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izz aty

Main - Opinion - Erna Mahyuni - The language that divides us @ Wed Nov 16 2011 - 0 views

www.themalaysianinsider.com/...the-language-that-divides-us

education malaysia children life development maths science maths and science PPSMI english esol

shared by izz aty on 16 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 16 Nov 11
     
    Teaching science and maths in English was a bad idea from the start. Let's be honest here; - half our teaching force, especially in the rural areas, can barely speak English, much less teach in it. If poor English standards don't matter, then why do our politicians send their children abroad for studies? There is a simple fix to our horrible public education system: Force all members of parliament and state assembly representatives to send their children to public schools and universities. Make it a condition of office - if a politician is elected, then his or her children must be enrolled locally or face a punitive fine for each year spent abroad. Right now the politicians in power don't care because they don't have to worry about their children's future. Malaysian parents have to worry not just about the rising cost of education but slipping standards.
izz aty

The Nordic countries: The next supermodel | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...rdic-countries-next-supermodel

nordic scandinavian sweden denmark norway finland

shared by izz aty on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The Nordics cluster at the top of league tables of everything from economic competitiveness to social health to happiness.
  • lucky timing: the Nordics cleverly managed to have their debt crisis in the 1990s
  • Development theorists have taken to calling successful modernisation “getting to Denmark”
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • In the 1970s and 1980s the Nordics were indeed tax-and-spend countries.
  • To politicians around the world—especially in the debt-ridden West—they offer a blueprint of how to reform the public sector, making the state far more efficient and responsive.
  • They have avoided both southern Europe’s economic sclerosis and America’s extreme inequality.
  • But tax-and-spend did not work: Sweden fell from being the fourth-richest country in the world in 1970 to the 14th in 1993.
  • Government’s share of GDP in Sweden, which has dropped by around 18 percentage points, is lower than France’s and could soon be lower than Britain’s. Taxes have been cut: the corporate rate is 22%, far lower than America’s. The Nordics have focused on balancing the books. While Mr Obama and Congress dither over entitlement reform, Sweden has reformed its pension system (see Free exchange). Its budget deficit is 0.3% of GDP; America’s is 7%.
  • Nordics have been similarly pragmatic. So long as public services work, they do not mind who provides them
  • The performance of all schools and hospitals is measured. Governments are forced to operate in the harsh light of day: Sweden gives everyone access to official records. Politicians are vilified if they get off their bicycles and into official limousines. The home of Skype and Spotify is also a leader in e-government: you can pay your taxes with an SMS message
  • Denmark and Norway allow private firms to run public hospitals. Sweden has a universal system of school vouchers, with private for-profit schools competing with public schools. Denmark also has vouchers—but ones that you can top up.
  • the Nordics also offer something for the progressive left by proving that it is possible to combine competitive capitalism with a large state: they employ 30% of their workforce in the public sector, compared with an OECD average of 15%
  • They are stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies: Sweden let Saab go bankrupt and Volvo is now owned by China’s Geely. But they also focus on the long term—most obviously through Norway’s $600 billion sovereign-wealth fund—and they look for ways to temper capitalism’s harsher effects.
  • Denmark, for instance, has a system of “flexicurity” that makes it easier for employers to sack people but provides support and training for the unemployed, and Finland organises venture-capital networks.
  • Public spending as a proportion of GDP in these countries is still higher than this newspaper would like, or indeed than will be sustainable.
  • All Western politicians claim to promote transparency and technology. The Nordics can do so with more justification than most.
  • Their levels of taxation still encourage entrepreneurs to move abroad
  • Too many people—especially immigrants—live off benefits
  • pressures that have forced their governments to cut spending, such as growing global competition, will force more change. The Nordics are bloated compared with Singapore, and they have not focused enough on means-testing benefits
  • Nordics are part of the answer. They also show that EU countries can be genuine economic successes. And as the Asians introduce welfare states they too will look to the Nordics: Norway is a particular focus of the Chinese
  • You can inject market mechanisms into the welfare state to sharpen its performance. You can put entitlement programmes on sound foundations to avoid beggaring future generations. But you need to be willing to root out corruption and vested interests.
  • A Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care
  • The main lesson to learn from the Nordics is not ideological but practica
  • you must be ready to abandon tired orthodoxies of the left and right and forage for good ideas across the political spectrum
  • izz aty on 17 Nov 14
     
