See link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/south-african-teachers-strike-shuts-schools-compounds-educational-crisis.html

BBC News is also covering the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11136354

This is terrible news for a number of obvious reasons and will require a lot of work by the Ministry of Education and the SA Government. I had been focusing greatly on the FIFA World Cup that recently commenced in SA a few months ago and the news and media coverage seemed for a time to be very positive. This is, however, a reminder of the many issues that the country faces…

I have included the Bloomberg News article in full below and as always welcome commentary from all of you.

In the meantime I will be in touch with my contacts in the country to get as much up-to-date information from them as possible. The teacher strike will effect all students but I think that in the city areas (Cape Town, Jo-burg, etc) will really feel this. Here is the Bloomberg News article written by Mike Cohen:

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South African Teachers’ Strike Shuts Schools, Compounds Educational Crisis

A teachers strike has shut schools across South Africa just weeks before year-end exams, compounding the failures of a state education system that has left more than half the country’s black youths unemployed.

Unions representing about 1.3 million state workers started an open-ended strike on Aug. 18, after the government rejected their demands for an 8.6 percent wage increase. The government offered an increase of 7.5 percent today to end the deadlock.

The strike has highlighted the government’s failure to improve apartheid-era educational levels that have left South Africa one of the world’s most unequal societies. A doubling of the education budget to 165.1 billion rand ($22.4 billion) in five years has failed to reverse a decline in exam results or to improve the standard of teaching.

“We are not getting return for our investment,” said Anne Bernstein, director of the Center for Enterprise Development, a Johannesburg-based research institute. “Some 75 to 80 percent of South African public schools are dysfunctional.”

Final-year pass rates fell to 61 percent last year from 67 percent in 2006. South African grade eight pupils came last in math and science in a 2007 study of 41 countries by the U.S.- based National Center for Education Statistics. Local students scored 326 in science, below Colombia with 411 and Iran with 470. The average was 516.

“While we are doing relatively well on enrolments, our weakness is in the quality of education,” Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said Aug. 25. “This is revealed time and time again.”

Pay Offer

Under today’s pay offer, teachers with one year’s experience will earn about 230,000 rand a year, 50 percent more than four years ago, the Education Ministry says. Unions said they will consult their members and give the government a reply tomorrow. They previously said that the government overstates average teacher’s earnings by about 29,000 rand.

“I can’t survive,” said Nonyameko Mdludlu, 48, who says she has been teaching for 15 years and takes home about 4,300 rand a month after paying her housing loan and other deductions. “That’s why I am on strike. They are just oppressing us,” she said while attending an Aug. 26 protest march to Parliament in Cape Town.

The National Treasury says wages account for 32 percent of the country’s 850 billion-rand annual budget and it needs to reprioritize spending and rein in the budget deficit, which reached a 17-year high of 6.2 percent of gross domestic product in the year through March.

Backlog

Besides higher wages for teachers, the increased education budget has been used to cover the costs associated with the growing number of students in the education system.

The education ministry says it still needs about 140 billion rand to refurbish and equip existing schools and build new ones, a backlog that it says will take 20 years to address given current budget constraints.

A substandard education has left 51 percent of blacks aged between 15 and 24 without jobs, and contributed to a wealth gap that sees 22 percent of the population surviving on less than 283 rand a month. South Africa’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, is 0.66, the second highest in the world after neighboring Namibia, a CIA Factbook ranking of latest available data shows. The coefficient measures inequality in a range from zero to 1, with zero referring to total equality.

Industry is starved of skilled workers, even in a country with an unemployment rate of 25.2 percent.

“We need our youngsters to study math, science and accounting at university” and the schooling system isn’t enabling them to do that, said Fezekile Tshiqi, human resources director of Johannesburg-based Nampak Ltd., Africa’s second- biggest packaging maker. The problem “starts with the quality of the teaching and the leadership in the schools.”

Apartheid

Under all-white rule, which ended in 1994, black children were condemned to schools that lacked books, desks, electricity and running water and were largely staffed by teachers who had sub-standard education themselves. Many of those teachers remain in the system and minimal progress has been made in retraining them.

