NewsTrust - Global Literacy - Most Recent Stories

Has America Become an Authoritarian State?

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Henry A. Giroux - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - What is missing in the current debates dominating Washington politics is the recognition that the real issues at stake are neither the debt ceiling nor the state of the economy, however important, but a powerful and poisonous form of authoritarianism that poses a threat to the very idea of democracy and the institutions, public values, formative cultures and public spheres that nourish it.

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The Effects of China's Push for Education

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Jan. 22 (Opinion) - Is China becoming more of a competitive challenge to the United States, Europe and Japan through its rapid expansion of education?

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Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - Being bilingual makes you smarter and can have a profound effect on your brain. Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

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Almost everything is getting better

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Long Now Foudation - By Kirk Citron - Aug. 10 (News Report) - Last week The Millennium Project released its 02011 State Of The Future report, looking at trends for the past twenty years and projecting ahead for the next decade. (Not the 10,000 year future, but still of interest.) You can read an executive summary of the report here. While the report finds many things to worry about – global warming, terrorism, corruption – overall the trends are surprisingly hopeful, as shown in their chart called “Where we are winning”

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Aliteracy Anxiety

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time Passing - By Lance Strate - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Aliteracy may be the trend of the future. Reading limited to short bursts. Street signs. Restaurant menus. Headlines. Status updates and tweets. Short paragraphs online. And reading that is limited to the functional, reading for directions, for instructions, for getting tasks done. As opposed to reading for pleasure. And as opposed to reading as a cultural activity.

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Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Minding the Campus - By Mary Grabar - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested in teaching students to write and communicate clearly. The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the meeting’s 500 panels as I could, is devoted to disparaging grammar, logic, reason, evidence and fairness as instruments of white oppression. They believe rules of grammar discriminate against “marginalized” groups and restrict self-expression.

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Why Are Americans So Ill-Informed on Climate Change?

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Scientific American - By Robin Lloyd - Feb. 23 (Special Report) - As glaciers melt and island populations migrate from shores to escape rising seas, many scientists remain baffled as to why the research consensus on human-induced climate change remains contentious in the U.S.

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Bias led to 'gutting' of New Black Panthers case, Justice official says

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jerry Markon, Krissah Thompson - Sep. 25 (News) - A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration. A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration. A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration. Christopher Coates's testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was the latest fallout from the department's handling of a 2008 voter-intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans accuse Justice officials of improperly narrowing the charges, allegations that they strongly dispute.

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Education now a fundamental right, cheers to India

Sat, 29 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

United Press International - By Abhirup Bhunia for UPI - May. 29 (News) - Throughout India, in thousands of villages, this legislation is expected to herald a new beginning for children who have thus far been forced to live without education, primarily because of poverty.

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'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Der Spiegel - By Umberto Eco, Susanne Beyer, Lothar Gorris - Nov. 12 (Interview) - Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who is curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, talks to SPIEGEL about the place lists hold in the history of culture, the ways we try to avoid thinking about death and why Google is dangerous for young people

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Raymond J. Learsy: T.Friedman's Take On 'Wimps" and "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Raymond J. Learsy - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - All this raises a much more fundamental question: Given our current structure of government and the way it functions, how are we going to compete, and to hold our own in years to come as we go head to head with societies that are far better equipped to deal with the exigencies of the future and the long-term planning that is essential is to meeting the challenges ahead? Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/tfriedmans-take-on-wimps_b_294370.html

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The Nut Graph | Scaling the language barrier

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

thenutgraph.com - By Wong Chin Huat - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - The standard of English has deteriorated in Malaysia, over the past decade, while the English language is enjoying increasing importance in a globalising world. Taking both these factors into consideration, isn't the call to abolish [the policy of English for Teaching Mathematics and Science] and reinstate the old status quo irrational and irresponsible? I don't think so.

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Former Microsoft exec grows global literacy effort

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

KING5.com - By Charlotte Starck - Feb. 06 (News Report) - This morning, 250 million children around the world didn't go to school. And that's something that must change says the one time director of Microsoft's Business Development for Greater China, John Wood. Room To Read brings philanthropists, business and even students attending a "Students Helping Students" breakfast event together to put a dent in illiteracy in seven different countries, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zambia.