    SMALLISH countries are often in the vanguard when it comes to reforming government. In the 1980s Britain was out in the lead, thanks to Thatcherism and privatisation. Tiny Singapore has long been a role model for many reformers. Now the Nordic countries are likely to assume a similar role.
izz aty

Private Schools in Denmark - Ministry of Education - 0 views

eng.uvm.dk/...Private-Schools-in-Denmark

danish education private school denmark independent school free school ESTEkiv

shared by izz aty on 11 May 14 - No Cached
  • Denmark has a tradition of private schools with a substantial government subsidy.
  • tradition mainly originates in the ideas and initiatives of the clergyman, poet and politician, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), and the teacher, Christen Kold (1816-1870)
  • Private schools in Denmark
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • the first "free school" (private independent school) for children in 1852
  • meant to serve the rural population.
  • ideas of Grundtvig and Kold had such an impact on the political thinking of their time that they were written into the democratic Constitution adopted by Denmark in 1915
  • In Denmark, all children must receive 9 years’ education, but - provided a certain minimum standard is obtained - it is a matter of choice for the parents whether the education is received 1) in the publicly provided municipal primary and lower secondary school, 2) in a private school, or 3) at home.
  • 13% of all children at basic school level (including the voluntary pre-school class and 10th form) attend private schools
  • In 2006, approx. 91,000 children attended 491 private schools, while 690,000 pupils attended the municipal school, of which there are approx. 600.
  • "a school for life based on the living word"
  • small independent schools in rural districts (friskoler)
  • large independent schools in urban districts (privatskoler)
  • religious or congregational schools,
  • progressive free schools
  • schools with a particular educational aim, such as the Rudolf Steiner schools
  • German minority schools
  • immigrant schools
    • izz aty
      izz aty on 11 May 14
       
      private schools will be recognized and receive government financing regardless of the ideological, religious, political or ethnic motivation behind their establishment. 
  • private schools will be recognized and receive government financing regardless of the ideological, religious, political or ethnic motivation behind their establishment
izz aty

The Swedish Model - Education | Frontier Centre for Public Policy - 0 views

www.fcpp.org/...the-swedish-model-education

sweden swedish education free school independent school social reform scandinvian education ESTEkiv

shared by izz aty on 11 May 14 - No Cached
  • Reforms that came into force in 1994 allow pretty much anyone who satisfies basic standards to open a new school and take in children at the state's expense
  • local municipality must pay the school what it would have spent educating each child itself—a sum of SKr48,000-70,000 ($8,000-12,000) a year, depending on the child's age and the school's location
  • Children must be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • no religious requirements or entrance exams
  • Nothing extra can be charged for, but making a profit is fine
    • izz aty
      izz aty on 11 May 14
       