In a September 2009 report, the Treasury said teacher training programs were poorly coordinated and the quality of courses was “questionable.”

Bernstein says there is a lack of “accountability” on the part of teachers. “Many teachers fail to teach and don’t get results, with no consequences whatsoever,” she said.

Curriculum Chaos

The education problems were compounded when the government introduced a system in 1998 whereby teachers were not required to follow a set curriculum and could utilize a wide range of teaching methods to prepare students for exams. It was abandoned this year.

“There have been so many changes to the curriculum within the last 10 years that teachers do not know what they should be doing,” said Ezra Ramasehla, president of the 50,000-member National Professional Teachers Organization of South Africa.

The 12 million pupils at the country’s 25,000 state schools are caught in the middle of the dispute.

“We are not attending school any more, we are just staying home,” said Vuyokazi Sijeku, 20, a grade 12 pupil in the southeastern town of Umtata, who wants to study law next year. “We are worried because we are not going to be ready for the final exams.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/08/25/nielsen.phone.use/index.html?hpt=T2

(CNN) — Women text and talk on their mobile phones more than men.

African-Americans and Hispanics use their phones more than whites, and Southerners out-chat their northern neighbors while on the go.

And here’s a real shocker: Teenagers text way more than anybody else.

Those are the findings of a yearlong survey by the Nielsen Co. The statistics firm studied the monthly mobile phone bills of more than 60,000 U.S. customers.

Women in the survey, whose findings were released Tuesday, spent about 22 percent more time chatting on mobile phones than men. They spent about 856 minutes per month on the line, on average, compared with 667 minutes for men.

Women also texted more, sending or receiving an average of 601 texts per month, compared with 447 for men.

According to the survey’s data, black users sent and received about 780 text messages per month and Hispanics got or sent about 767 — significantly more than whites, who checked in with 566 texts in the same time period.

Both of those groups, as well as Asians and Pacific Islanders, also talk more on their mobile phones than white customers. Black mobile phone users talked about 1,300 minutes a month, on average, followed by Hispanics at 826, Asians and Pacific Islanders at 692, and whites at 647 minutes.

The Nielsen report on the survey, conducted from April 2009 to March 2010, did not offer any possible explanations for the findings.

In the South, folks spent significantly longer chatting on their mobile devices.

In eight Southern states — Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas — users spent more than 800 minutes per month talking.

Florida, with one of the highest median ages in the country, ranked high on the list of active talkers but among the lowest in text messaging.

Meanwhile, the most text-happy states were Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming and Utah. Texters in each state averaged more than 600 messages per month.

In news that will come as no surprise to parents everywhere, teenagers were far and away the busiest texters.

They averaged a thumb-numbing 2,779 texts per month, according to Nielsen.

That’s more than double the 1,299 sent by the 18- to 24-year-old age group, and nearly three times the 952 sent and received by 25- to 34-year-olds.

Not surprisingly, mobile phone users older than 65 were the least active, barely registering with an average of 32 texts per month.

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Get the full story at http://www.thegrio.com/specials/making-the-grade/grim-graduate-rates-for-black-males-highlight-racial-gap-in-schools.php

“Another finding of the report is the apparent disparity between states providing opportunities for young black men to succeed. For example, the relative success and wealth of a town is not necessarily associated with positive performance a outcomes: only 22 percent of black high school males graduated from the Palm Beach County Florida public schools compared with 79 percent in Newark, New Jersey. 

Dr. John H. Jackson, president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education — the organization that produced the study, stresses that the good news for currently cash-strapped states is not about throwing money at a school district, but how you use it:

“The significance of New Jersey’s success is their decision to more equitably distribute their educational resources to all of the districts and students who needed them the most, but also target those resources in areas that are proven effective–providing more access to early education, highly effective teachers and rigorous curricula.”

By contrast, the report states that based on low reading scores, “Minnesota, Nevada, and Mississippi appear to have particular difficulty in providing their black male students in Grade 8 with a basic education.”

