tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/education-274/articlesEducation – The Conversation2024-03-26T11:39:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2260302024-03-26T11:39:36Z2024-03-26T11:39:36ZNigerian bandits strategically target school children for kidnappings – here’s why<p>It is every parent’s worst nightmare: armed criminals attacking their child’s school, kidnapping students and teachers. </p>
<p>In some parts of Nigeria, this scenario is not just the stuff of nightmares – it has become all too common in the past 10 years. The most famous incident was the mass abduction of <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/nine-years-after-chibok-girls-abducted/">276 students</a> from a girls’ school in Chibok, a town in Borno State, north-east Nigeria, in 2014. That incident led to global outrage and the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/08/world/gallery/bring-back-our-girls-movement/index.html">“bring back our girls”</a> campaign. </p>
<p>But it was not the last.</p>
<p>Most recently, on 7 March 2024, criminal groups (commonly described as bandits) attacked in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State in north-west Nigeria. They <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2024/03/kaduna-students-kidnappers-demand-n1bn-ransom-vows-to-kill-school-children-in-20-days/">abducted</a> about 286 students and teachers at the LEA Primary School Kuriga. A few weeks later, Kaduna state authorities <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68649221">announced</a> the release of 137 of the abducted students. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=146isHUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">research interests</a> include violence, organised crime, conflict and security governance. In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10246029.2024.2327314?src=exp-la">recent study</a> I analysed the dynamics of violence by bandits against educational facilities in north-west Nigeria. My study captured 52 incidents from 2013 to May 2023.</p>
<p>My findings can assist the law enforcement and security agencies to understand the variations in the spatial distribution, extent and intensity of attacks, and to identify alternative strategic responses. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-nigerian-children-are-being-kidnapped-the-government-must-change-its-security-strategy-226032">Hundreds of Nigerian children are being kidnapped – the government must change its security strategy</a>
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<h2>Why schools and students are targets</h2>
<p>The fieldwork part of my research was carried out in Zamfara, Sokoto, Niger, Kebbi, Katsina and Kaduna states from 9 February to 16 September 2023. </p>
<p>I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with teachers, education officials, residents, victims, bandits and defectors from banditry. </p>
<p>I also used information from the <a href="https://acleddata.com/">Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project</a>. </p>
<p>Three key reasons emerged for the targeting of schools and students:</p>
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<li><p>failure of governance</p></li>
<li><p>large forest zones</p></li>
<li><p>children’s vulnerability.</p></li>
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<p><strong>Failure of governance:</strong> The strategic targeting of educational facilities and students should be viewed and analysed in the context of pervasive failure of governance and diminishing presence of government. This enables a surge in violence against civilians generally.</p>
<p>In remote villages and towns, state security agents are <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/18/armed-groups-kidnap-hundreds-across-northern-nigeria">virtually non-existent</a> and surveillance remains very poor. </p>
<p>A few of the security officials I interviewed confirmed that the situation had degenerated due to negligence by the government. Schools in most of the communities were not guarded. </p>
<p><strong>Large forest zones:</strong> <a href="https://www.thecable.ng/seized-for-pleasure-the-tragic-plight-of-girls-women-abducted-by-bandits-in-niger">Schools are vulnerable</a> to bandits in the north-west where large forest zones have become safe havens for armed groups. </p>
<p>Most schools are located at the outskirts of villages and in remote parts of the forests where bandits operate freely. The bandits keep the abducted students in the nearby forest. </p>
<p><strong>Children’s vulnerability:</strong> Their physical and mental immaturity, limited abilities and dependence on adults makes students vulnerable. Kidnappers are known to demand ransom payments. </p>
<p>The bandits also carry out mass attacks and kidnapping of students to foster a climate of fear and propaganda. The large-scale kidnapping captures significant media spotlight, painting the government as incapable and emboldening the bandits. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-children-are-prime-targets-of-armed-groups-in-northern-nigeria-156314">Why children are prime targets of armed groups in northern Nigeria</a>
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<h2>Real and potential impacts of banditry on education</h2>
<p>Attacks and kidnapping for ransom by bandits affect learning and students in three principal ways: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>loss of lives</p></li>
<li><p>increasing burden of fear and sexual violence</p></li>
<li><p>forced displacement and decreasing school enrolment. </p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Loss of lives:</strong> My study showed violence against educational facilities and students by the bandits began to rise from 2020. From 2013 to 2019, attacks against students and educational facilities by bandits were intermittent. They surged to 25 incidents and 25 fatalities in 2021. </p>
<p>There were 15 reported incidents and three fatalities in 2022. The focus of bandits remains illicit profit from kidnapping and not necessarily the killing of victims. That is why incidents are often higher than fatalities. A total of 51 people have been killed as a result of attacks against schools and students from 2013 to 19 May 2023. </p>
<p><strong>Burden of fear and sexual violence:</strong> School girls are becoming victims of rape by bandits. They bear direct physical harm, trauma and social ostracism as a result. Some lack access to healthcare services. </p>
<p><strong>Forced displacements and decreasing enrolment in school:</strong> These developments raise very serious concerns among most residents in the north-west. They confirmed hundreds of students dropped out of schools due to the activities of bandits in their communities annually. </p>
<p>Others who decided to enrol changed their minds, thereby increasing the population of out-of-school children in those communities. Some school children were forcefully displaced into Kaduna, Zaria, Kano, Sokoto and other cities. They become homeless children living in public spaces. </p>
<p>Out-of-school children could become a recruitment pool for violent extremism groups and criminal gangs, creating another security challenge in years to come.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigeria-can-defeat-banditry-by-reconstructing-the-police-system-criminologist-216921">Nigeria can defeat banditry by reconstructing the police system – criminologist</a>
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<h2>Strategic options for resilience</h2>
<p>Addressing the challenges of attacks against educational facilities and students requires at least three strategies: </p>
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<li><p>security sector reform</p></li>
<li><p>safe school initiatives</p></li>
<li><p>social support and healthcare delivery to victims. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The forest areas and other unregulated spaces that serve as sanctuaries for the armed groups must be made secure. This would be part of the holistic solution government can find by partnering with the affected communities. </p>
<p>The government can revitalise the <a href="https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/31084.html">Safe School Initiative programme</a>, which was launched by the federal government in 2021, to rebuild, rehabilitate and restore a conducive learning environment. </p>
<p>The initiative <a href="https://punchng.com/nigerias-safe-school-initiative-designed-to-fail-lawan/">failed</a> as originally conceived and implemented between 2014 and 2018 because of the misplaced coordination of the task. It should be led by the education ministry, not the finance ministry.</p>
<p>For the Safe School Initiative to be truly effective, communities must be at the heart of its execution. They possess invaluable knowledge and situational awareness about the dynamics of insecurity in their areas.</p>
<p>Lastly, the state must update its current approach to countering armed banditry to include preventive methods of psychotherapy and primary healthcare support to female students who have become victims.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oluwole Ojewale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Governance failure and location of schools around large expanses of unprotected forest zones make school children easy targets for bandits in Nigeria’s north-west.Oluwole Ojewale, Regional Coordinator, Institute for Security StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225842024-03-25T12:40:21Z2024-03-25T12:40:21ZSchools can close summer learning gaps with these 4 strategies<p>When it comes to summer learning, the benefits are well documented. Students who consistently attend <a href="https://doi.org/10.7249/RR3201">well-planned, high-quality programs</a> achieve higher scores on math and language arts testing. They also earn higher ratings from teachers on their social and emotional skills, research shows. Unfortunately, research also shows that students from low-income and minority backgrounds are <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25546/chapter/1">less likely to attend</a> – and benefit from – summer learning programs than their affluent and white peers.</p>
<p>Summer learning can play a crucial role in helping these students – and all kids – recover learning lost during the pandemic. The federal government has also acknowledged the importance of summer learning through its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER. The fund infused states with <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/in-dc/standing-committees/education/elementary-and-secondary-school-emergency-relief-fund-tracker">nearly US$190.5 billion</a>, with 20% allocated to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/20/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-invests-in-summer-learning-and-enrichment-programs-to-help-students-catch-up/">academic recovery, including summer programs</a>.</p>
<p>So how can school districts capitalize on the crucial summer months and make learning more equitable? </p>
<p>In partnership with the <a href="http://www.wallacefoundation.org">Wallace Foundation</a> and the <a href="https://www.fhi360.org/projects/district-summer-learning-network">District Summer Learning Network</a> implemented by the nonprofit development organization FHI 360, our team at the <a href="https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/research-evaluation">Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation</a> at <a href="https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/rhea-almeida">New York University</a> is studying how districts implement high-quality summer programs with an eye toward equity. We analyzed 2022 summer planning documents from 26 districts and identified four strategies they’re using to make the programs more equitable.</p>
<h2>1. Strategically target students</h2>
<p>Of the summer learning plans we analyzed, we found that half prioritized students who need academic or behavioral support. Additionally, 42% mentioned English-language learners, and 35% mentioned students with disabilities.</p>
<p>Other distinct groups included low-income students, migrants, racial and ethnic minorities and gifted and talented students. Among districts that prioritized special groups, almost all of them included more than one group in their strategic outreach. </p>
<p>Which students get served in summer learning programs, and how they are served, has implications for equity. For instance, research has found that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/summer-learning-loss-what-is-it-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/">middle-income students often benefit more</a> from summer learning programs than lower-income students.</p>
<p>This could be because high-quality programs tend to serve higher-income students, which raises concerns that summer learning programs may actually increase the summer gap if they are not targeted. High-quality programs that target lower-income students and other minority students can move the needle toward equity.</p>
<h2>2. Reduce barriers to access</h2>
<p>For students to access programs outside of the regular school day in an equitable way, <a href="https://education.virginia.edu/documents/how-do-districts-implement-equity-afterschool-and-summer-programs">simple accommodations</a>, such as transportation, are key. </p>
<p>Several district summer learning plans we analyzed went above and beyond academics. They provided not just transportation but also free and nutritious meals, outreach material in different languages and extended day care services to support working families.</p>
<h2>3. Design courses for specific student populations</h2>
<p>Students learn best when they feel a sense of safety and belonging. By <a href="https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/summer-learning-creating-equity-report">affirming and nurturing</a> the unique identities of students, districts can make summer programming more equitable and accelerate learning. Research shows, for instance, that summer supports for <a href="https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/achievement-and-growth-for-english-learners/">English-language learners</a> are key for their overall academic development. </p>
<p>Some districts tailored their programming to the individual interests and cultural needs of their students. For example, three districts – in both urban and rural communities – provided language classes for English-language learners, including adults. </p>
<p>Another district designed an arts program for students to explore and celebrate their culture. The program featured programming around ethnic and racial identities. </p>
<p>Despite a shortage of teacher applicants across the country, some districts also made efforts to hire teachers who are not only effective and well credentialed but also reflect the demographics of the student body they serve. </p>
<h2>4. Engage families in planning and programming</h2>
<p>Some districts held regular family education sessions to provide updates about student needs and progress. Some also engaged families by offering information sessions on topics such as immigration and health.</p>
<p>Programs that include the whole family or community are particularly helpful for racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse populations and families in rural areas, where young people have <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25546/chapter/7#145">limited access to adults</a> other than their caregivers. </p>
<p>When parents are included in the planning process, programs can be designed to better fit their schedules. This might mean districts offer full-day, six-week camps to support children throughout the summer while their parents work. This type of arrangement makes it more likely that kids will be able to attend summer programs – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/499195">stave off summer learning loss</a>. </p>
<p>These four approaches help make summer learning programs more culturally responsive, accessible and inclusive. Over the next two years, our research will dive deeper into how districts strengthen equity-based practices and strategies to sustain them long term.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhea Almeida does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By targeting specific students, removing barriers and involving families and communities, school districts can make summer learning more accessible to students who need it.Rhea Almeida, Research Project Manager, NYU Metro Center, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2247542024-03-24T08:47:12Z2024-03-24T08:47:12ZWorried about how to support your child’s education? Here are four useful steps you can take<p>Parents play a crucial role in supporting their children’s learning. Their involvement lays the foundation for success both inside and outside the classroom. This makes a parent’s consistent support and nurturing important at every stage of formal schooling, and even before that.</p>
<p>The key lies in creating a supportive and encouraging environment at home. </p>
<p>In the school environment, teachers tend to be instructional leaders. This means they often focus on the classroom process of teaching and learning. Together, however, parents and teachers can help boost a child’s learning by sharing educational responsibilities at home and in school.</p>
<p>Teachers often favour <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sylvie-Barma/publication/281244508_Understanding_Complex_Relationships_Between_Teachers_and_Parents/links/57347edd08ae298602debb02/Understanding-Complex-Relationships-Between-Teachers-and-Parents.pdf">traditional modes of parental involvement</a>. This includes having parents supervise school outings or raise funds for school activities. </p>
<p>But it’s possible to find a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429494673/school-family-community-partnerships-joyce-epstein">middle ground</a> that harnesses the experiences of teachers and parents, and communicates expectations clearly. This would lead to <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sbp/sbp/2018/00000046/00000011/art00003">three positive outcomes</a>: reduced misunderstandings, the development of mutual goals and establishing trust for the teacher-parent partnership.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-parents-and-teachers-can-make-school-a-happy-place-for-kids-53314">How parents and teachers can make school a happy place for kids</a>
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<p>For more than a decade, through the African Population and Health Research Center’s <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf">Advancing Learning Outcomes and Transformational Change (ALOT Change) programme</a>, I have studied how parents’ involvement in education can advance learning outcomes. This can be done by monitoring children’s progress in school and helping them complete their homework. Knowing where their children are and who their friends are, and being available to offer insights on issues related to puberty, are also crucial. </p>
<p>To support a child’s educational journey, parents across all socioeconomic groups need to do four main things. First, they need to meet their <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738059311000393">family obligations</a>, which include providing food, shelter and paying school fees. Second, they should provide a conducive environment for children to work on homework assignments. Third, parents need to motivate their children to <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf">stay focused on learning and avoid peer pressure</a>. Finally, should the need arise, parents should seek support to be educated and empowered on how to help their children succeed in school.</p>
<h2>What to do</h2>
<p>To begin with, parents should meet their <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/GEC-Report.pdf">basic obligations</a> at home and collaborate at the community level. Ensuring children are fed and their fees are paid keeps them in school. Good nutrition <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8839299/#:%7E:text=The%20developing%20human%20brain%20requires,of%20exhibiting%20impaired%20cognitive%20skills.">improves cognitive function</a>, while paying fees <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1305014.pdf#page=12">boosts school attendance</a>, enhancing a child’s learning. Across all income groups, but particularly in low-income neighbourhoods, community collaboration enables parents to access the <a href="https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/training-technical-assistance/education-level/early-learning/family-school-community-partnerships">support and resources necessary for their children’s learning</a>. This could mean exchanging ideas with other parents, or getting access to career advisers and sports facilities. Collaboration at the community level provides <a href="https://cepsj.si/index.php/cepsj/article/view/89">social capital</a>. This creates opportunities for <a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cdep.12165">bonding</a>, which promotes a child’s social adjustment. </p>
<p>Second, parents should provide their children with <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/9e3a9e802f80705150dceec414b8ed1c/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41842">places to study, monitor their progress with homework and understand how they are progressing through various grades</a>. Spaces for study should be quiet and well-organised, but they don’t have to be at home. They can be <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf#page=10">safe spaces within communities</a>, such as churches. Parents can get involved in monitoring their children’s progress by actively communicating with teachers and <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/9e3a9e802f80705150dceec414b8ed1c/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41842">volunteering in schools</a>, both private and public. This allows parents to get involved in the planning, development and decision-making process of school activities for the benefit of their children.</p>
<p>Third, parents need to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8057542/">provide young children with nurturing care</a> before they begin formal education. They should maintain this caring support throughout the basic education cycle. Parents play <a href="http://41.89.164.27/handle/123456789/1187">key roles as co-educators of their children</a>. This means going beyond just providing the resources needed for learning to supporting a child’s personal development. Parents can do this by encouraging their children to ask questions, which can be answered by their older peers or mentors. Children also need <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0033688219848770">sufficient playtime and sleep</a>. Parents should motivate their children to complete assigned school assignments by, for instance, shortening the time spent on domestic chores, especially for girls. They should also monitor and give guidance on homework where possible, and provide learning aids and materials for practical activities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/education-in-kenyas-informal-settlements-can-work-better-if-parents-get-involved-heres-how-192149">Education in Kenya's informal settlements can work better if parents get involved -- here's how</a>
