Subjects Archives: Education

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

I did not want to write a third consecutive reflection, but I can not leave that for Monday.

There is one accurate response to Bush’s “democratic capitalism”: Chavez’s democratic socialism. There wouldn’t be a more accurate way to express the big contradiction that exists between North and South in our hemisphere, between the ideas of Bolivar and those of Monroe.

  Over the last year, there has been an escalation in the political battles between the government of President Evo Morales and a conservative opposition, based primarily in the prefectures, or provinces.  The opposition groups have rallied around various issues but have recently begun to focus on “autonomy.”  Some of the details of this autonomy […]

It would seem our country has the most educational problems in the world. All of the cables that reach us report the many and difficult challenges we face: a deficit of over 8,000 teachers, disrespectful and ill-mannered students, lack of training, in short: problems of all sorts.

  Dear Anti-War Activists, Mina Doroud, Jamshidieh Park, Tehran.   Photo by Hamed Saber. As you all know, the Bush administration is ratcheting up its rhetoric on Iran, and all of us are concerned and wondering how best to react and counter this growing threat.  As a resource to the anti-war movement, Global Exchange organizes […]

  We, the undersigned, call for the immediate resignation of Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and Board of Trustees Chair Art Zucker. For the past year, we have watched the negotiations between Antioch University and alumni groups who are dedicated to the future of Antioch College.  It is now apparent that Antioch University never had […]

  19 May 2008: Friends, this is simply an account of what I saw and experienced in a twenty four period.  It might be incomplete.  It is not an analytical piece as such, but I hope a small step towards trying to understand what had taken place in this city, in this country that I […]

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine sent me the text of a report from Gallup, the well-known U.S. opinion pollster. I started to leaf through the material with the natural lack of confidence given the lying and hypocritical information usually used against our nation.

It was a survey on education in which Cuba was included…

  The risks of a militant struggle for an alternative path of development that is radically different from the one followed by India’s ruling classes seem to most dissidents far too dangerous.  Yet there are some who stand firm in their conviction: what should be, can be.  An outline of a few of Mumbai’s rebels […]

Daily in countless classrooms across the U.S., teachers are using standardized curriculum to prepare their students to take and score highly on high-stakes achievement tests.  But critics say forcing K-12 schools to follow a single standard of education is no cure-all.  In fact, such an approach places students and teachers into a historic trend of […]

Without some basic historical knowledge, the subject I am dealing with could not be understood.

In Europe, people had heard about China. In the autumn of 1298, Marco Polo told marvelous tales about an amazing country he called Cathay. Columbus, an intelligent and intrepid sailor, was aware of the Greeks’ knowledge about the roundness of the Earth. His own observations led him to agree with those theories. He came up with the plan of reaching the Far East sailing westward from Europe. But…

March 19, 2003: a date that will live in infamy.  Perhaps not in the minds of many of our fellow citizens, but surely to most people around the world.  On that date, U.S. military forces invaded Iraq. Almost a year later I was in a small farming village some miles north of Baghdad, accompanying members […]

The secondary school students met: their 11th Congress was taking place. Listening to them, I felt a healthy pride and understandable envy. What a privilege at their fruitful age! Along with the massive nature of university study today, so is a more important activity: the battle of ideas before enrolling in university.

  Antioch Confidential examines several documents that were until now Antioch University attorney-client privileged communications.  What role has this confidentiality played in the health of a College that has functioned through a decades-old shared governance system, a governance system that has been integrated as a major component of its educational curriculum and that has historically […]

  Introduction Japan’s vast higher education system has around 5,000 institutions.  This includes a tertiary level of about 1,300 government-approved, degree-awarding colleges and universities.  Seven hundred forty-five of these are designated as ‘daigaku,’ a term which refers to any institution that has received government sanction to award four-year degrees equivalent to a baccalaureate.  These four-year […]

  The Cincinnati Public Schools appear to be promoting military recruitment in the guise of college preparation through a corporate program called “Making Your College Search Count.”  Students at Walnut Hills High School spent fifty minutes this week in a required assembly listening to a talk about getting into college, and though the presenter never […]

  In the interest of promoting individual and economic freedom, neo-liberal states have simultaneously deregulated and reduced the role of government in various sectors, giving power to the free market to allocate goods and services.  The university has historically been exempted from this process based on the widely accepted notion that higher education is a […]

“If we want to talk of socialism,” says Argenis Loreto, “we must first resolve the people’s most urgent needs: water in their homes, accessible health care, easy access to housing.” In the Venezuelan municipality of Libertador (state of Carabobo), of which Argenis is mayor, “we have 90% poverty.  Ending that is our first task.  I […]

  Richard York and Brett Clark’s cogent essay “Gender and Mathematical Ability: The Toll of Biological Determinism” (MR, November 2007) brings to mind the extreme complexities and biases entangled in separating genetic from environmental factors.  I suggest the following example to illustrate the point. Suppose we are confronted with the hypothesis that there exists a […]

[O]ccupation proceeds from the same ideological infrastructure on which the 1948 ethnic cleansing was erected  [. . .] and in whose name there take place every day detentions and killings without trial.  The most murderous manifestation of this ideology is now in the Territories.  It should and must be stopped soonest.  For that, no expedient […]