people to turn off their TV sets and use the time saved
actively in doing some kind of sport. Indeed, everybody in the family is
being invited to go to the gym. For some time now, Corsica has seen fresh outbursts of
racism, with a number of violent attacks on North Africans especially. The
local authorities have decided it is time to put a stop to this
situation. The news agency France Presse describes how all the schools on the island
are taking part in a campaign to disseminate information about necessary it
is for citizens from different ethnic groups to learn to live together. If it is true that so many of today's young people are
adverse to reading, why not try to encourage them with comics? The Washington Post recently published an article about how this strategy will
be tried out in the schools of Maryland. The idea is that, since comics
enjoy great popularity in America, they could be used not only to teach
children how to read but also for teaching other subjects. About 10,000 English school-age youngsters have given up
school. A recent study quoted on the BBC has underlined the fact that almost
all of these students had either been suspended or expelled for different
types of bad behaviour. Such displinary measures are to the permanent detriment of the student all too often and it is therefore necessary to find
alternative solutions to these problems. The results of the PISA survey are causing discussions
also in America. US students are being beaten by their contemporaries in
most Asian and European countries. And not only, as CNN reports: once again
America is divided along ethnic lines since black and Hispanic students have
lower achievements than white students. Very bitter arguments have arisen in Italy on account of the
decision taken by some primary school teachers not to display Christmas
cribs this year, in order not to offend the sensitivity of Muslim students
and their families. The newspaper La Repubblica has registered the reaction
of a great number of both Catholics and lay persons who consider the sacrifice of such a strongly-rooted and innocent tradition on the altar of
political correctness to be totally ridiculous. Although
Mikhail Smethurst is only six years old, he is derided, humiliated and
even beaten while at school. The reason, according to his parents, is
that he is a Muslim. He attends St Christopher’s primary school in
the English town of Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, and the school has not
only been reported but it has been asked to pay damages. The BBC story
relates how, among other things, the boy was habitually called “mud
face”. Trapani, 12/11/04 Unlawful
detention and abuse of disciplinary measures – these are the
accusations against a female primary school teacher in Salemi, located
in the Province of Trapani, Italy. According to the story in the
newspaper La Repubblica, this teacher of English tied a seven-year-old
boy to a chair and closed his mouth with adhesive tape, because he was
too vivacious in class. The teacher’s response is that it was all
part of a game. Eindhoven, 11/11/04 The
wave of violent reactions in Holland following the murder of the film
director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic fundamentalist has not spared
the schools. After a bomb damaged a Muslim institute in Eindhoven, a
fire destroyed a Catholic school in the same city which is attended by
students of a variety of faiths. CNN calculates that the number of
attacks against religious sites reached 18 in a period of about ten
days. New York, 11/11/04 The
baby girl she was bringing up was dead and so she had simply thrown
the body onto a rubbish dump. This tragic story began when the mother
reported the girl’s disappearance, but the truth came to light after
the body had been discovered amongst the rubbish and the mother had
made a full confession. The press agancy AP, reported how the child
suffered from a serious brain disorder and had died of natural causes. London, 10/11/04 An
enquiry conducted in a certain number of schools in England, Scotland
and Wales has revealed, according to the BBC, that the quality of the
food served in school canteens is unsuitable, to say the least.
