Friday, March 06, 2020


Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos SLAMS USC for 'heartbreaking and inexcusable' failure in 'ignoring' claims campus gynecologist sexually abused students for years

University of Southern California was ordered to undergo three years of federal monitoring after systematic failures were cited in the school's response to allegations of sexual misconduct by a former campus gynecologist.

The monitoring ordered by the US Department of Education comes amid sweeping changes that were mandated in USC's Title IX procedures, the federal law protecting students from sex-based discrimination.

The department on Thursday delivered a stinging rebuke of the Los Angeles school's handling of multiple accusations made against Dr. George Tyndall.

'This total and complete failure to protect students is heartbreaking and inexcusable,' US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statement announcing the results of the federal Title IX probe.

'Too many at USC turned a blind eye to evidence that Dr. Tyndall was preying on students for years

'We are grateful to every survivor who came forward to share their story with our (Office of Civil Rights) investigators,'' she said.

'Because of your bravery, we can now work with the university to ensure this never happens to another student on USC's campus.''

A Department of Education investigation found that the university was informed of possible misconduct by Tyndall toward five patients between 2000 and 2009.

However, the school 'failed to investigate, assess whether interim measures were needed, determine whether the five patients were subjected to sex discrimination or ensure that steps were taken to prevent recurrence of the conduct and correct its effects for patients who complained and/or other patients,' the department said.

Federal education officials also said the university failed to investigate complaints that Tyndall was conducting pelvic exams without gloves and engaged in 'digital penetration of patients' and conducted 'full-body skin checks.'

A USC representative said university officials were preparing a statement in response to the department's announcement, KNBC reports.

More than 700 women accused the 72-year-old former USC physician of sexual misconduct during the span of his career.

Under the terms of a settlement in a $215 million class action lawsuit agreed to last month, the university will pay around 18,000 former patients, including those who did not accuse him of misconduct, a minimum of $2,500 apiece.

Meanwhile, Tyndall remains jailed and is facing 29 felony charges in connection with the sexual assault of 16 patients.

Prosecutors say the patients were abused during visits to the student health center for annual exams or other treatment.

Tyndall, who is married, practiced at the university for close to 30 years.

The criminal charges include inappropriately touching the women, who were between 17 and 29 years of age. 

Tyndall's attorney say the gynecologist is suffering from heart problems and the onset of diabetes. Tyndall denies all the charges that have been made against him, his lawyer says.

USC still must answer hundreds of suits filed by women who have accused Tyndall in state court. Lawyers for the alleged victims have criticized the federal class-action settlement, saying it was not enough.

SOURCE 






Senate’s ‘Energy Innovation’ Bill Wasteful, Redundant

“I want to tell everyone today you are either for children or against children when it comes to educational freedom and choice in education.”

So said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, who spoke Thursday with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the Conservative Political Action Conference about the need to bring more education opportunities to America’s children.

Conway said support for school choice is broad among the general public, yet a deep partisan divide exists on the issue, as the Trump administration has found.

“There is no ‘but,’ there is no excuse, there is no talk of ‘But the teacher unions … ,’” she told the CPAC crowd. “You are either helping these brown and black and rural children get more opportunities, or you’re not.”

Choice in public education often is blocked by liberals at the state level who protect unions whose members work for badly run public schools, Conway noted.

Many children, DeVos said, are being “failed by schools that aren’t working for them, that aren’t the right fit.”

Trump is committed to ensuring that every child has access to a quality education, DeVos said, no matter where they come from.

She also warned about the problem of federal interference in education and touted the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the government’s role.

“President Trump campaigned on getting rid of Common Core, which was a massive overreach on the part of the federal government,” DeVos said. “We’ve done that.”

Keeping power over education in the hands of states, local communities, and families is essential, she said.

“There’s too many people in this city [who think] that the federal government has the answers for everything,” DeVos said, referring to the nation’s capital a few miles away from the conference in Maryland. “And we know that’s not the case.”

