A New System for K-12 Education in Qatar | RAND - 0 views
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The leadership of the Arabian Gulf nation of Qatar, like that of many other countries, views education as the key to future economic, political, and social progress.
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In summer 2001, the State of Qatar’s leadership asked the RAND Corporation to examine the K–12 (kindergarten through grade 12) school system in Qatar
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Qatari K–12 edu-cation system served about 100,000 students, two-thirds of whom attended schools that were financed and operated by the government. The highly centralized Ministry of Education oversaw all aspects of public education and many aspects of private education.
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The Unlikely Young Cosmopolitans of Cairo - 0 views
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Author Heba Elsayed gives a preview of the study she conducted to observe the lower middle class in Cairo. Elsayed describes Cairo as a microcosm of globalization in urban centers. She describes the unique role of Cosmopolitanism in analyzing trends of globalization. She focuses on the lower middle class who, she says, plays the biggest role in incorporating multiple viewpoints in daily life rather than practicing exclusivity like the upper middle class. In addition, she describes cosmopolitanism in terms of internal heterogeneity, describing an 'onion model' of the world, in which the local and national form the core and inner layers and the international and global form the outer layers. She also mentions that nation-states can no longer be regarded as the primary reference point for global citizenry.
CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers - 0 views
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dapting to or adopting North American discursive strategies
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to understand their characteristics
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sensitive to their linguistic and cultural needs.
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Wasta, Work and Corruption in Transnational Business | CONNECTED in CAIRO - 0 views
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Girgis worked for a company that insisted as part of their global corporate culture that there be no “corruption.” Six years after opening its office in Egypt, they continued to be plagued by behaviors they understood to be “corrupt.”
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I explained that wasta referred to a network of informal loans and favors traded by Arab men in order to move up in the world.
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Encouraged by my open, neutral tone, Girgis opened up further. “My father mortgaged family lands to pay for my college,” Girgis said. “I owe him everything. If he asks me to find a job for his brother’s son, how can I say no?”
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This article is from the point of view of an anthropologist who was brought in as a cultural consultant to mediate an issue of "watsa" for a corporation in the Middle East. The company prides itself on its lack of internal corruption, and in turn hired a man named Girgis who grew up in the Middle East but lived and received an education in the US. In Girgis's first year he hired one of his cousins, which the supervisors saw as corrupt hiring practice. The author, and hired consultant, explained to the company supervisors that watsa was an "investment and return" framework in Arab culture, and that there are economic parallels between Arab families and businesses, families existing as economic units. Girgis conveyed that anywhere else in the world he would run the office by the book, but in the Arab world he must also adhere to social norms. The result of watsa through Arab eyes leads to greater loyalty, and less likelihood for deception and theft. The article basically introduces the idea that while in the Western world this may be seen as corruption, it is an embedded part of culture in the Middle East.
What Happened to the Humanitarians Who Wanted to Save Libyans With Bombs and Drones? - ... - 0 views
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“Libya is a reminder that sometimes it is possible to use military tools to advance humanitarian causes.”
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intervention was a matter of upholding “universal values,” which itself advanced America’s strategic goals. In justifying the war to Americans (more than a week after it started), President Obama decreed: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”
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But “turning a blind eye” to the ongoing – and now far worse – atrocities in Libya is exactly what the U.S., its war allies, and most of the humanitarian war advocates are now doing.
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This article basically lays out the faults in US intervention in Libya during the fall of Gaddafi and condemns the US officials for their lack of hindsight in their agenda. The US claimed that they could not "turn a blind eye" to atrocities and human right violations in other countries and to intervene in Libya was a matter of upholding "universal values." After the successful ousting of Gaddafi, the US hypocritically turned their back on the country as a whole, leaving them to pick up the pieces and re-build themselves in the midst of socio-political and economic chaos. The US claims that military intervention is sometimes necessary to address human right violations, but in the case of Libya more violations have occurred as a result of a fallen regime rather than because of its reign. The author basically says that the US should have predicted that short-term intervention strategies achieves nothing without years of sustained support for rebuilding the civil institutions.
Playing Nostradamus - 0 views
Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse | Cathy Alexander... - 0 views
The Isis economy: Meet the new boss - FT.com - 0 views
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Iraq’s second city of Mosul looks like a model of success for its new rulers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
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But in the back alleys, litter fills the streets. The lights stay on, but only because locals rigged up generators themselves. And under the blare of café televisions, old men grumble about life under Isis’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
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“We’ve endured international sanctions, poverty, injustice. But it was never worse than it is now.”
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A daring plan to rebuild Syria - no matter who wins the war - Ideas - The Boston Globe - 0 views
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The first year of Syria’s uprising, 2011, largely spared Aleppo, the country’s economic engine, largest city, and home of its most prized heritage sites. Fighting engulfed Aleppo in 2012 and has never let up since, making the city a symbol of the civil war’s grinding destruction
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Rebels captured the eastern side of the city while the government held the wes
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, residents say the city is virtually uninhabitable; most who remain have nowhere else to go
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How Egypt is keeping its women trapped in zombie society - Your Middle East - 0 views
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he majority of families would rather have their daughters in an unfulfilling, even miserable marriage, convinced that she will somehow find a magical way to adapt, than see her alone
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Female independence is looked down on,
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true religious scholars are the first to reject any form of overt or clandestine female oppression
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Schooling in a crisis: the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey - ODI HPN - 0 views
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The Syrian civil war has created one of the largest and most intense episodes of human suffering of the early twenty-first century.
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387,883, with 200,039 living in government camps and 164,143 living in rented apartments
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Turkeys efforts to meet the needs of refugees have been spearheaded by the Afet ve Acil Durum Yonetimi Baskanligi
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This was probably the most interesting article I have read about education in the MIddle East. It is from the "Humanitarian practice Network". This article is about Turkey and the Syrian refugees, who are not documented as refugees, and the growing desire for improvements to education. Right now, the education which is in place for Syrians is adequate for a temporary stay of preserving knowledge. It is not designed to be used long term, to advance students, or to prep them for universities. This article looks at those issues and tensions which are happening currently in Turkey
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