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<p>Fourth, I was part of a research team at the African Population and Health Research Centre that found that <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf#page=9">giving parents access to counsellors</a> to guide them on how to support their children’s schooling improved education performances in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. </p>
<p>Under this intervention, parents were taught what their role is as the first supporters of their children’s education. This role includes taking the time to understand their children, opening lines of communication, discussing sexual and reproductive health matters, and encouraging positive aspirations. The <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf#page=16">results</a> included an improvement in children’s literacy. </p>
<p>When we asked pupils to explain the relationship between parental support and achievements in literacy and numeracy, <a href="https://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Endline-Report.pdf#page=29">they reported a better understanding of mathematical concepts, enhanced ability to interpret mathematical problem statements and improvements in understanding algebra and composition</a>. One of the reasons for this outcome was that both parents and pupils were more open with each other. They shared their opinions, needs and actions.</p>
<h2>Expected outcomes</h2>
<p>Parental involvement in education empowers children to reach their full potential. It improves their academic performance, enhances their social and emotional development, and increases their motivation and engagement. Parental involvement tends to lead to better school attendance, positive behaviour and higher aspirations for future success. When parents take an active role in their children’s learning, it fosters stronger parent-child relationships, creating a supportive environment for academic growth and personal development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benta A. Abuya, Research Scientist, APHRC receives funding from Wellsprings Philanthropic Fund. </span></em></p>Studies show that teaching parents how to support their children can lead to improvements in literacy.Benta A. Abuya, Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2259552024-03-22T12:32:20Z2024-03-22T12:32:20ZAn eclipse for everyone – how visually impaired students can ‘get a feel for’ eclipses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583493/original/file-20240321-24-k7j1j4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1997%2C1398&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A solar eclipse approaching totality. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Total%20Solar%20Eclipse%20Photo%20Gallery/d4f2edfa2e47448980ce303f299063ae?hpSectionId=8053d9e3a7de4b25a8bccd33428f5964&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=3429&currentItemNo=22">AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people in the U.S. will have an opportunity to witness nearly four minutes of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-a-solar-eclipse-look-like-from-the-moon-an-astronomer-answers-that-and-other-total-eclipse-questions-81308">total solar eclipse</a> on Monday, April 8, 2024, as it moves from southern Texas to Maine. But in the U.S., over 7 million people are <a href="https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics">blind or visually impaired</a> and may not be able to experience an eclipse the traditional way. </p>
<p>Of course they, like those with sight, will feel colder as the Sun’s light is shaded, and will hear the songs and sounds of birds and insects change as the light dims and brightens. But much of an eclipse is visual.</p>
<p>We are a <a href="https://scnasaepscor.charleston.edu/contact-us/">planetary scientist</a> and <a href="https://www.edinboro.edu/academics/schools-and-departments/cshp/departments/geosciences/planetarium/director.php">an astronomer</a> who, with funding and support from NASA’s <a href="https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/">Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute</a>, have created and published a set of <a href="https://sservi.nasa.gov/books/eclipses.html">tactile graphics</a>, or graphics with raised and textured elements, on the 2024 total solar eclipse. </p>
<p>The guide, called “Getting a Feel for Eclipses,” illustrates the paths of the 2017 total, 2023 annular and <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024/where-when/">2024 total solar eclipses</a>. In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-a-solar-eclipse-look-like-from-the-moon-an-astronomer-answers-that-and-other-total-eclipse-questions-81308">total eclipse</a>, the Moon fully blocks the Sun from Earth view, while during an <a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/annular-solar-eclipse">annular eclipse</a>, a narrow ring of sunlight can be seen encircling the Moon. </p>
<p>The tactile graphics and associated online content detail the <a href="https://theconversation.com/solar-eclipses-result-from-a-fantastic-celestial-coincidence-of-scale-and-distance-224113">specific alignment of the Earth, Moon and Sun</a> under which eclipses occur. </p>
<p>To date, we have distributed almost 11,000 copies of this book to schools for the blind, state and local libraries, the Library of Congress and more.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C3%2C2085%2C1553&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of the US with three curved lines stretching across, indicating the eclipses of 2024, 2023 and 2017." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C3%2C2085%2C1553&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583257/original/file-20240320-20-10b7nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Getting A Feel for Eclipses’ guide helps blind and visually impaired people learn about the eclipse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sservi.nasa.gov/books/eclipses.html">NASA SSERVI</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why publish a tactile book on eclipses?</h2>
<p>NASA has <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses">lots of explanatory material</a> that helps people visualize and understand rare phenomena like eclipses. But for people with visual impairments, maps and images don’t help. For tactile readers, their sense of touch is their vision. That’s where this guide and our other tactile books come in.</p>
<p>Over <a href="https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics">65,000 students in the U.S.</a> are blind or visually impaired. After working with several of our students who are totally blind, we wanted to find out how to make events like eclipses as powerful for these students as they are for us. We also wanted to help our students visualize and understand the concept of an eclipse. </p>
<p>These aims resulted in the three <a href="https://www.pathstoliteracy.org/tactile-graphics/">tactile graphics</a>, which are physical sheets with textures and raised surfaces that can be interpreted through touch, <a href="https://sservi.nasa.gov/books/eclipses.html">as well as online content</a>. </p>
<p>The first tactile graphic models the <a href="https://theconversation.com/solar-eclipses-result-from-a-fantastic-celestial-coincidence-of-scale-and-distance-224113">alignment of the Earth, Moon and Sun</a>. The second illustrates the phases of an eclipse as the Moon moves in between the Earth and Sun to full totality, and then out of the way. The third includes a map of the continental U.S. that illustrates the paths of three eclipses: the <a href="https://www.weather.gov/pah/TotalSolarEclipse2017">Aug. 21, 2017, total eclipse</a>, the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2023/where-when/">Oct. 14, 2023, annular eclipse</a> and the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024/where-when/">Apr. 8, 2024, total eclipse</a>. We used different textures to illustrate these concepts.</p>
<p>Each book includes a QR code on the front cover, outlined by a raised square boundary. The code links to <a href="https://sservi.nasa.gov/books/eclipses.html">an online guide</a> that leads the user through the content behind the graphics while also providing background information. With the online content, users may opt to print the information in large font or have it read to them by a device.</p>
<p>Although initially created to assist visually impaired audiences, these books are still helpful resources for those with sight. Some students can see but might learn better when able to explore the tactile parts of the guide while listening to the audio. Often it’s helpful for students to get the same information presented in different styles, with options to read or have the content information read to them. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sheet of paper with raised textures labeled Sun, Umbra, Moon and Totality, with three students touching the textures." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583490/original/file-20240321-18-camylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students at Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine explore tactiles 1 and 2.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Florida School for the Deaf and Blind</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How are the books made?</h2>
<p>We hand-make each book starting by identifying which science concepts the user will likely want to know, and which illustrations can support those concepts.</p>
<p>Once identified, the next step is to create a tactile master, or model, which has one or more raised textures that help to define the science concepts. We pick a set of unique textures to use on the master to signify different items, so the Sun feels different than the Earth. This way, the textures of the graphics become part of the story being shared. </p>
<p>For example, in a model of the Sun’s surface, we use <a href="https://www.britannica.com/plant/Spanish-moss">Spanish moss</a> to create the dynamic texture of the Sun. In past projects, we’ve used textures like doll hair, sand and differently textured cardboard to illustrate planet features, instruments on spacecraft, fine surface features and more. Then, we add <a href="https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/braille/what-braille">Braille labels</a> for figure titles, key features and specific notes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A circle filled with moss." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583492/original/file-20240321-28-ku4w3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The tactile master – Spanish moss – used for the Sun.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cassandra Runyon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once we’ve finished making the masters and laying out each page, a small family print shop – McCarty Printing in Erie, Pennsylvania – prints the page titles and key feature labels on Brailon, a type of plastic paper. </p>
<p>Once printed, we place the masters and the Brailon sheets on a thermoform Machine, which heats up the sheets and creates a vacuum that forms the final tactile graphics. Then, we return the pages to McCarty Printing for binding. </p>
<h2>Viewing and experiencing the eclipse</h2>
<p>Like fully sighted people, people with partial vision should avoid looking directly at the Sun. Instead, everyone should <a href="https://theconversation.com/total-solar-eclipses-while-stunning-can-damage-your-eyes-if-viewed-without-the-right-protection-221381">use eclipse glasses</a>. If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can use an indirect viewing method such as a <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024/safety/">colander or pinhole projector</a>.</p>
<p>As the eclipse approaches totality, take time to enjoy your surroundings, feel the changes in temperature and light, and note how the animals around you react to the remarkable event using another of your senses – sound.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cassandra Runyon receives funding from NASA's Office of STEM Engagment through the National Space Grant Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) as well as NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institure (SSERVI). She is the Director of both the NASA South Carolina Space Grant Consortium and NASA South Carolina EPSCoR program and Vice Chair of the National Council of Space Grant Directors.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Hurd receives funding from the NSF and NASA SSERVI.</span></em></p>Eclipses are rare, fantastic celestial events. Here’s how educators can help visually impaired students enjoy eclipses alongside their sighted peers.Cassandra Runyon, Professor of Geology & Environmental Geosciences, College of CharlestonDavid Hurd, Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2257372024-03-21T18:01:47Z2024-03-21T18:01:47ZSchool’s out: how climate change is already badly affecting children’s education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582542/original/file-20240318-20-6dukft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The education of students in countries like Sudan is already being negatively affected by the extremes of climate change. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-boy-school-south-sudan-juba-2428302529">Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Schools across <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/18/south-sudan-closes-schools-in-preparation-for-45c-heatwave">South Sudan</a> have been ordered to close as a heat wave of 45°C sweeps across the country. In recent years, severe flooding has already caused major disruptions to schooling in South Sudan where, on average, children complete less than five years of formal <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentViewer.xhtml?v=2.1.196&id=p::usmarcdef_0000387120&file=/in/rest/annotationSVC/DownloadWatermarkedAttachment/attach_import_73bb9372-6eb2-4593-9406-f7a33c2f66d5?_=387120eng.pdf&locale=en&multi=true&ark=/ark:/48223/pf0000387120/PDF/387120eng.pdf#p98">education across their lives</a>.</p>
<p>As researchers interested in both climate change and learning, we’ve been surprised that most public debate in this area concerns how best to teach children about climate change as part of the curriculum. Recently, we examined a less discussed, but arguably much more consequential, question: How is climate change impacting children’s education worldwide?</p>
<p>In a recent paper published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01945-z">Nature Climate Change</a>, we reviewed studies linking climate change-related events or “climate stressors” to education outcomes. One of the clearest connections was between heat exposure and reduced academic performance. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21157/w21157.pdf">study in the US</a> found that adolescents’ maths scores decreased significantly on days above 26°C. <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/726007">In China</a>, hotter day-of-test temperatures were associated with a drop in exam performance equal to losing a quarter of a year – or several months – of schooling.</p>
<p>But it’s not just test days that matter. Studies show that raised temperatures also affect learning over longer time periods. For example, pupils’ <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069616301887">test scores suffered</a> when there were more hot days across the school year and even when the hotter weather occurred <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180612">three to four years before</a> exam day.</p>
<p>Our review also highlights how climate-related regional disasters like wildfires, storms, droughts and floods are keeping many children out of school entirely. Floods can prevent children from <a href="https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/138/285">travelling to school</a> and cause <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/51/article/738666/pdf">damage</a> to school buildings and materials, which disrupts learning and lowers test scores.</p>
<p>In developing countries, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292115001427">storms</a> and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02869-1">droughts</a> commonly cause children to leave school permanently to join the workforce and support their families. Children in higher-income countries are not immune. They miss school days due to <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.4.1.109">hurricanes</a> and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06050-9#:%7E:text=We%20find%20no%20significant%20impacts,closures%20lasting%203%E2%80%935%20days.">wildfires</a> and these absences have measurable effects on education outcomes.</p>
<p>The impacts of climate disasters can also affect children before they are born with consequences that reverberate across their lives. For example, children whose mothers were pregnant during <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36129196/">Hurricane Sandy</a> were more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition that can make schooling more challenging.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/710066">India</a>, researchers found that raised temperatures lead to lower test scores due to crop failure and malnutrition, highlighting the importance of indirect links between climate stressors and subsequent school participation and learning.</p>
<h2>Educational injustice</h2>
<p>Our analysis suggests that climate change will exacerbate existing inequalities in global education access and attainment, with already disadvantaged groups facing the largest learning setbacks. In the US, heat had <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00959-9">worse effects</a> on exam scores for racial and ethnic minorities and children living in lower-income school districts. </p>
<p>Following a super typhoon in the Philippines, children whose families had fewer financial resources and smaller social networks were <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292115001427">more likely to drop out</a> of school than their better-resourced neighbours. In contexts where girls’ education is less prioritised than boys’, their school attendance and exam scores have suffered more following climate change stressors such as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environment-and-development-economics/article/rainfall-shocks-cognitive-development-and-educational-attainment-among-adolescents-in-a-droughtprone-region-in-kenya/E432EC63DAD24849A991E67C7B387844">droughts</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292115001427">storms</a>.</p>
<p>Globally, regions where people are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change – in terms of risk of harmful stressors occurring and resources available to adapt – are also regions where children already receive fewer years of schooling. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="World map in green on left side, another in pink on right with shaded areas to indicate average years of formal education compared to vulnerability to climate change in each country" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582546/original/file-20240318-25-n98wau.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These maps show the average years of formal education (left) and vulnerability to climate change by country (right).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The impacts of climate change on education are already widely visible. While the scale of the problem is daunting, there are many ways to take action. Most critically, global heating urgently needs to be limited by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. </p>
<p>At the same time, children’s education must be protected from climate change stressors that are already occurring. Possible measures include installing cooling technologies, effective disaster response planning, building <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/we-dont-need-air-con-how-burkina-faso-builds-schools-that-stay-cool-in-40c-heat">stressor-resilient schools</a> and addressing systemic global inequalities related to socioeconomic, gender and racial discrimination. </p>
<p>Preventing harm to children’s education is a worthy goal in itself. But improving education can also contribute to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01701-9">greater awareness</a> and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01171-x">climate literacy</a>, while <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01444">mitigating</a> climate change and making children more resilient in the face of climate stressors. </p>
<p>Education can help fight climate change. But we must also fight climate change to prevent harm to education. Without action, the future of young people around the world hangs in the balance.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
<br><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeTop">Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.</a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeBottom">Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Louise Berry has received funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and various other national and international competitive and consultancy research funding sources. She is affiliated with The Australian Greens. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin M Prentice, Francis Vergunst, and Kelton Minor do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Teaching children about the environmental crisis can help fight climate change, but climate change is already negatively affecting children’s education around the globe.Caitlin M Prentice, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of OsloFrancis Vergunst, Associate Professor, Psychosocial Difficulties, University of OsloHelen Louise Berry, Honorary Professor, Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Macquarie UniversityKelton Minor, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Computational Social and Behavioural Science, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2249822024-03-21T14:40:43Z2024-03-21T14:40:43ZGhana’s free high school policy is getting more girls to complete secondary education – study<p>Education drives economic growth and individual well-being. Secondary education, in particular, plays a crucial role. In recent decades, this recognition has encouraged several <a href="https://theconversation.com/free-secondary-education-in-african-countries-is-on-the-rise-but-is-it-the-best-policy-what-the-evidence-says-204924">African countries to make secondary education free</a>. One example is Ghana’s Free Public Senior High School (<a href="https://moe.gov.gh/index.php/free-shs-policy/">FreeSHS</a>) policy, initiated in 2017. </p>