DeVos promoted legislation, the Education Freedom Scholarship, that she said “would dramatically improve opportunities for more than a million kids nationwide.” She added:

This proposal is one that would create a federal tax credit in the form of scholarships to give rocket fuel to what states are already doing to advance choices and freedom in education.

We stand for freedom and opportunity, and we trust that parents and families are best to make decisions on behalf of their children, and the other side trusts the federal government to make these decisions.

She said the federal government long ago demonstrated that it can’t fix education from the top down:

Over the last 40 years, since the Department of Education was founded, we’ve spent over $1 trillion at the federal level alone with the express purpose of closing the achievement gap. Not only has it not closed and narrowed one little bit, it has actually gone wider in some measures and some communities.

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

SOURCE 






Australian Christian College settles case with former teacher Rachel Colvin over same-sex beliefs

Ballarat Christian College has settled with a former teacher who claimed its teachings against same-sex marriage discriminated against her, with principal Ken Nuridin saying the case has taken an enormous toll on his small school.

Rachel Colvin’s case against the school has been held up by faith-based communities as a key example of the need for a religious discrimination act following the 2017 same-sex marriage post survey.

As a result of the settlement, Ballarat Christian College in Victoria will not have to change its Statement of Faith defining marriage as a union between a man and woman and it has made no concessions on those teachings.

The Australian understands Ms Colvin will receive an undisclosed amount for loss of income and damages and will receive a positive employment reference from Ballarat Christian College.

Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination bill is still to be tabled in parliament after drafts have come under sustained attacks from both faith-based and LGBTI groups.

Mr Nuridin told The Australian that the school would continue to stand by its teachings on marriage. Ballarat Christian College principal Ken Nuridin.
“Our College provides a high quality Christian education in accordance with our beliefs,” he said.

“The claim has taken an enormous cost in time and resources already – detracting from the ability of a small school like ours to focus on what is important, the education of our students”

Christian Schools Australia director of public policy Mark Spencer said the government needed to bring on its religious discrimination bill to protect schools like Ballarat Christian College.

“We are calling on the Commonwealth Government to ensure that the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill clearly protects Christian schools from these sort of claims,” he said.

“Christian and other faith-based schools must be able to engage staff who share their beliefs and are equipped to teach those beliefs” he said.

The Australian Christian Lobby said the case showed the need for increased protections for faith-based schools and ACL chief political officer Dan Flynn called on the government to bring forward its final bill.

“The sad reality for this school is that it took steadfast determination not to buckle under the pressure of a well-resourced legal attack,” he said.

“To the school’s credit, under great duress, they stood by their principles.”

“This case underlines how the religious freedom debate must make faith-based schools’ legal rights crystal clear.

“The ACL calls upon the government to ensure a case like Ballarat Christian College never happens again.”

Following same sex marriage being legalised in December 2017, the school amended its Statement of Faith through its constitution outlining its position on marriage.

The teacher formally notified the school of her objections to the statement in a letter on August 14, and was directed to meet with the chaplain and a female member of the school leadership to discuss her views.

The college indicated she was free to hold her views personally but was required to support and teach in accordance with the beliefs of the school, which Ms Colvin was allegedly unwilling to do.

As well as the positive reference for Mrs Colvin, the payout, and the school’s secured right to keep teaching against same-sex marriage; the parties will issue a statement of ‘mutual regret’. The Australian has contacted Ms Colvin’s lawyers Clayton Utz and LGBTI rights group Equality Australia, which backed the former teacher’s case.

SOURCE  


Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos SLAMS USC for 'heartbreaking and inexcusable' failure in 'ignoring' claims campus gynecologist sexually abused students for years

University of Southern California was ordered to undergo three years of federal monitoring after systematic failures were cited in the school's response to allegations of sexual misconduct by a former campus gynecologist.

The monitoring ordered by the US Department of Education comes amid sweeping changes that were mandated in USC's Title IX procedures, the federal law protecting students from sex-based discrimination.

The department on Thursday delivered a stinging rebuke of the Los Angeles school's handling of multiple accusations made against Dr. George Tyndall.

