I remember how it was -- JR
Why I sent my kids to Atlantic College, the ‘hippy Hogwarts’ school favoured by European royals
Obviously a dreamy experience but one wonders whether it is a good prepartion for a harsh real world
It may look like something out of Harry Potter but the Welsh school is the popular choice for international elites – one mother explains why
It’s a 12th century castle on the wind-blown Welsh coast with a royal roster: the newest addition to which will soon be Princess Leonor, the 15-year-old future queen of Spain. Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan – better known as ‘Hippy Hogwarts’ – has become beloved among the international elite thanks to its mission for public good and global sustainability. One mother of former students explains its well-heeled appeal...
When it came to choosing a sixth form college, my two sons had a clear first choice in mind: anywhere that was part of the United World College movement. We live in Sussex, and UWC’s 18 schools spanning four continents from the US to Asia meant they'd be far from home, but didn’t mind that as long as it was a good fit.
I went to a UWC myself, in Singapore; my sons too were attracted to the idea of attending an international school with other young people from over 80 different nationalities. The entrance procedure is demanding: you have to be nominated by the National Committee of Great Britain and blind assessment for places is judged solely on merit and potential. Wear a UWC T-shirt anywhere in the world and fellow alumni will recognise you.
My husband is from the US, and we both work in international development, so we have an international outlook. My sons also bought into UWC’s mission, which is to make education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. Much of that is achieved through the IB as pupils have to study maths, a science, English or your mother tongue, a humanities subject, a language and Theory of Knowledge; I’d love to see it taken up more by UK schools as it provides a perspective I think we really need in this country.
UWCs also offer co-curricular community service activities which, for my sons, included an outdoor leadership programme through which they were trained to teach children from local schools archery, kayaking and climbing. The day starts early, at 8am, with lessons all the way through until 1pm, so the afternoon is clear for community service commitments.
The Glamorgan outpost, where Princess Leonor is to attend, is a wonderful setting with tennis courts, sailing boats and a cliff for climbing and rescue practice; a 12th-century tithe barn is used as a theatre, arts centre and cinema. The opportunity to study in a castle, live on the grounds just by the sea and eat in a huge Gothic dining hall is quite remarkable.
But in spite of its elite clientele and hippy reputation, it’s really quite no-frills: the living conditions – seven modern boarding houses named after ancient Welsh kingdoms and college benefactors – are comfortable, but not over the top. There are four people to a dorm with a mix of international students (you wouldn’t have two people from the UK rooming together). Your house forms part of your identity. It’s not cliquey – students go in with an open mindset and the sense that, having worked hard for their place there, it’s exactly where they want to be. But there’s no denying it is tough.
While there are students from very privileged backgrounds, there are also students on 100 per cent scholarships and everyone in between. No matter their royal connections, they’re all in a dorm together and go through the same rigorous entrance procedure. It’s an authentic celebration of diversity and the community service element is levelling. I’m not bothered about whether celebrities attend or not – what matters is that young people are coming through the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter years with a sharpened sense of who they are and how what they say and do has an impact. To be able to listen to what another person is saying and understand their point of view without leaping in with a judgment is something many of us could do well to learn.
No school is perfect, of course there are sometimes tensions. But while it’s hard to be away from your family, my sons forged brilliant friendships with people all over the world, from Sweden to Nepal. One of them has just started Hispanic Studies at the University of Nottingham and the other is studying music in Germany. They’re both thrilled they had the experience, and it’s helped determine the choices they’re making now.
UWCs give young people a global perspective in a local setting. It’s very special.
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How Biden's student loan policies are rigged in favor of government and nonprofit workers
In January, as one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden directed the Department of Education to continue the government’s freeze on federal student loan repayment plans. The Trump administration initially paused federal student loan payments in March 2020.
Because of the move, borrowers enrolled in federal student loan repayment plans will not need to make payments until Oct. 2021, at the earliest, and interest will not accrue for any federal student loan borrowers during this period either, including for those who choose not to make payments.
Americans with debt from private student loans – which were much more commonly used prior to the Obama administration – receive no benefits from the policy.
The decision to freeze loan payments will make it easier for millions of borrowers to save money, pay bills or work to reduce debt during the freeze. It will be especially beneficial to workers at government agencies and nonprofits who carry a large student loan debt burden, but it could cause substantial long-term harm to millions of other Americans.
