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Teachers Without Borders

States look to enact cyberbullying laws - USATODAY.com - 1 views

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    Lawmakers in at least five states aim to stiffen or enact cyberbullying laws as national concern grows over electronic harassment and its deadly consequences.
Teachers Without Borders

Cuomo signs cyberbullying measure into law - Albany - The Buffalo News - 0 views

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    Cuomo signs cyberbullying measure into law Measure does not include stronger, clearer penalties for digital modes of harassment
Teachers Without Borders

Fake Facebook identities are real problem for schools | StarTribune.com - 0 views

  • The impersonator posed as a real Cottage Grove sixth-grader, created a Facebook page and posted threats that he would bring a gun to school and shoot three students. Fights broke out in school as students argued over who created the fake profile that ridiculed the boy, a special education student. It was not only the viciousness of the lies and threats that caught the attention of Cottage Grove police, but the youthfulness of those involved, only 11 and 12.
  • Amid a wave of proliferating Facebook fakes and cyber-attacks like this one -- including children too young for Facebook's minimum age of 13 -- Cottage Grove police and other metro law enforcement agencies find themselves coping with outdated state laws, limited resources and a steep learning curve on children's use of social media.
Gwen Stamm

Red Cross EHL | Home - 0 views

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    Has well-developed curriculum on Exploring Humanitarian Law (rules governing war and their impact on human life and dignity)
Voytek Bialkowski

Voices of Australia - Learning outcomes - 0 views

  • The teaching and learning activities have been designed to address the outcomes in all subjects related to Civics and Citizenship across Australia (including history, society andenvironment and humanities).
  • Activity 5: Cases studies, theorigins of modern human rightslaws, international law.
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    Governmental publication integrating activities, case studies, and other material into existing curricula in history/civic studies. This comprehensive resource is particularly relevant to rights & diversity education. *Copyright government resource--may be used for educational/training purposes, however.
stephknox24

AFWW :: To Abolish War - 0 views

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    The thesis of this essay is that the institution of war could be abolished through a combination of Constructive Programs and Obstructive Programs. Good works alone won't end war. To transform dominator, warring cultures into egalitarian and nonwarring ones, Constructive Programs are needed to prepare the way, to establish the groundwork for a new lifestyle. But alone they will not result in a paradigm shift to a Gene Roddenberry-style Star Trek future on earth in which there is gender and racial equality, poverty has been eliminated, and conflicts are resolved by the rule of law instead of through military force. Paradoxically, Constructive Programs unless paired with the force of Obstructive Programs can enable dominator cultures to remain firmly in place. Moreover, to bring about a major social transformation we will need leaders to unite men and women as full partners in shaping a massive cultural shift to a more egalitarian, just, and nonwarring future.
Teachers Without Borders

Mexico's drug gangs aim at new target teachers - World AP - MiamiHerald.com - 1 views

  • Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers. Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers - and even the children.
  • To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins. Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."
  • Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.
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  • "We are scared," admitted Maria de Jesus Casio, principal of the Ramon Lopez Velarde Elementary School. But she also said teachers don't want to pay. "Teachers don't have much money. The salaries are just enough for survival." Teachers in this city earn an average of $650 a month. Christmas bonuses vary but the average is about a month's pay.
  • "The educational system is under threat by criminal groups," Javier Gonzalez, the under secretary for education in northern Chihuahua state, said in an interview. "We're just praying to God that there never is an event of this nature."
  • At the pre-primary school hit by arson Dec. 5, director Norma Pena said her school had been sacked of anything valuable. "They constantly rob from us - the metal bars from the fence, the air conditioners, even the swing sets," Pena said. "The laws are so soft. The laws are no good. When they catch someone, they let them go right away. The criminals threaten the authorities."
  • "We feel the caring and love people have for our school. This is what keeps us going," Casio said. But the crime gangs are sapping hope. "They respect no one. What is there to rob in this school? And we teachers, with our salaries, have even less."
Teachers Without Borders

Diane Ravitch: Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching : NPR - 0 views

