EDUCATION

SAN JUAN – On the U.S. mainland, teachers have been marching, organizing at the grassroots, for more money for schools. On Puerto Rico, it was the students – 94 percent of them.
That’s how many of the island’s students stayed out of class on May Day, the commonwealth’s Education Secretary admitted. The students were part of a mass nationwide demonstration – adults included – against austerity measures that include planned closing of 266 schools.

Backpack Full of Cash is a 90-minute documentary about the negative consequences of the growing privatization of public schools in America. Produced several years ago, the film focuses mainly on the harmful impact of charter schools on public schools and America’s most vulnerable children. The film has been viewed by thousands of people in many different venues, and many continue to organize film screenings in their communities.

The modern university is a tertiary colonising institution.  Like the old mercantilist bodies – the Dutch East India Company and its equivalents – the educational world is there to be acquired by bureaucrats, teachers and, it is hoped, suitable recruits.

When the rivers and air are polluted, when families and nations are at war, when homeless wanderers fill the highways, these are the traditional signs of a dark age.
— Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, September 26, 2000

Recent cases of personal information collecting for corporate interests highlight the urgency of revisiting the topic of higher education in its connection with the corporate sector and the government. We ought to reconsider at least some aspects of the complex web of the contemporary “education industry” and its social implications. Understanding how contemporary (Western) education works (or doesn’t work) can contribute to raising the awareness of the general population as to the scale of the problem, and making a change, no matter how small.

What is explained can be denied but what is felt cannot be forgotten.
— Charles Bowden

In the wake of recent tragic school shootings, anxious parents are contemplating homeschooling to protect their children. After February’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Miami Herald reported that more parents were considering the homeschooling option. And after Friday’s disturbing school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas, a local ABC news affiliate in Alabama reported the increasing appeal of homeschooling.

Parents who remove their children from the confines of the conventional classroom are not running away from reality. They are running towards it. (FEE) — In the wake of recent tragic school shootings, anxious parents are contemplating homeschooling to protect their children. After February’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Miami Herald reported that more parents were considering […]

While some social policy formulators are advocating rigorous teaching methods in the formal skills for disadvantaged children, they are tending to enroll their own youngsters in schools that are more open, more permissive, and that tend to give increasing emphasis to the arts and the humanities.

Big financial news out of Caracas this week, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announce an agreement between their two countries to start a bi-national bank. The newly created bank will “fund technological and industrial initiatives” and will launch with 20 million Venezuelan Petros, teleSUR reports.