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Games US Economy - 0 views

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    Economy of US with fun games play games while learning US Economy
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Azerbaijan reveals plans to implement a blockchain system for a digital economy - 0 views

izz aty

Open Mike - Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy, by Rowland | "catch a fire" - 0 views

  • they represent very different methods for approaching the issue of socialism
  • Democratic Socialism
  • Peter Hain, for example, classes democratic socialism, along with libertarian socialism, as a form of anti-authoritarian “socialism from below”
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  • social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of state sponsored programs and organizations which work to ameliorate or remove perceived injustices inflicted by the capitalist market system
  • it is the active participation of the population as a whole, and workers in particular, in the management of economy that characterises democratic socialism
  • nationalisation and economic planning (whether controlled by an elected government or not) are characteristic of state socialism
  • democratic socialists tend to support revolutionary means and methods as opposed to reformist/evolutionary ones
  • Social Democracy
  • emerged in the late 19th century out of the socialist movement
  • Modern social democracy is unlike socialism
  • Evolutionary democratic socialists accuse supporters of revolution of being impractical.
  • social democracy as moving left from capitalism
  • For him, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide
  • a mainstream leftist party in a state with a market economy and a mostly middle class voting base might be described as a social democratic party
  • a party with a more radical agenda and an intellectual or working class voting base that has a history of involvement with further left movements might be described as a democratic socialist party
  • Now the term social democracy refers to an ideology that is more centrist and supports a broadly capitalist system, with some social reforms (such as the welfare state), intended to make it more equitable and humane
  • Democratic socialism implies an ideology that is more left wing and supportive of a fully socialist system[1], established either by gradually reforming capitalism from within, or by some form of revolutionary transformation.
  • Revolutionary democratic socialists accuse those who favor evolution of supporting socialism from above, which does not abolish the capitalist system
  • Revolutionary democratic socialists believe that the political structures within existing capitalist societies serve as an impediment to full democracy, which they believe can only be achieved by establishing a new political structure built from the bottom up
  • democratic socialism as moving right from Marxism
  • Evolutionary (reformist) democratic socialists and social democrats both typically advocate at least a welfare state
  • some social democrats, being influenced by the Third Way, would be willing to consider other means of delivering a social safety net for the poorest in society.
  • Revolutionary democratic socialists support a welfare state not as a means of achieving socialism, but as a temporary method of relief, and as a means of mobilizing the populace towards revolutionary ideals.
  • Democratic socialists usually support re-distribution of wealth and power, social ownership of major industries, and a planned economy
izz aty

The Economist Insights - Expert Analysis and Events | Starting Well - 1 views

  • Until the 1980s, preschools in most countries were largely focussed on providing simple child minding. But as economies shift towards more knowledge-based activities, awareness about child development—the need to improve their social awareness, confidence and group interaction skills, and to prepare them for starting primary education—continues to grow. Nevertheless, policymakers still give most attention to the tertiary, secondary and primary levels of education, in descending order of importance, with the least focus given to the early years of child development.
  • also broader reasons to invest in preschool. At one level, it helps facilitate greater female participation in the workforce, which bolsters economic growth
  • From neuro-scientific research, we understand the criticality of early brain development; from social science research, we know that high quality programmes improve children’s readiness for school and life; and from econometric research, we know that high quality programs save society significant amounts of money over time.  Early childhood contributes to creating the kinds of workforces that are going to be needed in the twenty-first century.”
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  • preschools can help ensure that all children get a strong start in life, especially those from low-income or disadvantaged households.
  • The Nordic countries perform best at preschool, and European countries dominate the rankings.
  • especially so in very unequal societies where you get generational and cyclical repetition of poverty and low achievement.”
  • the Starting Well Index assesses the extent to which these governments provide a good, inclusive early childhood education (ECE) environment for children between the ages of three and six. In particular, it considers the relative availability, affordability and quality of such preschool environments.
  • As economies increasingly compete on the quality of their human capital, policymakers need to ensure that all children get the best possible preparation for primary school.
  • Finland, Sweden and Norway top the Index, thanks to sustained, long-term investments and prioritisation of early childhood development, which is now deeply embedded in society
  • Europe’s state-led systems perform well, as the provision of universal preschool has steadily become a societal norm. This trend continues to develop. Ireland introduced a universal free year of preschool in 2010, for example, despite chronic budgetary difficulties
  • In general, the leading countries in this Index have the following elements in place for their preschool systems: A comprehensive early childhood development and promotion strategy, backed up with a legal right to such education. Universal enrolment of children in at least a year of preschool at ages five or six, with nearly universal enrolment between the ages of three and five. Subsidies to ensure access for underprivileged families. Where provision is privatised, the cost of such care is affordable relative to average wages. A high bar for preschool educators, with specific qualification requirements. This is often backed up with commensurate wages, as well as low student-teacher ratios. A well-defined preschool curriculum, along with clear health and safety standards. Clear parental involvement and outreach. A broad socioeconomic environment that ensures that children are healthy and well-nourished when they enter preschool.
  • also a major force in helping overcome issues relating to child poverty and educational disadvantage
  • not to suggest that quality preschool programmes are lacking in these countries. But such schemes are not available or affordable to all strands of society, while minimum quality standards vary widely
  • Many high-income countries rank poorly, despite wealth being a major factor in a country’s ability to deliver preschool services
  • For emerging countries seeking to improve their innovative potential, they need to ensure that as many children as possible have a strong start in life. This is a crucial first step as they seek to transform their economies from low to high value-add activities.
  • Public sector spending cuts pose a major threat to preschools, especially among recent adopters
  • especially true within countries where preschool provision is not yet a societal norm,
  • increased government investment in early childhood development, if directed well, can result in annual returns ranging from 8% to 17%, which largely accrue to wider society. Such returns come from the reduced need for later remedial education and spending, as well as lower crime and less welfare reliance in later life, among other things.
  • Among wealthier countries that are making considerable steps towards quality universal provision, many have yet to enforce even a minimum level of preschool as a legal right for children.
  • Affordability of preschool is typically worst in those countries where availability is most limited. As simple economics would suggest, those countries with the lowest availability of preschool are also the ones where it is most expensive. This hits lower-income countries hard. In China, the least affordable country in this Index, preschools in Beijing charge monthly fees up to six times as much as a top university. In general, as preschool provision becomes more widely available in a country, it also tends to become more affordable.
  • Ensuring a high standard of teacher training and education, setting clear curriculum guidelines, and ensuring parental involvement are some of the main drivers of preschool education quality
  • Other factors can help too: reducing student-teacher ratios in classes; ensuring good health and safety measures; and creating clear links between preschool and primary school, to name just a few.
izz aty