Authorities have been asked to be pay more attention to this matter
and, in particular, to eliminate dispensing machines which supply
drinks and snacks of dubious nutritional value. Philadelphia, 9/11/04 According
to the Pennsylvania school authorities, the experiment in which some
public school were handed over to private management has been
successful. In the Philadelphia area alone, some 45 schools out of 265
took part in this “privatization” experiment, even though as the
Washington Post pointed out, it wasn’t really privatization but the
simple expedient of using outside services. Despite its success, the
policy was aroused fierce opposition.. Fuyang, 9/11/04 The
deaths of thirteen babies from malnutrition in the Chinese city of
Fuyang has brought to light a foodstuffs fraud involving around a
hundred people. The agency MISNA reports that milk powder was being
sold that contained very few nutrients. Analyses have revealed that
some shipments of this product contained only a sixth of the nutrients
normally present in powdered milk. Còrdoba, 30/10/04 ”I’ll
shoot the lot of you with my father’s pistol” – this is the way
a ten-year-old Argentinian boy, son of a policeman, threatened one of
his female schoolmates in a letter. He explained that he would shoot
her and her girl friends too. The daily newspaper Clarìn reported
that the threat was taken seriously and that the boy has been taken
away from his school temporarily and entrusted to a team of
psychologists. Addis Ababa, 29/10/04 After
a number of cases of poliomylitis were registered in the north of the
country along the Sudanese border, Ethiopia carried out a widespread
vaccination campaign involving 750,000 children. In reporting this
news item, the agency MISNA recalls that polio is still present in
many African states and that during the first nine months of this year
more than 700 youngsters have been afflicted. She
thought the children were asleep and so she went off to have something
to eat. This was the excuse of an Indianapolis woman after one of
the children, who had both been left alone in the house, fell from a
window. A neighbour related to CNN how she had seen the children
together at the window calling for their mother. The two-year-old boy
who fell is not in a serious condition and both he and his baby sister
were immediately placed in protective custody. The
BBC reports that music teachers in English schools are extremely
dissatisfied. This has nothing to do with their teaching situation but
stems from the fact that the less well-off families cannot afford to
pay the extra money needed for music lessons and so their children are
excluded. Of those who do study music, the girls usually choose flute
or violin and the boys guitar or drums. It's
election time also in Washington's Centreville High School. The
Washington Post relates how the students, guided by their teachers,
enact simulations of the debates and issues which are very similar to
those of the candidates taking part in the Presidential race to be
decided on November 2. This initiative is designed to stimulate an
interest both in both politics and in the way the legislative system
works. François
Fillon, French Minister of Education, is ready to launch a widespread
consultation campaign before the vote takes place on proposed laws
regarding new education directions. This law has been preceded by a
bitter debate about making English language lessons compulsory even in
primary schools and, according to the newspaper Le Monde, will be
voted on in spring to go into effect in autumn 2006 at the start of
the new scholastic year. Greater
efforts need to be made in the vitally important sector of primary
education. This is what the Mexican school workers union is asking for.
According to the newspaper Excelsior, the chief secretary of the
union, Rafael Ochoa Guzmàn, is asking that educational programs be
developed over the whole period of the school cycle in order to free
these programs from their present dependence on annual fighting for
funds. Now
that the initial running-in period is over, during which a certain
tolerance was accepted, the contoversial law forbidding the open
display of religious symbols in French schools is being applied in
earnest. The agency AFP reports how two female students were expelled
from a secondary institute in Mulhouse after all attempts to persuade
them to remove their veils had failed. They can now enrol in
distance-learning programs. They
wanted to get out of a Greek test, or at least have it postponed, but
they only succeeded in creating a disaster of unforeseen proportions.
Some of the students of the long-established Parini Liceo Classico in
Milan broke into the school during the night and opened the bathroom
taps. The report in the newspaper La Repubblica estimated the damage
at hundreds of thousands of Euro. The entire school had to be closed
for ten or so days. Viper
in the Fist is the title of Hervé Bazin’s novel which narrates the
long struggle between a ten-year-old boy and the cruel and opressive
woman who is his mother. The novel has now become a film directed by
Philippe de Broca with its exterior scenes shot in the English
countryside in Devon. The news agency France Presse quotes the
director as saying that he wanted to invite comparisons with the
literary world of Charles Dickens. Philadelphia, 7/10/04 The
education authorities of the Philadelphia
schools district have asked the cooperation of religious organisations
to help stamp out bullying and juvenile violence. This proposal,
however, has led to bitter debates in the state of Pennsylvania. CNN
reports that many critics consider this type of cooperation to be not
only improper but even illegal, as it violates the principle of
separation of church and state. Belfast, 7/10/04 A
Northern Irish teacher who had been accused of sexually harrassing a
female high school student was suspended from classes for two years.
Later a law court acquitted him of the charge. At this point, as was
reported by the BBC, the teacher’s colleagues went out on strike.