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Father matters

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Hindu - Feb. 05 (News Report) - “I want my daughter to attend school but her father has to agree’, is a common reaction in most mothers that we come across,” Sudha Parthasarathy, Executive Director, Deepalaya, relates her first-hand experience of working in the field of girl child education. Like Sudha, many involved with the campaign would agree that a large number of young girls in this country do not go to school because their fathers think it is not worth it. In a patriarchal set-up like ours, men are still the decision-makers of their families. This, unfortunately, has been a roadblock in the emancipation of many women on different fronts. And one typical example is in imparting basic education in young girls, mostly from poor families.

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Gail Rebuck on adult literacy

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Gail Rebuck - Feb. 05 (Opinion) - Adult literacy is a stubborn, apparently intractable problem that belies simplistic solutions. The government has spent £5bn on basic skills courses between 2001 and 2007, which will rise to £9bn by 2011. This money has had an effect and progress has been made: the Skills for Life target to improve the skills of 2.25 million adults by 2010 was reached two years early. But, as last week's all-party public accounts committee report into adult literacy makes clear, there is still a long way to go, with as many as 17.8 million over-18s reported as having poor levels of literacy. This is bad for the economy, bad for society, and - most important - bad for those who have their life potential blighted by an inability to read.

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India to launch credit crunch £7 laptop, world's cheapest computer

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Randeep Ramesh - Feb. 03 (News Report) - The credit crunch computer is set to arrive tomorrow in India when officials unveil the 500 rupee (£7.25) laptop. In an attempt to bridge the "digital divide" in the country between rich and poor, the government will show off the prototype, low-cost laptop as the centrepiece of an ambitious e-learning programme to link 18,000 colleges and 400 universities across the country.

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Tackling illiteracy in Phila.

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Philadelphia Inquirer - By Melissa Dribben - Feb. 02 (Special Report) - Rebecca Wagner can't forget the most recent student she lost to humiliation. He was about 50 and had been brave enough to make his way to the Community Learning Center in Kensington. That alone was huge, says Wagner, director of the nonprofit literacy school for adults. For those crippled by the inability to complete a job application or read a text message, asking for help requires courage. The man was given 12 reading comprehension questions to help place him in an appropriate class. He tried to work on them, but then stopped. "He watched everyone else filling out their forms," Wagner says. "Then he walked out and never came back." Wagner's heart sank, knowing he would be swallowed back into the flood of struggling Americans who lack the rudimentary skills to survive.

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Half of us are barely literate and it's getting worse

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Telegraph - By Alasdair Palmer - Feb. 01 (Comment) - The most graphic illustration of the failure of the British education system is the vast number of people who, despite 11 years of full-time schooling, cannot read, write and add up properly. The Government's own figures show that 5.2 million workers in Britain today are "functionally illiterate", and 6.8 million are "functionally innumerate". "Functional illiteracy" is not the same as the blank inability to read anything – but the bar for competence is not set very high. If you can't read the stories in The Sun, or the signs in a station indicating from which platform your train departs, you are functionally illiterate. Similarly, "functional innumeracy" involves such things as being unable to calculate the change you are owed, or how much you spend every month on regular purchases.

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The global achievement muddle

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

nwarktimes.com - By Sandra Stotsky - Jan. 31 (Opinion) - The Fayetteville Public Schools are very good because they are always trying to get better. But sometimes the best thing is to leave things alone. The Fayetteville Public Schools are now holding a series of workshops on Tony Wagner's "The Global Achievement Gap." As a curriculum expert who has taught third grade, served on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel and spent the past 30 years teaching teachers in this country and in Eastern Europe, I know that change can be good, but that fads are very bad. How can we tell the difference? Only by research and measurement. Wagner promotes seven "21st century" skills that he claims are not taught in our schools. These "survival" skills are also being promoted by advocacy groups like the National Educational Association. Wagner's list seems plausible. Who can argue against teaching students "agility and adaptability" or how to "ask good questions?" Yet these "skills" are largely unsupported by actual scientific research. Wagner presents nothing to justify his list except glib language and a virtually endless string of anecdotes about his conversations with high-tech CEOs.

