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Translated by Ben Krasner, Accademia Britannica, Arezzo
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Dar es Salaam, 30/05/02 Entire
populations, including millions of children, are starving in parts
of Southern Africa as a result of drastically reduced
harvests caused by a period of droughts followed by torrential rains.
International aid agencies are getting organised to deliver help.
The agency Misna reports how
the first load of 30,000 tonnes of food is expected in the Tanzanian
port of Dar es Salaam. Kuala Lumpur, 28/05/02 The
New Straits Times writes
that there is a plan to reform the school system in Malaysia and so
bring things more into line with international models. Primary
school attendance will be compulsory, high school will be reduced
from 5 years to 4, and exams will be designed to test intelligence
and personality rather then mere knowledge of facts. London, 27/05/02 The
British Government’s decision to get tough with petty crime in
schools has in practice been disregarded. This is the complaint made
by one of the UK teachers’ unions, according to the BBC
. They say that 78 students are still attending classes even
though they committed acts of violence and were expelled from their
schools. The expulsions were ordered by school principals but were
later overturned by higher school boards. Fortaleza, 27/05/02 The
drop-out rate in Brazilian schools is falling although, as the daily
newspaper O Povo
reports, it is still at very high levels. Quoting sources in
the Ministry of Education, the paper says that in the year 2000 only
2.6 million children out of the 6.1 million enrolled in 1993
finished primary education. This means that 59% had to repeat one or
more years or dropped out altogether. Rheims, 26/05/02 An
organisation of Catholic parents has accused the French school
system of being a labyrinth which only a privileged few can find
their way around. The parents have asked the government to change
the system by giving students stronger motivation to learn. France
Presse emphasises that the present centralised system should
be abandoned in favour of giving schools more autonomy. Hamburg, 24/05/02 There
is a small separate class of seven pupils, all with an IQ above 130,
in the “Bertolt Brecht” primary school. Der
Spiegel writes that this group is the centre of a teaching
experiment whose motto is, paradoxically, separation and integration.
The pupils receive special instruction by themselves but for certain
purposes they are in a normal class with other pupils. Jenison, 23/05/02 10-year
old Calvin McCarter who comes from this small town in Michigan has
just won a geography competition that has become part of the
American tradition. CNN reports
how, in a decisive moment of the battle, the young contestant
successfully located Lop Nur as the site of the Chinese nuclear
tests. Calvin, who won a scholarship worth $25,000, was the youngest
competitor to reach the final. Sassari, 21/05/02 The
daily newspaper La Nuova Sardegna reports
that a terrible accusation has been made against a primary teacher in
Pozzomaggiore, a small town in the Province of Sassari. Apparently she
had installed a climate of terror in her classroom by mistreating and
even hitting her pupils. These were so terrified that they kept silent
until finally they reported it to their parents. The teacher wondered
why her students would invent such a story. Arras, 20/05/02 The
parents of public school students in Arras have convened to criticise
the way in which their children’s problems are seen.
The Agency France Presse reports
how the president of a parents’ association has denounced the
criminalisation of youth and how young people are equated with
delinquency in the same way that immigrants are equated with crime. Rome, 18/05/02 Amnesty
International, along with other NGOs, is promoting an awareness
campaign in Italy about the exploitation of minors in the workplace.
Since this is to coincide with the start of the World Cup, the motto
is something like “let’s kick this kind of work in the ass”. The
main idea is to encourage people to boycott sporting goods
produced with child
labour. Ragusa, 18/05/02 Daniela
Calabrò, a student from the Sicilian town of Ispica, has given birth
to a baby in the middle of the school year; but she says this is not a
good enough reason to interrupt her studies. La
Repubblica recounts how, with the consent of the school principal and
her affectionate classmates, Daniela is able to bring her young baby
to lessons. Beijing, 17/05/02 In
China the Internet is under fire for the negative influence it has
over the young because of the opportunities for gambling that it
offers and the violent and pornographic material made available. For
this reason, according to AFP
, the Beijing government has decided that anybody under the age of 16
must be accompanied by an adult if they use the computer in an
Internet point and then for a maximum of three hours and during the
holidays. Miami, 17/05/02 An
American publisher has decided to withdraw from circulation 300,000
copies of a children’s book about Scooby-Doo, a popular US cartoon
character. The St
Petersburg Times
reports that there was a terrible mistake in the book: the
phone number which was given for young readers to call their cartoon
hero was, instead, a pay service offering erotic conversations. Washington, 16/05/02 Many
of the school shootings which have so alarmed public opinion in
America could have been avoided, according to US secret service
experts. It turns out, as reported on CNN,
that almost all the protagonists involved had themselves
undergone threats or violence. On this basis it should be possible to
draw up an identity kit of potential aggressors. London, 16/05/02 A
sort of “silent revolution” has taken place in English schools
over the years which has progressively
reduced the number of subjects taught. Mike Tomlinson, ex head
of English school inspectors, told a BBC
interviewer about this “erosion of the curriculum”.
According to Tomlinson the tendency is due to the fact that so much
importance is placed on literacy skills but at the expense of other
studies. Yakima, 15/05/02 Since
there is a teacher shortage in many American schools, it has been
decided to import them from abroad. Associated
Press reports how there are many foreign teachers working in
the Yakima district of Washington state and how this trend is
spreading. The most wanted are Spanish-speaking teachers since their
mother tongue has by now become the second language spoken in the US.
And they number around 1000. Munich, 14/05/02 The
lessons in four German and four French schools know no borders:
students are connected for an entire day via the Internet and try to
speak each other’s language. The TV station WDR
reports that this experiment will be repeated and refined.
