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There are no statistics about how many Afghan girls masquerade as boys. But when asked, Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbor or co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy. To those who know, these children are often referred to as neither “daughter” nor “son” in conversation, but as “bacha posh,” which literally means “dressed up as a boy” in Dari. Through dozens of interviews conducted over several months, where many people wanted to remain anonymous or to use only first names for fear of exposing their families, it was possible to trace a practice that has remained mostly obscured to outsiders. Yet it cuts across class, education, ethnicity and geography, and has endured even through Afghanistan’s many wars and governments.

There are no specific legal or religious proscriptions against the practice. In most cases, a return to womanhood takes place when the child enters puberty. The parents almost always make that decision.

A bacha posh can also more easily receive an education, work outside the home, even escort her sisters in public, allowing freedoms that are unheard of for girls in a society that strictly segregates men and women.

Referred to variously as technopanic, predator panic, cyberbullying panic, etc., a lot of fear and anxiety has developed around the intersection of youth and the Internet.

He defined juvenoia as "the exaggerated fear of the influence of social change [including the Internet] on youth." This week, the first of a two-part series on Dr. Finkelhor's talk: why the fear is unsupported by the evidence and (next week) why all the fear.

Jeffrey Beard, the head of one of the world's most respected assessment organisations - the International Baccalaureate (IB) - has been caught red-handed passing off someone else's work as his own.The Geneva-based director general of the IB has been publicly named and shamed by an American academic institution where he made a speech that it has discovered "was not original work".Mr Beard gave a talk on "Education for a Better World" last month at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State.

It appears that Mr Beard broke one of the golden rules of cheating - if you're going to do it don't be too obvious. In using material from Sir Ken, he picked on a world-renowned US-based British educationalist who has had one of his talks viewed more than 1.5 million times on the internet."Mr Beard neglected to cite his source or reveal the quotations for what they were. Yesterday's speech was not original work," the statement continued.The IB's own guide for schools on academic honesty defines plagiarism as "the representation of the ideas or work of another person as the candidate's own".

This week an IB spokeswoman said: "On reflection, Mr Beard thinks that he could have been more explicit about the sources and authors that inspired him for the content of this speech."She said he had drawn from "a number of sources", including Sir Ken Robinson, but "it was never Mr Beard's intent to imply that the ideas were his alone"."If this had not been a speech, but a scholarly or academic paper, he would have made a complete list of all references available," she said.The Chautauqua Institution was not impressed and has withdrawn the speech from its website and bookshop. Its statement ends: "Mr Beard's behavior in this matter is not characteristic of the work done here at Chautauqua and violates the expectations you should have for that work. We acknowledge to you our genuine disappointment in this event."

We’ve created Pine Tree Poetry to interlace students, their peers, parents, teachers and school librarians in a quest for poetry writing excellence. Rarely do students earn kudos or trophies for their writing, but at Pine Tree Poetry, we are dedicated to rewarding the fine writing achievements of students who are 5 – 18. Pine Tree Poetry contributes four important elements to the realm of student poetry. We: 1. Receive, read, evaluate, pick (a few) and publish the best poems written by poets ages 5 – 18. 2. Support schools by awarding thousands of dollars each year for much-needed library materials. Some awards are based upon the number of poems submitted while others are selected at random from among all particiipants. 3. Give a free copy of The Pine Tree Poetry Collection to the library of every school that has one or more students published. 4. Highlight the life lesson that many will write and the best will be chosen. We are not a vanity publishing company! We’re out to change the world one poem at a time and we invite students, parents, librarians, teachers and those who love the written word to join us.

This site will be used primarily to document our development with iPads, iPod Touches and 1-1 implementation in our school.

NEW YORK, USA, 23 April 2010 - Indigenous people have come from all over the world to New York this week to participate in the Ninth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. At its own panel yesterday which was designed to explore issues specifically affecting children and adolescents UNICEF assembled a group that included Urapinã Pataxó 15, and Kãhu Pataxó, 19, WHO live in Pataxó de Coroa Vermelha, a small village in the Bahia region of north-eastern Brazil We want to ensure that cultural diversity and the rights of cultural expression are fully mainstreamed in our world. Its a challenge, said UNICEF Deputy Director of Policy and Practice Elizabeth Gibbons. She added that UNICEFs involvement in the past had been fragmentary and that the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2009 provided an important reminder of the urgency of these issues. In this video, Urapinã Pataxó, 15, describes the conditions in his village in Bahia, Brazil, that led to him becoming an activist for the rights of indigenous children and young peopl