Independent school (United Kingdom) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • History
  • Edward Thring of Uppingham School introduced major reforms, focusing on the importance of the individual and competition, as well as the need for a "total curriculum" with academia, music, sport and drama being central to education
  • The Independent Schools Council say that UK independent schools receive approximately £100m tax relief due to charitable status whilst returning £300m of fee assistance in public benefit and relieving the maintained sector (state schools) of £2bn of costs
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  • They were schools for the gentlemanly elite of Victorian politics, armed forces and colonial government. Often successful businessmen would send their sons to a public school as a mark of participation in the elite
  • the public school system influenced the school systems of the British Empire, and recognisably "public" schools can be found in many Commonwealth countries
  • The Direct Grant Grammar Schools (Cessation of Grant) Regulations 1975 required these schools to choose between full state funding as comprehensive schools and full independence
  • Until 1975 there had been a group of 179 academically selective schools drawing on both private and state funding, the direct grant grammar schools
  • Both these trends were reversed during the 1980s, and the share of the independent schools reached 7.5 percent by 1991
  • 119 of these schools became independent.
  • share of the independent sector fell from a little under 8 percent in 1964 to reach a low of 5.7 percent in 1978
  • changes since 1990 have been less dramatic, participation falling to 6.9 percent by 1996 before increasing very slightly after 2000 to reach 7.2 percent, as seen at present.
  • England
  • As of 2011[update] there were more than 2,600 independent schools in the UK educating some 628,000 children, comprising over 6.5 percent of UK children, and more than 18 percent of pupils over the age of 16
  • According to a study by Ryan & Sibetia,[7] "the proportion of pupils attending independent schools in England is currently 7.2 percent (considering full-time pupils only)".
  • Most independent schools, particularly the larger and older institutions, have charitable status
  • Most public schools developed significantly during the 18th and 19th centuries, and came to play an important role in the development of the Victorian social elite
  • Independent schools, like state grammar schools, are free to select their pupils, subject to general legislation against discrimination
  • Selection
  • principal forms of selection are financial, in that the pupil's family must be able to pay the school fees, and academic, with many administering their own entrance exams - some also require that the prospective student undergo an interview, and credit may also be given for musical, sporting or other talent
  • Nowadays most schools pay little regard to family connections, apart from siblings currently at the school.
  • Only a small minority of parents can afford school fees averaging over £23,000 per annum for boarding pupils and £11,000 for day pupils, with additional costs for uniform, equipment and extra-curricular facilities.[2][12]
  • Scholarships and means-tested bursaries to assist the education of the less well-off are usually awarded by a process which combines academic and other criteria.[13][14]
  • generally academically selective, using the competitive Common Entrance Examination at ages 11–13
  • Schools often offer scholarships to attract abler pupils (which improves their average results)
  • Poorly-performing pupils may be required to leave,
  • Conditions
  • generally characterised by more individual teaching
  • much better pupil-teacher ratios at around 9:1;[16]
  • more time for organised sports and extra-curricular activities
  • longer teaching hours (sometimes including Saturday morning teaching) and homework, though shorter terms
  • a broader education than that prescribed by the national curriculum, to which state school education is in practice limited.
  • Educational achievement is generally very good
  • As boarding schools are fully responsible for their pupils throughout term-time, pastoral care is an essential part of independent education, and many independent schools teach their own distinctive ethos, including social aspirations, manners and accents, associated with their own school traditions
  • Most offer sporting, musical, dramatic and art facilities, sometimes at extra charges, although often with the benefit of generations of past investment
  • more emphasis on traditional academic subjects
  • Independent school pupils are four times more likely to attain an A* at GCSE than their non-selective state sector counterparts and twice as likely to attain an A grade at A-level
  • Some schools specialise in particular strengths, whether academic, vocational or artistic, although this is not as common as it is in the State sector.
  • A much higher proportion go to university
  • set their own discipline regime
  • In England and Wales there are no requirements for teaching staff to have Qualified Teacher Status or to be registered with the General Teaching Council
  • impact of independent schools on the British economy
  • 2014 a report from Oxford Economics highlighted the impact that independent schools have on the British economy
  • independent schools support an £11.7 billion contribution to gross value added (GVA) in Britain. This represents the share of GDP that is supported by independent schools
  • Independent schools support 275,700 jobs across Britain, around 1.0% of all in employment in Britain
  • the report quantified the savings to the taxpayer derived from c.620,000 British pupils at independent schools choosing not to take up the place at a state school to which they are entitled. This results in an annual saving to the taxpayer of £3.9 billion, the equivalent of building more than 590 new free schools each year
  • the report highlighted the additional value to Britain’s GDP that results from the higher educational performance achieved by pupils at independent schools
  • many of the best-known public schools are extremely expensive, and many have entry criteria geared towards those who have been at private "feeder" preparatory-schools or privately tutored
  • the achievement of pupils at independent schools in Britain results in an estimated additional annual contribution to GDP of £1.3 billion.
  • Criticisms
  • often criticised for being elitist
  • often seen as outside the spirit of the state system
  • the treatment of the state sector as homogeneous in nature is difficult to support
  • Although grammar schools are rare, some of them are highly selective and state funded boarding schools require substantial fees
  • Even traditional comprehensive schools may be effectively selective because only wealthier families can afford to live in their catchment area
  • may be argued that the gap in performance between state schools is much larger than that between the better state and grammar schools and the independent sector
  • Smithers and Robinson's 2010 Sutton Trust commissioned study of social variation in comprehensive schools (excluding grammar schools) notes that "The 2,679 state comprehensive schools in England are highly socially segregated: the least deprived comprehensive in the country has 1 in 25 (4.2 percent) of pupils with parents on income benefits compared with over 16 times as many (68.6 percent) in the most deprived comprehensive"
  • Every 2.3 pupils at an independent school supports one person in employment in Britain
  • large number (c. one third[citation needed]) of independent schools provide assistance with fees
  • The Thatcher government introduced the Assisted Places Scheme in England and Wales in 1980, whereby the state paid the school fees for those pupils capable of gaining a place but unable to afford the fees
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      1980 Assisted Places Scheme: financial aid
  • The scheme was terminated by the Labour government in 1997, and since then the private sector has moved to increase its own means-tested bursaries.
  • Some parents complain that their rights and their children’s are compromised by vague and one-sided contracts which allow Heads to use discretionary powers unfairly, such as in expulsion on non-disciplinary matters. They believe independent schools have not embraced the principles of natural justice as adopted by the state sector, and private law as applied to Higher Education
  • Nowadays, independent school pupils have "the highest rates of achieving grades A or B in A-level maths and sciences" compared to grammar, specialist and mainstream state school
  • pupils at independent schools account for a disproportionate number of the total number of A-levels in maths and sciences.
  • In 2006, pupils at fee-paying schools made up 43 percent of those selected for places at Oxford University and 38 percent of those granted places at Cambridge University (although such pupils represent only 18 percent of the 16 years old plus school population)
  • A major area of debate in recent years has centred around the continuing charitable status of independent schools, which allows them not to charge VAT on school fees. Following the enactment of the Charities Bill, which was passed by the House of Lords in November 2006, charitable status is based on an organisation providing a "public benefit" as judged by the Charity Commission.[23]
  • "ceteris paribus, academic performance at university is better the more advantaged is the student's home background".
  • In 2002, Jeremy Smith and Robin Naylor
  • they also observed that a student educated at an independent school was on average 6 percent less likely to receive a first or an upper second class degree than a student from the same social class background, of the same gender, who had achieved the same A-level score at a state school
  • The same study found wide variations between independent school, suggesting that students from a few of them were in fact significantly more likely to obtain the better degrees than state students of the same gender and class background having the same A-level score
  • Richard Partington at Cambridge University[29] showed that A-level performance is "overwhelmingly" the best predictor for exam performance in the earlier years ("Part I") of the undergraduate degree at Cambridge
  • A study commissioned by the Sutton Trust[30] and published in 2010 focussed mainly on the possible use of U.S.-style SAT tests as a way of detecting a candidate's academic potential. Its findings confirmed those of the Smith & Naylor study in that it found that privately educated pupils who, despite their educational advantages, have only secured a poor A-level score, and who therefore attend less selective universities, do less well than state educated degree candidates with the same low A-level attainment
  • Independent sector schools regularly dominate the top of the A-level league tables, and their students are more likely to apply to the most selective universities; as a result independent sector students are particularly well represented at these institutions, and therefore only the very ablest of them are likely to secure the best degrees.
  • In 2013 the Higher Education Funding Council for England published a study [31] noting, amongst other things, that a greater percentage of students who had attended an independent school prior to university achieved a first or upper second class degree compared with students from state schools
izz aty