According to their way of seeing the matter, any disciplinary action
against the teacher should have been decided only after he had been
found guilty in a court of law. Lüneburg, 6/10/04 The
guiding spirit of CISV – Children’s International Summer Villages
– is to help children from countries all over the world to live
together. CISV has a camp in a Lüneburg school complex, near Hamburg
and it is this camp which inspired an article in the weekly magazine
Der Spiegel. The report charts the history of how this institution was
founded in 1947 at the prompting of the American psychologist Doris
Allen. New York, 5/10/04 Too many people, and too many children in
particular, are dying in Palestine and Israel. For this reason, as
reported in the United Nations, the representatives of the eleven
member states of the Security Council, including the US delegates,
expressed the wish that the Israeli government would suspend their
military operations in the Gaza Strip. They are hoping for a return to
the negotiating table in order to break the cycle of attacks followed
by reprisals followed by further attacks. Baghdad, 1/10/04 The
news agency AFP reports how 5 million Iraqi students went back to
school this year two weeks later than usual and with a terrible
feeling of insecurity and uncertainty. Just after the press conference
when the Minister of Education, Sami al-Mouzaffar, announced the
reopening of schools, a ferocious attack in the center of Baghdad
caused the deaths of 34 children. Managua, 17/09/04 The
experience of a group of deaf children in the Nicaragua capital,
Managua, was the starting point to lead a group of scholars from New
York’s Columbia University to work out a theory of “innate
language ability’.
The children of Managua were communicating with a type of sign
language that they themselves had invented. The report of this
research in Science magazine explains that children have no need to be
actually taught how to speak; all they really need is a context in
which they can interact socially. London, 10/09/04 There
is no connection between autism and the triple vaccine used to protect
children against measles, mumps and German measles. The medical
journal The Lancet has recently published this result of a specialist
study on a sampling of 5,000 children. In 1988 the same journal
printed the report of a theory advanced by a previous study which
suggested that use of this vaccine might be linked to an increase in
cases of autism. Geneva, 8/09/04 According
to data published
by UNICEF to coincide with an international day promoting
literacy, 120 million children do not have access to education and two
thirds of these are girls. Lack of schooling makes children more
vulnerable to poverty, to extortion and to AIDS. Paris, 8/09/04 Even
though the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq was designed
to pressurise the French government into repealing the law banning the
display of religious symbols in schools, the law nonetheless took
effect when schools reopened after the summer holidays. A week after
the start of lessons, the French Minister for Education, François
Fillon, speaking on Europe 1, said that no more than 100 – 120
Muslim female students had refused to remove their veils. Houston, 7/09/04 During the school year 2000/2001, more than
3,000 students in the Houston school district of Texas left school in
the middle of their studies. This has led to new strategies and
measures designed to keep even the most difficult kids at school.
According to CNN, one of the ideas is to distribute these students
into smaller classes and to offer support systems to keep a check on
their progress. London, 6/09/04 Infantile
and childhood obesity has become a problem even in the United Kingdom
and the government has decided to try and tackle it. The BBC reports
that
the attack will take place on two fronts: on the one hand,
schools will be encouraged to promote more effective and continuous
physical education programs and on the other school canteens will be
more strictly controlled in order to reduce significantly the salt,
sugar and.fat content of the food served. New Delhi, 4/09/04 In
the decade between 1991 and 2001, the precentage of people able to
read and write in India rose from 52 to 65%, an increase of 13%. The
agency MISNA reported that the state of Kerala had the highest
literacy rate with 91% of the population able to write, while the
least literate state was Bihar still afflicted by endemic poverty. Paris, 1/09/04 Jules
Ferry, the French Minister of Education who founded the modern school
system in 1882, is the number one choice of names for the nearly
70,000 schools in France, according to a survey carried out by the
newspaper Le Monde. Second choice is Jean Monnet, the European
statesman, and third is Jean Moulin the partisan hero. Schools are
also named after writers, scientists, French monarchs and even trees
and flowers. Braunschweig, 30/08/04 There
is no reason to enrol children in school at the age of 5 instead of 6
just because they are intellectually gifted. This was the opinion of a
judge in Braunschweig, according to an article in the German weekly
Der Spiegel. It would seem that, rather than force gifted children to
sit in classrooms,
it is better to give them an extra year of worry-free childhood
where not only intelligence is important but also physical development
and social skills. Buenos Aires, 29/08/04 Tell
us the stories of your dreams: this is the invitation that Argentinian
students have received from the Minister of Education through a
national radio progam. The daily newspaper Clarìn reports that the
children’s dreams reveal their humor but also a sense of social
disadvantage. One boy related how he dreamed of electricity after the
solar panel battery of his building broke and his home was left in
darkness. Another dreamed of becoming a doctor as there is none in the
area where he lives. New Delhi, 27/05/04 After
the unexpected electoral victory by Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party,
education is being treated as a top priority by the new Indian
government headed by economist Manmohan Singh. According to the report
in The Times of India, this sector will be financed by a surtax
applied to income tax. At least this is the government’s proposal
and it has the support by a coalition of a number of left-wing parties. London, 26/05/04 The
number of students expelled from English schools for violence or lack
of discipline has declined for the first time in three years.