<p>The policy aimed to remove cost barriers to secondary education, including fees, textbooks, boarding and meals. </p>
<p>As scholars of public policy, we conducted <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059324000439#bib4">research</a> into the impact of the policy, particularly its effect on the number of girls completing secondary school. We emphasised the educational outcomes of girls because they are at a disadvantage when accessing higher education in Ghana. The enrolment and retention of girls in school <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603124.2019.1613565">decrease with each educational level</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01443581211274647/full/html">Socio-culturally,</a> if a family has limited resources, they tend to spend more on boys’ education than on girls’ education and this is reinforced by the belief that girls’ labour around the house is more valuable.</p>
<p>The results highlighted that the state’s absorption of education costs had served as a critical incentive for students to complete secondary education – and more so for girls.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059324000439#bib4">Our paper</a> is the first to quantitatively evaluate the policy’s impact on education outcomes. Also, by focusing on the policy’s impact on schoolgirls, our findings show how removing cost barriers to education significantly enhances the chances of girls in completing secondary education. This is important because aside from female education having individual benefits, “to educate girls is to reduce poverty”, as former UN secretary-general <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2003/sgsm8662.doc.htm">Kofi Annan</a> said.</p>
<p>Our findings contribute to the call for greater schooling access for girls.</p>
<h2>Weighing up the pros and cons</h2>
<p>Ghana’s Free Public Senior High School policy arose from an <a href="https://www.codeoghana.org/assets/downloadables/2012%20NPP%20Manifesto.pdf">election campaign promise</a> made by President <a href="https://citifmonline.com/2017/09/from-2008-to-2017-the-free-shs-journey/">Nana Akufo-Addo during campaign trails in 2008, 2012 and 2016</a>.</p>
<p>Between 2017 and 2021 the government spent <a href="https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/politics/gh-5-12bn-spent-on-free-shs-minister.html">GH¢5.12 billion</a> (US$392 million) on implementing the policy. </p>
<p>There has been controversy. Critics have questioned the policy’s financial sustainability and raised concerns about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18146627.2023.2225754?casa_token=ghjM4EjR7LQAAAAA:Fh511M9k6kARILla_omwarRwRI8r_PA130k9DRvHDmJYvyCIIYDZb4u0FwqbmXuO3hD_3VL51CF6eA">deteriorating education quality</a>, given the rising enrolment rates since the policy’s inception.</p>
<p>Still, public opinion remains largely favourable. According to the <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/migrated/files/publications/Summary%20of%20results/summary_of_results-ghana_r8-19feb20-updated.pdf">Afrobarometer survey in 2020</a>, 23.5% agreed and 63.1% strongly agreed that it had created opportunities for those who otherwise would not have been able to afford secondary education. </p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>Our study set out to estimate the impact of the policy on education attainment. We emphasised how it had affected, in particular, the completion rate of girls. We did this by estimating the change in secondary school completion rates without the policy (2013 to 2016) and with it (2017 to 2020). </p>
<p>These rates will have been influenced by a number of factors, not just free education. But they were the starting point of our nuanced analysis.</p>
<p>Because all students benefited from the policy from 2017 we couldn’t simply estimate its impact by looking at the completion rate of those who benefited and those who had not. </p>
<p>So we compared districts where more students took advantage of the policy. That is, where more students had previously been unable to afford schooling to districts where fewer did so. This helped us see if the change in completion rates between these groups was bigger after the policy started. Basically, it’s like comparing two gardens. Both get extra water (free schooling) and experience an increase in growth. However, one garden grew more than the other.</p>
<p>That difference in “gardens” (school districts) allowed us to estimate the impact of the “water” (the policy) on education completion. </p>
<p>We found that the policy positively affected the educational attainment of both girls and boys. For girls and boys together, the policy increased the completion of senior high school by 14.9 percentage points. </p>
<p>There was a 14 percentage point increase in the rate of girls completing senior high school after the new policy. We did not estimate the increase for boys but the combined rate shows it will be higher than 14 percentage points.</p>
<p>We also found that after the policy was in place, girls enrolled in secondary high school at rates equal to or exceeding those of boys across all regions. However, this has not yet translated into full gender parity in completion rates. </p>
<p>The short-term impact suggests that the policy alone does not erase all gendered constraints to education (for example, social and cultural), but it has contributed to reducing them. </p>
<p>We did not find evidence that the policy improved the quality of education. However, we found that quality was statistically insignificant in driving completion rates.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10780-022-09459-3">Reports</a> of inadequate infrastructure and overcrowding hint at an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18146627.2023.2225754">unchanged and even declining quality of schooling</a>. </p>
<h2>Policy implications</h2>
<p>Our findings have four policy implications. To maximise the benefits of increased enrolment and completion rates, Ghana must:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Address education quality concerns</strong>: An increase in secondary high school completion rates should not be mistaken for quality. Quality must be enhanced to improve labour market competitiveness and long-term gains.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Implement complementary policies</strong>: Increasing enrolment and completion rates will lead to a larger pool of educated youth. Labour market and tertiary education opportunities must be boosted to match the new demand.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Develop interventions to address specific needs of deprived districts</strong>: Some regions, for instance, the northern and western regions, had among the lowest uptake rates for the free senior high school policy. There are underlying barriers to education in these regions other than fees. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059321000237">Lessons from Uganda</a> have shown that, despite universal fee-free secondary education, the probability of enrolling in secondary education was reduced by greater distance to the nearest school, especially in rural compared to urban areas. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Make FreeSHS a targeted intervention rather than universal</strong>: The government must do more to systematically identify those who cannot pay and make secondary education free for them. The policy can also be used to provide incentives for the uptake of technical and vocational education and training. This can yield savings, generate resources for quality education investments and increase employment opportunities. </p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>This article and the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059324000439#bib4">research</a> it is based upon was led by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-stenzel/?originalSubdomain=de">Alicia Stenzel</a> (Education Policy Advisor at GIZ).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Free secondary educational policy in Ghana is worthwhile but struggles to keep up with quality.Victor Osei Kwadwo, Lecturer, Maastricht University (UNU-MERIT), United Nations UniversityRose Vincent, Assistant Professor, Utrecht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231612024-03-08T13:37:29Z2024-03-08T13:37:29ZWhat families need to know about how to safely store firearms at home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579045/original/file-20240229-20-8z3by2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=42%2C0%2C3430%2C2404&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Guns are the leading cause of death of children in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/child-holding-gun-mid-section-b-w-royalty-free-image/pha184000035?phrase=kids+guns&adppopup=true">Laurent Hamels via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past few years, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html">guns have been identified</a> as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html">leading cause of death</a> for children in the United States.</p>
<p>There were <a href="https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/">2,571 children age 1 to 17 who died in shootings</a> in the U.S. in 2021, 68% more than the 1,531 that occurred in 2000.</p>
<p>To help reduce the number of firearm-related deaths and injuries among children, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in January 2024 <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/012524.html">called upon school and district administrators</a> to talk with parents and guardians about safe firearm storage practices.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6kAiow8AAAAJ&hl=en">experts</a> on the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=r9lbnH0AAAAJ">safe storage of firearms</a> – and as leaders of the University of Connecticut’s <a href="https://arms.chip.uconn.edu/">ARMS Center for Gun Injury Prevention</a> – we often get questions about the best ways to keep guns out of the hands of children. We offer the following tips:</p>
<h2>1. Safely store all of your firearms</h2>
<p>Nearly half of the households in the U.S. have at least one firearm, but only about 40% of firearm owners store all of their guns when not in use, according to data in a survey we recently fielded. Unsecured firearms have been linked to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-018-0261-7">suicides, domestic homicides and accidental shootings</a>. They also heighten the risk of unauthorized use, which <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2017/11/stolen-guns-violent-crime-america/">includes theft</a>.</p>
<h2>2. Don’t assume you can hide your guns</h2>
<p>Kids generally know the hiding spots for the things their parents or caretakers do not want them to find, such as holiday gifts or Halloween candy. The same is true with firearms.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/13788?autologincheck=redirected">40% of gun-owning households</a> with children, adults said their children did not know where firearms were stored, a 2017 study found. However, many of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/hpeds.2016-0146">children reported knowing</a> and being able to access the firearms.</p>
<p>Researchers estimate that <a href="https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/research/areas-of-research/center-for-injury-research-and-policy/injury-topics/general/gun-safety">75% of children</a> who live in homes with guns know where they are stored.</p>
<p>Adults may think they can instruct children to leave firearms alone, but the 2017 study also found that <a href="https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/13788?autologincheck=redirected">22% of parents</a> wrongly believed that their children had never handled their gun.</p>
<h2>3. Store ammunition separately</h2>
<p>Research shows that locking ammunition separately from firearms further <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.6.707">reduces the risk</a> of firearm injuries in homes with children and teenagers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bullets are scattered about a table top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579044/original/file-20240229-20-yhh7th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Storing ammunition separately from firearms can help reduce the risk of injury.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/war-bullets-pistol-9-mm-royalty-free-image/1940835204?phrase=guns+ammunition&adppopup=true">Olena Domanytska via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While storing an unreadied weapon locked away may feel counterintuitive to those who own guns for personal protection, research shows that keeping firearms locked or unloaded, or both, can also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136%2Fjech.2003.017343">reduce risk of injury</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Learn to talk about firearm safety</h2>
<p>While some families may not have firearms in their home, eventually children go to other homes and, as they get older, go unsupervised.</p>
<p>Keeping children safe from gun violence requires normalizing conversations on firearm storage, even for people in households where no gun is present. </p>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a1.htm#T2_down">45% of all unintentional shooting deaths</a> of children under 17 occurred outside of their own homes. When children visit friends, we believe it’s important for their parents to know if guns are present in the home they are visiting and, if present, whether those firearms are being safely stored.</p>
<p>For more information about how to discuss firearm safety, parents can visit websites such as <a href="https://besmartforkids.org/">BeSMART</a>, <a href="https://www.endfamilyfire.org/about">End Family Fire</a> and <a href="https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/blog/advocacy/how-secure-storage-of-guns-makes-children-and-families-safer/">Secure Storage of Lethal Means</a>.</p>
<h2>5. Know the law</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/state-advocacy/safe-storage-of-firearms/">Twenty-seven states</a> have some version of <a href="https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-and-children-legislation/">secure storage laws</a>.</p>
<p>Based on our calculations <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm">using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>, states with child access prevention laws – known as <a href="https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/strategies-and-solutions/what-works-for-health/strategies/child-firearm-access-prevention-laws#">CAP laws</a> – have a gun death rate that is 65% lower than states that do not have CAP laws (12.33 vs. 20.38 per 100,000). Of course, states with and without CAP laws have many differences; therefore, the lower rates cannot be attributed to CAP laws alone. However, the presence of CAP laws is protective and reduces gun death.</p>
<p>In the absence of a federal secure storage law, the legal requirements around firearm storage and preventing unauthorized children from accessing weapons vary by state or municipality.</p>
<p>For example, Connecticut <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/2019/act/pa/pdf/2019PA-00005-R00HB-07218-PA.pdf">requires firearms be in a locked device</a> when not in use. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/iac/rule/07-01-2020.441.113.7.pdf">Iowa prohibits</a> the storing or leaving a loaded firearm around children 14 and younger if it is not secured by a trigger lock or a securely locked container or some other secure location.</p>
<p>Further, while Michigan only recently added a safe storage law, Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of a boy who committed a mass school shooting with his parents’ unsecured firearm, <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html">was recently convicted</a> of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the case. Her husband’s trial in the matter <a href="https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/james-crumbley-trial-date-lawyer-charges">began on March 5, 2024</a>.</p>
<h2>6. Invest in a quality safe and/or locking device</h2>
<p>There are various levels of locked gun storage, including <a href="https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/firearm-safety.html#">trigger locks</a>, <a href="https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/firearm-safety.html">metal cable locks</a>, <a href="https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/what-qualifies-secure-gun-storage-or-safety-device#">locked gun cases and gun safes</a>. While storing a firearm and the ammunition in a locked combination or biometric device <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62245-9_12">is safest</a>, all of these methods can reduce the risk of gun injury and death. These locking devices can be purchased online, through some gun sellers or at sporting goods stores.</p>
<p>A biometric safe for a handgun is about US$65, a gun lock runs $55 to $75 dollars, and combination safes for long guns range widely from a couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars.</p>
<p>Family-school-community partnerships allow America’s children to grow and thrive. By asking schools to share resources for secure firearm storage and communicate evidence-based safety practices, the Department of Education is helping schools address the leading cause of death among American children.</p>
<p>But families have to do their part, too. It begins by normalizing firearm safety conversations and storing firearms properly to keep children safe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerri Raissian is affiliated with the Niskanen Center (Sr. Fellow) and Arnold Ventures (paid consultant).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Necci Dineen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows that more children have handled household guns than their parents think.Kerri Raissian, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of ConnecticutJennifer Necci Dineen, Associate Director of the ARMS Center for Gun Injury Prevention, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211552024-03-07T13:03:45Z2024-03-07T13:03:45ZWhy schools need to take sun safety more seriously – expert explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577546/original/file-20240223-16-azytla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C0%2C4195%2C2788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The World Health Organization recommends formal school programmes as the key to preventing skin cancer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-boy-having-sunscreen-applied-339150182">Paul Higley/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite the UK’s rainy climate, there is a one in six <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ski2.61">risk</a> of developing skin cancer. Children, especially, should take extra care as severe sunburn as a youngster more than <a href="https://www.skincancer.org/risk-factors/sunburn/">doubles</a> the chance of developing skin cancer later on. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ced/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ced/llad458/7507665">new research</a> my colleagues and I conducted shows that less than half of primary schools in Wales have a formal sun safety policy.</p>
<p>With skin cancer rates continuing to rise by <a href="https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/medical_specialties/dermatology/">8% annually</a> in England and Wales, it’s a problem that’s not going away and the disease now accounts for half of all cancers. In 2020 alone, the cost of treating skin cancer in England was <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23554510/">estimated</a> to be more than £180 million.</p>
<p>There is hope, though. It is estimated that around <a href="https://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/skin-cancer-facts">90% of skin cancers</a> are due to ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure from the sun. This means they can be prevented through safer behaviour. </p>
<p>In the UK, though, many people still <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">underestimate</a> the link between sunburn and skin cancer. Research paints a worrying picture, revealing disparities in sun protection awareness and behaviour across different groups. Notably, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">men</a>, people living in <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26875569/">low-income neighbourhoods</a>, those belonging to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">lower socioeconomic groups</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28125871/">people of colour</a> are often found to be less informed about sun safety and are more likely to put themselves at risk. </p>
<p>With childhood a crucial time for learning healthy behaviour, teaching all children from a young age about sun protection could be one way to reduce future skin cancer rates. And the <a href="https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/42678/9241590629_v1.pdf?sequence=1">World Health Organization</a> recommends formal school programmes as the key to prevention. </p>
<p>Overall, school-based interventions have been <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743521000438">shown</a> to positively influence sun safe knowledge and behaviour. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyt105">schools in Australia</a> with written policies show better sun protection practices than those without.</p>
<p>But in UK schools, the situation varies. The UK government’s Department for Education has issued <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/physical-health-and-mental-wellbeing-primary-and-secondary#by-the-end-of-primary-school">statutory guidance</a> for England that children should leave primary school knowing about sun safety and how to reduce the risk of getting skin cancer. </p>