  • "I came to the conclusion ... that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I had never imagined that the test would someday be turned into a blunt instrument to close schools — or to say whether teachers are good teachers or not — because I always knew children's test scores are far more complicated than the way they're being received today."
  • "The whole purpose of federal law and state law should be to help schools improve, not to come in and close them down and say, 'We're going to start with a clean slate,' because there's no guarantee that the clean slate's going to be better than the old slate," says Ravitch. "Most of the schools that will be closed are in poor or minority communities where large numbers of children are very poor and large numbers of children don't speak English. They have high needs. They come from all kinds of difficult circumstances and they need help — they don't need their school closed."
  • "Regular public school parents are angry because they no longer have an art room, they no longer have a computer room — whatever space they had for extra activities gets given to the charters and then they have better facilities. They have a lot of philanthropic money behind them — Wall Street hedge fund managers have made this their favorite cause. So at least in [New York City] they are better-funded ... so they have better everything."
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  • "Race to the Top is an extension of No Child Left Behind. It contains all of the punitive features. It encourages states to have more charter schools. It said, when it invited proposals from states, that you needed to have more charter schools, you needed to have merit pay — which is a terrible idea — you needed to judge teachers by test scores, which is even a worse idea.
  • On teachers unions "They're not the problem. The state with the highest scores on the national test, that state is Massachusetts — which is 100 percent union. The nation with the highest scores in the world is Finland, which is 100 percent union. Management and labor can always work together around the needs of children if they're willing to. I think what's happening in Wisconsin and Ohio and Florida and Indiana is very, very conservative right-wing governors want to break the unions because the unions provide support to the Democratic Party. But the unions really aren't the problem in education."
Teachers Without Borders

Buenos Aires Teachers on Strike | Teacher Solidarity - 0 views

  • Teachers in Buenos Aires have been on strike for the last two days against new laws being brought in by the city’s government The teachers are striking against plans by the right wing mayor – property tycoon Mauricio Macri to change the law so that instead of teachers being appointed by school boards, they will be appointed by the government. The teachers see this as part of the overall efforts of the government to privatise education and run down free democratic education in Argentina.
Teachers Without Borders

At what age? | Right to Education - 0 views

  • What are the implications for children’s development if the age at which they complete their compulsory schooling is 14 but the legal minimum age for employment is 12? Or vice versa? What happens if a girl can legally be married before finishing compulsory education? Will she return to school and develop her potential to the fullest? And who ensures that relevant education of good quality is in place to prevent juvenile delinquency or to facilitate the reintegration into society of children in conflict with the law? These are some of the questions raised in At what age?... are school-children employed, married and taken to court? – Trends over time. Covering 186 State reports over a period of 18 years, this research confirms that States have not yet fully upheld the right to education in their legislation. Nor have they agreed standards for the transition from childhood to adulthood, either domestically or internationally.
Teachers Without Borders

Midterm report: Tanzania's educational revolution needs investment | Global development... - 0 views

  • Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.
  • half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.
  • The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
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  • 32-year-old Grace Mayemba, who teaches English, Swahili and social studies. "It's so hard because there are so many," she says."They are noisy and can do anything. To make each child understand is very difficult but you have to try your best.
  • Salima Omari, 36, a science and maths teacher, faces classes of 76 pupils. "It's difficult to cope with when you want to give one-to-one support. There are only four toilets for the whole school and two for the teachers, and there is not much water. The MDG has been good for Tanzania overall, but it was rushed."
  • With significant donor support from Britain and others, the government has allocated more than 2tn shillings (£856,000) for education in 2010-11, about double its spending on health. But most schools still lack electricity or water – nine in 10 children cannot wash their hands after using the toilet. Education activists warn that Tanzania, where half the population is below 18, still has a long way to go to achieve the MDG in spirit.
  • "Students will be enrolled, but in a few months, because of no shoes or textbooks, they can easily drop out," says Anthony Mwakibinga, its acting co-ordinator. "Boys often drop out for child labour near diamond mines. Girls drop out because of early pregnancy or marriage in some areas."
  • In Tanzania, parents are still expected to contribute to teaching materials, uniforms and even classroom construction. Still, it's not enough. Mwakibinga says he has come across classes of 200 pupils where quality inevitably suffers. "What do you from expect from a classroom of 200 children, even if the teacher works like a donkey? What if the 200 children have no books?"
  • The national teacher-pupil ratio has climbed from 1:41 in 2000 to 1:51 today. New teacher training colleges, including some in the private sector, have opened in a bid to meet the demand, but some trainees are allegedly rushed through in three or four months. The profession also suffers from low public esteem.
  • One teacher, Florence Katabazi, 37, says: "I chose teaching and to this day people think I'm a failure. People say, 'I want my son to be a doctor or lawyer, not a teacher,' It's shameful to be a teacher. Everyone runs away from the profession. If they want to be an accountant, they just use teaching as a bridge. At the end of the day we've got 10,000 half-baked teachers and only 400 good ones."
  • Struggling to maintain classroom discipline, some of the country's 160,000 primary school teachers resort to corporal punishment. Noel Ihebuzor, Unicef's chief of basic education and life skills, says: "They see it as controlling children and don't feel they are doing anything wrong. They were brought up that way. We've had stories where parents take children to the head and say, 'He's stubborn, cane him for me.'"
  • "Another problem is the provision of decent training services to teachers. The ministry has tried to develop a management strategy this year but it has not been implemented because of scarce resources. It's good to have a target, but a target without resources is a problem."
  • the pass rate for the primary school leaving exam is just 49.4%.
  • One teacher has a class of 166, with some pupils forced to lie on the bare concrete floor during lessons. They keep up spirits in the dusty, tree-lined central courtyard by playing steel instruments on the bandstand. In headteacher Abdallah Mgomi's office, a typed sheet of paper on the wall reminds anyone who reads it: "Quality is never an accident."
Meghan Flaherty