During the freeze, all borrowers who work for nonprofits or government agencies who are enrolled in an income-based repayment plan will continue to accumulate credit toward receiving student debt forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program.
Under PSLF, borrowers enrolled in income-based repayment plans who make payments for 10 years while working for a local, state or federal agency (including public school teachers) receive total debt forgiveness of their federal student loans. Employees at many nonprofits not affiliated with the government are also eligible.
Because the Trump-Biden loan repayment freeze continues to count non-payments as payments for the purpose of qualifying for public loan forgiveness, there are government and nonprofit workers who are now receiving student debt cancellation without having made the full 10 years’ worth of payments. And the longer the freeze continues – there’s nothing stopping Biden from perpetually renewing the halt in payments – the more it will disproportionately benefit these workers over all others.
It is important to keep in mind that there are no forgiveness limits to the PSLF program. So, for example, it is possible a government worker with $200,000 in student loan debt could save hundreds of thousands of dollars under the PSLF program once hitting the 10-year mark, which, thanks to Trump and Biden, is now easier than ever.
Initially, the Trump administration instituted the freeze to help deal with the potential economic effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns. At the time, no one knew exactly how things were going to play out, and the Trump administration erred on the side of caution, for better or worse.
Today, however, the situation is completely different. The Biden administration knows the vast majority of government workers and nonprofit employees have not lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, so why is the federal government continuing to freeze loan payments for workers who haven’t lost their jobs? Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, borrowers enrolled in an income-based repayment plan paid nothing after losing employment.
And, even more puzzling, why would Biden continue to count non-payments as credits toward achieving the requirements of the Public Student Loan Forgiveness Program?
The only explanation that makes sense is that the Biden administration is trying to keep government workers and Biden’s allies in nonprofits (including think tanks) happy, regardless of the costs imposed on others.
The federal government has already racked up trillions upon trillions of dollars in additional debt trying to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Wasting billions on crony deals for government workers and employees at nonprofits while other Americans are losing their small businesses and getting crushed by COVID-19 restrictions is downright cruel.
Blue Dogs push for further action on domestic terrorism
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The costs of the Trump-Biden student loan policies must be accounted for by hurting someone else, either through taxes or by continuing to print money, which has already caused damaging levels of inflation in key industries, including housing. And the problem is only going to get worse over time, as the federal government’s debt payments continue to eat up an ever-greater proportion of the federal budget.
America needs to change course now, before this serious problem spirals even further out of control.
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Illinois Readies Disastrous Teaching Standards
The Illinois government is about to decide whether to transform the state’s teachers into a radical political vanguard bent on indoctrinating the state’s children in socialism and undermining academic achievement.
Of course, that’s not how they’re stating it. The Illinois Legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will consider on February 16 the Illinois State Board of Education’s proposed Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards to determine certification of all teachers and other education personnel in the state.
“This Part establishes certain standards that shall apply to the issuance of all Illinois professional educator licenses endorsed in teaching, school support personnel, and administrative fields,” the proposal states. The standards, if approved, would go into effect on October 1. The stated aim is the nebulous but apparently innocuous goal of creating “the culturally responsive teacher and leader.”
Though written with generous helpings of gobbledygook, the standards are quite clear about the intention to license only teachers fully committed to political and cultural indoctrination and willing to ignore academic achievement to the extent that it gets in the way of this, which is to say: completely. The state’s “culturally responsive teachers and leaders” will “value the notion that multiple lived experiences exist, that there is not one ‘correct’ way of doing or understanding something, and that what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences.”
In short, two plus two equals four only if that is how the child has “experienced” it at home, among neighborhood denizens, and on TV and social media.
Children will be graded accordingly, as teachers and administrators “[c]onsider a broader modality of student assessments” including decidedly nonacademic criteria such as “community assessments, social justice work, action research projects, and recognition beyond academia.”
That mandate, plus the requirement to teach “with emphasis on prioritizing historically marginalized students” means children will be graded not on how well their ideas comport with reality but will be apportioned grades in whatever way best ensures each “identity” group -- "(race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/ emotional ability, socioeconomic class, religion, etc.)” -- gets the same grades overall.
The houses, bridges, and automobiles built by people thus educated will be very interesting to see, though not useful for any other purposes.
The new rules would also codify and expand the perversion of school personnel into spies bent on rooting out crimethink in students’ households. Teachers and administrators will “[k]now about their students and their lives outside of school, using this knowledge to build instruction that leverages prior knowledge and skills,” the plan mandates.