Problems of Development Today | Globalization101 - 0 views

  • the problems facing developing countries revolve around what are generally called “structural constraints” to development
  • a modern economy cannot function without a division and diversification of labor. Thus, countries with small populations may have trouble developing and gaining access to markets, while landlocked countries may struggle to integrate with global markets and expand their economies.
  • Other common constraints on development are high economic poverty, hunger, high mortality rates, unsafe water supplies, poor education systems, corrupt governments, war, and poor sanitation. These factors all combine to create what the World Bank calls “poverty traps”—cycles that must be broken for countries to develop
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  • geographic advantages do not always result in sound development in cases when governments squander valuable natural resources. The World Bank, therefore, recommends that countries focus on six areas of policy to improve chances of development: Investment in education and health Increasing productivity of small farms Improving infrastructure (for example, roads) Developing an industrial policy to promote manufacturing Promoting democracy and human rights Ensuring environmental protection
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Low quality Malaysian education more alarming than household debt, says World Bank econ... - 0 views

  • This is because the country's substandard education system would affect the pool of skilled talent it needs to grow its economy to become a high income nation, while high household debt is not necessarily a problem if the economy continues to grow and citizens are gainfully employed.
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Center on International Education Benchmarking » Finland Overview - 0 views

  • Right after the Second World War, Finland was largely a land of woodcutters and agriculturalists.  Finland’s education system and student achievement at that time were unremarkable.
  • In the early 1990s, Finland was forced to completely re-think its economic strategy. An overheated economy combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major trading partner, to produce a precipitous decline in GDP and an unemployment rate of 20%, higher than in the Great Depression.  Following this cataclysm, Finland applied for entrance into the European Union and began to move away from its traditional export strategies.
  • The government decided to funnel resources into the development of the telecommunications sector, hoping to reinvent Finland as a global telecommunications capital.
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  • By 2003, 22 of every 1000 Finnish workers were involved in the research and development sector, a figure almost three times higher than the OECD average, and more than four times higher than in Finland in 1991.   The Finnish economy had undergone a major transformation.
  • The education system was able to respond to the workforce needs created by the events of the early 90s because of a series of extensive reforms that had begun in 1972, which had changed the face of teaching and learning in Finland.
  • began with creation of a unified comprehensive education structure and national curriculum guidelines.
  • Accompanying the restructuring of schools was a restructuring of teacher education, with responsibility for teacher training moving to Finland’s universities, where Finland’s other most valued professional had long been trained. Other measures were also aimed at improving the quality of the Finnish teaching force. 
  • The Finnish story is not unlike that of Singapore, in that eventual success was the result of a long, slow and rather steady process, not the result of a single development, policy, program or administration.  Each step in the development of the modern Finnish education system built sensibly on those that went before.
  • These reforms and others, described in more detail in other sections on Finland on this site, made Finland’s economic survival in the 1990s possible.
  • if there is a key to the success of the Finnish system, it is the quality of their teachers and the trust that the Finnish people have vested in them.  Some would argue that this, in some sense, makes the Finnish case irrelevant to the decisions to be made by other countries, because they lack the culture in which such a high value is placed on teachers and teaching. 
  • when one examines the specific policies that the Finns have adopted with respect to the recruitment, selection, training, supervision and support of teachers, and the way in which the intense focus on teacher quality is matched to the Finnish approach to accountability, curriculum, instruction and school management, then one begins to see that teacher quality in Finland is not the result of an unmatchable culture, but rather of a specific highly integrated system of policies and structures that other nations can emulate to produce a culture that is no less supportive of teachers and no less likely to result in superior student performance.
  • USEFUL LINKS Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture The Finnish National Board of Education thisisFINLAND: Education & Research Articles World Education Services Education Links – Finland The CIA World Factbook: Finland
  • Every four years, the government prepares a development plan for education and research, using that plan as a vehicle to make sure that the Finnish system is constantly adapting to the changing needs, including the economic needs, of the country.
  • Though Finland’s population is very homogenous (more than 98% are descended from Finnish stock), that is changing and the Finns know that their education system will have to change to adapt to these changing demographics.
  • Lower-skilled work is also being exported to other parts of Europe and a greater proportion of Finnish jobs will require ever-more-sophisticated skills, another factor that is accounted for in Finnish education planning.
  • The government’s stated priorities going forward include reducing class sizes, enhancing remediation and special needs teaching, improving teachers’ working conditions, establishing new opportunities for teachers to develop their professional skills, and overhauling adult education and training
  • it took decades for the Finns to build the system whose fruits they are now enjoying.
  • OECD. (2014). Education at a Glance 2014 – Country Note: Finland.
  • Finnish National Board of Education. (2012). International comparisons of some features of the Finnish education and training system 2011.
  • Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland. (2012). Education and Research 2011-2016: A development plan.
  • OECD. (2011). “The Children Must Play: What the U.S. Could Learn from Finland” in The New Republic. (PDF)
  • Abrams, S. (2011). “Finland: Slow and Steady Reform for Consistently High Results,” in Strong Performers, Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. (PDF)
  • The World Bank. (2006). Policy Development and Reform Principles of Basic and Secondary Education in Finland since 1968. Education Working Paper Series. (PDF)
izz aty

Hall, J 2014 Children's Human Rights and Public Schooling in the US (abstract) - 0 views

  • In certain areas, the US may have a better track record compared to other nations. However, human rights concerns are confronted everyday by people in this country, including children.
  • against the backdrop of neoliberal expansion, serious human rights violations are taking place among children in the US. The daily struggles among groups of school children in the US are specifically considered
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    Inside: "In an economony increasingly shaped by neoliberal reform, the conditions of children everywhere are deteriorating. Makret logics supported by translational bodies, networks, constituents, and policies - such as the UM, the World Bank/IMF, the WTO, and the World Economic Forum and the World Water Forum - bear out such outcomes (Goldman 2006, 2006; Goodman, 2011; Kloby, 2004). This economy helps shape policies and interaction in al spaces, including public schools in the US. When it comes to schools children are often silenced further by the gutting of school budgets, unequal funding, racial sorting/segretaion/violence, sexual harassment...targeted cuts to ESL and SE programs, and overal privatization. Given their vulnerabilities, for children to have any chance to succeed there muust be a significant shift in thinking among the public. The CRC must be debated in the US inlcuding a discussion of its problems and promise/potential. The US must ratify an improved version fo the CRC, live up to iy, and other nations must too... Public schools could be the forum where these conversations begin. Regrettably, many are unfamiliar with this convention and/or are unaware of its existence."
izz aty