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Reaching young minds

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

bozemandailychronicle.com - By Gail Schontzler - Jan. 30 (News Report) - Greg Mortenson has spoken to thousands of U.S. university and high school students about his bestselling “Three Cups of Tea,” the inspirational story of his work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan to “promote peace, one school at a time.” But when Mortenson visited a fourth-grade class in Houston, he realized the kids were struggling with the adult-level book. That prompted his wife, Tara Bishop, to suggest once again that he write a version for children.

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Parental sine qua non

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

globecampus.ca - By Editorial Board - Jan. 30 (Editorial) - While parents cast about at great expense looking for programs to improve their children's brainpower, a magic bullet exists at low cost that has never quite received its due. It is a life-enhancing, literacy-inducing, time-travelling device, colloquially known as a “book.” It works optimally when a parent or two read it out loud. Best of all, it is free at public libraries, though woe betide the person who returns it late. This device – sold separately, as they say (the book and the parental reading unit) – is far, far better than a Baby Einstein video. Imagine, if it only had the name. Let's do the Baby Einstein before bed. Think how eagerly parents would embrace it. What parent-child reading needs is marketing. It is getting some. Beginning Friday, and ending Saturday, thousands of Canadian adults and children are attempting to enter the Guinness World Records, for “most children reading with an adult, multiple locations,” trying to grab the record of 78,791 from the Americans, who set it in 2006. At last word, Canada had 187,043 people registered. Everyone is reading the same five books by the Canadian author Robert Munsch. Corny? No.

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Fighting Global Illiteracy

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Houston Chronicle - By DorisH - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - According to this International Reading Association 2007 study "The relationship of illiteracy and poverty is undeniable." Here are just a few facts culled from The International Reading Association. • The per capita income in countries with a literacy rate less than 55% averages about $600. • Teaching mothers to read can lead to a decrease in infant mortality of up to 50%. • 98% of all non-literates live in developing countries. • 52% of all non-literates live in India and China. • Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60%. • In all developing countries, the percentage of children aged 6-11 not attending school is 15%. In the least developed countries, it is 45%.

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Rural teachers ford the educational gap

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

VietNamNet Bridge - Jan. 27 (Special Report) - Many young teachers dream of spacious schools with modern equipment, but after graduating university, Hoang Thi Huong ventured to remote Rao Tre Village, where she had to swim across a river every morning just to reach her students. Food or education After graduation Huong found herself inspired by the plight of the province’s Ma Lieng ethnic people, who live in poor conditions in a remote area of the province. These children are often unable to take advantage of educational opportunities, since they are needed at home to help their parents work or take care of their younger siblings. "When I saw the city children going to school, I often wondered why Ma Lieng children didn’t have that opportunity," Huong says, "I began to ponder this question and instead of applying for a job in the centre of the province, I decided to become a teacher in Rao Tre Village." The Huong Lien kindergarten was founded by Headmistress Tran Thi Linh. Hoping to bring education to the most remote areas of the province, she gathered a group of teachers who shared this dream and opened the school in 1995.

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In School for the First Time, Teenage Immigrants Struggle

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jennifer Medina - Jan. 25 (Special Report) - Fanta Konneh is the first girl in her family to go to school. Not the first to go to college, or to graduate from high school. Fanta, 18, who grew up in Guinea after her family fled Liberia, became the first to walk into a classroom of any kind last year. “Just the boys go to school, so I always knew I was left out,” said Fanta, a student at Ellis Preparatory Academy in the South Bronx. “But here, I am trying. I can say many things I did not know before. I can learn things more.” New York City classrooms have long been filled with children from all over the world, and the education challenges they bring with them. But hidden among the nearly 150,000 students across the city still struggling to learn English are an estimated 15,100 who, like Fanta, have had little or no formal schooling and are often illiterate in their native languages.

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Books Can't Compete

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Mark Bauerlein - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - Here’s a depressing and blunt comment from Larry McMurtry, speaking not only as a novelist but as a bookstore owner (it’s an interview): The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40. I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries. They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t. The tsunami metaphor is apt, and it points out the relationship between books and other media in kids’ lives. The list of options has grown, with books now joined by games, Web surfing, music downloading, Photoshop, YouTube, social networking, blogs, texting, IM, and the rest. Lots of folks think that the environment has grown more challenging and rewarding and enlightening, the addition of digital diversions fostering a rich plurality of texts and images and stories and sounds in which books maintain a central place.

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