      profit is fine; can't ask for fees
  • In just 14 years the share of Swedish children educated privately has risen from a fraction of a percent to more than 10%
  • What no one predicted was the emergence of chains of schools. Yet that is where much of the growth in independent education has come from
  • Kunskapsskolan gets its customers to do much of the work themselves
  • He then broadens the analogy to hotels and airlines, which make money only if they are popular enough to maintain high occupancy rates.
  • Youngsters spend 15 minutes each week with a tutor, reviewing the past week's progress and agreeing on goals and a timetable for the next one. This will include classes and lectures, but also a great deal of independent or small-group study
  • Kunskapsporten allows each student to work at his own level, and spend less or more time on each subject, depending on his strengths and weakness
  • Each subject is divided into 35 steps. Students who reach step 25 graduate with a pass; those who make it to step 30 or 35 gain, respectively, a merit or distinction
  • no money is wasted on fancy surroundings
  • Teachers update and add new material to the website during school holidays and get just seven weeks off each year, roughly the same as the average Swedish office worker
  • “We do not mind being compared to McDonald's,” he says. “If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.
  • Sweden's Independent Schools Association has ten members that run more than six schools, and five that run ten or more
  • Each child's progress is reported each week in a logbook, and parents can follow what is being studied on the website.
  • expectation that the children take responsibility for their own progress
  • “Our aim is that by the time students finish school, they can set their own learning goals,” says Christian Wetell, head teacher at Kunskapsskolan Enskede. “Three or four students in each year may not manage this, but most will.”
  • tracks the performance of individual teachers to see which ones do best as personal tutors or as subject teachers
  • bonuses to particularly successful teachers and is considering paying extra to good ones from successful schools who are willing to move to underperforming ones
  • preferred bidder to run two “academies”—state-funded schools run largely free from state control—in London
  • run by a not-for-profit arm, since for-profit ventures are banned from Britain's academies programme
  • The firm also hopes to open low-cost independent schools in Britain, where it can offer the full Kunskapsskolan experience, free of state meddling
  • the returns are solid, rather than stellar: Mr Ledin quotes an average return on capital of 5-7% a year
  • If a future government, hostile to school choice, changed the rules, that would be the end of this nascent market.
  • The school reforms are popular with parents, he says, and politicians know they meddle with them at their peril. More plausible would be a change to the rules so that independent schools had to match the methods and curriculum of state schools more closely, or perhaps even a ban on profits
  • The latter sounds bad, says Mr Stawström, but would not really amount to much: companies could split themselves into non-profit schools and a profit-making body that supplies services, such as teaching materials and consultancy
izz aty

Tory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/Tory

politics politicians toryism political science history england united kingdom britain conservative

shared by izz aty on 12 May 14 - Cached
  • The Tory ethos has been summed up with the phrase 'God, King and Country.'
  • Tories generally advocate monarchism, are usually of a High Church Anglican religious heritage,[2][3] and are opposed to the radical liberalism of the Whig faction
  • Due to these Tories leading the formation of the Conservative Party, members of the party are colloquially referred to as Tories, even if they are not traditionalists
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The term was thus originally a term of abuse, "an Irish rebel", before being adopted as a political label in the same way as Whig.
  • Towards the end of Charles II's reign (1660–85) there was some debate about whether or not his brother, James, Duke of York, should be allowed to succeed to the throne. 'Whigs' was the abusive term directed at those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. Those who were not prepared to exclude James were labelled 'Abhorrers' and later 'Tories'.
  • The suffix -ism was quickly added to both 'Whig' and 'Tory' to make Whiggism and Toryism, meaning the principles and methods of each faction.
  • Historically, the term Tory has been applied in various ways to loyalists of the British monarchy
  • characterized by strong monarchist tendencies, support for the Church of England, and hostility to reform
  • Since 1832, the term "Tory" is commonly used to refer to the Conservative Party and its members.
izz aty

Houston - 75 ESL Teaching Ideas (TESL/TEFL) - 0 views

iteslj.org/...Houston-TeachingIdeas.html

esol esl intro icebreakers classroom language learning english activities ideas teaching reference education