'This total and complete failure to protect students is heartbreaking and inexcusable,' US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statement announcing the results of the federal Title IX probe.

'Too many at USC turned a blind eye to evidence that Dr. Tyndall was preying on students for years

'We are grateful to every survivor who came forward to share their story with our (Office of Civil Rights) investigators,'' she said.

'Because of your bravery, we can now work with the university to ensure this never happens to another student on USC's campus.''

A Department of Education investigation found that the university was informed of possible misconduct by Tyndall toward five patients between 2000 and 2009.

However, the school 'failed to investigate, assess whether interim measures were needed, determine whether the five patients were subjected to sex discrimination or ensure that steps were taken to prevent recurrence of the conduct and correct its effects for patients who complained and/or other patients,' the department said.

Federal education officials also said the university failed to investigate complaints that Tyndall was conducting pelvic exams without gloves and engaged in 'digital penetration of patients' and conducted 'full-body skin checks.'

A USC representative said university officials were preparing a statement in response to the department's announcement, KNBC reports.

More than 700 women accused the 72-year-old former USC physician of sexual misconduct during the span of his career.

Under the terms of a settlement in a $215 million class action lawsuit agreed to last month, the university will pay around 18,000 former patients, including those who did not accuse him of misconduct, a minimum of $2,500 apiece.

Meanwhile, Tyndall remains jailed and is facing 29 felony charges in connection with the sexual assault of 16 patients.

Prosecutors say the patients were abused during visits to the student health center for annual exams or other treatment.

Tyndall, who is married, practiced at the university for close to 30 years.

The criminal charges include inappropriately touching the women, who were between 17 and 29 years of age. 

Tyndall's attorney say the gynecologist is suffering from heart problems and the onset of diabetes. Tyndall denies all the charges that have been made against him, his lawyer says.

USC still must answer hundreds of suits filed by women who have accused Tyndall in state court. Lawyers for the alleged victims have criticized the federal class-action settlement, saying it was not enough.

SOURCE 






Senate’s ‘Energy Innovation’ Bill Wasteful, Redundant

“I want to tell everyone today you are either for children or against children when it comes to educational freedom and choice in education.”

So said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, who spoke Thursday with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the Conservative Political Action Conference about the need to bring more education opportunities to America’s children.

Conway said support for school choice is broad among the general public, yet a deep partisan divide exists on the issue, as the Trump administration has found.

“There is no ‘but,’ there is no excuse, there is no talk of ‘But the teacher unions … ,’” she told the CPAC crowd. “You are either helping these brown and black and rural children get more opportunities, or you’re not.”

Choice in public education often is blocked by liberals at the state level who protect unions whose members work for badly run public schools, Conway noted.

Many children, DeVos said, are being “failed by schools that aren’t working for them, that aren’t the right fit.”

Trump is committed to ensuring that every child has access to a quality education, DeVos said, no matter where they come from.

She also warned about the problem of federal interference in education and touted the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the government’s role.

“President Trump campaigned on getting rid of Common Core, which was a massive overreach on the part of the federal government,” DeVos said. “We’ve done that.”

Keeping power over education in the hands of states, local communities, and families is essential, she said.

“There’s too many people in this city [who think] that the federal government has the answers for everything,” DeVos said, referring to the nation’s capital a few miles away from the conference in Maryland. “And we know that’s not the case.”

DeVos promoted legislation, the Education Freedom Scholarship, that she said “would dramatically improve opportunities for more than a million kids nationwide.” She added:

This proposal is one that would create a federal tax credit in the form of scholarships to give rocket fuel to what states are already doing to advance choices and freedom in education.

We stand for freedom and opportunity, and we trust that parents and families are best to make decisions on behalf of their children, and the other side trusts the federal government to make these decisions.

She said the federal government long ago demonstrated that it can’t fix education from the top down:

Over the last 40 years, since the Department of Education was founded, we’ve spent over $1 trillion at the federal level alone with the express purpose of closing the achievement gap. Not only has it not closed and narrowed one little bit, it has actually gone wider in some measures and some communities.