Wahab et al 2010 Transformational of Malaysian's Polytechnic into University College in... - 0 views

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    Proceedings of the 1stUPI International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training Bandung, Indonesia, 10-11 November 2010 570 Transformational of Malaysian's Polytechnic into University College in 2015: Issues and Challenges for Malaysian Technical and Vocational Education Sahul Hamed Abd. Wahab1 , Mohd Amin Zakaria2 , Mohd Ali Jasmi3 Politeknik Johor Bahru 81700 Pasir Gudang Johor Malaysia. sahul@polijb.edu.my, mohd_amin_zakaria@yahoo.com, matali_jasmie@yahoo.com Abstract Malaysian Polytechnic has been operated for almost 41 years. It was established by the Ministry of Education with the help of UNESCO in 1969. The amount of RM24.5 million is used to fund the pioneer of Politeknik Ungku Omar located in Ipoh, Perak from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). At present, Malaysia have developed 27 polytechnic at all over states in engineering, agriculture, commerce, hospitality and design courses with 60,840 students in 2009 to 87,440 students in 2012. The Department of Polytechnic Education is committed to provide quality, efficient and customer-friendly services to the highest level of objectivity, confidentiality, integrity and professionalism. Their main purpose is to breaking boundaries for the creation of transformative and creative learning environment for an innovation-led economy and to be Malaysia's number one provider of innovative human capital through transformational education and training for the global workforce by 2015. The objective of this paper is to analyze the issues related on transformational of conventional polytechnic towards students, lecturers, stakeholders, communities, and workforce and skill development in lifelong learning. In addition, to study new courses aligned with development of new technology and currents trend of employment has take into consideration. Finally, a basic frame work of a new dimension for University College based on technical and vocational training is discussed at the end of this p
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"We're the future - YOUR future." | Psychopomp - 0 views

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    Riots in London have everyone talking today, although violence and disorder have been going for days according to reports. Causes and motivations are still unclear, and as with most crises they will probably remain so until after the fact. Whatever the reasons, youth in London and increasingly across England are tossing aside any sense of citizenship they might have had in favour of selfish, violent behaviour against a society which, judging from the quotes that are emerging, they perceive as having abandoned them. Why is this spreading so far and so fast? Riots of this magnitude erupt when people are pushed to their limits, unhappy with a government which has betrayed them or does not represent them. We applaud when people demonstrate their desire for democracy with this kind of passion, and comdemn police who silence them. In London, however, the police seem to be determinedly holding to their responsibility not to hurt citizens - and in pro-democracy protests, rioters do not upload photos with themselves and the commercial goods they have managed to steal.
izz aty

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley | Talk Video | TED - 0 views

  • . I have found no evidence that Americans don't get irony. It's one of those cultural myths, like, "The British are reserved." I don't know why people think this. We've invaded every country we've encountered.
  • I knew that Americans get irony when I came across that legislation No Child Left Behind. Because whoever thought of that title gets irony, don't they, because -- (Laughter) (Applause) — because it's leaving millions of children behind. Now I can see that's not a very attractive name for legislation: Millions of Children Left Behind. I can see that. What's the plan? Well, we propose to leave millions of children behind, and here's how it's going to work. 2:04 And it's working beautifully. In some parts of the country, 60 percent of kids drop out of high school. In the Native American communities, it's 80 percent of kids. If we halved that number, one estimate is it would create a net gain to the U.S. economy over 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars. From an economic point of view, this is good math, isn't it, that we should do this? It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.
  • the difference between the task and achievement senses of verbs. You know, you can be engaged in the activity of something, but not really be achieving it, like dieting. It's a very good example, you know. There he is. He's dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. Teaching is a word like that. You can say, "There's Deborah, she's in room 34, she's teaching." But if nobody's learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching but not actually fulfilling it.
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  • The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That's it. And part of the problem is, I think, that the dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing. Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic. They should help.
izz aty

Archives | The Star Online. - 0 views

  • It does not matter if you are top of your class or have a string of degrees, that dream job will not be yours unless you can speak and write well in English.
  • 68% of the companies surveyed named communication skills as the top quality required in job applicants, followed by working experience (67%), interpersonal skills (56.2%) and passion and commitment (55.7%).
  • The MEF Salary Survey for Executives 2010
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  • MEF executive director Shamsuddin Bardan said globalisation had changed the nature of jobs, making communication skills, specifically in English, a valuable asset for today's worker.
  • He added that this was an essential criterion even for professions traditionally seen as “backroom” staff such as engineers, technical personnel and scientists. “It is especially so for those working in multinationals and bigger firms,” he said. “Today, our clients are worldwide. In factories, for instance, engineers are a different breed from the past,” said Shamsuddin. “Now, they have to be involved in various aspects of business and interact with clients.”
  • Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers President Tan Sri Mustafa Mansur said the young ones who could not communicate in English were unable to negotiate the best deals in business transactions or investments. “We need to send people out to market our products, negotiate deals or get contracts signed. If they cannot communicate well in English, we will lose out,” he said.
  • Shamsuddin expressed concern that many local graduates today could not speak or write proper English, saying this was a reason why they faced difficulties getting jobs in the private sector.
  • Norman said it was important to master English as it was widely used among the business community, both in Malaysia and internationally.
  • Various industry and business leaders also warned that the decline in English was affecting Malaysia's global competitiveness.
  • Kelly Services (M) Sdn Bhd managing director Melissa Norman concurred, noting that six in 10 graduates who attended its interviews could not communicate effectively in English.
  • Pemudah co-chair Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, it was important for civil servants to have a good command of English due to a growing borderless world. “The standard of English also affects the quality of the public sector as civil servants have to interact with international citizens and the business world as well as articulate Malaysia's stand on issues to the international community. These include negotiations on important agreements such as trade agreements.”
  • Noting that the quality of English in the country had declined over the last two decades, former Human Resource Minister Tan Sri Fong Chan Onn warned that the country would lose out to its neighbours that did not teach English in schools previously. “Thailand, Indonesia and China are making efforts to improve their English through their education system,” he noted.
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    "Feedback from local and international employers shows that verbal and written communication skills in English remain the most sought-after attribute in prospective employees. According to a recent Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) survey, it is the most important trait employers look for when recruiting graduates."
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How To Kill A Country - Samantha Power - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In 1980, after a civil war that cost 30,000 lives, the black majority took charge of the country, which was renamed Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe—the nationalist leader whom Smith had branded a "Marxist terrorist" and jailed for more than a decade; a man who had once urged his followers to stop wearing shoes and socks to show they were willing to reject the trappings of European civilization—became President.
  • 1. Destroy the engine of productivity
  • 2. Bury the truth
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  • 4. Legislate the impossible
  • 3. Crush dissent
  • 6. Scare off foreigners
  • 8. Ignore a deadly enemy
  • 9. Commit genocide
  • 10. Blame the imperialists
  • Mugabe will have the last word on Zimbabwe's fate. His cronies are clearly worried that if he clings to power indefinitely, the ruling party will sink with him. He is under pressure to choose a successor by the end of the year. But at seventy-nine, Mugabe may well decide to stick around, relying—though he would never admit it—on the United States and Britain to bail out his people with food aid.
  • For all their differences, Mugabe and Ian Smith share a basic misconception about power: they both fail to realize that a government cannot survive indefinitely when it advances the political and economic desires of the few at the expense of the many.
  • http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/how-to-kill-a-country/302845/
  • 5. Teach hate
  • 7. Invade a neighbor
  • How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe, now seventy-nine, who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction. Although many of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole his ten-step approach is more radical and more comprehensive than that of other despots. The Zimbabwe case offers some important insights. It illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an antidote to idiocy and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonization—limited Western influence on the continent and a reluctance by African leaders to criticize their own. And it offers a warning about how much damage one man can do, very quickly.
  • Although Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the planet, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to govern but to a minority rule as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare of citizens as its ignominious white predecessor. The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women.
izz aty

