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19 of 19 Results
Youth Rights, Dignity, and the Anti-Democratic Values of Public Schooling
As students, we are told that we are being made into an “informed citizenry” capable of maintaining a vibrant democracy. Indeed, we are told that we must give up most of our constitutional rights in the name of achieving this goal. We are compelled to attend an institution where our every action, from speaking, to moving, to going to the bathroom is strictly controlled by an authority...
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Occupy Your Brain: On Power, Knowledge, and the Re-Occupation of Common Sense
One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority.  While all cultures are different, in many non-modernized societies children enjoy wide latitude to learn by free...
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Why Aren't Public Universities More Transparent and Accountable?
Over the last six months of researching for my work-in-progress documentary about the pitfalls of American higher education, The Elephant on Campus, there have been many problems I have come across. One of the biggest and least talked about problems is that public universities are totally opaque when it comes to the way they receive and spend money, especially tuition money. No one outside of...
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8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.  Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and...
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Teacher Writes Open Letter Criticizing U.S. Secretary of Education
In response to Arne Duncan's Open Letter to America's Teachers, Kansas high school teacher, David Reber wrote an open letter of his own that criticized the Secretary of Education's "corporate-style education reform".The following is the beginning paragraphs of Reber's response.  For the full letter, click the link at the bottom of the page.  Mr. Duncan,I read your Teacher...
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Bucky Fuller & his World Game: Intro to Saving Planets
I think now is a good time to be talking about Bucky’s vision of a World Game.  We have the technology to do this and a new administration could easily provide the funding.  I don’t think any of this material is Utopian or far out, but if you do, let me know why. From the introduction to a World Game activity book:“Now, for the first time in the history of man...
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Dealing with Collapse: Why Reaching out to Young People Is So Important
Reaching out to young people is especially critical at this time. With mounting psycho-social stress attributed to an increasingly uncertain future, young people are going to need support grappling with the social effects of the coming collapse. The world is rife with uncertainty about our fate on the planet. Declining ecosystems and biodiversity, a quickly destabilizing climate and an end to the...
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No Child Left Inside: Unplug your kids and kick them outside!
“Every child,” wrote pioneer botanist Luther Burbank, “should have mud pies, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pinecones, rocks to roll, snakes, huckleberries and hornets. And any child who has been deprived of...
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Raising Awareness: Why We Shouldn't Take It For Granted
A dangerous thing can occur when you start learning about what's really going on in the world. The problems start to seem so complex, and you're just one person, doubts begin to creep in. You sincerely want to help change the world, but from all this knowledge you start to believe that the world is too out of control and too big to change, so you end up not doing anything.What aspiring...
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Soul Of A Citizen: 'From Drunken Party Girl To Climate Change Activist'
When we try to engage people politically we never know who will respond, or when someone will shift from reveling in their apathy to taking powerful public stands. Here's a striking example of one such transformation.Virginia Tech freshman Angie De Soto didn't vote in the 2004 election. The president, she thought, had nothing to do with her life. She didn't care who won. Instead, she and friends...
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Are you sick of highly paid teachers?
WARNING!!!!  THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS HEAVY SARCASM!!! Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! I feel we need to put things in perspective and pay them for what they currently do - babysit.And I am sure we can get that for less than minimum wage. For starters, let's give a general high school teacher $3.00 an hour/student and only the...
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The Public School Nightmare: Why Fix a System Designed to Destroy Individual Thought?
I want you to consider the frightening possibility that we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. I want you to consider that we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up — and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children's lives and away from their homes and families and neighborhoods...
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Revolution Brewing in Wisconsin has Easy Solution
Another revolution is brewing, but in an unlikely place: Wisconsin. Teachers are on strike, classes canceled, in protest of a state government plan to cut their benefits and weaken their unions. The governor says the cuts are necessary to balance the state budget. Given the bankrupt state of government finances across the country, I don’t doubt him. The teachers have a valid complaint...
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Bad Food Makes Kids Dumber, Study Says
A new study says 3-year-olds who mostly eat processed foods have lower IQs five years later. (So Pop-Tarts and Sunny-D are why we're "falling behind" China in math and science?) The study, cited in The Guardian, examined the diets of 14,000 wee Britlets, based on what their parents reported feeding them.Three is the magic number: Your brain grows the fastest from birth to age 3, says The...
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Films For Action Launches New Website, a "Learning Library for People Who Want to Change the World"
Lawrence, KS -- After 12 months in development, Films For Action has launched its new website - a head-to-toe redesign that lays the foundation for a vibrant community-powered news site dedicated to inspiring positive social change. At the heart of the new site is a constantly growing learning library of over 200 documentaries and 500 short films that can be watched free online, daily...
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Huge Numbers of Students Don't Learn Critical Thinking in College
What happens when you fail to invest in education (and no, I don't mean investment in excessive layers of school administration), the most important single item in our nation's success or failure? You end up with this result:An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex...
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Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe?
While London has been rocked by student protests over proposed tuition hikes, United States college campuses have been largely quiet. Tens of thousands of students in the UK have taken to the streets -- confronting police, storming the Conservative Party headquarters, even halting the motorcade of the British monarch Prince Charles.In fact, all across Europe students are revolting. For...
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Fox News Owner Buys Education Tech Provider, 3 Million-Student Audience
Wireless Generation, a US education technology company, will become a subsidiary of News Corporation for about $360 million in cash as Rupert Murdoch seeks to expand his company into academia.The company provides technology solutions for an audience of over 3 million students nation-wide.On Monday, News Corporation, the parent company of the Fox News Channel, announced it signed an agreement...
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The Tyranny Of Compulsory Schooling
Let me speak to you about dumbness because that is what schools teach best. Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance: you didn't know something, but there were ways to find out if you wanted to. Government-controlled schooling didn't eliminate dumbness - in fact, we now know that people read more fluently before we had forced schooling - but dumbness was transformed. Now dumb...
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