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

SOURCE 






Australian Christian College settles case with former teacher Rachel Colvin over same-sex beliefs

Ballarat Christian College has settled with a former teacher who claimed its teachings against same-sex marriage discriminated against her, with principal Ken Nuridin saying the case has taken an enormous toll on his small school.

Rachel Colvin’s case against the school has been held up by faith-based communities as a key example of the need for a religious discrimination act following the 2017 same-sex marriage post survey.

As a result of the settlement, Ballarat Christian College in Victoria will not have to change its Statement of Faith defining marriage as a union between a man and woman and it has made no concessions on those teachings.

The Australian understands Ms Colvin will receive an undisclosed amount for loss of income and damages and will receive a positive employment reference from Ballarat Christian College.

Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination bill is still to be tabled in parliament after drafts have come under sustained attacks from both faith-based and LGBTI groups.

Mr Nuridin told The Australian that the school would continue to stand by its teachings on marriage. Ballarat Christian College principal Ken Nuridin.
“Our College provides a high quality Christian education in accordance with our beliefs,” he said.

“The claim has taken an enormous cost in time and resources already – detracting from the ability of a small school like ours to focus on what is important, the education of our students”

Christian Schools Australia director of public policy Mark Spencer said the government needed to bring on its religious discrimination bill to protect schools like Ballarat Christian College.

“We are calling on the Commonwealth Government to ensure that the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill clearly protects Christian schools from these sort of claims,” he said.

“Christian and other faith-based schools must be able to engage staff who share their beliefs and are equipped to teach those beliefs” he said.

The Australian Christian Lobby said the case showed the need for increased protections for faith-based schools and ACL chief political officer Dan Flynn called on the government to bring forward its final bill.

“The sad reality for this school is that it took steadfast determination not to buckle under the pressure of a well-resourced legal attack,” he said.

“To the school’s credit, under great duress, they stood by their principles.”

“This case underlines how the religious freedom debate must make faith-based schools’ legal rights crystal clear.

“The ACL calls upon the government to ensure a case like Ballarat Christian College never happens again.”

Following same sex marriage being legalised in December 2017, the school amended its Statement of Faith through its constitution outlining its position on marriage.

The teacher formally notified the school of her objections to the statement in a letter on August 14, and was directed to meet with the chaplain and a female member of the school leadership to discuss her views.

The college indicated she was free to hold her views personally but was required to support and teach in accordance with the beliefs of the school, which Ms Colvin was allegedly unwilling to do.

As well as the positive reference for Mrs Colvin, the payout, and the school’s secured right to keep teaching against same-sex marriage; the parties will issue a statement of ‘mutual regret’. The Australian has contacted Ms Colvin’s lawyers Clayton Utz and LGBTI rights group Equality Australia, which backed the former teacher’s case.

SOURCE  

Monday, March 02, 2020



Lesbian Feminist: It's Time to Stop Trans Indoctrination in Public Schools

On Wednesday, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after getting kicked out for her sexual orientation, spoke out against the "indoctrination of children by the trans community." A vocal radical feminist, Ben-Shalom championed the cause of parents in Madison, Wisc., who are suing the local school district over the issue. She and her allies with the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition spoke at a press conference at the downtown Madison public library.

"It is time to put a stop to the sort of indoctrination of children by the trans community, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine," Ben-Shalom declared at the press conference, streamed exclusively by Women's Liberation Radio News. "As a teacher of 37 years, I wonder what goes on in the mind of a man who thinks that because he goes about in womanface [the feminist equivalent of blackface], that gives him the right to force his system of beliefs on young children. That isn’t what teachers are supposed to do, is it?"

The radical feminist was referring to Vica Steele, a male teacher who identifies as female and who used the same restroom as elementary school girls until parents complained. The teacher's union is suing to force the school to violate the privacy rights of female students by forcing them to share the private space with a grown man.

Ben-Shalom explained that she jointly founded Hands Across the Aisle Coalition with Kaeley Triller Harms, a conservative Christian, in order to push back against the transgender assaults on basic science and women's rights.