How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't - 0 views

  •  
    Irwin Schiff's 1985 pictorial introduction to basic economics is made available free on this site. Each page is represented by a .gif image, and any can be accessed via the index below
izz aty

Assessing No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies - 1 views

  • No Child Left Behind and other education reforms promoting high-stakes testing, accountability, and competitive markets continue to receive wide support from politicians and public figures. This support, the author suggests, has been achieved by situating education within neoliberal policies that argue that such reforms are necessary within an increasingly globalized economy, will increase academic achievement, and will close the achievement gap.
  • the author offers preliminary data suggesting that the reforms are not achieving their stated goals. Consequently, educators need to question whether neoliberal approaches to education should replace the previously dominant social democratic approaches.
izz aty

Being Poor - Whatever - 0 views

  • Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
  • eing poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.
  • Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.
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  • Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.
  • Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.
  • Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.
  • Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
  • Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
  • Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
  • Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
  • Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
  • Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.
  • Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.
  • Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.
  • Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.
  • Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.
  • Being poor is seeing how few options you have.
  • Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
  • Being poor is staying with a man who beats your kids because you can’t afford to keep them out of foster care without his salary.
  • Being poor means making decisions like “is stealing food a sin” outside of an ethics class.
  • Being poor is realizing that heating and eating will probably be mutually exclusive this month.
  • Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million.
  • Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.
  • Being poor is understanding that the lowest, poorest, starvingest time of the month for anyone on public assistance is exactly when Katrina hit.
  • Being poor is taking a cash advance from the credit card–to pay the credit card minimum bill.
  • Being poor is trying to decide which one of you gets to eat today – the one of you that is pregnant or the one of you that can work.
  • Being poor is a sick, dreadful feeling of your stomach dropping out when the phone rings, because you know it’s a bill collector and you know you’ll pick it up anyway on a one in a million chance someone does want to hire you.
  • Being poor is laying down because it hurts to breathe and you are pregnant, but you can’t afford to go to the hospital.
  • Being poor is crying when $50 bill you didn’t expect gets taken from your paycheck.
  • Being poor means never forgeting that the bills aren’t paid.
  • Growing up poor is spending the rest of your life trying to escape (and never realizing that you have)
  • Being poor means looking at life in such a different way that most people can’t imagine it.
  • Being poor means being grateful that you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
  • Growing up poor means you feel guilty when you escape, because your siblings didn’t.
  • Being poor means saving the plastic containers and jars from yogurt or spaghetti sauce so you can take milk with you to school in your lunch after they lower the income limit for free lunches and your mom makes $3 more than the limit.
  • Being poor is choosing between the lesser of two evils and not realizing it.
  • Being poor is a motivator to never be as poor as your parents.
  • Being poor makes you appreciate everything you’ve earned.
  • Being poor gives you the ability to look at supporting your still poor mother as an honor not a burden.
  • Being poor is worrying that someday you will wake up, find yourself lying beneath a blanket in the back of that station wagon and realizing that your escape and rise was just a dream.
  • Being poor is a month with 28 spaghetti dinners, 2 invitations over to eat, and a day without.
  • Being poor is carrying your fiancee to the hospital to miscarry, then using their phone to call around for someone to take you back home, since there aren’t beds for Medicare patients.
  • Being poor is wondering what sort of fool drops a penny on the ground and doesn’t pick it up.
  • Being poor is wondering what to say when your friends ask you to join them for coffee in the campus coffee shop, and you can’t because you thought you had a couple bucks cash but you must have left it in your coat at home, and so you have to use all the change you dug up from under the seat for gas to get home after classes.
  • Being poor is pretending to any major, religion or career interest to get free pizza on campus.
  • Being poor means dreading getting a Christmas present from the Fireman’s Charity, because you’ll end up on TV and everybody at school will find out.
  • Being poor is wearing the same dress to school every day for four months, then getting “new” clothes from the church for Christmas and changing your clothes three times in one day because you can.
  • Being poor means not being able to take a better job because the shift ends are after the busses stop running, and you don’t feel safe walking the two miles home after dark.
  • Why is is so hard to remember poverty once you get past it, if you get past it? Why is it so hard to empathize with poverty if you have never had it? What the hell is wrong with us?
  • Being poor means learning firsthand the meaning of words like “eviction,” “garnishee,” “repossess,” and “transient motel.”
  • Being poor means paying a premium on food and goods at local stores that jack up prices for being in a poor neighborhood, or simply because they can.
  • Being poor means buying bread at the “day old store” even though it’s a lot older than one day.
  • Being poor means paying high prices for exprired meat at the bodega, because there isn’t a supermarket chain willing to open a store in your neighborhood.
  • Being poor means your 10 cent an hour raise is almost negated by the 25 cent increase in bus fare.
  • Being poor means watching your disabled child get worse and worse because you can’t afford the therapies.
  • Being poor means having your life gone over with a fine tooth comb to see if you’re bad enough to help.
  • Being poor is feeling ashamed when your ‘peers’ slam WalMart, and talk about buying organic, and the horrors of driving gass-guzzling cars, all while wondering why you repeatedly find ways to not join them at $15/plate social dinners.
  • Being poor is avoiding spending time with people you care about, because you don’t want to have to answer “how are you doing?”.
  • Being poor is having your best friend’s mother compliment her for hanging out with you–shows good moral fiber, don’t you know.
  • Being poor is having your mum scrimp and save to get you the latest “in” thing, just as it goes out of style. (But you wear it anyway, so she doesn’t feel bad, and then all the kids at school make fun of you.)
  • Being poor is being the family that everybody knows it’s okay to pick on.
  • Being poor is having your house egged and a firecracker tossed through your front door because some kid thought it was funny.
  • Being poor is losing your special lunch card and seeing the snotty kid across the street find it, chop it up with scissors, and return the pieces to you.
  • Being poor means going to a church school on a Pell grant and trying to get your associate degree in one year, because you know your sibs are close on your tail, and your family has barely enough money to send you.
  • Being poor takes time. Time to wait in line for the reduced-price clinic while gathering all your paperwork, and hoping you have it in order so you won’t be sent home to get one little slip of paperwork. Time to wait in line at the food bank, where people fight to get to the one box of expired Entemann’s first. Time that you spend walking back home or waiting beside your POS car because it broke down for the umpteenth time. Time that you spend at your minimum wage fast food job after hours because you really don’t want to go home, and the manager might just feed you.
  • Being poor means that if you pull yourself up and stop being ‘poor,’ you will still be struggling and behind, because a large chunk of your money will go toward cleaning up all the stopgaps, mistakes, and overcharges you accumulated when you were poor.