shared by izz aty on 04 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Ask a student to demonstrate a dance, and assist the student in explaining the movements in English.
  • Ask students to name as many objects in the classroom as they can while you write them on the board.
  • Ask your students if there are any songs running through their heads today. If anyone says yes, encourage the student to sing or hum a little bit, and ask the others if they can identify it.
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  • Assign students to take a conversation from their coursebook that they are familiar with and reduce each line to only one word.
  • At the end of class, erase the board and challenge students to recall everything you wrote on the board during the class period. Write the expressions on the board once again as your students call them out.
  • Bring a cellular phone (real or toy) to class, and pretend to receive calls throughout the class. As the students can only hear one side of the conversation, they must guess who is calling you and why. Make the initial conversation very brief, and gradually add clues with each conversation. The student who guesses correctly wins a prize.
  • Bring in some snacks that you think your students haven't tried before, and invite the students to sample them and give their comments.
  • Collaborate with your students on a list of famous people, including movie stars, politicians, athletes, and artists. Have every student choose a famous person, and put them in pairs to interview each other.
  • Come to class dressed differently than usual and have students comment on what's different.
  • Copy a page from a comic book, white out the dialogue, make copies for your class, and have them supply utterances for the characters.
  • Copy pages from various ESL textbooks (at an appropriate level for your students), put them on the walls, and have students wander around the classroom and learn a new phrase. Then have them teach each other what they learned.
  • Copy some interesting pictures of people from magazine ads. Give a picture to each student, have the student fold up the bottom of the picture about half an inch, and write something the person might be thinking or saying. Put all the pictures up on the board, and let everyone come up and take a look.
  • Draw a pancake-shape on the board, and announce that the school will soon be moving to a desert island. Invite students one by one to go to the board and draw one thing they would like to have on the island.
  • Draw a party scene on the board, and invite students to come up and draw someone they would like to have at the party.
  • Fill the board with vocabulary your students have encountered in previous classes (make sure to include all parts of speech), and get them to make some sentences out of the words.
  • Find out what famous people your students admire, and work together with the class to write a letter to one of them.
  • First, instruct your students to write on a slip of paper the name of one book, CD, or movie that changed them in some way. Collect the papers, call out the titles, and ask the class if they can guess who wrote it. Finally, let the writer identify him or herself, explaining his or her choice.
  • Hand a student a ball of yellow yarn. Have him toss it to another student, while saying something positive about that student and holding onto the end of the yarn. Continue in this manner until there is a web between all the students.
  • izz aty on 04 Aug 11
     
    These are the ideas included in Hall Houston's Random ESL Idea Generator. If you have a JavaScript-enabled browser, you can use the generator to get a randomly-selected idea from this list. Perhaps you will find it useful to print out this list and refer to it from time to time.
izz aty

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

aer.sagepub.com/...493.short

american special ed no child left behind neoliberalism education high-stakes testing globalisation

shared by izz aty on 18 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • 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

Let's Call All Terrorists "Terrorists" - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...call-all-terrorists-terrorists

terrorism france charlie hebdo social phenomenon social issues social justice

shared by izz aty on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • In the hours since the shooting, politicians and the media have universally condemned the gunmen as "terrorists" and called their actions "terrorism." And for good reason, too: the killing of unarmed civilians for apparently political or religious reasons is the classic definition of terrorism.
  • 2011 Norway attacks, where a white right-wing extremist and racist named Anders Breivik killed 77 people during a rampage through Oslo and a nearby summer camp.
  • If Breivik's name were "Omar" and he said that he acted in the name of Islam as opposed to "Europe" and Christianity, I doubt people like Michael Morell would forget who he is or what he did.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But like other white perpetrators of mass political violence, from the guy who shot up a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin a few years ago to the guy who attacked a Kansas JCC this past April, Breivik gets a free pass from the media. He's a "mass shooter" or "mass murderer," not a "terrorist."
  • Are the guys who aimed loaded guns at federal officers at the Bundy ranch called "terrorists"? They are. Or the people who bombed the NAACP building yesterday in Colorado? Absolutely.
  • In our society, calling an act of violence "terrorism" is an extremely powerful statement. It says that that an action is so awful, so beyond what we consider acceptable human behavior, that we must do everything we can to prevent it from happening ever again.
  • when we refuse to call acts of violence that really are terrorism "terrorism," we're saying as a society that we don't need to take them as seriously as we would the acts of violence that we do call terrorism.
  • According to some estimates, right-wing terrorists have killed more Americans since 9/11 than Islamic terrorists have.
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