"We are especially concerned about the casual and cavalier way the human rights of women and girls are being set aside because of their biological sex, which is not the same thing as gender," Ben-Shalom explained. "We are not here today to say that transgender people should face discrimination. We are not here to say they ought not to exist. We are not here to say they ought not to have the same rights as all other citizens, nor will we say that males who identify as trans are all criminals. That simply isn’t true."

"This is about male entitlement and power being used to subjugate women and girls and deny them any human rights or place at all in the society. Men do this without any sort of consent — our consent," the veteran added.

"We are here to ask why the privacy of elementary school girls means nothing when a male who identifies as trans decides that walking down the hallway is simply too much," Ben-Shalom said. "We are asking... if it is appropriate for an adult intact male, no matter his presentation, to be in an elementary girls’ bathroom when there are other places nearby for him to use."

First Lesbian Reinstated to U.S. Army Comes Out Against Transgender 'Erasure of Women'
"Giving him that right does open the door for other males to claim they are women and claim access to that restroom.

How many girls will have to be violated? When is enough enough?"

"This is about [trans activists] saying that gender is more important than biological sex, that a man’s demands are more important than a young female’s right to privacy," she explained.

Ben-Shalom noted that many transgender advocates claim that men who masquerade as "transgender women" in order to prey upon vulnerable women in restrooms and changing rooms are not "really" transgender.

"How can one tell who’s a real transgender? It defies logic because it’s self-identified," she said, brushing aside this objection.

Ben-Shalom noted a recent lawsuit filed by the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), representing 14 unnamed parents with children in Madison schools. The lawsuit focuses on a district guidance document promoting transgender identity and directing school staff not to "disclose any information that may reveal a student's gender identity to others, including parents or guardians" unless it is legally required or the student wishes to reveal himself or herself.

The lawsuit claims the document requires staff to "actively deceive" parents about their children's gender identities and alleges that the guide violates parental and religious freedom rights guaranteed under the Wisconsin Constitution.

"It is Hands Across the Aisle position that parents should not have to have their rights abrogated by school personnel, that schools should not be pressured to force girls or boys to share bathrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex, much less with an adult," Ben-Shalom declared. "Hands Across the Aisle asks for a return to education, not activism based on false science, female erasure, and the willful violations of student privacy and the denial of parental rights."

Sadly, the press conference was sparsely attended. Yet Ben-Shalom's powerful rebukes to transgender activism cannot be ignored.

SOURCE 






Quarrel, oath and failure

In the latest example of institutional neglect the University of Oxford, is considering making the study of Homer’s Iliadand Virgil’s Aeneid – optional.

At Oxford, large portions of the Iliad and Aeneid are read in Greek and Latin – subjects mostly taken by students from private schools, and Oxford is being pressured to attract more pupils from state schools.

Unfortunately, Oxford’s proposal is unsurprising as they have favoured hollow identity politics over maintaining a rigorous education in the classics.

A campaign to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ in British universities has gained popularity, winning a non-Sussex royal endorsement from Meghan Markle, because the current curriculum is “male, pale and stale.”

Such searing literary analysis was echoed by an Australia high school English teacher who bemoaned “Why are so many “classics” written by old, dead, (usually) straight white guys?”

These comments are indicative of universities obsession with ‘new thinking’ and ‘new ways of learning.’

When students are encouraged to ‘unlearn’, and “to be brave enough to…demolish social norms and build new ones” is it any wonder universities have neglected the classics, especially the teaching of Greek and Latin?

But, as one student opposed to Oxford’s changes remarked “Oxford remains one of the few places in the world, if not the only one, in which students must read a substantial amount of [The Iliad and Aeneid] in the original.”

Removing such a requirement in the name of equality will harm future generations as the knowledge of Greek and Latin is lost – entirely.

Oxford could address educational inequality by looking at increasing the number of students studying Greek and Latin – a change schools, parents and teachers would support.

But Oxford have, like Prince Paris, shot Achilles and run away – a simile fewer will understand as the Iliad is read less and less.