  • Being poor is everything gets washed by hand in the bathtub with the smallest amount of dollar-store detergent.
  • Being poor means choosing between a cup of coffee, a newspaper, or a load at the laundrymat. You can’t have all three, or even two of them. ever.
  • Being poor is everything must be mended, pinned, taped, glued or stapled for a little more use.
  • Being poor means two or three jobs, and never enough time, sleep, or money. never.
  • John, thanks for this. This is so spot-on it hurts. And I don’t have to do any of these things any more, but you really don’t ever forget what it’s like to do them.
  • Being poor is really, really pushing your two-year old during potty training, because diapers are really, really expensive.
  • Being poor means that you laugh hysterically when you watch the financial planning segments on the Today Show, because the thought of starting a college fund for your child is so far beyond the pale that if you don’t laugh, you’ll start to cry and you’ll never stop.
  • Being poor means that three years after you’re not poor anymore, you still know exactly what everything costs; you still feel like a dinner at Chili’s or even Wendy’s is a huge splurge; and you still feel like you can’t afford to buy a six dollar belt at Target. And you still buy ramen.
  • Being poor is obviously your fault, even though the biggest, fattest reason you had to file bankruptcy in the first place was because your husband frivolously got cancer while laid off. How silly of him! And then he couldn’t find a new job until he was done with treatment because oddly, employers are shy of hiring bald, vomiting people with IV ports taped into their arms.
  • Being poor is being horrified when you see a very young person from your area with an arm, neck, or hand tattoo, not because corporate America generally bans such things… but because fast-food and retail America does, too.
  • Being poor is being bumped by somebody carrying a Prada tote bag on your way to pick up your paycheck… and instantly realizing, without having to calculate, that in terms of actual cash value, the tote bag is worth far more than the paycheck.
  • Being poor means selling blood plasma and signing up for every medical experiment they’ll let you into, and breezing past the disclaimer form because, really, are you going to give up $100 just because you may be risking injury or death from whatever they’re giving you?
  • - Being poor is spending money you know you don’t have on a candybar because you need something to cheer yourself up enough to get out of bed.
  • Being poor is sleeping everyone to one bed so you’re a little bit warmer.
  • Being poor is having friends who’s parents won’t let them sleep over because you live in that part of town.
  • Being poor is not caring that starchy carbs are bad for you, rice and pasta are cheap, and it’s either that, or nothing at all.
  • Being poor is the lunchlady feeling bad for you so she sneaks you leftovers from after all the classes have eaten, for you to take home for dinner.
  • Being poor is learning to like skim milk because it’s a nickel cheaper than whole.
  • Being poor means your husband is working – when he can get work – at Labor Ready, and you’re at the food bank. Being poor means your husband is sharing his main meal of the day with someone who hasn’t eaten for three days.
  • Being poor is rejoicing the fact you miscarried
  • Being poor is becoming a stripper just to make the rent, and hating yourself for it.
  • Being poor is washing up in public bathrooms and sampling fragrances at the department store so you don’t smell bad.
  • Being poor is sleeping in stairwells.
  • Being poor means mom and dad do not sit and eat dinner with you. They eat after the kids are done with what’s left. Dad’s dinner is wiping clean the bits from the frying pan with a piece of bread.(He still does that out of habit just like grandpa.)
  • Being poor is not having sex because you can’t afford birth control and you’re smart enough to not get pregnant
  • Being poor is rejoicing in the fact that after five years, the color of your expired vehicle tags has cycled back around, and there’s less of a chance of getting pulled over for your 2001 tags.
  • Being poor is counting your food money for the week and knowing you will have to walk the two miles to the grocery with three children under the age of six.
  • Being poor is hearing your daughter tell you twenty years later that she finally realized that ‘Mommy already ate, sweetie’ was a lie.
  • Being poor is not being able to afford to pursue the ex who owes you child support.
  • Being poor is having a judge give him custody because HE isn’t poor.
  • Being broke is making a meal and sitting the kids down at the table, and sipping a glass of watered down powedered milk while they eat.
  • Poor never seems to leave us completely. No matter what we do or have done, we will always be haunted by the tears and shame of poverty. The worst part: even if our kids escape, THEY REMEMBER forever. A legacy we’d rather not give.
  • Being poor is having someone tell you that if you own _____ (A car, a TV, a bed) then you really aren’t poor, & realizing they’re either stupid, or worse off than you
  • Being poor means a 4 hours of commuting for a 6 hour shift.
  • Being poor means putting a beloved pet to sleep because you can’t afford the vet bill.
  • Being formerly poor means that your never-poor spouse resents the hell out of the fact that you still give your mom and siblings money – money that could have gone to “our” family. It means your spouse never quite thinks of your family as her family too because the resentment is there.
  • Being poor is throwing up six times a day because you are pregnant and don’t have health care. Being poor means that you can’t even scrape together enough change to ride the bus to the neonatal clinic, and it’s the middle of summer and too far to walk. Being poor means pondering an abortion because you know everybody around you is equally strapped for cash, you only get one meal a day, and you don’t see that changing in the immediate future. Being poor means after much tears and thought, when you finally decide to have the abortion, you have to borrow the money to get it done. Being poor means that if you’d kept the baby, some rich people would accuse you of abusing the welfare system. Being poor means that by getting the abortion, some rich people accuse you of murder. Being poor means weeks of crying and hating yourself.
  • being poor is mom and dad being humiliated saturday and sunday to pay your failed attempt at the american dream, because first you’re not american, second you are not rich, third you are not america educated, and all those dollar-master slavering world wonderpeople can tell you, making fun, is: born in the wrong country pal, hahaha.
  • being poor is working hard and never had worked enough.
  • Being poor makes you appreciate the value of free napkins, plastic food utensils, matches, condiment packages, plastic bags, or any other giveaway item of use in the home.
  • Being poor means never having leftovers.
  • FYI: Nick Mamatas has a few additions to the list (from an international perspective) here.
  • pictruandtru: you, more than anyone else here, need to read John’s article over and over again, until you get it. It was you he wrote it for. Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
  • Being poor (or having been poor) means you know that if there is a devistating economic crisis, you will know how to survive when those who never were poor are paralized with fear. Being poor is knowing you are strong and resourceful.
  • As a born-and-bred welfare kid raised by TV and cheap supermarket off-brands, I see my mother in many of these statements. She worked so hard to raise herself out of crushing poverty, with little or no useful help from the government or well-meaning “liberals” with social-science degrees that I can only shake my head and wonder how it was I got out of the poverty trap at all. I think I was just lucky. I also happen to be white and male, and I’m reasonably sure in today’s world this is a certain advantage.
  • Being poor means that someone who has never been poor will never really understand what it’s like.
  • Being poor means you no longer have to fill out the forms at the ‘payday loan store’ because they have your information memorized.
  • I joined the military so they would fix my teeth. I brushed everyday. And flossed. But never had dental insurance. Only got cleanings maybe once in my childhood.
  • The point is when something goes wrong, for whatever reason, being poor means your options are limited, and what options you have are often likely to cause you pain.
  • Being poor is not having any margin for error. The problem is that life only rarely lets people get through it without error.
  • When you’re middle-class or well-off, you can absorb a certain amount of the crap life throws at you. When you’re poor, you really can’t.