Gender Dynamics of Conflict, Peace-building and Reconstruction | UNESCO - 0 views

  • n March 2000, the UN Security Council, in its Proclamation on International Women's Day, recognized that gender equality is an integral component of peace
  • On 31 October 2000 it passed Security Council Resolution 1325 [PDF, 35 Kb], calling on governments – and the Security Council itself – to include women in negotiations and settlements with respect to conflict-resolution and peace-building. The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, and the need to implement fully international humanitarian and human rights law that protect the rights of women and girls during and after conflicts.
  • Increasing the representation of women at all decision-making levels
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  • Integrating a gender perspective into peacekeeping missions
  • Supporting women's grassroots organizations in their peace initiatives
  • Involving women as participants in peace negotiations and agreements;
  • Ensuring protection of and respect for human rights of women and girls;
  • Protecting women and girls from gender-based violence;
  • Integrating a gender perspective into disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants.
  • In many conflict areas, a culture of "hegemonic masculinity" prevails among the major political actors,
Teachers Without Borders

Turning environmental destruction into a crime against peace - AlertNet - 0 views

  • environmental lawyer Polly Higgins outlined the proposed law of ecocide, which she says should be recognised by the United Nations as a fifth crime against peace alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
Teachers Without Borders

Daily Nation: - News |Kenya school curriculum aligned with new law - 0 views

  • The school syllabus has been changed to make it relevant to the new Constitution.
  • Key amendments will start this term in primary and secondary schools with most of the changes being made in social studies, history and government. A detailed directive from the Ministry of Education has been sent to all schools through the provincial and district education officers.
  • “These changes are to come into effect immediately and the information should be brought to the attention of all schools,” Mr Enos Oyaya, the director of quality assurance and standards at the ministry, said.
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  • This is the first tangible action that the ministry has taken in aligning education with the new Constitution.
Teachers Without Borders

Educate the Girl, Empower the Woman - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

  • Picture a mother, hunching over a field with a Medieval-style hoe in hand, spending day after day tilling the soil under a beating hot sun - only to retire home to care for her family without electricity or running water.This is not a 12th century image, but a typical working day for scores of rural women in today's developing world, where lack of access to education and technology has forced many to resort to traditional and often painful methods of livelihood.
  • Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), a pan- African network bringing together individuals and organisations from 23 countries, is among the key regional groups tackling this issue head on. WILDAF believes lack of knowledge about education rights, specifically among young girls, is one of the main reasons forcing rural people to endure lives of agricultural hardship.
  • "We want to teach them how to develop projects, from tilling the ground to seeding, all the way through to packaging at an international level so the food will be accepted by everybody in other countries," she said. Agu cited a project where female farmers of moringa – a nutritious African plant – were able to increase the efficiency and ease of production, through simple modern conveniences.
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  • Bisi Olateru-Olagbegi, executive director of the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON) and board member of WILDAF, said educating girls with both formal and practical education was key to addressing the gender imbalances and breaking the cycle of poverty. "When a women is empowered and she can assert her rights in the community she can rise up to any position and be part of decision making and raise the status of women," Olateru- Olagbegi said.
  • Although enrolment levels have risen in many developing countries since 2000, UNICEF estimated there were still more than 100 million children out of school in 2008, 52 percent of them girls and the majority living in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Subsequently there has been a measurable increase in girls attending school, a trend that has led to fewer early marriages and teenage pregnancies as well as a reduction in the number of youths who are trafficked and prostituted. In spite of the gains, however, girls are still largely underrepresented in the science and technology fields. "Even when girls go to school there is a bias that girls are not supposed to learn science and technology; they're still doing the social sciences and humanities," Olateru-Olagbegi said. "They don't think that the faculties of girls are developed enough and it's mere discrimination."
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | BURUNDI: Helping returnee students overcome language barrier | Burundi | ... - 0 views