There are two main aims: to provide an aid to language learning and to
encourage friendships between children of different countries. Banbury, 14/05/02 There
is now zero tolerance in the United Kingdom for those parents who
don’t put a stop to their kids when they play hooky from school. Reuters
tells the story of the arrest of a woman who did not send her
two daughters to school despite the repeated warnings from the school
authorities. She was sentenced to 60 days imprisonment and was the
first parent to be punished in accordance with a new law that came
into force only a couple of months ago. Milan, 14/05/02 The
problem of school kids’ backpacks that are overloaded with books
will probably be solved when the electronic notebook is in general use.
The daily newspaper La Repubblica relates
how 8 schools in the provinces of Milan and Brescia are to take part
in a pilot scheme next year: instead of textbooks and notebooks,
students will carry a laptop computer and CDs. School red tape and
contacts with students’ families will also be carried out using IT. Saint-Pèè-sur-Nivelle, 12/05/02 30,000
people coming from all the Basque provinces of France and Spain took
part in the “ikastolas” festival held in this town in the French
Basque region. The festival is an annual event and is organised to
show support to the Basque-teaching schools in the area. France
Presse reminds readers that about 15% of the Basque-language
minority attend this type of school. London, 12/05/02 The
BBC has made reference to a
recent study in which two thirds of the teachers in Welsh and English
primary schools believe that the number of autistic children has been
on the increase over the last few years (one for every 86 students).
Teachers do not feel that they are adequately qualified to meet this
situation. The problem is slightly better in Scotland where there is
one autistic child per 121 children. New York, 11/05/02 The
recent special UN session on childhood concluded with a document which
called for a world more in keeping with the needs of children. The UNO
information service reports that 180 countries held discussions for
some days before agreeing to 21 objectives regarding health, education,
the fight against AIDS, and how to defend children against
exploitation and violence. Washington, 9/05/02 The
Bush administration wants to encourage single-sex classes in American
schools, thereby breaking with a 30-year-old policy which banned sex
discrimination in public education. According to CNN
, civil rights organisations intend to fight this move since
they see it as a threat to equality between people and to the quality
of education. Berlin, 7/05/02 The
German Minister of Education, Edelgard Bulmahn, has proposed a task
force to eliminate violence from German schools. Der
Spiegel informs readers that this is a result of the bloody
shooting in Erfurt in which a student massacred people in a high
school. One of the main aims will be to improve the psychological
training of teachers. Los Angeles, 5/05/02 There
are some schools in California where adults sit beside youngsters
during lessons. Associated Press reports
that this is a pilot project designed to help the integration of
immigrants through teaching English in the same way as it is taught to
American children. In other states the choice was made to have
bilingual schools where both Spanish and English are taught. Seoul, 3/05/02 About
152,000 of the more than 2 million crimes committed in South Korea
each year are committed by minors and every year 2% of the 8 million
young people under 20 are arrested. These figures are supplied by the
newspaper Joong Ang Ilbo which
attributes a large measure of the responsibility to schools. Students
lose their interest in schooling because of the low standards of
education. San Francisco, 1/05/02 About
a third of the teachers working in California complain that there are
not enough books for their classes and that the classrooms are dirty;
indeed, they say that there are mice and cockroaches to be found.
According to Reuters this is
what an inquiry into public schools turned up. The authorities claim
that the survey was not scientifically carried out and that the
results hide what progress has been made in the Californian school
system which serves 6 million students. Berlin, 30/04/02 As
a result of the Erfurt massacre, when a 19-year-old youth who had been
expelled from school killed a number of teachers and students, Germans
are debating whether it’s time to raise the age of legal adulthood.
This applies particularly to the age when a person can legally buy
firearms. Der Spiegel describes
how the Minister for the Interior, Otto Schily, is proposing to raise
the age of official adulthood from 18 to 21; some people are pushing
to have it raised to 25. London, 29/04/02 Schools
lacking in discipline with a high drop-out rate? The British Minister
for Education, Estelle Morris, thinks the situation needs to be
remedied. The BBC reports that
a police presence is proposed for the 70 or so worst schools in
England located in London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Manchester and
Liverpool. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, commented that this would
be a real deterrent to crime. Jenin, 28/04/02 Only
one girls’ primary school has managed to reopen in the refugee camp
of Jenin in Trans-Jordan. This is the area where recent clashes took
place between the Israeli army and the Palestinian resistance movement.
AFP reports that 800 children
are being assisted by the Red Crescent under the supervision of a
UNICEF psychologist. Many of these children were left homeless as a
result of the fighting. Chattanooga, 26/04/02 How
can you attract good teachers and improve the educational system? A
possible response comes from Tennessee.
According to a CNN
report, the state educational authorities have launched, with the help
of two foundations, a system that helps purchase the teachers’
houses in return for a guaranteed 5 years of teaching. Maseru, 25/04/02 The
government of Lesotho, a little country in southern Africa, has
declared a state of emergency. The
agency MISNA has reported that
months of rain have destroyed crops and literally put the country into
a state of famine. The
country has already recorded its first victims, mostly children.
The authorities of Maseru have asked for help from
neighboring
countries, in particular South Africa, and also from the international
community. Salta, 23/04/02 It is one of the poorest
schools in the world, claims the Argentinean daily Clarin.
It is found in Pascha, a village 3800 meters high in the Andes, 120
kilometers from the city of Salta.
You can only get there by foot. There are 35 students divided
into classes of elementary and middle school levels. Elena Burgos de
Farfan, the director and teacher, humbly hopes for a water tank and a
few pipes to collect floodwater. London, 22/04/02 In English elementary schools, only one teacher in six is male and therefore children miss interacting with essential role models. The BBC informs us that it is for this reason the London government has launched a campaign designed to encourage more male university students to choose elementary education as a major. Their goal is to have twenty percent of elementary education applicants be male. |
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