  • Being poor means understanding that Internet flamewars are a tragic waste of time better used bettering yourself. Use that time and effort to build yourself up rather than tear a stranger down- you’ll feel better afterward.
  • Being poor means being stuck around people who want you to continue to be poor.
  • Being poor means not being able to take advantage of all the really great sales that come along — because they only seem to happen when you don’t have the money in hand.
  • Being poor is having the grocery store checker give you dirty looks and make comments to the next customer about “my tax dollars being wasted” when you use food stamps to buy a day-old cake on sale and a package of birthday candles for your child. Being poor is being overwhelmingly grateful that the next person in line says to the checker, “I can’t think of a better use for my tax dollars than to pay for a poor child to have a birthday, you heartless prick.”
  • I still use tea-bags twice. I won’t eat ramen, because I ate far too much for too long. I consider myself well-off because I have a lot of books and I never skip a meal. I know exactly how much things cost, and shop at two supermarkets because one has cheaper prices on produce and meat, and the other has cheaper canned goods. And I know the usual price of everything I buy on a regular basis, so I know whether the “sale” price is really a good deal. And when it is, I stock up, just in case.
  • I worked for a bank for a while after finishing my bachelor’s degree, and here’s what I learned: Being poor means the bank doesn’t want you as a customer. Being poor means you will pay the highest fees for every service. Being poor means you will pay the highest interest on any loan. On the other hand– Being rich means all service charges will be waived on your accounts, because you’re a preferred customer. Being rich means never waiting in line, because the bank manager greets you when you come in and takes you to a customer service representative who handles your transactions.
  • Being poor is knowing how to sew.
  • Being poor is having a lower Social Security number than your classmates in high school, because you had to get one young to get welfare.
  • Being poor is finding prostitution a valid way to pay the electrical bill, and then lying to your spouse about where the money came from.
  • Being poor is exploding at the old lady who has taken all the 20c bread at the day-old store to feed to the fraggin’ SQUIRRELS.
  • Being less poor is living close enough to work and the store and the library to walk and NOT have to buy gas.
  • Being less poor is 10c for a packet of seeds that produces zucchini in your yard all summer.
  • I tell you this not to display my saintliness, but to put into perspective a conversation I have not infrequently with other members of my profession: ME: …no, I’m really tense about this case. If we lose, Mrs. Smith and her nephew have nowhere to go. She’s on a fixed income. What if I screw up and it costs them their apartment? OTHER LAWYER: Wow. Well, it could be worse. I mean, what if it were a big commercial-litigation case, and you screwed THAT up, and lost twenty million dollars for the client? At least the pro bono cases are over, what, five hundred dollars or something? (Pop Quiz: do you think the Other Lawyers who make such remarks have ever been poor?)
  • Being poor means you don’t count (unless you are pretty).
  • Being poor is never looking down on a man begging for change, mainly because you have seriously considered doing it.
  • Being poor is having the luck and luxury of growing up rich and having no resources whatsoever when you are tossed out of your parents house with no money for “the gay thing” because it’s an embarrasment to daddy and his ilk.
  • Being poor is making the rent and bills by six dollars and not having any left over for grocery shopping that week because that six dollars is for gas to get to work.
  • Being rich to poor means your parents make too damn much for you to get student loans so you have no way of getting any help, whatsoever.
  • Being rich to poor means that you can’t fathom how your family of two that you no longer live with lives in a 5500 square foot house.
  • Being rich to poor is your dad telling you it’s strange you don’t have a car, when you are paying for college on your own and he has just bought your younger, non-gay sibling, a BMW.
  • Being rich to poor is when your father visits your new apartment – the one you’re making it all on your own in – and tells you to move because you’re living “in a ghetto” as he drives home in his Mercedes.
  • Being poor means burning in shame because this is the most you could afford and you spent hours cleaning before he arrived.
  • Being rich to poor is being too ashamed to leave my name on this.
  • And being poor means you will probably be punished because you *did* leave
  • Being poor means teaching yourself to not notice feeling hungry.
  • Being poor means people making fun of your weight and calling you “anorexic” when you’ve been unable to have more than one meal a day.
  • Being poor is knowing you’re always under a microscope: Human Services, Housing Assistance, Social Security…but also, your friends, your family, and strangers who seem to think you’re lazy, unmotivated, or stupid for being in the situation you’re in.
  • Being poor is scraping enough money to go home to your family for Christmas and not having any gifts for them.
  • Being poor is using your stamps to buy pints of milk in glass bottles, then sitting outside of the supermarket, drinking the milk, rinsing out the bottle, and trading it in for a dollar cash so you can afford the co-pay on your prescriptions.
  • Being poor is never being able to afford to see a doctor for monthly cramps so bad they make you miss work; spending month after month for years hoping they just go away; and then finally getting seen and told you’re going to be infertile for the rest of your life, and that you could have avoided this had you come in sooner.
  • Being poor is sitting on a dusty brick sidewalk with a cheap recorder and a Goodwill hat, enduring snotty yuppie tourists, high school boys who make innuendos or say “get a day job”, police officers saying “You’re not doing anything illegal, but…”, and threats of physical violence from drunks, all in the hopes that someone will deign to put a dollar in.
  • Being poor is realizing that you will do just about anything necessary to feed your kids, including giving a blow job to a guy for $10.
  • Fifteen years ago, when I started in at a school, the packed that home room teachers got contained for each kid on opening day: 1 schedule, 1 emergency info form, 1 student handbook, 1 athletic dept. handbook 1 insurance form (AD&D plus emergency med. for school-related activities) and for a class of 20, three or four free/reduced lunch forms. You were supposed to give these to the students who asked for them, and get more if they weren’t enough. No one understood why I threw a hissy fit and made sure that there was one form per kid, just like all the other paperwork. Sometimes things do get slightly better. We now have cafeteria swipe cards, and the free kids and paying kids both just swipe their cards. The difference is that the paying kids have to top off their card balances with cash periodically.
  • Being rich to poor is your father casually talking about a utility bill that is the cost of your rent.
  • Being rich to poor is your father casually talking about half your years wages that he made in a week’s time.
  • Poor is living next to a crack house, being on a first name basis with the local prostitute, having murder weapons tossed in your back yard, and running from gangs.
  • Living in a house that’s literally falling apart. I used to get snow in my bedroom and water during thunderstorms.
  • By Katrina standards, however, my family was rich. We would’ve been able to evacuate. We had credit cards and family that would’ve helped us.
  • America, the land of opportunity, so long as you aren’t poor.
  • Being poor is hoping your bike doesnt break during your one hour cycle to work.
  • Being poor is walking for 3 hours to get to work because your bike broke.
  • Being poor is coming up with a different excuse every day why your not going to lunch (& dont eat any).
  • Being poor is thinking about the man who propositioned you while you were walking home some time back, and wondering just what he wanted to do to you or have you do to him, and how much he might be willing to pay for that.
  • Being poor is eating government commodity white rice with salt and pepper from packets that you kept from the last time you had fast food, and telling yourself that you actually prefer it that way.
  • Being poor is thinking of job benefits not in terms of health care, vacation, or retirement plans, but in terms of leftover or past-expiration-date food.
  • Being poor is being furious at the job interviewer who tells you that they won’t give you the nine-to-five office job because they don’t think that you can “adjust” from scrubbing out toilets on the graveyard shift.