  • MAKAMBA, 24 February 2011 (IRIN) - Unversed in Burundi's official languages of French and Kirundi, children of refugees returning after decades spent in Anglophone countries, such as neighbouring Tanzania, often find it difficult to continue their studies and some drop out.
  • To ensure such students continue learning, a group of returnee teachers has set up an education centre in the commune of Mabanda in Makamba Province, near Tanzania. The teachers work without pay. "We couldn't just sit back while our children faced a lack of education due to a language barrier," Norbert Bitaboneka, the principal, told IRIN. Swahili and English are the languages of instruction at the facility, the Centre Prévisionnel de l'Afrique de l'Est (East African Planning Centre), in line with the Tanzanian curriculum. The language of instruction in Burundian schools is French.
  • Most of the returnee students affected by the language barrier are those whose parents fled Burundi during civil war in 1972.
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  • "When I returned from Tanzania, I hoped to continue with my studies but I had no chance of doing so because I didn't understand French or Kirundi," Imed Hakiza, now a small-scale trader at Mabanda market, said.
  • “The situation is complex. The school is not recognized by Burundian law but teachers and the principal are doing something good, which made us decide not to close the school even though we were asked to do so," he added.
  • "Besides language training, we are adopting a holistic approach in providing returnees with life skills like sports for integration, culture and arts, awareness-raising and discussions of youth-relevant issues such as HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, environmental awareness and conflict resolution," Zeus said.
  • According to RET, some 690 students are enrolled in intermediate level courses to learn French and Kirundi and culture clubs have been set up in 37 secondary schools across the provinces of Bururi, Makamba and Rutana.
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Should Creole replace French in Haiti's schools? - 0 views

  • "The percentage of people who speak French fluently is about 5%, and 100% speak Creole," says Chris Low. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote It's like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold” End Quote Michel DeGraff Associate Professor of Linguistics at MIT "So it's really apartheid through language."
  • He argues that French should be taught in Haiti as a second-language - after children have learnt basic literacy skills in Creole. "Learning to first read and write in a foreign language is somewhat like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold, and the blindfold is never taken off," he told the BBC World Service.
  • No matter which indicators you pick, Haiti has an appalling record on education. One recent report rated it as the third worst place in the world, after Somalia and Eritrea, to go to school. Continue reading the main story A brief history of Haitian Creole It emerged towards the end of the 18th Century as slaves from Africa began mixing African languages with French Lots of the vocabulary comes from French, but the grammar is quite different Spelling was standardised in 1979 A law called the Bernard Reform was introduced in the early 1980s, designed to boost Creole in schools The 1987 constitution states that French and Creole are both official languages in Haiti It's estimated that about one-third of children never enrol at primary school, and only about one in 10 complete secondary school.
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  • "Whether we want it or not, we are influenced by French because of the history of colonialism - this is not something we can get rid of quickly," he told the BBC World Service. "I don't think education should be only in Creole - Creole is not a scientific language."
  • The belief is widely held in Haiti that Creole is somehow a primitive, inferior language - possibly because of its origins in the days of slavery. The earthquake in 2010 destroyed about 80% of schools But linguists are at pains to counter this perception. Creole is "fully expressive", as well as being rich in imagery and wisdom says Prof DeGraff.
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    Creole is the mother tongue in Haiti, but children do most of their schooling in French. Two hundred years after Haiti became the world's first black-led republic, is the use of French holding the nation back?
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Uganda: School Children Demand an End to Child Labour - 0 views

  • School children have asked government to explain its commitment to end rampant child labour in the country. The children, in both primary and secondary schools, said despite several efforts and the laws in place, child labour has persisted, thereby posing dangers to their growth and health. "We are always abused. Is it right for children to work in construction companies? What solution do you have for those who employ children in bars and other places and what is government doing to such entrepreneurs?" Hamidu Kamoga, a secondary school student from Comprehensive College, Kitetikka in Wakiso District said.
  • The young people made the demands during celebrations to mark the commemoration of the World Day Against Child Labour 2011 at Kyambogo University. The celebrations attracted workers organisations, activists and children in and out of school under the theme; 'Warning! Children in hazardous work; end child labour.'
  • A International Labour Organisation (ILO) report released this month warns that a staggeringly high number of children are still caught in hazardous work with some 115 million of the world's 215m child labourers, under 18 years.
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  • "...Although the overall number of children aged 5 to 17 in hazardous work declined between 2004 and 2008, the number aged 15 to 17 actually increased by 20 per cent during the same period. It increased from 52 million to 62 million," reads the report.
  • "It is difficult to establish facts and figures about Child Labour, that is why we have to apply different techniques thus creating relationships with people involved in child labour," said Ms Kort emphasising that children below 14 years are not supposed to work while children aged 14 to 17 are supposed to do light work. Ms Helen Grace Namulwana, the Platform for Labour Action senior programme Officer in charge of child labour said there is need to enhance the fight for the children at the risk of falling into labour because it is their right to go to school.
  • We criticise any acts that get said children involved in child labour and we believe that every child has a right to education, so nothing should stand in the way to observing those rights," said Ms Namulwana.
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