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Though today more than half of the students at the Liberté VI school are girls, Ms. Kidjo said there was more work to be done. Violence in school remains a reality for many Senegalese children, especially for girls.

Student Aida Yacine Sy, 8, said girls must be careful. “My mom told me not to wear short clothing. I should not go into a room alone with a teacher or a group of boys. It is not smart,” she said as her friends nodded in agreement. Other students at the school said violence could mean anything from bullying to rape. Seated alongside students at a small wooden desk, Ms. Kidjo listened to their stories. Violence, she told them, is never the answer. “When I was young, kids bullied me because I was small. My dad told me that my brain is my best weapon,” she said. “You must have a strategy. You must speak to your teachers and parents.”

A safe learning environment is essential to keeping girls in school. In Senegal, violence in school, early marriage, sexual abuse, gender discrimination and poverty can impede a girl’s ability to learn.

At a time when the underachievement of black boys in the United States can only be described as a national crisis, there is finally some good news. This fall, Baltimore City Schools chief executive Andres Alonso proudly reported that black male teens in his district are staying in school and graduating in higher numbers. The announcement made headlines, and for good reason: It proves that there are successful strategies in approaching this seemingly intractable problem. We urge other cities across the country to learn from Baltimore's creative approach.

We have long known that excessive use of suspension and expulsion results in higher rates of school absence, academic failure and, eventually, quitting school altogether.

Consider: In the 2003-04 school year, fewer than one out of two black male students graduated. Baltimore schools handed out nearly 26,000 suspensions to a student body of just over 88,000 kids. Two-thirds were to boys and, reflecting the city's population, nearly all were to black students.

KAZAN — Google has become a classroom tool in Tatarstan as the republic, already ranked by Forbes as Russia’s best region for business, invests heavily in digital technologies for its schools in hopes of becoming the best region for education as well. Tatarstan's annual budget for education has doubled over the past five years to 36 billion rubles ($1.2 billion), and it is spending 1.92 billion rubles over 2010-11 to develop computer-based education, the republic's education and science minister, Albert Gilmutdinov, said at the Electronic School 2011 conference in Kazan. In addition, 103.2 million rubles in federal funding is being used. Gilmutdinov recalled the Russian saying "a miser pays twice" as he explained the republic's hefty investment in education. To be commercially successful in the 21st century, Tatarstan will have to be well-educated, he told The Moscow Times at the conference last week.

The microprocessor producer has donated Intel-based computers to a Kazan classroom and conducted free teacher training in Tatarstan, said Sergei Zhukov, the Russia and CIS director of Intel's World Ahead Program, which works with governments to increase access to technology. The program's work in Tatarstan is one of  its largest projects in Russia, he said.

The republic's educational development strategy for 2010-15 includes installing computers and high-speed Internet in all of Tatarstan's 1,940 schools, purchasing digital educational content and training teachers to use the new technology. All schools will offer services such as school web sites, text messaging for parents and digital records and schedules. The region is working with partners including Intel, Google, Microsoft and the Tatarstan IT company ILC-KME CS.

ACAPULCO, Mexico — The message is delivered by a phone call to the office of one school, a sheaf of photocopied papers dropped off at another, a banner hung outside a third.

The demand is the same: teachers have until Oct. 1 to start handing over half of their pay. If they do not, they risk their lives. Extortion is a booming industry in Mexico, with reported cases having almost tripled since 2004. To some analysts, it is an unintended consequence of the government’s strategy in the drug war: as the large cartels splinter, armies of street-level thugs schooled in threats and violence have brought their skills to new enterprises. But the threat to teachers here in this tarnished tourist resort has taken the practice to a new level. Since the anonymous threats began last month, when students returned to classes after summer break, hundreds of schools have shut down.

“We are all scared,” said a high school drawing teacher who would give her name only as Noemi. “We are targets because we have a salary that is a bit more stable than the rest.”

PeaceBuilders is an organization that provides training for teachers, parents and others involved in the lives and wellbeing of young children and teens. The training goes beyond the nurturing and disciplinary aspects usually associated with child care, and also strives for a peaceful environment more conducive to learning.

One of the steps teachers will implement as part of the PeaceBuilders program will be a campaign to give up "put-downs." Other time will include the PeaceBuilders pledge, "praise people" activities, and seeking wise people for input, making them the subjects in a PeaceBuilders Hall of Fame.

Teachers were also offered tips as "First Aid for Anger," strategies that work well in a school setting as well as the home, to help build a more positive life."It's a program that has many applications in life, regardless of age," Bustos said.

Students and teachers in four southern African countries are benefiting from an ambitious HIV programme spearheaded by UNESCO. From its start in 2008, the programme was designed to strengthen the education sector’s AIDS response in Angola, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.

NDICATIONS have emerged that the Federal Government has dropped the 9-3- 4 system of education.   This educational system took stakeholders over three years to plan and work out its implementation strategy.   The system, which purportedly kicked off in 2009, had the components of basic, technical and vocational inputs, which pupils were expected to complete in the first nine years before proceeding on a career path in the next three years of secondary education.   Education Minister, Prof.  Uqayyatu Rufa’i, last Tuesday, proposed to the National Assembly (NASS), the need to revert to the old system of 6-3-3-4, but with a modification that would include Early  Childhood Education (ECE).