The report also paints a depressing picture for large metropolitan areas. “The tragedy of the data is that the four major districts that are most challenged have the largest black male enrollment,” Jackson said. Philadelphia joins New York City in a 28 percent black male graduation rate and Chicago graduates less than half of its black males at 44 percent.

The report is primarily numbers-based and is meant to serve as a measuring tool and benchmark for states and educators. It does not delve into individual programs or cultural factors in the different states.

But at a time when cities and states are struggling with how to “reinvent” themselves in the new economy and how to lure companies to invest in their communities, it is clear that many states have not adequately invested the right resources into what should be one its greatest assets: An educated community.”

Post a comment below:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/08/16/tsr.china.2nd.economic.power.cnn?hpt=T2

China is on the verge of passing Japan as the world’s second largest economy behing the US. Having just returned from the People’s Republic it is clear that this nation has the ability and resources to claim the title of one of the top economies in the world.

Not only has China recently show-cased its recent campaign into the 21st century via the World Expo but they are growing at an incredible rate. As mentioned by Wolf and his “talking heads” the Chinese are on the brink of recreating the definition of what “superpower” means to the world.

Post comments below:

Find the full article here: BBC and below:

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10 August 2010 Last updated at 07:53 ET

// Brain works more like internet than ‘top down’ company

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The brain appears to be a vastly interconnected network much like the Internet, according to new research.

That runs counter to the 19th-Century “top-down” view of brain structure.

A novel technique to track signals across tiny brain regions has revealed connections between regions associated with stress, depression and appetite.

The research, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may lead to a full map of the nervous system.

Larry Swanson and Richard Thompson from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US, isolated a small section of a rat’s brain in the nucleus accumbens – a brain region long associated with pleasure and reward.

Their technique hinges on the injection of “tracers” at precise points in the brain tissue. These are molecules that do not interfere with the movement of signals across the tissue, but can be illuminated and identified using a microscope.

Loops not lines

What is new is that the researchers injected two tracers at the same point at the same time: one that showed where signals were going, and one that showed where they were coming from. The approach can show up to four levels of connection.

If the brain has a hierarchichal structure like a large company, as neurology has long held, the “to” and “from” diagram would show straight lines from independent regions up towards a central processing unit: the company’s boss.

But instead, the researchers saw loops between differing regions, feeding back to and directly linking regions that were not known to communicate with one another. This is a better fit with the model of vast networks such as the internet.

The region of the brain studied by the researchers displays a network connecting regions associated with stress, appetite and depression.

Such a highly interconnected structure has been hypothesised for some time, and could prove to be a powerful tool in analysing how the brain processes information. But it had not, until now, been demonstrated experimentally.

“You would be amazed at how much of the current experimental neuroscience literature is dominated by ‘top down-bottom up thinking’, which goes back to the 19th Century, especially in neurology,” Professor Swanson told BBC News.

“The bottom line is that no matter what you might think, the circuitry we’ve shown – that specific set of structural connections – has not been demonstrated before.”

The work illuminates just one tiny corner of the vast number of connections present even in a small mammal’s brain. But by slightly overlapping one mapped region with another, and mapping that, a far greater picture could emerge.

“This method is repeatable in a sensible way so that neural networks can be followed as far as they go – ultimately to the whole wiring diagram of the brain,” Professor Swanson said.

Such a diagram would be boundlessly complex, and the degree to which it could shed light on the more slippery questions of consciousness and cognition is still up for debate.

“We have no idea right now, but the direct analogy is with the Human Genome Project: taking on faith that knowing the complete sequence of human DNA would be a foundation stone for biology, no matter how long the understanding may take to realise in practical terms.”

The article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-10888173

The hip hop star has formally registered to stand for president of his native Haiti as it rebuilds after the devastating January earthquake. Although many are raising eyebrows about this recent news I’m excited and think that this would be a great oppurtunity for the country.

Granted, I know nothing about Jean’s political stances or fundamental values, however, I think that his hip hop stardom could do wonders to not only unite the country but bring in much needed media focus on the republic.

