Graduating from protesters to politicians, Chile’s student leaders achieved the legislative wins that have eluded their Occupy counterparts.
Chilean Activists Change the Rules of the Game
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education
Overcoming the Barriers to Educating Roma Children
Romanian educators perpetuate a vicious cycle of failure with Roma children.
Standing Up for Girls’ Education in Nigeria
Many families in Nigeria are already skeptical about women’s education. The Nigerian government’s failure to protect schoolgirls makes it worse.
Rwandan Bonsais
Are Rwanda’s post-genocide youth programs paving the way for future unrest?
Peru Confronts Its Past
Nations trying to come to terms with violence from their recent pasts have a difficult road ahead, and the Andean country of Peru is no exception. The country is grappling with a host of issues stemming from its violent struggle against insurgent movements in the 1980s and 1990s.
Haiti’s Recovery Ultimately Contingent on Education
If education were made more of a priority, Haiti’s future would look much brighter.
Interview with Farid Panjwani
In our special focus on Islamophobia, Farid Panjwani talks about the relationship between religion and citizenship, the impact of Sharia law, and the role of Muslim faith schools.
The Art of Extraction
The teacher assembles a collection of chocolate-chip cookies and toothpicks. This is how the elementary school children are supposed to learn about the costs associated with coal mining. Each cookie is a mining property. The students each receive $19 in play money, which they use to buy these properties. They examine the cookies closely to determine which ones to buy. They map their cookies. They buy mining equipment in the form of paperclips and toothpicks. Each minute spent extracting a chocolate chip costs $1. The chips that they do not surreptitiously eat can be sold for $2 apiece. When they are finished, the students must restore their property to its original condition using only their tools, a process that also costs money. Only after this labor can they determine their profits — and the costs of the mining process.
The Grinch Who Stole Our Future
The Bush administration released its fiscal year (FY) 2009 $3 trillion budget request on Monday, February 5. As Congress excavates through the President Bush’ proposed budget looking for specks of political gold in this election year, something very real, very threatening, and very consequential is buried throughout the thousands of pages of the budget–and that is, how it will simply screw an entire generation.
Hardliners Target Detente with North Korea
The Bush administration’s approach to North Korea was once quite consistent with its overall foreign policy. There was name-calling, a preference for regime change, and an emphasis on military solutions. Not surprisingly, then, the relationship between the United States and North Korea, like so many other tense stand-offs, deteriorated over the last seven years. The United States accused the third member of the “axis of evil” of money-laundering, missile sales, and a secret program for the production of nuclear material. For its part, North Korea responded tit for tat at the rhetorical level. And, in October 2006, it upped the ante by exploding a nuclear device. If the United States were not tied up in other military conflicts, and eyeing Iran to boot, a war in Northeast Asia might have been higher on the administration’s to-do list.