<p>In Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is not a legal requirement to teach sun safety in schools. And in Wales, while sun safety is recommended as part of the Welsh Network of Healthy Schools scheme, again there is no mandatory requirement to have a sun safety policy or to teach skin cancer prevention. Nor are there central UK resources provided to help schools in this area. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The red, peeling sunburnt back and shoulders of a young girl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Being severely sunburnt as a youngster more than doubles the chance of developing future skin cancer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dangerous-sunburn-shoulders-young-girl-601094933">Alonafoto/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>My colleagues and I wanted to know how many schools have a sun safety policy, a formal document that sets out a school’s position with respect to the education and provision of sun safety. We also wanted to understand whether the existence of a policy varied by area or school characteristic, and what support schools need. </p>
<p>In 2022, we sent a survey to all 1,241 primary schools in Wales. In total, 471 schools responded. </p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>We found that only 39% of responding schools had a formal sun safety policy. And of these, not all enforced them. Schools that had more children receiving free school meals and with lower attendance rates were less likely to have a sun safety policy.</p>
<p>We asked schools that did not have a policy to tell us the reasons why not. Thirty-five per cent of schools were “not aware of the need”, while 27% of schools had “not got around to it just yet”. Thirty schools (13%) said that a sun safety policy was not a priority at this time. Clearly, there is work to be done on raising awareness among schools and school leaders on the role they can play in this area.</p>
<p>Of course, schools are busy places. So, when asked to indicate what would encourage them to create a sun safety policy, 73% of schools said assistance with development, while 56% said resources to aid the teaching of sun safety. </p>
<p>Previously both Cancer Research UK and the Wales-based Tenovus Cancer Care charities have offered support and guidelines for schools but this support is no longer easily available. The England-based charity <a href="https://www.skcin.org/ourWork/sunSafeSchools.htm">Sckin</a> has a comprehensive and free sun-safe schools accreditation scheme. Some schools told us they based their policies on resources supplied by the local authority, but this was not consistent across Wales.</p>
<p>UV levels will soon rise in the UK and now is the time for schools to start thinking about sun protection. Having a formal sun safety school policy sets out the position of the school when it comes to sun safety. When enforced and communicated properly, this makes it clear to everyone (governors, teachers, carers and pupils) their individual responsibilities when it comes to staying safe. </p>
<p>But with fewer than half of schools in Wales having formal policies, and not all enforced, awareness of the importance of this issue and the potential role of schools is lacking. </p>
<p>It is therefore time for sun safety policies to become mandatory for primary schools across the UK. This could help to improve knowledge and behaviour for all age groups. But adequate support and guidance must be also given to schools to help them educate children about sun safety and protect them while they are at school.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Peconi received funding for the Sunproofed Study from Health and Care Research Wales through a Health Research Grant Award. She is also a volunteer with the charity Skin Care Cymru, a charity working to raise the profile of skin health in Wales. </span></em></p>Being severely sunburnt as a child more than doubles the chance of developing future skin cancer but less than half of primary schools questioned in new research have a sun safety policy.Julie Peconi, Senior Research Officer in Health Data Science, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244572024-02-29T13:39:32Z2024-02-29T13:39:32ZClimate comedy works − here’s why, and how it can help lighten up a politically heavy year in 2024<p>In a catchy <a href="https://youtu.be/UxLvTF_9jv4?feature=shared">YouTube video</a>, British comedian Jo Brand <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-brand-translated-my-science-im-certain-that-comedy-can-connect-people-to-climate-change-223745">translates a scientist’s long-winded description</a> of the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis this way: “We are paying a bunch of rich dudes 1 trillion dollars a year to f--- up our future,” she says. “Even the dinosaurs didn’t subsidize their own extinction. <a href="https://twitter.com/SRTurtleIsland/status/1727843781880209794">Who’s the stupid species now</a>?”</p>
<p>Although there is nothing funny about the subject, the way she says it is funny.</p>
<p>She speaks truth to power. She relieves the heaviness of the rhetoric. And she’s dropping f- and s-bombs with a British accent. At the start of the video, Brand comments, “If people like me have to get involved, you know we’re in deep s---”.</p>
<p>We all need some refreshing levity nowadays – especially this year.</p>
<p>Around the world, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-climate-change-on-the-ballot-paper-in-2024/id1538415261?i=1000643262165">voters will be choosing</a> national leaders <a href="https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/">in countries representing nearly half the human population</a>. In many cities, states and counties, those decisions will directly affect how the world deals with climate change. Outcomes, including from another U.S. presidential race with Donald Trump vowing to promote fossil fuels and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/trump-climate-change-fossil-fuels-second-term">undermine climate policies</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-how-trump-and-his-followers-use-offensive-humour-to-make-prejudice-acceptable-221364">democracy itself</a>, will reverberate across the planet. That’s heavy.</p>
<p>At the same time, the planet just came off its warmest year on record in 2023, and ocean temperatures are still abnormally high. Heavier yet, the <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news/2023-was-worlds-warmest-year-on-record-by-far">10 hottest years since record-keeping began</a> have all occurred in the past decade.</p>
<p>Not only does the world need to cool down, it also needs to lighten up. As <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/chancellor/cu-boulder-where-you-are-stand-climate-change-using-power-humor-start-conversation">professors who study climate comedy</a>, we can tell you that the need for levity is one reason climate comedy works.</p>
<h2>Lightening up to engage with tough stuff</h2>
<p>For many generations, comedy has been an effective pathway to not only lighten things up but to propose unlikely solutions.</p>
<p>In ancient Greece, comic playwright Aristophanes took on the crisis of his times – the Peloponnesian War – <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27549461">with a comedy</a> in which women from both sides of the conflict enact a sex strike until their men agree to a peace treaty. As you can imagine, sexual innuendo abounds.</p>
<p>Brand, the British comedian, teamed up with <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-brand-translated-my-science-im-certain-that-comedy-can-connect-people-to-climate-change-223745">climate scientist Mark Maslin</a> to find novel ways to communicate effectively about the climate crisis. In a video, they <a href="https://youtu.be/SA87n9jrWU0?si=iZEilVCj8oEsAcy1">effectively communicate together</a> about climate change causes and consequences. Humorously drawing out their contrasting communication styles, they find the funny as Brand pops up with observations like, “If you liked climate crisis, you’re going to love climate complete f---ing collapse.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">British comedian Jo Brand and scientist Mark Maslin play off each other to educate the public about climate change.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Their mix of clever timing, absurdity, scatology and full commitment to each of their roles as scientist and comedian <a href="https://youtu.be/9ZGjEHxoDiQ?si=rBbq6Ob1byWT9i2L">gave their climate comedy traction</a>, with over 3 million views.</p>
<p>In South Africa, the group <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliticallyAweh">Politically Aweh has been producing creative content</a> about climate change and other connected issues in the run-up to their general election this year.</p>
<p>In one <a href="https://youtu.be/N3n1HgwW8jg?si=FHDuGU8pAzMGgRCK">YouTube video</a>, host Zipho Majova creatively compares our collective avoidance of dealing with climate change with avoiding our mothers’ texts. She then says, “You can’t ignore messages from mom forever. And by mom, I mean mother Earth!” The skilled editing of news media clips and popular TV shows woven into Zipho’s commentary makes this climate comedy take an effective one.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Political Aweh takes on ignorance of climate change.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the U.S., creative collectives such as <a href="https://www.climatetownproductions.com/">Climate Town</a> in New York, <a href="https://yellowdotstudios.com/">Yellow Dot Studios</a> in Los Angeles, the <a href="https://cmsimpact.org/">Center for Media and Social Impact</a> in Washington, D.C., and our <a href="https://insidethegreenhouse.org/">Inside the Greenhouse</a> project in Boulder, Colorado, are working to alleviate climate anxiety and activate people to discuss climate change and do something about it.</p>
<p>With elements of exaggeration, innuendo, witty recognition of truths, suspense and ultimate honesty, climate comedy from groups like these and on late-night shows <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0">like John Oliver’s</a> “Last Week Tonight” resonates.</p>
<h2>Why climate comedy works</h2>
<p>Comedy has the ability to transcend science-speak and open up conversations with new audiences while helping “keep it real” and identifying solutions.</p>
<p>It can also provide emotional relief as it lowers people’s defenses and allows them to find promise and possibility for envisioning positive change.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Comedians discuss climate change using comedy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through our research, we have found that comedy can help college students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2019.1623513">work through negative emotions</a> associated with climate change. In one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKgpVnv6xM">Earth Day show</a>, a fashionista student at the University of Colorado-Boulder, craving a loophole for satisfying her clothing addiction, discovers thrifting, and comically quips, “Nothing says ‘I love Planet Earth’ more than wearing someone else’s clothes.”</p>
<p>Creative movies like “<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-look-up-hollywoods-primer-on-climate-denial-illustrates-5-myths-that-fuel-rejection-of-science-174266">Don’t Look Up!</a>” and TV shows like <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81500842">“Unstable,” starring Rob Lowe</a>, comedically address themes such as climate change and science denial by making fun of some behaviors while bringing serious problems into everyday life. Lowe’s biotech billionaire character’s efforts to capture carbon from the atmosphere in cement got people talking about carbon capture and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/concrete-traps-co2-soaked-air-climate-friendly-test-2023-02-03/">similar projects in real life</a>.</p>
<p>Introducing ridiculous ideas into an otherwise logical world like comedians <a href="https://www.chucknicecomic.com/">Chuck Nice</a> – co-host of “StarTalk” with Neil deGrasse Tyson – and <a href="https://www.kashapatel.com/">Kasha Patel</a> each do can also get people laughing. So can imitation and playfulness with social inversions, which you’ll see from comedians <a href="https://www.nicoleconlan.com/">Nicole Conlan</a>, who writes for “The Daily Show,” and <a href="https://www.rolliewilliamscomedy.com/climate-town">Rollie Williams</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rollie Williams explains how your money is funding Big Oil behind your back.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although some of the solutions put forth by comedians may seem ridiculous, history can tell us that such antics can draw attention and lead to change.</p>
<p>The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. and the Hip Hop Caucus have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0k9R4DWtuU&t=225s">teamed up with comedians</a> for years to engage audiences on climate change. Their new documentary with comedian Wanda Sykes mixes in comedy while documenting the rising risks of sea-level rise <a href="https://hiphopcaucus.org/hip-hop-caucus-short-film-underwater-projects-selected-for-social-justice-now-film-festival-and-dc-environmental-film-festival/">in Norfolk, Virginia</a>.</p>
<p>Comedy can run the risk of merely distracting people from the serious climate challenges before us or trivializing the problems. However, the transformative and subversive power of comedy as a vehicle for social, political, economic and cultural change is proving to be strong.</p>
<p>When unleashed into our collective consciousness, jokes can be healing contagion as they elicit laughter and open the mind. In that moment, rigidity is relaxed, the single solution is bifurcated, hypocrisy is exposed and delight intoxicates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maxwell Boykoff receives funding from National Science Foundation, the National Parks Service Climate Change Response Program and the Argosy Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Osnes receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Argosy Foundation. </span></em></p>Jokes can be a healing contagion as they expose hypocrisy, spark laughter and open minds.Maxwell Boykoff, Professor of Environmental Studies and Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado BoulderBeth Osnes, Professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225882024-02-27T19:40:15Z2024-02-27T19:40:15ZBetty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577625/original/file-20240223-28-ht6czh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3691%2C2714&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Betty Smith's novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-women-smile-as-they-crowd-around-another-who-news-photo/119076541?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty years ago, in the winter and spring of 1944, Brooklyn-born author <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/smith-betty">Betty Smith</a> was entering a new chapter of life.</p>
<p>A year earlier, she was an unknown writer, negotiating with her publisher about manuscript edits and the date of publication for her first book, “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ATreeGrowsInBrooklynByBettySmith/A+Tree+Grows+In+Brooklyn+by+Betty+Smith_djvu.txt">A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</a>,” a semi-autobiographical novel about the poor but spirited Nolan family. </p>
<p>Now she was one of the lucky few. Her book was spotted in cafes, on buses and in bookstores all over town. The following year, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038190/">when it was being made into a film</a> directed by Elia Kazan, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=H1MEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA43&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj25depp-CDAxXiSTABHYd3C6YQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">Life magazine reported</a>, “Betty Smith’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (2,500,000 copies sold) has become one of the best-loved novels of our time.”</p>
<p>New York in the 1940s was not the city we know today. The Empire State Building had not reached its <a href="https://www.esbnyc.com/about/history">full height</a>, nor had the statue of <a href="https://www.centralpark.com/things-to-do/attractions/alice-in-wonderland/">“Alice in Wonderland” taken up residence in Central Park</a>. And it would be decades before anyone was humming along to a tune that brashly commanded, “Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today, I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!” </p>
<p>Brooklyn, too, was still becoming itself – and no other 20th-century American novel did quite so much for the borough’s reputation.</p>
<h2>Readers fall for Brooklyn</h2>
<p>During World War II, writes law professor <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/when-books-went-to-war-molly-guptill-manning">Molly Guptill Manning</a>, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” was one of the most popular books among the Armed Services Editions, which were mass-produced paperbacks selected by a panel of literary experts for distribution to the U.S. military during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Green horizontal copy of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' with creases along the cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Armed Services Edition of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/03/A-Tree-Grows-in-Brooklyn-ASE.jpg">UNC Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seemed like everyone wanted to declare some affiliation with the novel-turned-film and, by extension, with Brooklyn. Even readers who had never set foot in the borough nonetheless found themselves enchanted by it through Smith’s portrayal. </p>
<p>As one reader wrote to Smith, “Raised as a ‘rebel of the old South,’ Brooklyn has long been my symbol of all yankee, thus learning to hate it; but now I have learned to love it through Francie’s eyes … as Francie loved it.”</p>
<p>Advertisers also took note, riffing on Smith’s title with tags such as, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjgn8vbp-CDAxU6RDABHX3uAF44ChDoAXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">A Dress Grows on Peggy</a>,” or Rheingold extra dry lager – the “beer that grows in Brooklyn.”</p>
<h2>Poverty loses its sheen of shame</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, readers who had grown up in the borough responded enthusiastically to Smith’s evocations of their favorite neighborhood haunts, writing to her to share their own memories of the shops and streets that she had included in the novel. </p>
<p>“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” had done something remarkable for them: It removed the veil of shame that surrounded tenement living and, as historian Judith E. Smith has written, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">helped them reclaim their humble origins</a>.</p>
<p>And not just reclaim them. The novel affirmed the desire to move beyond poverty, as the protagonist, Francie, had done, and Betty Smith, too.</p>
<p>Francie’s wanderings through Brooklyn lead to her discovery of a more inviting public school than her own. With her father’s help, she manages to enroll in the school, which is better funded but farther from home. Despite the extra-long schlep, Francie sees it as “a good thing” to have found this new school: “It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.” </p>
<p>It was a feeling that people of many backgrounds could understand, and not just in Brooklyn. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Red and white brick apartment buildings in Brooklyn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">702 Grand Street in Williamsburg, where Smith spent part of her childhood and which served as the setting for ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,’ pictured in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.compass.com/listing/702-grand-street-brooklyn-ny-11211/265170627315403233/">Compass Real Estate</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith certainly understood the importance of broadening her horizons: Although she never finished high school, when her marriage to a University of Michigan graduate student brought her to Ann Arbor, she was able to audit classes as a special student.</p>
<p>There, her work for her playwriting classes led to a prestigious playwriting prize, and then an invitation to study at Yale School of Drama. Divorced at that point, Smith was free to pursue her education in theater at Yale. The theme of self-improvement through education made “A Tree Grows” relatable for readers of modest origins.</p>
<p>Readers were quick to see the novel as a paean to Brooklyn, and often sought to bond with Smith over their presumed shared love of Brooklyn.</p>
<p>“I hope you will give us further stories of the Brooklyn which you know, and, I am sure, love so well,” wrote one reader. </p>
<p>“Some day, if you have time, it might be fun to chew the fat a bit about old Williamsburgh (sic),” journalist Meyer Berger wrote to Smith after reading and reviewing her novel. </p>
<p>“Betty Smith obviously loves Brooklyn and is proud of it,” Orville Prescott declared in his <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/08/18/issue.html">glowing New York Times review</a>.</p>
<h2>Smith scorns the borough’s new arrivals</h2>
<p>But did Betty Smith love Brooklyn? </p>
<p>After all, she wrote the novel while living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – years after having moved away from New York. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bkmag.com/2021/08/20/priced-out-the-2020-census-throws-brooklyns-affordable-housing-crisis-into-relief/">Like so many who leave Brooklyn today</a>, Smith did not return to take up residence, in part because she could not afford to live there on her own. By the time she had earned a windfall from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” she had come to love Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>Smith also left Brooklyn with mixed feelings about her hometown. <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">She wrote to her publishers in 1942</a>, “If Hitler’s bombers should ever get over and if any portion of this great city has to be wiped out, it would be a blessing if it were (Williamsburg).” </p>
<p>“Evil seems to be part of the very materials that the sidewalks are made out of and the wood and the brick of the houses,” she added. </p>
<p>Although writing about Brooklyn had brought her fortune and fame, she had no desire to return. </p>
<p>As she explained in her 1942 letter, Smith perceived Brooklyn’s current situation as the result of a changing population and growing crime: “A hundred years ago, it was a quiet peaceful village settled by hard-working, sturdy, honest burghers,” Smith reflected in her letter, adding that even 25 years ago, Williamsburg was a gentler place. “But now it’s a fearful one.” </p>