Recently, and as predicted, the international media (especially US mainstream media) has shifted focus from the natural disaster and devistation of Haiti post earthquake and has been covering the BP fiasco in the coast. Jean’s run for president is one way to bring attention back on the crisis that Haiti faces and to help to unit the country as it rebuilds.

I wish Haiti all the best in these coming months as Wyclef makes a run for the executive office. Hopefully this will be a great way to regain interest and in turn, send funds down to the island nation.

To make a donation to the Sage Haiti Fund please click here: Sage Helping Haiti Fund

Here is the url: http://www.365gay.com/opinion/corvino-what-i-learned-at-gay-leadership-camp/

Corvino: What I learned at gay leadership camp

By John Corvino, columnist, 365gay.com
07.30.2010 11:36am EDT

“Remind me, dear,” I said to my partner Mark on the way to the airport, “what I am absolutely, positively not doing again next year?”

“You are not doing Camp next year,” he dutifully replied. We had repeated this dialogue many times in the weeks leading up to Campus Pride’s annual Leadership Camp, a week of intense workshops and other activities for LGBTQ and allied college students, which was held this year at Vanderbilt University July 20-25.

This was my second year volunteering as a faculty member, and oddly enough, my second year making a pact with Mark to bar me from returning. My reluctance stemmed not from any doubts about the program’s value. Quite the contrary, Camp is one of the most worthwhile experiences I have ever had the privilege of joining. However…

However, I crave my so-called “free time” in the summer for research and personal projects. It’s the only time when I can have the kind of uninterrupted schedule needed for serious writing. Moreover, I didn’t relish the thought of a week in the Nashville heat in late July, eating college cafeteria food and sleeping on a vinyl mattress in a humid dorm room.

Sleeping, that is, in the rare moments when we were actually permitted rest. Our Camp schedule stretched from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day, with sessions on various aspects of LGBTQA leadership and development. At the end of each day we held faculty meetings to “process” what had occurred. Processing has its place, but after a grueling day I’d personally rather chew on tin foil than sit in a circle and share how I’m feeling. (“I’m feeling like someone who’d prefer to be sleeping right now, thanks for asking.”)

So what did I learn at Camp this year?

I learned that there’s a brilliant group of young leaders poised to do amazing things. Indeed, they are already doing amazing things, making progress on their campuses and in their communities, often against powerful odds.

I learned that neat boxes into which we place ourselves and others often do a poor job of capturing reality.

I learned about privilege, a subject that I—like most privileged people—tend to avoid. I hope I learned greater sensitivity to those at the margins of our (already marginalized) community: the gender variant, the differently abled, the economically disadvantaged.

I learned that there’s a time for action, and then there’s also a time for just being in the moment—to reflect, to “process,” to listen and learn. There’s a time to work within existing structures, and a time for revolution.

I learned what the “srat squat” is. And that hardly anybody looks good in bright orange.

I learned that insight sometimes happens in the strangest places—as it did for a friend of mine who was almost moved to tears by a drag performance in the talent show on the last night of Camp. “I had forgotten,” he told me, “about the simple value of joy.”

I learned—yet again—that despite talk of a “post-gay” generation, young people still struggle to form their identities and to express those identities with confidence and integrity. They need our encouragement and support. And we need theirs, too.

Truth be told, one of the things I find unsettling about Camp is that it forces me to confront my own insecurities. As the “Gay Moralist,” speaking and writing and debating about gay issues, I’ve developed a pretty hard shell. One needs it in this line of work.

But one also needs to strip that shell off every once in a while and make oneself vulnerable. As we often said at Camp, disequilibrium is the price of growth. I experienced both disequilibrium and growth in my week with the campers.

I learned from the speakers—including Robyn Ochs, who taught us about the varieties of sexual orientation and expression; Brian Sims, whose coming-out story as a gay all-American college football player spotlighted the better side of human nature; and transgender activist Mara Keisling, who urged us to put our voices into action and have fun in the process.

But mostly I learned from the youth. Their integrity inspires me.