Although the ‘decolonising the curriculum’ crowd insist their way is necessary to “confront exclusion”, in reality, all they end up excluding is beauty and greatness.


SOURCE 






LGBT Activists Promote ‘Trans Reading Day’ in Public Schools

It started as just one rogue Wisconsin school, showing its LGBT pride. Now, five years later, it’s a national movement in public schools—and most parents have no idea it’s happening.

Do you want your child to be psychologically manipulated at school Thursday? Most moms and dads would say no.

But on Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign and its pals at the powerful National Education Association are teaming up to promote “Jazz and Friends National Day of School & Community Readings.”

“We want the listeners to know,” Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon told me on “Washington Watch,” “This could be happening in your school. Your children could be hearing a book [that is] very disturbing to young children.”

The book “I Am Jazz” is a favorite of transgender activists. It’s based on the real-life story of Jazz, a boy who was convinced that he was born in the wrong body.

“As a child he was injected with hormones to block his normal sexual development, and recently, he had radical surgery to complete his ‘transition’ to another sex,” Kilgannon says. “Which, of course, is impossible.”

Now, LGBT groups are pushing schools to make reading the book an annual event. The day will be used, FRC’s Cathy Ruse says, to promote gender deviance and LGBT politics to vulnerable children.”

“Not all schools are doing it. Yet. But some are,” she says.

In one school in Arlington, Virginia, administrators enlisted “mystery readers” to come read to children.

“The school has not revealed to parents who they are and what they will read,” Ruse warns.

And based on what we know about the “Drag Queen Story Hour” movement, that could mean anyone. To counterpunch, the Arlington Parents Coalition has urged parents to keep their kids home.

“We want all children to be treated with respect and dignity as children of God,” Kilgannon says, adding:

That’s a basic tenet of the Christian faith, of many faiths, that everyone should be, should have dignity. [But] that doesn’t mean that we need to reinforce these controversial ideas… that are untrue, biologically, and impossible. A boy cannot become a girl. A girl cannot become a boy.

But unfortunately, she warns, this kind of activity isn’t necessarily going to make it on the school calendar.

“It’s just something that’s going to happen—and then, once it’s over, it’s too late.”

Everyone should call their child’s school principal and ask, “Are you planning to have this reading in your school?”

If the principal says yes, it’s a great opportunity to turn in the universal opt-out letter available on Family Research Council’s website.

“It’s up to you what kind of a statement you want to make,” Kilgannon says.

But if your school is participating, make sure it knows where you stand.

SOURCE 






Sunday, March 01, 2020


Do the Benefits Of Digital Devices in Classrooms Outweigh The Downsides?

Technology has steadily worked its way into classrooms around the world, from kindergarten to graduate school. Its use in schools has been strongly supported by the U.S. Education Department, among others, and it is widely viewed as a valuable tool—even a necessity—in education. But its use has critics, as well. They worry about digital devices taking time away from teacher-student interaction, especially in the early school years. And they question how effective technology is in helping students from lower-income families narrow the performance gap in the classroom.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES are as essential to students today as reading, writing and arithmetic were when they were the hot new things in the early 19th century. In addition, technology use in schools is a powerful tool to close the opportunity gap.

There are detractors who say that the introduction of technology into classrooms has failed to meet the high expectations its proponents hoped for, noting correctly that flooding classrooms with computer tablets without productive curriculum plans does not improve educational outcomes and may even hurt students when it leads to overreliance on computers rather than support from teachers.

But that is a shortsighted argument. Shortcomings in the use of technology can be overcome; instances of misuse shouldn’t overshadow the many benefits technology can provide.

Today’s technology is not a magical cure to end education woes, but it is a tool that, when used well, can help us prepare students to succeed in our modern society. We fail our students if we do not teach them how to master the technologies that can support their learning and success in the rest of their lives.

How technology is used is key. When technologies try to replace teachers—especially when they are used like electronic workbooks to drill students on rote skills—research consistently finds no benefit to students.