<p>Smith offered her own analysis of the situation: “The feuds in the neighborhood came about because most of the Italians originally came from Sicily and were fierce and murderous. The Jews in the neighborhood were mostly Russian Jews, conditioned to pogroms and much fiercer and more ready to fight.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Kids tug and pull at one another while a woman cries in the background and another woman tries to keep order." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd gathers in Williamsburg in 1941 to see the corpse of a man shot twice by an unknown gunman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/premium-rates-apply-a-crowd-gathers-in-the-williamsburg-news-photo/2716771?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like many Americans at the time, Smith held some entrenched and intolerant views about immigrants and their character. Since she was often invited to contribute guest essays to publications during the height of her fame, she had ample opportunity to express her worldview. </p>
<p>After World War II, Smith directed this hostility toward foreigners at America’s wartime enemies. In her August 1945 essay “<a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/08/26/305533912.html?pageNumber=104">Thoughts for These Days of Victory</a>,” she encouraged readers not to forget their anger at wartime enemies: “Let us hold this bitterness so that we’ll not again be lulled into a false sense of security. The war proved conclusively that not all men are brothers and that not all nations are sisters.” </p>
<p>A full understanding of the Betty Smith behind the novel that changed how Americans felt about Brooklyn – and their humble origins – are complicated by Smith’s own views and her experiences away from Brooklyn. </p>
<p>As Smith knew, making something of yourself often requires leaving home. It’s hard to tell whether distance made her heart grow fonder. In leaving Brooklyn, Smith had not suddenly started seeing her hometown through rose-colored glasses.</p>
<p>In Chapel Hill she was finally able to see Brooklyn – and write about it – in a way that brought readers of all kinds closer to Brooklyn and legitimized their own origin stories. That, in and of itself, is a kind of love, even if it’s not the unconditional kind so many had imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Gordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.Rachel Gordan, Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232502024-02-27T12:30:48Z2024-02-27T12:30:48ZA Texas court ruling on a Black student wearing hair in long locs reflects history of racism in schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577713/original/file-20240224-24-mne9vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C49%2C8118%2C5383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">America's schools don't always welcome cultural expression. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/barber-cutting-young-boys-hair-in-barbershop-royalty-free-image/1717468327?phrase=black+boy+dread+locs&adppopup=true">MoMo Productions via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A Texas judge ruled on Feb. 22, 2024, that the Barbers Hill School District <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/22/texas-crown-act-judge-barbers-hill">didn’t violate the law</a> when it punished Darryl George, a Black student, for wearing his hair in long locs. The Texas law in question – the CROWN Act – prohibits discrimination against hairstyles in schools and workplaces. The school district argued – and Judge Chap B. Cain III agreed – that the law doesn’t mention anything about hair length. In the following Q&A, <a href="https://american.academia.edu/KenjusWatson">Kenjus Watson</a>, an education professor at American University who studies the <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED619047">psychological and social effects of racism</a>, discusses how the decision upholds a long-standing legacy of cultural assimilation .</em></p>
<h2>What message has the court just sent?</h2>
<p>I’d argue it’s a harsh reminder that the natural appearance, cultural expressions and freedom of Black children are <a href="https://doi.org/10.47106/4rwj.11.02181931">incompatible with the objectives and ideals</a> of <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/the-white-architects-of-black-education-9780807740422">the school system in the U.S</a>. Those objectives and ideals were created to establish social order, enforce conformity, demand cultural assimilation and <a href="http://www.blackfeministpedagogies.com/uploads/2/5/5/9/25595205/a_third_uni.pdf">suppress marginalized groups</a>. </p>
<p>The court decision in Texas – and the no-long-hair policy in the Barbers Hill Independent School District – might seem outdated, misinformed or at odds with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-019-00540-3">best practices for culturally responsive education</a>. But as I and other researchers <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36891083/">have found</a>, strict monitoring and other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918754328">anti-Black practices</a> – such as those regarding Black children’s hair, bodies, language, clothing and even their presence – <a href="https://culanth.org/fieldsights/schools-prisons-and-blackness-in-america-a-conversation-with-damien-sojoyner">are widespread in America’s schools</a>. </p>
<h2>What options do Black students have?</h2>
<p>Since education is compulsory for minors, the only options for Black families are to find schools that attempt to <a href="https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1484">prioritize their overall well-being</a> by being supportive of their children’s hairstyle and other cultural values, or to educate their children at home, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/struggling-with-racial-biases-black-families-homeschool-kids-38694">many Black families do now</a>.</p>
<p>Finding a culturally supportive school can be a challenge. Despite efforts from Black families, educators, leaders and allies to create more inclusive environments in schools, anti-Black racism is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2013.850412">pervasive in educational settings</a> – from pre-K through higher education.</p>
<p>Staying in a school system that is hostile to Black cultural expression can threaten children’s well-being. <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/racial-microaggressions-in-education-9780807764398">Extensive research</a> has found that <a href="https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/14/resources/9950">racial microaggressions</a> – <a href="https://issuu.com/almaiflores/docs/kw___lph_research_brief_final_versi">everyday acts of racism</a> – can adversely affect the mental and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-racial-battle-fatigue-a-school-psychologist-explains-192493">physical</a> health of Black people. </p>
<p>My own research has found that it can affect the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36891083/">biological health of Black young people</a>. The hormones the body releases under stressful racial events can damage the <a href="https://vimeo.com/469867415">DNA of Black students</a>. Over time, this can contribute to higher rates of disease and overall <a href="https://theconversation.com/study-racism-shortens-lives-and-hurts-health-of-blacks-by-promoting-genes-that-lead-to-inflammation-and-illness-122027">shorter life expectancy</a> among Black people in the U.S. Finding a supportive school can be an even more urgent matter of life and death. Researchers have found that enduring everyday racism in school is also a key factor behind <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-kids-and-suicide-why-are-rates-so-high-and-so-ignored-127066">rising suicide rates</a> for Black youth.</p>
<h2>What should school leaders consider?</h2>
<p>If educational leaders want to see Black students flourish, I believe they should dismantle racist policies that require order, conformity and assimilation. They should replace these with schoolwide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2021.100880">microaffirmative</a> practices that validate Black student cultural expressions, identities, resilience and brilliance. They can also prioritize mental and emotional health and wellness.</p>
<p>To move toward a new educational system that truly serves all students, I argue that it is crucial to listen to Black families and students in the development of school policies, curriculum and instruction. Doing so can help place Black families’ current experiences within the broader context of the ongoing struggle against <a href="https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752">discrimination and unjust legal decisions</a>, such as the one against Darryl George.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenjus T. Watson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar on racism weighs in on a recent court decision that upheld a school’s decision to punish a Black male student for wearing his hair in long locs.Kenjus T. Watson, Assistant Professor of Urban Education, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235702024-02-23T12:57:13Z2024-02-23T12:57:13ZIQ tests: the danger of reading too much into them – and the crucial cognitive skills they don’t measure<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576998/original/file-20240221-30-c7urzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C28%2C6190%2C4139&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/female-pupil-desk-taking-school-exam-541632589">SpeedKingz/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people object to intelligence tests. Some say IQ test scores are too often abused. They says it’s unfair that when children “fail” these tests it can mean they receive a worse secondary education than their more successful peers – sentencing them to a lifetime of disadvantage.</p>
<p>Some object to IQ tests for quite personal reasons and remember how stressed they were by sitting a test. Many doubt their result was a fair reflection of their future potential. But how useful are IQ tests really – and what skills and qualities do they miss?</p>
<p>More than 30 years ago, I discovered a <a href="https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/j.crawford/pages/dept/pdfs/Intelligence_2000_Stability_IQ.pdf">half-forgotten, unique archive</a> of more than 89,000 IQ-type tests from 1932. This comprised a near-complete national sample of Scottish children born in 1921 who – at the time – would have been about 76 years old.</p>
<p>My aim was simple: to find local people to match with the archive and compare their current mental ability with their test result from 1932. A picture <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.322.7290.819">quickly emerged</a> linking lower IQ scores with earlier than expected age at death and earlier onset dementia.</p>
<p>The second world war yielded some strong unexpected anomalies. Young men with higher childhood IQ scores more often died on active service. Girls with higher scores more often moved away from the area.</p>
<p>I cycled around Aberdeen to learn more about its social history, becoming familiar with the primary schools where the children had sat their tests in 1932. Average IQ scores often differed substantially between schools. Those pupils attending schools in overcrowded districts tended to perform less well on the test.</p>
<p>Our later research showed that people with higher IQ were engaging in <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4925">more intellectually stimulating activities</a>, such as reading complex novels or learning musical instruments. But we can’t know whether having a high IQ leads people to seek out such activities or whether intellectually curious people develop higher IQ because they engage in cognitively complex tasks throughout life.</p>
<p>And that’s an important question. People from poorer backgrounds, such as the disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city of Aberdeen, may not have the opportunity to pursue intellectual interests due to a lack of time and resources.</p>
<p>To better inform my work, I sought out local residents with long experience of teaching in Aberdeen. Their views were echoed by current workers in public health and psychology.</p>
<p>Teachers warned me not to forget that IQ tests have been used over the years to advance “<a href="https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review">scientific racism”</a> and that they feared that before too long, right-wing advocates of IQ testing would want to use these rediscovered Scottish data to search for the genetic basis of intelligence. Alarmed and now forewarned, I looked back at the reasons for undertaking the 1932 survey of the mental ability of Scottish schoolchildren. </p>
<p>The survey was funded by the Eugenics Society (eugenics is the science of improving the human race through the selection of “good” hereditary traits) with some help from the Rockefeller Foundation. Their shared priority was to show a link between large family size and below average mental ability. </p>
<p>At the time, this negative relationship between a mothers’ IQ and having children was easy to show. But post-1945 educational reforms, which led to more girls completing higher education, produced much more complex relationships between maternal IQ, educational achievements, age at first childbirth and lifetime fertility. </p>
<p>This fed into contemporary public concerns that the average mental ability of the general population was lowered by the loss of so many young men of presumed above average ability during the first world war war. Newspapers argued that schoolboys would need to be assessed and selected to better educate those most likely to benefit. </p>
<p>This only goes to show that while IQ tests can tell us something about academic success or dementia risk, they miss a lot of a nuance. There’s no denying they have long been used for murky reasons – often as an excuse to direct less funding to certain types of school, thereby creating a two-tier system. </p>
<p>The majority of children, those who do not take or pass IQ-style entrance exams to private or grammar schools, will have many qualities not measured on an IQ test. They may also just be late developers.</p>
<h2>What IQ tests don’t measure</h2>
<p>So what do IQ tests miss? Research suggests that IQ scores <a href="https://theconversation.com/iq-tests-are-humans-getting-smarter-158837">rose by about 3 points per decade</a> over much of the 20th century, but <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-26835-000">may have dropped</a> over the past 30 years or so.</p>
<p>Some experts argue this reflects changes in the school curriculum or maybe just the complexity of modern life. The acquisition of “content knowledge” (reading and memorising) once formed a cornerstone of public examinations and is related to IQ test performance. </p>
<p>We know for example that working memory <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1041608002000493">is related to</a> IQ test performance. But research has since uncovered that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x">self-discipline is actually better predictor</a> of exam results than IQ.</p>
<p>Nowadays, children in the west are taught collective scientific problem-solving, combined with interpersonal skills and teamwork, which requires less memorisation (rote learning). This may actually make students less likely to score highly on IQ tests, even though these methods are helping humanity as a whole get smarter. Knowledge keeps growing, often as a result of giant research collaborations. </p>
<p>This type of “procedural learning” leads to mature self-awareness, emotional stability, recognition of the thoughts and feelings of others and an understanding of an individual’s impact on the performance of a group. Critically, a lack of these skills can hinder rational thinking. Research shows that when we ignore or fail to understand our feelings, <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/31984/#:%7E:text=We%20conclude%20that%20emotions%20and,for%20trader%20behavior%20and%20performance.">we are more easily manipulated by them</a>.</p>
<p>High IQ doesn’t necessarily protect against bias or error either. In fact, research shows that people with high IQ can be <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/review-the-intelligence-trap-why-smart-people-do-stupid-things-and-how-to-make-wiser-decisions-by-david-robson-impressive-and-readable-tgr72mshs/">particularly vulnerable to mistakes</a> such as spotting patterns even when there aren’t any, or they are irrelevant. </p>
<p>This may lead to confirmation bias and difficulty giving up on an idea, solution or project even when it is no longer working. This can also get in the way of rational reasoning. But such weaknesses are missed by IQ testing.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Image of Albert Einstein." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577001/original/file-20240221-30-nfj86z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Einstein valued creativity and intuition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many great leaps in human ingenuity were driven by creativity, collaboration, competition, intuition or curiosity rather than just individual IQ. Take Albert Einstein, who is often hailed as a genius. </p>
<p>He never took an IQ test, but people are constantly <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/parenting/moments/5-genius-kids-who-have-an-iq-score-higher-than-albert-einstein/photostory/99929937.cms">speculating about his IQ</a>. Yet he <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/albert-einstein-quotes-inspiring-clever-funny-famous/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20important%20thing%20is%20not,of%20this%20mystery%20every%20day.%E2%80%9D">often credited curiosity and intuition</a> as the core driving forces of scientific success – and these are not qualities measured by an IQ test.</p>
<p>The ethos of a modern school is rightly not driven by a preference to educate only those children who on selection meet a minimum standard on a mental test. Schools acknowledge that educational outcomes are not determined solely by any innate ability but are equally affected by all prior experiences that affect emotional competences, motivation, intellectual curiosity, insightfulness and intuitive reasoning. </p>
<p>When local participants in the 1932 survey were interviewed in late life, they spoke warmly of their schooldays – particularly about friendships. They rarely mentioned their education though. The learning of content knowledge, with threats of physical punishments, simply weren’t well regarded. Some remembered sitting the IQ test in 1932 and were pleased most schools no longer test children that way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lawrence Whalley received funding from Scottish Government, Henry Smith Charity, BBSRC, MRC, Alzheimer's Research Trust, The Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>The majority of children who do not take or pass IQ-style entrance exams to private- or grammar schools, will have many qualities not measured on an IQ test. They may also just be late developers.Lawrence Whalley, Emeritus Professor of Mental Health, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238672024-02-22T12:01:17Z2024-02-22T12:01:17ZLearning in two languages: lessons from francophone Africa on what works best<p>Children living in multilingual communities often learn in a language at school that does not match the language they speak at home. This mismatch makes it challenging for them to participate in classroom discussions and learn to read. In turn, this contributes to poor learning outcomes, grade repetition, and dropping out of school.</p>
<p>Bilingual education programmes that include mother tongue languages have become increasingly popular for improving learning outcomes. Bilingual education is associated with better <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728908003386">language and literacy skills</a>, reduced grade repetition and school dropout rates across the <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10986/10331">globe</a>. Including mother tongue languages in education also places value on children’s cultural identities, improving confidence, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09500789808666737">self-esteem</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-012-9308-2">learning</a>. </p>
<p>But simply providing bilingual education does not guarantee better learning results. This is the conclusion of a recent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2023.2290482">paper</a> we published in which we reviewed bilingual programmes in six francophone west African countries: Niger, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. </p>
<p>We found mixed results, across and within countries and programmes.</p>
<p>We identified two sets of factors that constrain or contribute to the quality of bilingual education. These were: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>implementation factors, such as teacher training and classroom resources</p></li>
<li><p>socio-cultural factors, such as perceptions of mother tongue languages in education.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Our findings emphasise the need to consider the local context when applying bilingual education programmes. </p>
<h2>Bilingual education in francophone west Africa</h2>
<p>Our research team conducted research in Côte d’Ivoire from 2016 to 2018. We measured children’s language and reading skills in both their mother tongue and in French, and compared outcomes between children attending French-only or bilingual Projet École Intégrée schools. </p>
<p>Children in French-only schools outperformed their peers from bilingual schools on the language and reading <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000723">assessments</a>. Teachers revealed they had better teaching resources and felt better prepared in French-only schools. </p>
<p>We were interested in whether bilingual education programmes in other francophone countries in the region had had similar experiences. In 2022, we searched academic databases for literature in English and French that discussed programme implementation and measured learning and schooling outcomes within bilingual education programmes. We reviewed nine programmes from six countries: Niger, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon. </p>