Nevertheless, with 9,290 cases in 2002/2003, the number still remains
high. In a report on the BBC, we learn that there has been no parallel
decrease in antisocial behavior. The figures for expulsions refer
mainly to 14-year-old males from families with an Irish background. Paris, 26/05/04 Probably
because they are all stressed out after a difficult year that has seen
a lot of union action, fewer French teachers took part in recent
continuing strike action to express their opposition to the
government’s school policies. The unions are not, however,
giving up. They
told the agency France Presse that the Ministry for Education can
expect anything but a smooth start to the new school year next autumn. Louisville, 21/05/04 Professor
Ede Warner of the University of Kentucky wants the Ku Klux Klan banned
from the university and, in order to obtain his wish, he is willing to
go before the courts to have the Klan called a terrorist organization.
However, according to opinions expressed on CNN,
he will find it difficult to demonstrate his case. The Klan might have
been a killer organization in the past, but today its activities are
limited to hate campaigns and propaganda. Bogota, 15/05/04 Working
in conjunction with an adult gang, three youngsters planned to have
their schoolmates kidnapped by highjacking a school bus. But the
police force of the small Colombian town of Cucuta was able to nip the
plan in the bud, luckily, because the youngsters had already received
a pistol and they had been promised a share of the ransom money. As Associated
Press pointed out, Colombia is the country with the highest rate
of kidnappings in the world.. Harare, 6/05/04 A
large number of private school head teachers in Harare and Bulawayo,
the biggest cities in Zimbabwe, have been arrested. The BBC
reported that they have been accused of excluding as many African
students as they can. The Justice Minister Aeneas Chigwedere says that
all of these schools, which were reserved exclusively for whites
during the colonial period, have remained racist in their policies. Washington, 4/05/04 American
youngsters are becoming increasingly used to drinking alcohol, but
what countermeasures should be adopted to solve this problem are still
under debate. Should students be taught how to treat alcohol with
common sense or should they be completely forbidden to have alcoholic
drinks? Jay Matthews in the Washington Post is in favor of this second
option. He believes that, just as “responsible smoking” is not a
workable policy, there is no such thing as “responsible drinking”.
Rome, 16/04/04 How
many children are there working in Italy? The newspaper La Repubblica
reports on a difference of opinion between IRES, a research institute
operated by one of the big Italian trade unions, CGIL, and the
Minister for Social Affairs, Roberto Maroni. The union speaks about
400,000 under-age workers while the minister thinks that the real
figure is little more than a third of this number. The union thinks
the minister should deal with the problem rather than minimise it. Paris, 16/04/04 The
new
Secretary for Disabled Persons in France, Marie-Anne Montchamp,
has announced that, as from January 2005, a new law will come into
effect guaranteeing equal rights with other citizens to all disabled
persons. The law is still in its preparation phase, but already it is
clear that the first result will be to allow any disabled person to
attend French schools. According to the agency France
Presse, the text of the law will be examined by the French
parliament before the summer. Sao Paulo, 14/04/04 The
growth of criminal activity in Sao Paulo, one of Brazil’s most
heavily populated states, has reached worrying levels. The daily paper
Diario de S. Paulo reports that between 1980 and 2000 more than
190,000 murders took place, a twenty-fold increase on the previous
twenty year period. Many of those killed were young or even very young
people and most of the murders involved firearms. |
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