The standards are all about race, sex, money, and political power -- reading, math, science, and other essentials of intellectual capacity be damned. Teachers will be required to engage in leftist political activism in their free time and promote “student activism and advocacy… with real world implications.”
This set of standards would use the state’s licensure process and obedient college education programs to weed out any teachers devoted to academic excellence before they can enter the profession, and it would evidently apply to any private schools that use licensed teachers.
In addition to their catastrophic academic effects, these rules will be costly for taxpayers in Illinois and other states that implement them. Greatly reducing the pool of teachers available in the state (because other states don’t have these rules), will raise the cost of teachers by decreasing the supply without reducing the demand for their services. Perhaps that is one of the intended effects of the standards.
What other states can learn from this exercise is that the education establishment is fully committed to state governments mandating a politicized curriculum that has no room for each child to reach his or her full potential.
With the educational establishment having reached peak corruption, the only plausible remedy is to return power to localities and ultimately to parents. Parents and taxpayers have a common interest in ensuring their often-huge property tax bills pay for schools that teach children what they must know and be able to achieve success in life instead of demoralizing them and leaving them without the knowledge and skills they deserve. They are thwarted in this goal because the concentration of power over education at the state level removes the ability of parents and taxpayers to hold local schools accountable and places power in the hands of the types of mad bureaucrats who wrote the proposed Illinois standards.
In addition, programs that allow state education funding to follow the child to the school of the parents’ choice can put further pressure on public schools to improve student achievement. Gold-standard academic studies have consistently shown that school choice raises educational accomplishment not only for the choice students but also for those who remain behind in the government schools. It is truly a win-win policy.
States that follow these citizen-empowering policies will create a great competitive advantage for dedicated teachers and the children they teach. Those who follow Illinois’ example will only foster more dependency, demoralization, and despair.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/illinois_readies_disastrous_teaching_standards.html
***********************************Australia: Coronavirus pandemic making students anxious, depressed, with suicide fears, new report finds
National Mental Health Commission chief executive Christine Morgan yesterday warned the COVID-19 pandemic is making young Australians anxious and depressed.
Ms Morgan, who is also national suicide prevention adviser to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, said children and young people are suffering due to repeated lockdowns, lifestyle restrictions and disruptions to school and sport.
“I’m concerned about increases in self-harm among young people – that is a sign of distress – and I’m concerned about … suicidal risk,’’ she told News Corp Australia.
Commission data reveals that Lifeline, Kids Helpline and Beyond Blue fielded a record 112,000 calls for help last month – 23 per cent more than in January 2020, before the start of the pandemic, and 38 per cent more than in January 2019.
Ms Morgan said high school principals had raised concerns about the “increasing number of young people at risk’’.
“For teenagers, this is the time in your life when you’re finding your place, pushing against parental restrictions and wanting to find networks,’’ she said.
“A lot of that has been impacted not just by lockdowns but a sense of ‘my future is being impacted by something I can’t control’.
“(The COVID-19 restrictions) impact on their ability to engage with others, to make choices, it impacts their families, their school and their future.’’
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said all schools need qualified counsellors on staff, as children and teenagers wait months to see psychologists or psychiatrists for help with high anxiety or depression.
Ms Haythorpe said a “significant number’’ of teenagers had dropped out of school as a result of COVID-19 shutdowns last year.
But she warned there were not enough school counsellors, or outside psychologists and psychiatrists, to “make sure students have access to the help they need’’.
“Teachers shouldn’t give psychological advice – they should refer students to appropriate services, but we need to have the appropriate services in place,’’ she said.
“There is not enough provision of services.’’
“We need to have fully trained and qualified counsellors in schools, with teaching qualifications, who can work with children around anxiety and mental health issues,’’ she said.
“At the end of last year teachers were chronically fatigued in terms of the pandemic, looking after student health and wellbeing, and managing their own needs.’’
Stress on teachers during the pandemic has also been exposed by University of Sydney Associate Professor Rachel Wilson, in a study for the Centre for Strategic Education.
The study found that teachers were overworked with extra hours, student welfare issues and paperwork, and anxious about the risk of catching COVID-19 in classrooms.
At least half of teachers were not confident students were learning well, and felt most students were “not positively engaged’’ with online classes.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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