<p>These countries are former French colonies or territories. French is the official or working language and often the language of instruction in school. However, these countries are highly multilingual. About 23 living <a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/">languages</a> are spoken in Niger, <a href="https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/linguistic-diversity-in-africa-and-europe.html">39</a> in Senegal, <a href="https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/linguistic-diversity-in-africa-and-europe.html">68</a> in Mali, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1280625/number-of-living-languages-in-africa-by-country/">71</a> in Burkina Faso, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1280625/number-of-living-languages-in-africa-by-country/">78</a> in Côte d’Ivoire and <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1280625/number-of-living-languages-in-africa-by-country/">277</a> in Cameroon. </p>
<p>Our review showed that children can benefit from learning in two languages. This is true whether they are two official languages like in Cameroon’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-019-09510-7">Dual Curriculum Bilingual Education</a> (French and English) schools, or in a mother tongue and French, like in Mali’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/447544">Community Schools</a>. Children can also benefit regardless of whether they are gradually introduced to a language throughout primary school or whether both languages are introduced at the same time.</p>
<p>But a lack of resources, and a failure to take into account local conditions, affected the outcomes. The programmes that resulted in positive schooling and learning outcomes recognised and targeted common school-related and community-related challenges.</p>
<h2>Teacher training and resources</h2>
<p>One common school-related challenge was teachers not having teaching materials in all languages of instruction.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000161121">Pédagogie Convergente</a> programme in Mali, for example, ensured teachers had materials in both French and the mother tongue. Children had better French and maths scores. </p>
<p>But some teachers from the same programme did not always have teaching <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Patterns_of_French_literacy_development.html?id=MoNnAAAAMAAJ&hl=en&redir_esc=y">materials</a> in mother tongue languages. And some children struggled with literacy and writing skills. </p>
<p>Another common challenge was teachers not feeling prepared to teach in all languages, as teacher training often occurred in an official language, like French. The <a href="https://www.adeanet.org/clearinghouse/sites/default/files/docs/interieur_11_burkina_fre.pdf">Programme d’éducation bilingue</a> in Burkina Faso, for example, made an effort to train teachers in the mother tongue language so they felt confident following the bilingual curriculum. </p>
<p>Children in bilingual Burkina Faso schools had higher than average <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050802149275">pass rates</a> on the primary certificate exam, <a href="https://www.memoireonline.com/06/22/12997/m_Le-rapport-des-enseignants-aux-langues-nationales-en-tant-que-mdiums-et-matires-den.html">repeated grades less</a>, and stayed in school more than children in traditional French schools. </p>
<p>Both examples are in contrast to the bilingual schools in Côte d’Ivoire, where teachers lacked materials and training in mother tongue languages. In turn, children demonstrated worse language and reading skills compared to their peers in French-only schools.</p>
<h2>Socio-cultural factors</h2>
<p>We identified common community-related challenges, particularly related to community buy-in and perceptions of mother tongue instruction. </p>
<p>For example, families with higher socioeconomic status were worried that Niger’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050208667760">Ecole Experimentale</a> schools would hinder children’s French proficiency and compromise their entry into secondary school. </p>
<p>Programmes such as the <a href="https://ared-edu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/DC-Senegal-Workshop-Findings_04.2019-FINAL-ENG.pdf">Support Program for Quality Education in Mother Tongues for Primary Schools</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1765968">Senegal</a> worked to combat negative perceptions by educating families about the benefits of bilingual education. Children in the Senegalese programme outperformed their peers in traditional French schools in all school subjects.</p>
<p>The same programmes sometimes experienced different outcomes depending on the community. For example, although children in Burkina Faso’s bilingual schooling showed favourable outcomes, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-021-09885-y">parents</a> felt that French programmes were better suited for continuing to secondary school. </p>
<h2>What does this mean for bilingual education?</h2>
<p>Efforts to provide teachers with the resources they needed, and efforts to foster community support, were both consistently linked with positive schooling and learning outcomes in our review. </p>
<p>However, these efforts might work better in some communities compared to others, due to different resource constraints and socio-cultural differences. Studies that found poorer outcomes also found common challenges present. Therefore, bilingual education has the potential to facilitate positive learning outcomes if efforts are made to overcome common challenges based on communities’ needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bilingual education can improve learning outcomes but it’s important to consider local context.Kaja Jasinska, Assistant Professor, Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of TorontoMary-Claire Ball, PhD student, Developmental Psychology and Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2190872024-02-16T13:18:51Z2024-02-16T13:18:51ZA Bronx school district offers lessons in boosting student mental health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575680/original/file-20240214-30-zch8fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C42%2C5640%2C3745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Building a sense of community is critical for students to thrive.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/happy-female-teacher-talking-with-junior-high-royalty-free-image/1439953744?phrase=students+speaking&adppopup=true">Maskot / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you are an educator or a parent, you have likely already seen many ways in which “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stressful-lives/202302/the-kids-are-not-alright">the kids are not alright</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584221084722">Mounting evidence</a> shows that the mental health of American youth has been declining for at least a decade. During the pandemic, it took an even sharper downturn. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2021 – the most recent data available – 42% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/yrbs_data_summary_and_trends.htm">22% seriously considered suicide</a>. This is a significant increase from 10 years earlier, when 28% of students reported persistent feelings of sadness or loneliness and 16% considered attempting suicide.</p>
<p>The isolation of pandemic stay-at-home orders and the trauma of losing loved ones <a href="https://www.aft.org/press-release/educators-say-covid-19-has-greatly-exacerbated-grief-support-crisis-schools">contributed to declines in well-being</a>. Schools have an important role to play in addressing this crisis.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gUZyPcUAAAAJ&hl=en">researchers in education</a>, my co-author, <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=%22Javaid+E.+Siddiqi%22&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en">Javaid Siddiqi</a> and I interviewed educators working in <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-43237-8#toc">school districts that faced extreme adversity</a> during the pandemic but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43237-8">still found success in supporting their students</a>.</p>
<p>One district in particular stood out for the challenges it faced. At the time of our study in 2020, Bronx Community School District 7 in New York City was not just in the <a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2019/12/ny-has-the-richest-poorest-smallest-most-unequal-congressional-districts/176658/">poorest congressional district in the nation</a>, but it also experienced one of the <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#deaths-landing_">highest death rates per capita from COVID-19</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these obstacles – all of which were outside of their control – educators told us they found ways to be there for their students and support their mental health.</p>
<p>In the course of our research, three strategies became apparent. The lessons show promise not just in this section of New York City, but for the rest of the country as well.</p>
<h2>1. Connect to community</h2>
<p>In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy raised alarm about the essential need for social connection within communities to heal America’s “<a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html">epidemic of loneliness</a>.” Schools, in particular, have a history of being hubs for connection. In the pandemic, that was especially apparent when they became <a href="https://ethics.harvard.edu/schools-during-covid-19">centers of information</a>, offering academic support and internet access as well as food and nutrition, even when classes were remote.</p>
<p>Across the country, educators quickly realized that psychologically isolated students also needed social connection, and they responded with innovation. They developed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK5hMspzTaM&ab_channel=AlexaSorden">bedtime story videos</a> for families, online cooking lessons that invited community members into their homes, and socially distanced dance classes on school athletic fields.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pK5hMspzTaM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bedtime videos can be beneficial during difficult times.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Bronx CSD 7, a <a href="https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/pressrelease/mental-health-services-expanded-for-students-in-areas-hardest-hit-by-covid-19/">partnership with a nearby hospital</a> increased access to much-needed mental health services for students and educators.</p>
<p>Community connections help educators understand child and family needs and allow community members to trust schools as a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bronx-school-works-to-help-students-thrive-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-11590249600">source of support</a>. They also bring community assets, such as free clinics, food pantries, housing programs and mental health resources, into schools where families can more easily access them.</p>
<p>With emergency educational funding from the pandemic <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/02/02/funding-cliff-student-mental-health">expiring on Sept. 30, 2024</a>, <a href="https://www.ascd.org/books/the-six-priorities?variant=122022">school-community partnerships</a> will be essential for continuing mental health services in schools to support psychological recovery.</p>
<h2>2. Give students a seat at the table</h2>
<p>Relationships within schools are also important for improving and maintaining mental health. Research shows that when school leaders involve students in decision-making, it encourages them to develop leadership skills and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.12960">increases the overall well-being of the community</a>, as indicated by civic engagement and health outcomes.</p>
<p>In Bronx CSD 7, students are part of the Superintendent’s Advisory Council. This meant that during the pandemic they were able to bring to light the challenges of engaging in online learning all day without a break. Unlike a regular school day, where students would move between classes and chat with teachers and friends in the hallways, the online school day went from one class period to another with no built-in opportunities to take breaks, socialize and refocus. Experts were quickly recommending that online school days be <a href="https://transcendeducation.org/why-distance-learning-should-not-replicate-school/">restructured to meet student needs</a>. But students knew this first.</p>
<p>When youth are empowered to share their stories, they not only strengthen their school community, but they also serve as trusted messengers for their peers. During the pandemic, students around the country created <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/877498373/coronavirus-racism-and-kindness-how-nyc-middle-schoolers-built-a-winning-podcast">youth-led podcasts</a> to learn from each other. They also <a href="https://time.com/6071300/kids-pandemic/">documented their experiences</a>, processing psychological upheaval, communicating their needs and supporting each other. Education researchers have referred to these empowering connection activities as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2021.1992603">cultural assets</a>” because they not only support young people, but they also help teachers approach students in more culturally sensitive ways.</p>
<h2>3.Think developmentally</h2>
<p>Since the end of the pandemic, school districts across the country have been dedicating resources and time to recovering “<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29497">lost learning</a>,” the phrase used to describe the test score declines attributed to school closures and emergency online learning. But some students experienced another equally devastating decline that’s gotten less attention – their social and emotional development. </p>
<p>To soften the impact of social isolation, educators in Bronx CSD 7 intentionally dedicated time during remote learning to social interactions. They provided informal connection spaces during the school day, played video games with their students and encouraged them to eat lunch together online. Research shows that young people who communicated more often with friends were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2305">less impacted by the social isolation of the pandemic</a>. The experience of Bronx CSD 7 shows that schools could play an instrumental role in nurturing this force for mental well-being. </p>
<p>Every district faced its own complex challenges during the pandemic, and educators across the country have supported their students, communities and each other in the recovery process. As school leaders consider ways to recover lost academic opportunities and learning, it is equally important to help students stabilize their mental health and boost their overall well-being.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Faiza Jamil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Giving students a voice in decision-making helps foster well-being, research has found.Faiza Jamil, Associate Professor of Education, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223422024-02-14T16:53:54Z2024-02-14T16:53:54ZCanada’s entrepreneur shortage is impacting the economy — here’s one way to fix it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573166/original/file-20240203-29-f3bec9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=482%2C30%2C4606%2C2820&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To build more small- and medium-sized businesses, and create more jobs in turn, Canada needs to create more entrepreneurs. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Business Development Canada made headlines in October 2023 when it revealed that almost <a href="https://www.bdc.ca/en/about/mediaroom/news-releases/nearly-half-as-many-people-are-launching-businesses-as-20-years-ago">half as many Canadians are starting businesses today</a> compared to 20 years ago. </p>
<p>This is alarming, as the vast majority of jobs in Canada — <a href="https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/1253-small-and-medium-businesses-driving-large-sized-economy">98 per cent</a> — are created by small business entrepreneurs. The health of our economy is built on the backbone of these enterprises. </p>
<p>To build more small- and medium-sized businesses, and create more jobs in turn, Canada needs to create more entrepreneurs. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106326">recent study with my colleagues Shasha Liu and Brock Smith</a> at the University of Victoria offers a way forward. Our study reveals that instilling an entrepreneur-possible self — the belief that you can become an entrepreneur — is a critical stepping stone for becoming an entrepreneur. And, it’s one we can encourage to form.</p>
<h2>Daydreaming reality into being</h2>
<p>Each of us carries a constellation of possible selves within us. These possible selves play a crucial role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.954">shaping the actual identities we assume</a>. </p>
<p>If we don’t develop an entrepreneur-possible self, we are unlikely to develop the mindset that fosters entrepreneurship. Historically, most Canadians never consider becoming an entrepreneur and, of those who do, <a href="https://www.gemconsortium.org/reports/latest-global-report">most never actually take the leap</a>.</p>
<p>Our study <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106326">highlights some easy ways to foster the development of this entrepreneur-possible self</a>. What’s needed is identity play — the provisional “trying-on” of a future entrepreneur-possible self. Specifically, two types of identity play: daydream-play and substantive-play.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman, sitting in front of a computer screen, rests her chin against her hands while starting off into the distance" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574212/original/file-20240207-26-juwr5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most Canadians never consider becoming an entrepreneur and, of those who do, most never actually take the leap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Daydream-play involves envisioning an entrepreneur self through unrestricted thought exercises and imaginings. It’s about letting your mind freely wander through creative musings, wondering, considering and thinking. </p>
<p>Substantive-play involves physically acting to learn more about the possibility of being an entrepreneur. This is an active form of play focused on actions such as trying things out, looking into things and observing or learning new things related to entrepreneurship. </p>
<p>Alternating between these two types of play can ultimately lead to an aspirational stage that is critical to forming an entrepreneur identity.</p>
<h2>Creating entrepreneur-possible selves</h2>
<p>For many of us, the pandemic fuelled personal reflections on the meaning, purpose and impact of our careers and vocations, resulting in what Harvard business professor Ranjay Gulati has called the “<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/03/08/great-resignation-careers-rethink-labor-shortage-pandemic-work-ranjay-gulati/">Great Re-think</a>.”</p>
<p>This period of reflection serves as a prime opportunity for individuals to work on developing an entrepreneur-possible self.</p>
<p>One way individuals can do this is by engaging in daydream-play to imagine the entrepreneur they could become. This can involve, for example, reading <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22754.Business_Biographies_and_Memoirs">biographies of entrepreneurs</a>, listening to <a href="https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/">podcasts with or about successful entrepreneurs</a> or watching <a href="https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80202462">movies about entrepreneurial journeys</a>.</p>
<p>As a form of substantive-play, individuals can tap existing entrepreneur networks and <a href="https://eocanada.com">meet with or shadow entrepreneurs</a>, play tabletop or <a href="https://www.simcompanies.com/">virtual games</a> that simulate building companies, work or volunteer at a startup, or conduct industry or opportunity-specific research that leverages a personal curiosity, interest or passion.</p>
<p>Since entrepreneurial journeys are seldom solitary endeavours, aspiring entrepreneurs can also reach out to organizations that support entrepreneurship (like the <a href="https://chamber.ca/">Canadian Chamber of Commerce</a> or <a href="https://www.futurpreneur.ca/en">Futurepreneur</a> for guidance and mentorship. These organizations can provide valuable insights, networking opportunities and resources.</p>
<h2>Entrepreneurship support organizations</h2>
<p>Organizations that are part of the entrepreneur ecosystem, like <a href="https://www.innovatingcanada.ca/">Innovating Canada</a>, <a href="https://www.startupcan.ca">Startup Canada</a> and the <a href="https://www.ccsbe.org">Canadian Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship</a>, also should ensure working-age individuals have opportunities to explore and build their entrepreneur-possible selves.</p>
<p>These organizations should start by educating Canadians about the identity play process. To encourage more focused daydream-play, these organizations can create resources for exploring entrepreneurship as a career, provide access to success stories and create an accessible database of entrepreneurs willing to have conversations with those interested in learning more. </p>
<p>They can support substantive-play by developing an active mentoring program that goes beyond passive advice-giving to provide individuals a chance to shadow successful entrepreneurs. Establishing positive and meaningful mentor-mentee connections will help to cultivate an aspirational entrepreneur possible self.</p>
<p>Lastly, these organizations can create opportunities for hands-on experience by hosting or promoting hackathons, short-sprint entrepreneurship competitions, pitch events, maker spaces and side-hustle experiences. They can also begin providing coaches to create individualized action plans.</p>
<h2>Today’s youth are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs</h2>
<p>To ensure a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem, parents, guardians and teachers play a pivotal role in providing children with opportunities to practice being an entrepreneur that establish entrepreneur-possible selves. </p>
<p>Across the country, there are many entrepreneurship classes, <a href="https://www.camps.ca/entrepreneurship-camps.php">summer camps</a> and entrepreneurship youth experiences that foster daydream and substantive-play in children, including the UVIC Gustavson School of Business’ <a href="https://www.kidovate.ca/">Kidovate program</a>.</p>