I’m not a sentimental person, and I’m certainly not given to hyperbole. But when students describe Camp as “the best five days of my life thus far,” as so many of them did afterward, I get it. And I just might have to return.

For more about Campus Pride’s work, visit http://www.campuspride.org. To learn more about Camp and see photos, go to the Campus Pride blog at www.CampusPrideBlog.org.

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com. For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

Having spent an incredible week in Nashville, TN, I was so impressed with much of what we did and humbled to have been a part of such an innovative, talented, and tenacious teaching team.

Although a lot was covered in lectures, keynotes, workshops, roundtables, caucuses, and during mealtime discussions, I was very impressed with our first workshop on Adaptive Leadership. Although, and I must admit, much of what was discussed has become the framework for “successful” leadership that many of us already have some idea about but are rarely able to articulate. Overall, I was reintroduced to the concept of purposeful professional and personal evolution within an organization in real time. After the initial presentation I decided to do some research and found a ton of online and print resources.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

According to the Cambridge Leadership Association (http://www.cambridge-leadership.com/index.php/adaptive_leadership/) Adaptive Leadership has been defined as “a practical leadership framework that helps individuals and organizations adapt and thrive in challenging environments. It is being able, both individually and collectively, to take on the gradual but meaningful process of adaptation. It is about diagnosing the essential from the expendable and bringing about a real challenge to the status quo.

When you realize that your organization’s aspirations—the innovations and progress you want to see—demand responses outside the current capacities, Adaptive Leadership is the framework you need to effectively close the gap and make your aspirations reality. It provides a disciplined approach to do more for what you care most about.”

Ronald A. Heifetz spearheaded these concepts in a number of publications and presentations and during his time at Harvard Kennedy School where he became the resident guru of Adaptive Leadership.

I’m hoping to bring together not only the workshop/lecturette that was presented at the Campus Pride Summer Camp along with my own independent research but I’m also looking to wed that with my studies in the Educational Leadership Doctoral degree that I’m currently embarking on. Bringing all of this together my aim is to have opportunities to give these skills and ideas to our student leaders and campus community here at Sage.

For additional information on Adaptive Leadership I would recommend the following Heifetz books:

Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1994)

Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading with Marty Linsky (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

As well as the Harvard Kennedy School’s web address: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ 

You can also take this quick quiz to determine your adaptability!

Believe In — Campus Pride. Campus Pride is the leading national nonprofit organization 501(c)(3) for student leaders and campus organizations working to create safer, more LGBT-friendly colleges and universities. It exists to give “voice and action” in building future LGBT and ally leaders. More info online at www.campuspride.org.  

 BELIEVE IN — CAMPUS PRIDECampus Pride is the leading national nonprofit organization 501(c)(3) for student leaders and campus organizations working to create safer, more LGBT-friendly colleges and universities. It exists to give “voice and action” in building future LGBT and ally leaders. DONATE TODAY online at http://www.campuspride.org.

// // //

Shulz has authored a number of works but this one was recommended to me not only by him but by the President of my institution (Sage). This is an insightful book that puts a lot of current issues and perspectives in focus. I was especially taken by Dr. Shulz’s commitment to speaking out and speaking up for human rights in some very interesting (that is to say dynamic and vested) ways. Not only does he take current (this is 2001/2)political leaders to talk he also discusses his own misconceptions and relates them back to the converstational threads of the American people during a time of post 9/11 and a “war on terror.”

This is also a very pragmatic and inviting read. The language is practicle and not convoluted and confusing which makes it much easier to become engaged in some very complex international policitical issues. This, wedded with the fact that Dr. Shulz is obviously passionate about the topics at hand, allows the reader to enter the discussion and not made to feel like an “outsider” as many texts on these topic often do. I may not know all the ins and outs of the uprisings in Chile during the 1960s and again in the 1990s but I’m still able to follow the discussion and lines of thoughts presented in the chapters.

Highly recommend this reading. I have it on loan from the college’s President’s spouse but I’m sure local libraries carry it as well (looked for a free-online version but couldn’t find anything in my searches–if you see one please post below so we can share for the greater good…)