  • Being poor is being furious at the manager of your rooming house for throwing away your bicycle because it was in such bad shape that he thought it had been abandoned there; surely no one would actually ride that thing.
  • Being poor is when people tell you that they think that you’re wasting your time and effort trying to get a better job, and they think that they’re doing you a favor.
  • Having been poor is weeping with joy and gratitude when you can afford an apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom of your own.
  • Having been poor is being amazed when you make it to the next paycheck with ten dollars in your bank account from the last one.
  • Having been poor is reading about thousands of people who used to have the comfortable middle-class existence that you have now, and have suddenly fallen through the cracks just as you once did, and really understanding for the first time what Satchel Paige said: “Don’t look back–something might be gaining on you.”
  • Being poor is not having eyeglasses until age 13 when you have needed them since age 4 and your grasp of the basics, like mathmatics, is without foundation, thereby closing the glorious door of science forever
  • Being poor is at age 14, using your entire first real paycheck to buy clothing for your younger siblings
  • Being poor is from age 14 on walking home three miles in the dark everyday after working after school because your family can’t survive without your paycheck
  • Being poor is making absolutely sure that you serve yourself last at all meals so that the younger kids can get their full share and so that you can be sure that your Mother gets to eat something as well
  • Being poor is watching your Mother die a slow agonizing death from cancer at home because your state doesn’t provide nursing home or hospice care for the indigent patient.
  • Being poor is not being able to escape watching your Mother die for even a minute because you don’t have a TV or a car or the price of a matinee movie ticket. Or money to hire someone to watch the young kids you are now responsible for.
  • Being poor is having, at age 18, to bath and clean your mother like an infant because the cancer has robbed her of her arms
  • Being poor is something you are inside forever.
  • Being poor, is having to share a bed with your three sisters in a house thats covered by tin and hoping it doesnt rain.
  • Being poor is being scared to take out the trash for fear of rats in the alley.
  • Being poor is hoping there’s not another drought so you have food to eat from the farm.
  • Being poor is rushing home so you can do your homework before nightime comes so you dont have to do it by candlelight instead.
  • Being poor is taking 5 years to finish high school because you have to work to pay for your private schooling.
  • Being poor is waking up your four year old at 3:30 in the morning to catch the bus in time to drop her at a seedy daycare, then make it to work on time.
  • Being poor is using your child’s piggy bank of dimes and nickels to pay for the ridiculous gas prices when you finally afford that car.
  • Being poor is walking up to your mom when you’re four, holding a toy and prefacing your request to buy it with “When you have money…”
  • Being poor is when your dinner consists of juice boxes because that’s all there is.
  • Being poor is being beat around by a baby-sitter you keep going to b/c they’re free
  • Being poor means learning by 7 that one meal a day is decent and real hunger doesn’t hit until at least the second day
  • Being poor is people asking you why you bothered to pick up that nickel on the ground
  • Being poor is never being liked by your friends’ parents because they think you must be a bad influence because you’re poor
  • Being poor is being bounced back and forth between different households who don’t really want you because your parents can’t afford to keep you.
  • Being poor means that holidays are no different than any other day: your mom is still working and there’s still no food in the house.
  • this is “being poor in one of the richest countries in the world”, being really poor is exactly like this, only much, much worse. Except perhaps without the status envy. Being really poor is walking 6 hours through the african night to the only hospital carrying your dead child, because you’ve heard the people there can bring the dead back to life. I’m not trumping your moving and honest writing. It just amazes me how humans are never happy, no matter what we have, if others have more.
  • this is “being poor in one of the richest countries in the world”, being really poor is exactly like this, only much, much worse. Except perhaps without the status envy. Being really poor is walking 6 hours through the african night to the only hospital carrying your dead child, because you’ve heard the people there can bring the dead back to life. I’m not trumping your moving and honest writing. It just amazes me how humans are never happy, no matter what we have, if others have more.
  • What’s the problem with me saying that there’s a difference between not having funds, and living like white trash? Because you’re ignoring reality in a desperate need to find somebody to step on–oh yes, we may have been poor, but we weren’t white trash, you see. And it’s a very handy way to see oneself as permanently beyond the reach of all those horrors of poverty: People stay poor because they are bad; I am good; therefore I will never be poor again. Your “brush your teeth” comment is a good example of this kind of magical thinking. The notion that people might have dental problems despite being diligent about dental hygiene is not one you can entertain, because that would deflate the whole “poor people deserve it” argument. (And, of course, it all rests on the fallacy that all poor people are adults.) Instead of focusing on self pity and hopelessness, I think it’s a lot better focus on what can be done to fix what’s broken. As somebody who didn’t grow up poor, Brian, let me give you a big suggestion as to one of those things that can be done, and it’s not telling poor people to shut up and work harder. It’s extending the same safety net, social support and benefit of the doubt we give wealthy people that we give to poor people. Believe you me, it’s quite an eye-opener to find out that things you took for granted when you were a kid–you know, like the cops showing up when someone calls 911, or having a functioning lab in your science class–were not available to everyone.
  • Being poor means not having a working stove, good pots and pans or decent food to eat and having to skip a meal or two a day.
  • Being poor means no asthma treatment and gasping for air in Emergency Rooms praying to stay alive where you know youll be getting thousands of dollars in bills you wont be able to pay.
  • Being poor means being looked at with a mixture of disgust and pity by so called “loved ones” who shop for recreation who have endless money to waste.
  • Being poor can lead you to depend on God, because there is no one else that is going to help you. I am a Christian today because of the poverty I faced.
  • Being poor makes you realize what a sick and shallow society we live in.
  • people seem take out of this list what they put into it. You seem to want make this list examples of how people can’t, don’t or won’t help themselves. Interestingly, this is one of the reasons I put this one in the list: Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
  • being poor means wondering if the lights will come back on
  • Being poor is one meal a day, if that.
  • Being poor is worrying about appendicitis every time you ovulate.
  • Being poor means always the library, never the book store.
  • being poor is feeling all the eyes judging you, measuring you, and coming to the conclusion that you don’t belong; when all you want is to be away in the comfortable place you don’t have.
  • being poor is being exploited by rich people while you smile, not to be fired.
  • being poor is paying a debt to the rich for being born in their world.
  • The problem is people who aren’t poor or who have never been poor often don’t grasp why it’s difficult to escape poverty — you can do everything right in terms of trying to improve your life situation (and there are many people who are poor do), and yet just one thing going wrong can mess the whole thing up.
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    Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
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These are the world's most digitally advanced countries | World Economic Forum - 0 views

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    " the most exciting region in the world, digitally speaking, is Asia, with China and Malaysia as exemplars. We can expect to see plenty of investor and entrepreneurial interest in this region; it is critical that the political institutions are stable and supportive."
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