<p>By nurturing micro-entrepreneurship experiences for youth from an early age, we are sowing the seeds for a generation that will grow up thinking “I could be an entrepreneur” which is key to becoming one.</p>
<p>The takeaway is clear: building more opportunities for Canadians to create entrepreneur-possible selves will result in more Canadians who think and act based on believing they are entrepreneurs. It is an investment in the nation’s future that will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity and its competitiveness on the global stage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudia Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study reveals that instilling an entrepreneur-possible self — the belief that you can become an entrepreneur — is a critical stepping stone for becoming an entrepreneur.Claudia Smith, Assistant Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2228492024-02-09T13:32:30Z2024-02-09T13:32:30ZWhy John Dewey’s vision for education and democracy still resonates today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574482/original/file-20240208-30-vvibg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C106%2C7790%2C5122&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Dewey was a proponent of active learning. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/students-working-on-stem-projects-royalty-free-image/1456008678?phrase=children+classroom+active+learning&adppopup=true">FatCamera via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>John Dewey was one of the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/#:%7E:text=John%20Dewey%20(1859%E2%80%931952),half%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.">most important educational philosophers</a> of the 20th century. His work has been cited in scholarly publications <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dD5DTREAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">over 400,000 times</a>. Dewey’s writings continue to influence discussions on a variety of subjects, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12567">democratic education</a>, which was the focus of Dewey’s famous 1916 book on the subject. In the following Q&A, Nicholas Tampio, a political science professor and editor of a <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/democracy-and-education/9780231558273">forthcoming 2024 edition of Dewey’s “Democracy and Education,”</a> explains why Dewey’s work remains relevant to this day.</em></p>
<h2>Why revisit John Dewey’s philosophy on education and democracy now?</h2>
<p>I think it is time to revisit Dewey’s philosophy about the value of field trips, classroom experiments, music instruction and children playing together on playgrounds. This is especially true after the pandemic when children spent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.56157">significantly more time</a> in front of screens rather than having whole body experiences.</p>
<p>Dewey’s philosophy of education was that children “learn by doing.” Dewey argued that children learn from using their entire bodies in meaningful experiences. That is why, in his 1916 text, “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/democracy-and-education/9780231558273">Democracy and Education,”</a> Dewey called for schools to be “equipped with laboratories, shops, and gardens.”</p>
<p>Dewey argued that planting seeds, measuring the relationship between Sun, soil, water and plant growth, and then tasting fresh peas made for a seamless transition between childhood curiosity and the scientific way of looking at things. Dewey also encouraged schools to create time for “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/852/852-h/852-h.htm">dramatizations, plays, and games</a>.” </p>
<p>In his 2014 book, “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479540/an-education-in-politics/#bookTabs=1">An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind</a>,” the political scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OsXHylAAAAAJ&hl=en">Jesse H. Rhodes</a> shows how business groups and certain civil rights groups advocated federal laws that required states to administer high-stakes tests. This focus on tested subjects means that public school students in places <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2010.490776">such as Texas</a> have less time for arts education. </p>
<h2>What role did Dewey see for public schools in preserving democracy?</h2>
<p>For Dewey, modern societies can use schools to impart democratic habits in young people from an early age. He argued that the “intermingling in the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment.” Dewey was writing as <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/immigrants-in-progressive-era/">millions of European immigrants</a> were arriving in the United States between 1900 and 1915. Dewey believed that schools could teach immigrants what it means to be a citizen and incorporate their experiences into American culture. </p>
<p>Dewey’s view of the schools remains relevant today. In the <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">2020-21 school year</a>, more than a third of the country’s children attended schools where 75% of the student body is the same race or ethnicity – hardly the ideal conditions for Dewey’s vision of democracy. </p>
<p>Dewey <a href="https://chipbruce.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/dewey_creative_dem.pdf">opposed “racial, color, or other class prejudice</a>.” Segregated schools <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2293151">violate Dewey’s ideal</a> of treating all students as possessing intrinsic worth and dignity. Dewey <a href="https://chipbruce.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/dewey_creative_dem.pdf">believed that</a> democracy means “that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.” Democratic schools, for Dewey, empower every child to develop their gifts in ways that benefit the community.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young boy feeds a goat while his parents stand nearby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574477/original/file-20240208-28-gkl7uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dewey espoused the idea of learning by doing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How closely does today’s education system resemble Dewey’s vision for education?</h2>
<p>I would argue that the education system resembles the vision of modern testing pioneers like <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/pioneers-of-modern-testing/1999/06">Edward Thorndike</a> more than Dewey’s.</p>
<p>Dewey thought that standardized tests serve a small role in education. <a href="http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm">He believed</a> that “the child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education.” Dewey maintained that teachers need to use student interest as the fuel to propel students to learn math, reading and the scientific method, and standardized tests serve mainly to help the teacher identify where <a href="http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm">each student</a> “can receive the most help.” In his lifetime, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo3683209.html">Dewey opposed</a> proponents of intelligence testing, such as Thorndike.</p>
<p>But the testing proponents seem to be winning. According to a 2023 <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-feel-growing-pressure-for-students-to-perform-well-on-standardized-tests/2023/09">Education Week</a> survey of teachers, nearly 80% feel moderate or large amounts of pressure to have their students perform well on state-mandated standardized tests. According to <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-feel-growing-pressure-for-students-to-perform-well-on-standardized-tests/2023/09">one principal</a>, “There’s too much pressure put on these kids for testing, and there’s too much testing.”</p>
<p>Dewey’s vision of education is teachers nurturing each child’s passions and not using tests to rank children. For many teachers, U.S. public schools are <a href="https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/standardized-testing-still-failing-students">far from realizing that vision</a>.</p>
<h2>How popular are John Dewey’s views today?</h2>
<p>Dewey’s ideas were controversial during his lifetime. They remain so to this day.</p>
<p>In 2023, Richard Corcoran, the president of New College of Florida, criticized “<a href="https://www.srqmagazine.com/srq-daily/2023-11-16/22795_In-Conversation-with-Leaders-in-Higher-Education">the Dewey school of thought</a>” for training students to become “widget makers.” According to Corcoran, Dewey thought that “if we can teach (people) just enough skills to get on the assembly line and help us with this Industrial Revolution, everything will be great.” Corcoran is right that Dewey thought that schools should teach children about industry, including with hands-on tasks. But Dewey opposed vocational education that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1179397">slotted children from a young age into a career path</a>. </p>
<p>“I am utterly opposed,” Dewey explained, “to giving the power of social predestination, by means of narrow trade-training, to any group of fallible men no matter how well-intentioned they may be.” Dewey thought that children could learn about history and economics from using machinery in schools. However, he opposed a two-tiered education system that denied working-class children a well-rounded education or that equated human flourishing with making widgets. </p>
<p>Educators and scholars such as <a href="https://dianeravitch.net/2017/12/31/john-dewey-my-pedagogic-creed/">Diane Ravitch</a>, <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/beyond-testing-9780807758526">Deborah Meier</a> and <a href="http://zhaolearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/josi12191_LR.pdf">Yong Zhao</a> cite Dewey and apply his insights to current education debates. Those debates include topics such as the place of standardized testing in schools, the freedom of the classroom teacher and the need for schools to build trust with families and community members.</p>
<p>Zhao, for instance, argues that Dewey outlined a way to address education inequity that does not rely on closing gaps in test scores. Dewey’s idea, according to Zhao, is that all children should have a chance to express and cultivate individuality, learn through experiences and make “the most of the opportunities of present life.”</p>
<p>Dewey believed that “<a href="https://chipbruce.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/dewey_creative_dem.pdf">democracy is a way of life</a>.” He also believed schools could teach that lesson to young people by allowing people in the school to have a meaningful say in the aims of education. For many people who read Dewey today, his call for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/992653">democracy in education</a> still resonates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Tampio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Educational philosopher John Dewey saw America’s schools as a place for students from different backgrounds to learn from one another.Nicholas Tampio, Professor of Political Science, Fordham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220552024-02-08T21:17:53Z2024-02-08T21:17:53ZThe war in Gaza is wiping out Palestine’s education and knowledge systems<p>Gaza’s education system has suffered significantly since Israel’s bombardment and assault on the strip began. Last month, Israel <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68023080">blew up</a> Gaza’s last standing university, Al-Israa University.</p>
<p>In the past four months, all or parts of Gaza’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/24/how-israel-has-destroyed-gazas-schools-and-universities#:%7E:text=Palestinian%20news%20agency%20Wafa%20reported,university%20in%20Gaza%20in%20stages.">12 universities</a> have been bombed and mostly destroyed. </p>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-102-enarhe">378 schools</a> have been destroyed or damaged. The Palestinian Ministry of Education has reported the deaths of over <a href="https://www.unicef.org/media/151126/file/State-of-Palestine-Humanitarian-Situation-Report-No.15-(Escalation)-17-January-2024.pdf">4,327 students, 231 teachers</a> and <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6108/Israel-kills-dozens-of-academics,-destroys-every-university-in-the-Gaza-Strip">94 professors.</a></p>
<p>Numerous <a href="https://librarianswithpalestine.org/gaza-report-2024/?fbclid=IwAR1VqwE8t9HEb46IFQDPJhl8ZFReHyyzgCAXjPfMPIGoThfbSXBEsy-Trog">cultural heritage sites</a>, including libraries, archives and museums, have also been destroyed, damaged and plundered.</p>
<p>But the assault on Palestinian educational and cultural institutions did not begin in response to the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has a long record of <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/430540">targeted attacks</a> on Palestinian institutions that produce knowledge and culture. That history includes targeting and <a href="https://yam.ps/page-11801-en.html">assassinating</a> Palestinian intellectuals, <a href="https://www.aaiusa.org/library/i-knew-ghassan-kanafani">cultural producers</a> and political figures. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4cY6H8n0zf0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A video clip shared by ‘The New Arab,’ showing the destruction at Al-Israa University in the Gaza Strip.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is scholasticide?</h2>
<p>The destruction of education systems and buildings is known as “scholasticide,” a term first coined by Oxford professor Karma Nabulsi during the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Gaza. Scholasticide describes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/10/gaza-schools">the systemic destruction of Palestinian education</a> within the context of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2021.1909376">Israel’s decades-long settler colonization and occupation of Palestine</a>.</p>
<p>Recently, a group of scholars working under the name <a href="https://scholarsagainstwar.org/toolkit/">Scholars Against the War on Palestine</a> broadened the definition to include a more comprehensive picture of what is happening during the current war. They outline the intimate relationship between <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/how-israels-scholasticide-denies-palestinians-their-past-present-and-future/article_8f52d77a-b648-11ee-863d-f3411121907b.html">scholasticide and genocide</a>.</p>
<p>They say scholasticide includes the intentional <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/14/a-cultural-genocide-which-of-gazas-heritage-sites-have-been-destroyed">destruction of cultural heritage</a>: archives, libraries and museums. Scholasticide includes killing, causing bodily or mental harm, incarcerating, or systematically harassing educators, students and administrators. It includes besieging, closing or obstructing access to educational institutions. It can also include using universities or schools as a military base (as was done with <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68023080">Al-Israa University</a>).</p>
<p>The magnitude of destruction has led them <a href="https://scholarsagainstwar.org/toolkit/">to conclude:</a> “Israeli colonial policy in Gaza has now shifted from a focus on systematic destruction to total annihilation of education.”</p>
<p>As genocide scholar Douglas Irvin-Erickson says: the original definition of genocide as first drafted by <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781351214100-2/rapha%C3%ABl-lemkin-douglas-irvin-erickson">Raphael Lemkin in 1943</a> included the idea that “attacking a culture was a way of committing genocide, and not a different type of genocide.” </p>
<h2>The International Court of Justice</h2>
<p>During the recent genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), South Africa argued that <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf">Palestinian academics were being intentionally assassinated</a>.</p>
<p>Legal representative for South Africa, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f_yoal4gx8">told the court</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Almost 90,000 Palestinian university students cannot attend university in Gaza. Over 60 per cent of schools, almost all universities and countless bookshops and libraries have been damaged and destroyed. Hundreds of teachers and academics have been killed, including deans of universities and leading Palestinian scholars. Obliterating the very future prospects of the future education of Gaza’s children and young people.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-sum-01-00-en.pdf">On Jan. 26, in a landmark ruling, the ICJ</a> ordered Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza.</p>
<h2>Attempting to eliminate Palestinian futures</h2>
<p>Scholasticide is not an event. It’s part of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2021.1975478">colonial continuum</a> of attacking and destroying a people’s educational life, knowledge systems and plundering material culture and cultural heritage.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.46.4.75">targeted killing of the educated class</a> is intended to make it difficult for Palestinians to restore the political and socio-economic conditions needed to survive and rebuild Gaza.</p>
<p>This systematic destruction is at the core of the settler colonial “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240">logic of elimination</a>.” It has also been applied to Indigenous Peoples in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648833">logic</a> drives a settler population to replace Indigenous peoples in their aim to establish a new society. </p>
<p>For example, this logic was exercised <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/palestine-nakba-9781848139718/">during the 1948 Nakba</a>. Thousands of <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/78440">Palestinian books</a>, manuscripts, libraries, archives, photographs, cultural artifacts and cultural property <a href="https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/54">were looted, destroyed or damaged</a> by Zionist militias. In 1948, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine/Ilan-Pappe/9781851685554">Palestinian schools were destroyed or damaged</a> or later appropriated for use by the new Israeli state. </p>
<h2>Resistance: Palestinian history and culture</h2>
<p>Despite the ongoing attempts to erase Palestinian history, culture and memory, Palestinians have found ways to resist their erasure. In the 1960s and ‘70s, <a href="https://palestinianstudies.org/workshops/2023/palestinian-revolutionary-tradition-and-global-anti-colonialism">an anti-colonial revolutionary tradition</a>, produced and influenced by intellectual and political thought, was strengthened. </p>
<p>It helped to create <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650753">infrastructures</a> for the survival, mobilization and development of the Palestinian people and their national movement. It cultivated transnational relationships of solidarity. It helped displaced Palestinians, separated across geographies, to preserve their identity and reorganize themselves politically.</p>
<p>The intellectual and political thought of this period was <a href="https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/28899">passed onto</a> the generations that followed. It influenced educational and political programs, cultural development and practices of resistance. Especially during the First Intifada from 1987-1993. This enabled Palestinians to stay steadfast in their struggle against colonial violence across time and space. Palestinian education and culture form <a href="https://www.newarab.com/analysis/israels-archaeological-war-palestinian-cultural-heritage">the backbone</a> of the right to self-determination. This is why Israel frequently targets Palestinian education and culture. </p>
<p>Palestinians have endured <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n20/karma-nabulsi/diary">several periods of intense attacks</a> on their cultural and educational life. This includes the June 1967 war, Israel’s 1982 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jan/06/israel7">invasion of Lebanon during which a number of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s institutions were destroyed</a> and the First and Second Intifadas.</p>
<p>Following Israel’s destruction of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44746845">the Palestine Research Center in Lebanon in 1982</a>, Palestinian poet <a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/palestinian-identity/">Mahmoud Darwish said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“He who steals land does not surprise us by stealing a library. He who kills thousands of innocent civilians does not surprise us by killing paintings.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man in glasses wears a suit and tie" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574465/original/file-20240208-16-vtx98z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote about everyday grief. (Photo is from 1980)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Syrian News Agency/Al Sabah)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.2114778">colonial theft</a> continues unabashed. Cultural heritage has been <a href="https://librarianswithpalestine.org/gaza-report-2024/?fbclid=IwAR2QpiHfxSB6939yfyipOLY6zVYTED_rQN7JVxTq33UCinF_-3U1xNuQFzE">annihilated, damaged or plundered</a> in this war. During the bombing of Al-Israa University in January, Israel also targeted the National Museum. Licensed by the Ministry of Antiquities, the museum housed over <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-obliterates-gazas-last-university-amid-boycott-calls">3,000 rare artifacts, which were looted</a>. </p>
<p>Most academic institutions around the world remain silent about Israel’s scholasticide. But others are speaking out. Globally, this includes <a href="https://lithub.com/israel-has-damaged-or-destroyed-at-least-13-libraries-in-gaza/">Librarians and Archivists with Palestine</a> and some <a href="https://www.brismes.ac.uk/news/destruction-of-palestinian-education-system">academic associations</a> and faculty groups. The ICJ’s recent order to Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza may motivate other scholars and institutions to consider breaking their silence on scholasticide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chandni Desai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scholars say Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s schools, universities and museums are part of an ongoing project to destroy Palestinian people, identity and ideas.Chandni Desai, Assistant professor, Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211872024-02-06T15:21:17Z2024-02-06T15:21:17ZIs Montessori education all it’s cracked up to be? What science says<p>Walk into any bookshop these days and you will find Montessori-labelled books and games galore. Born at the start of the 20th century, Montessori teaching methods have enjoyed <a href="https://journals.ku.edu/jmr/article/view/18675">increasing popularity in Europe</a> over the past 20 years.</p>