But there is a burgeoning field of digital technology that is making a difference in many ways: providing support for students with disabilities; sparking greater academic success for atrisk students using it to write more proficiently, understand math problems better and learn through science simulations; and supporting students in their own inquiries into the world around them. Young people are using technology for research and to produce newspapers, projects and websites, as well as to program new apps.

Sometimes that technology enables them to engage in inquiries that address real-world problems with experts and other students around the world.

If there is anything to be concerned about when it comes to technology in the classroom, it is not that there is too much, but that there is a deep inequity in access.

Equalizing access for low-income students is particularly important. While wealthy families can purchase technology as they see fit, lower-income families have far less access to the most up-to-date and useful tools and the bandwidth needed to use them. Schools can help bridge that gap.

With well thought-out approaches, we can use the tools available to help our children learn in new and powerful ways that allow them to fully engage the world around them.

DIGITAL devices have the potential to yield benefits in the classroom, but the way they’re commonly used only exacerbates existing inequalities. A different approach would change that, but there’s no saying when that might happen, and meanwhile the education of many students is suffering.

A study of high-school students in the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found heavy computer use at school had a negative impact on achievement. And a study by the nonprofit Reboot Foundation of American fourth- and eighth-graders showed that the more hours they spent on computers for English-language arts, the lower their reading scores.

Contrary to hopes that technology could help narrow the achievement gap, vulnerable students are the most likely to be harmed by it. The Reboot study found that the gap between the test scores of students who use technology frequently and the higher scores of those who don’t is largest among students from low-income families. Even worse, in many schools serving students from those families, students are more likely to use computers in the classroom— the problem isn’t lack of access to technology, it’s overexposure. In a typical elementary school, the day is divided into reading and math blocks, during which students rotate through learning stations in the classroom. Typically, at least one of those stations requires students to work independently on digital devices.

Even when the subject is math— where the evidence for technology being helpful is strongest—children get distracted more easily in these independent activities. Devices can’t motivate them like a teacher can, and there’s no group discussion. With reading, the prevailing approach prioritizes comprehension skills and strategies, like finding the main idea and making inferences. The theory is that if students practice reading skills on books or passages easy enough for them to read independently, they’ll be able to understand more complex text later.

But that theory is mistaken. Comprehension depends far more on knowledge of the topic than on generally applicable skill. To boost comprehension, schools need to build knowledge through systematic instruction in social studies, science, and the arts. Theoretically, digital devices could build students’ knowledge about any topic. But that would require software grounded in a content-rich curriculum that genuinely adapts to students’ existing vocabulary and knowledge. Instead, our neediest students are getting technology that deprives them of both human connection and a meaningful education.

SOURCE 






Islam finds a home in German classrooms

Half an hour away from Frankfurt—the German city of commerce with shimmering bank towers—Timur Kumlu reads a chapter from the Quran to about 20 second-graders. “Abraham, the first of the Hebrew patriarchs, looked for Allah, the God of Islam, but found him neither in the sun, the wind, nor the moon.” “But who is Abraham?” Kumlu asks. “He trusted Allah!” a boy with piercing dark eyes exclaims as the children jostle for their teacher’s attention. “Good!” says Kumlu. “Now tell me, who is Allah?” “He is God,” says a pale-faced boy. Mr. Kumlu acquiesces. “Allah is also the god of the Jews and Christians, for we have common roots.”

That day at the Henri Dunant School, a run-of-the-mill primary school in Frankfurt—one of the largest cities in the Hessen region, where a third of residents are not born in Germany—a teacher and his students are pioneering something banal yet revolutionary. The students are among the first batch of Muslims in the region to experience something their Catholic and Protestant peers have always gotten; religious instruction in German, from a public teacher, as part of their regular school curriculum.

About six years ago, Hessen became one of the first states in Germany to experiment with teaching Islam in schools along with Christianity, and Timur Kumlu volunteered.

“It’s a matter of recognition,” Kumlu says. Most of the children in his class have roots in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Albania, Turkey and Morocco, where Islam is the main religion.

“The kids live in two cultures and don’t know where they belong,” says Kumlu. “They are Muslim, but have little sense of their religion. They ask lots of questions, and they want answers.” Kumlu wants to help children understand their own culture and roots better to prevent them from falling prey to radicalization. The added benefit is that he gets to learn more about his own religion.

To qualify as an Islam teacher, he had to enroll for 18 months of training at the public university of Gießen, near Frankfurt, specially designed for new public teachers of Islam.

“It’s long overdue,” says Dunant School’s Principal, Ulrich Grünenwald, adding that parents—Muslim and non-Muslim—have unanimously endorsed the concept. Grünenwald says it’s important that Mulsim children are taught their religion in German, rather than Arabic or Turkish, and with a curriculum that is under state supervision.

Not just in Frankfurt, but across Germany, except in the five new länder (regions) from the former Soviet East, public schools are now offering some form of Islamic education. Although controversial, the process is widely viewed as necessary as German society becomes increasingly multi-ethnical.

The German government has made efforts to help people engage with its growing Muslim community and weed out Islamic radicalization.

Being a country where religious groups and the state have historically shared deep symbiotic relationships, the government has taken ardous steps to put Islam on the same legal footing as Christianity and Judaism. This involved efforts to extend the same constitutional rights and protections offered to other religions, and incorporating Islam into public school curricula and university disciplines.

In many countries, bringing God into the classroom is considered a taboo. France sees religion as a threat to the sacrosanct laïcité which was established in 1905 to keep the power of the Catholic Church at bay, and has also kept religion out of public institutions, including its école uniques (public schools). On the other hand, the government hands out subsidies to a plethora of private confessional schools.

Germany, however, sees religion as a way of keeping its democracy stable. Enshrined in its constitution, the country’s unique form of church-state cooperation lays out one of the world’s most extensive systems of protecting religious liberties.

“Germany considers religions sociologically and psychologically important and part of both individuals and society,” says Mathias Rohe, head of the Center for Islam and Law in Europe at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Bavaria.

“There is an openness towards religions, not only as having their own merits, but also towards contributing to the well-being of society.”

SOURCE 





Australia: Education policy rolls dice

“Both today and 20 years from now, I want Australians to be in control of their future.” At the very least,  Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s vision for the nation is ambitious.

Two decades from now, the children starting school this year will be 25, and their future is massively dependent on how well they are educated.  But the vision for education looks scarily like a roll of the dice.

The next 10 years will be guided by the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, the fourth in a series of road maps signed off by the Federal Education Minister and all states and territories.

Some people will be happy with the Declaration’s recycled, globalist language and experimental proposals for improving student performance.

But statements like: “As the importance of a high quality education grows, so does the complexity of being an educator” offer little evidence of building on solid foundations.

Have quality and complexity only recently become the main game?

As Australian curriculum, assessment, teaching and other standards go steadily downhill, school education is now a $60 billion a year bet that pays off only for some.

Australian policymakers are embracing a 21st century learning agenda that paints the future as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA).

This VUCA world was part of the response by the US Army War College to the fall of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The futurists love it, and various interpretations have been adopted enthusiastically by educators as they try to anticipate the needs of the children of the new millennium.

But it’s a dark and pessimistic outlook — fixated on jobs lost to artificial intelligence and other technological trends — and it permeates the work of organisations such as the OECD, whose Future of Education and Skills 2030 Project is influential.

What’s emerging is intellectually and pedagogically shallow, a wholesale shift towards a curriculum focusing on skills that — as per the Alice Springs document —  “support imagination, discovery, innovation, empathy and developing creative solutions to complex problems”… these allegedly being “central to contributing to Australia’s knowledge based economy.”

The vision does at least include the occasional reference to “development of deep knowledge within a discipline … appropriate to students’ phases of development.”

The visionaries cannot have it both ways. A sovereign nation must have an effective, efficient educational agenda.

It is time for our leaders to ensure that all Australian students will benefit from a sophisticated, rigorous education delivered by highly-trained subject experts.  That is what being in control looks like.

SOURCE