<p>But what does the science tell us about the effectiveness of Montessori education compared with other forms of teaching? Is the method, which is now more than 100 years old, still relevant to modern life?</p>
<h2>The ABCs of Montessori education</h2>
<p>Founded on a number of key principles, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rechercheseducations/10807">Montessori education</a> believes children will learn better if we entrust them with more freedom. Its curriculum is divided into several discovery areas dedicated to practical and sensory life, languages and mathematics. It’s also worth noting that children work in multi-age groups according to their development stage, respectively broken down into 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, 12-15, and 15-18 years old cohorts.</p>
<p>The equipment in the classroom encourages children’s <a href="https://www.cairn.info/les-grands-penseurs-de-l-education--9782361064655-page-55.htm">sense of independence</a> by empowering them to correct themselves. In such an environment, the teacher is there to keep an eye on the child to respond to their needs, support them in their initiatives and redirect them if necessary.</p>
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<strong>
À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pedagogie-montessori-les-ressorts-dun-engouement-qui-dure-105269">Pédagogie Montessori : les ressorts d’un engouement qui dure</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In addition, the Montessori environment enables <a href="https://theconversation.com/lecture-postures-emotions-comment-le-corps-nous-aide-a-comprendre-un-texte-159583">embodied cognition</a>. According to this theory, sensory-motor interactions with our environment boost cognitive development and learning in children. In other words, we learn better by interacting physically with the environment. Montessori materials involve several senses, in particular touch and sight.</p>
<p>One emblematic piece of the Montessori toolkit are its physical <a href="https://theconversation.com/apprendre-a-lire-quels-defis-cela-represente-t-il-pour-les-eleves-de-primaire-212144">letters</a>. Made of rough material, such as sandpaper, they allow children to feel their way through the lines of alphabetical letters through touch, and then to pronounce them. The same goes with sets of physically tangible numbers. Through sight and manipulation, children can therefore strengthen their understanding of the links between spatial and mathematical representation of a number.</p>
<p>And contrary to popular belief, Montessori does not mean unlimited freedom. The classroom is governed by a set rules, which are carefully enforced by the adults at school. While one of the aims of this teaching method is to adapt to each individual’s pace, respect for others and their work is also key. In line with this principle, pupils in Montessori schools receive neither rewards nor punishments, which helps to support pupil cooperation while encouraging intrinsic motivation.</p>
<p>It would appear that the Montessori teaching method has all of the ingredients to champion a child’s education and psychological development. Studies conducted over the last thirty years appear to support this view, suggesting that various aspects of Montessori teaching methods could benefit children’s cognitive abilities, social skills, creativity, sensorimotor development and academic results.</p>
<p>However, up until now, there has been no comprehensive study that has been able to draw any real conclusions about the effects of Montessori teaching methods. Our recent research published in <em>Contemporary Educational Psychology</em> does just that.</p>
<h2>Better grades and social skills</h2>
<p>A meta-analysis is a statistical synthesis of several empirical studies on the same subject. The aim is to determine the trend, positive or negative, of all the studies of the phenomenon under study. We therefore contrast the results of experimental groups (schools or classes using the Montessori pedagogy) with those of the control group (schools or classes using another pedagogy). Thanks to bibliographic database, we were able to pore over 109 articles published over the last 30 years. In total, the studies scoped out more than 21,000 schoolchildren in North America, Asia and Europe. We specifically looked at how they performed in the areas of academic learning, cognitive development, social development, sensorimotor development and creativity.</p>
<p>The results of this meta-analysis show that Montessori teaching methods have significant positive impacts on social skills and school results. Compared with other forms of teaching, Montessori’s approach enables students to better grasp social situations, solve social problems, and put themselves in other people’s shoes. Various features of Montessori’s approach are thought to encourage the development of social skills, such as valuing cooperation over competition, and encouraging mutual respect and sharing.</p>
<p>Montessori also makes a significant contribution to improving pupils’ results in maths, reading, writing and other subjects. This contribution is linked to the multi-sensory and self-correcting materials in the classroom, but also to the absence of punishments and rewards, which encourage children’s intrinsic motivation.</p>
<p>We did not note any differences according to school level (nursery or elementary), the type of journal in which the study was published (peer-reviewed or not) or the geographical area in which the study was conducted.</p>
<h2>Lesser impacts on other (less studied) areas</h2>
<p>The impact of Montessori pedagogy on other areas was not notable. For example, the teaching method benefited only very slightly cognitive skills, which include memory, inhibition, attention span, planning as well as IQ. This could be because children are more likely to exercise their cognitive skills through school tasks themselves than through a particular teaching method.</p>
<p>Children also experienced an uptick in creativity, but not one we would consider as significant. Such results jar with the widespread narrative that Montessori education’s holistic approach boosts children’s creative development more than conventional schooling. However, given there were only four studies on the subject, we ought to approach these conclusions with some caution. It would be good to carry out more research across different cultures and contexts.</p>
<p>Montessori education had a mild impact on what is known as sensorimotor learning – the baby and child’s ability to carry out increasingly precise and willed gestures and movements from one to 36 months. Again, more research on the subject is needed and the small number of studies we based ourselves upon require that we approach these results with a pinch of salt. The scores were all the more surprising that the Montessori teaching method includes many activities to refine children’s motosensory developmemt.</p>
<p>All in all, the impacts of Montessori education on children’s development and learning vary from low to high. Future research would benefit from controlling for more variables, such as families’ socio-economic background, or the extent to which Montessori teaching methods have been implemented. Indeed, as various studies have shown, it would appear that a holistic approach to this method is more effective than its partial use.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Montessori education is as popular as ever. But is the teaching method really more effective than conventional schooling?Alison Demangeon, Docteure en psychologie du développement et de l'éducation, Université de LorraineYoussef Tazouti, Professeur des universités en Psychologie de l’éducation, 2LPN (Laboratoire Lorrain de Psychologie et Neurosciences, EA. 7489), Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222542024-02-06T02:24:40Z2024-02-06T02:24:40ZGenerative AI in the classroom risks further threatening Indigenous inclusion in schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572099/original/file-20240130-15-t0nek5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C6%2C1636%2C1096&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Midjourney/Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is <a href="https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/Prioritising_Blak_Voices_Representing_Indigenous_Perspectives_in_NSW_English_Classrooms/23974575">well documented</a> that Australian teachers face challenges incorporating Indigenous perspectives and content in their classrooms. The approach can sometimes be somewhat tokenistic, as if the teacher is “<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-spoke-about-dreamtime-i-ticked-a-box-teachers-say-they-lack-confidence-to-teach-indigenous-perspectives-129064">ticking a box</a>”. We need a more <a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/cultural-responsiveness/building-a-culturally-responsive-australian-teaching-workforce">culturally responsive teaching workforce</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/generative-AI">Generative AI</a> is advancing at a fast pace and quickly finding a place within education. Tools such as <a href="https://chat.openai.com/">ChatGPT</a> (or Chatty G as the kids say) continue to <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/digital-education/artificial-intelligence">dominate conversations in education</a> as these technologies are explored and developed.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1640054994601639936"}"></div></p>
<p>There are many concerns around academic integrity and things to consider on how to best <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/06/1071059/chatgpt-change-not-destroy-education-openai">introduce</a> and <a href="https://thechainsaw.com/defi/aussie-students-ai-chatgpt-survey-gen-z/">control</a> this technology in practice.</p>
<p>As teachers continue to look for ways to meet <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-histories-and-cultures/">Indigenous content requirements</a>, it makes sense they would turn to generative AI to assist them in an area they struggle with. But using these tools could do more harm than good.</p>
<h2>Indigenous peoples’ concerns around AI</h2>
<p>Indigenous people have raised a range of concerns around generative AI. These include the risks these technologies pose for Indigenous people and knowledges. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/01/19/artificial-intelligence-fake-indigenous-art-stock-images/">AI-generated art</a> is causing a significant threat to Indigenous peoples’ incomes, art and cultural knowledges.</p>
<p>The lead image of this article was created using the generative AI platform <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/">Midjourney</a>. The prompts included the terms Indigenous, artwork, colourful, artificial intelligence, Aboriginal, Western Sydney and painting styles. </p>
<p>This shows that with AI, anyone can easily <a href="https://www.terrijanke.com.au/post/the-new-frontier-artificial-intelligence-copyright-and-indigenous-culture">produce “Indigenous-style” art</a> and content. This poses a threat to <a href="https://www.artslaw.com.au/information-sheet/indigenous-cultural-intellectual-property-icip-aitb/">Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights</a>. </p>
<p>With AI being trained on vast data sets primarily from the western corpus of knowledge, there are also concerns relating to <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publication/116530">Indigenous data sovereignty</a> – the right to “govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands and resources”.</p>
<p>Generative AI can also perpetuate misinformation that harms Indigenous communities. This happened during the Voice referendum campaign, when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/07/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-no-campaign-ai-facebook-ads">fake, AI-generated images of Indigenous “no” voters</a> were published on social media.</p>
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<p>Importantly, there is also the potential impact to Country due to the environmental costs of data centres – an issue that must be addressed as more generative AI tools come online.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-environmental-cost-of-data-centres-is-substantial-and-making-them-energy-efficient-will-only-solve-half-the-problem-202643">The environmental cost of data centres is substantial, and making them energy-efficient will only solve half the problem</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>How do these concerns translate into the classroom?</h2>
<p>All students should see themselves reflected in the classroom. This especially applies to Indigenous students, as attested by <a href="https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/">Closing the Gap targets</a> for educational attainment.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/cultural-responsiveness/building-a-culturally-responsive-australian-teaching-workforce">A 2022 report</a> by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The legacy of colonisation has undermined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ access to their cultures, identities, histories and languages. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have not had access to a complete, relevant and responsive education.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Children need both “windows and mirrors” in the classroom. American education scholar <a href="https://witschicago.org/windows-mirrors-and-sliding-glass-doors">Rudine Sims-Bishop</a> has aptly put this in the context of children’s literature: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Students need to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, including the technologies used.</p>
<p>By using generative AI, teachers risk perpetrating and promoting inaccuracies and spreading false information instead of meaningfully engaging with Indigenous values and knowledge systems.</p>
<p>This can potentially harm the student–teacher relationship, <a href="https://www.edresearch.edu.au/summaries-explainers/explainers/positive-teacher-student-relationships-their-role-classroom-management">which is incredibly important</a>, particularly for Indigenous students.</p>
<p>Late last year, the Australian government released a <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/schooling/resources/australian-framework-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-schools">framework for generative AI</a> in schools. It offers “guidance on understanding, using and responding to generative AI” to everyone involved in Australian school education. </p>
<p>The framework also affirms the necessity of respecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights. But we need more extensive work to ensure teachers can do this appropriately. Currently, there is a lack of research that looks at the intersection between generative AI and Indigenous content inclusion in the classroom. </p>
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<h2>Indigenous futures and AI</h2>
<p>Generative AI, and other forms of AI, have extensive potential to benefit Indigenous people and their communities. Many Indigenous people are engaging with the technologies to this effect.</p>
<p>For example, you can take a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/take-a-virtual-trip-to-the-torres-strait/102566056">virtual trip to the Torres Strait Islands</a>, spend time at <a href="https://www.theaimarae.co.nz/">the AI Marae</a> in New Zealand or engage with the <a href="https://indigenousprotocols.ai/">Indigenous Protocols and AI Laboratory</a> </p>
<p>But to make room for what is seemingly an inevitable future that involves AI, work needs to be done in policy and professional bodies to ensure Indigenous inclusion at all levels – from development to use. </p>
<p>Teachers and students must be supported with the necessary resourcing to promote critical thinking when engaging with generative AI. Teachers will look to the relevant government bodies, whereas students will look to their teachers for guidance.</p>
<p>It is clear we need further guidance on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights, and culturally appropriate AI use for educators. </p>
<p>Generative AI still has much to learn, and Indigenous knowledges have <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/indigenous-knowledge-provides-skills-lifelong-learning-ai-cannot">much to teach it</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamika Worrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tools such as ChatGPT dominate the conversation around AI in schools. But with teachers looking to meet Indigenous content requirements, using generative AI could do more harm than good.Tamika Worrell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Critical Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197972024-02-02T13:16:45Z2024-02-02T13:16:45ZStudents with disabilities often left on the sidelines when it comes to school sports<p>“Teen with special needs makes <a href="https://www.today.com/video/watch-teen-with-special-needs-makes-thrilling-buzzer-beater-shot-197284933762">thrilling buzzer beater shot</a>.”</p>
<p>“Special needs student <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrhuNjegi1A">offered shot</a> of a lifetime.”</p>
<p>“High school basketball manager gets his <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/high-school-basketball-manager-time-court-82967098">time on the court</a>.”</p>
<p>These inspirational headlines may sound familiar. They highlight brief but exhilarating moments of disabled students in sports.</p>
<p>They represent what’s commonly referred to in the disability community as “<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en">inspiration porn</a>,” but they often miss an injustice that deserves far more attention. Student athletes with disabilities are sidelined or, even worse, never granted the opportunity to try out, even though they gained equal rights to extracurricular activities such as school sports more than 50 years ago. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsa.ed.gov/sites/default/files/downloads/rehabilitation-act-of-1973-amended-by-wioa.pdf">The Rehabilitation Act of 1973</a> prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. As a professor who studies <a href="https://health.oregonstate.edu/directory/megan-macdonald">sport and physical activity participation</a> of children with disabilities, it’s clear to me that this public law has been misinterpreted for more than 50 years, in ways that deny students equal opportunities.</p>
<h2>Clarifying the issue</h2>
<p>Just over 10 years ago, the U.S. Department of Education had to broadly issue a “<a href="https://www.ncpeid.org/assets/docs/Dear%20colleague-201301-504.pdf">Dear Colleague” letter</a> to schools across the country to communicate and clarify their responsibilities under the act. In other words, school districts had to be reminded not to generalize information about students with disabilities based on stereotypes.</p>
<p>Section 504 of the act says students with disabilities must receive the same equal rights and opportunities afforded to their peers without disabilities in extracurricular activities such as school sports. It further states that school districts should work directly with athletic associations to ensure that students with disabilities are granted an equal opportunity to participate.</p>
<p>The precedent for this broad-stroke communication came from a U.S. Government Accountability Office report, which found that disabled students were <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-519.pdf">not afforded equal opportunities to participate in school sports</a>, including club, intramural or interscholastic. The content in the letter wasn’t new information – it clearly reiterated key components of Section 504, reminding school districts not to act on generalizations or stereotypes of disability. It also provided examples about how to ensure equal opportunities for disabled students.</p>
<p>So where do things stand now?</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Special Needs Student Offered Shot Of A Lifetime”</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Participation rates unclear</h2>
<p>Students with disabilities make up <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/24/what-federal-education-data-shows-about-students-with-disabilities-in-the-us/">15% of U.S. public school students</a>, which is about 7.3 million K-12th graders. It’s impossible to know if the “Dear Colleague” letter made a difference, because there still isn’t much data on this issue.</p>
<p>Data on the general makeup of school sports teams or intramural activities is lacking, despite the fact that research shows participating has physical, social, academic and <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-us-department-educations-proposed-change-its-title-ix-regulations-students-eligibility-athletic-teams#:%7E:text=Participating%20in%20school%20athletics%20is,%2C%20leadership%2C%20and%20physical%20fitness">mental health benefits</a>.</p>
<p>As someone who sees students with disabilities and their families on a regular basis, the stories I hear haven’t changed. Students with disabilities are still put in so-called manager roles or aren’t taken seriously when they express an interest in interscholastic sports.</p>
<p>A recent conversation with a parent echoed the stagnant nature of this subject: “It was just never presented as an option. If we knew more, we may have been able to help facilitate (participation in sports), but it just didn’t come up …”</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing Section 504. Since 2013, civil rights <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/colorado-high-school-activities-association-agrees-improve-access-student-athletes">lawsuits still arise</a>. While these lawsuits often are resolved in favor of the student, they can be finalized or settled long after the egregious act. In other words, the legal action doesn’t always have immediate effects on the student athlete.</p>
<h2>What can be done</h2>
<p>While schools and their administrators have a responsibility to implement the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, there’s a collective public responsibility to ensure equal access and to uphold civil rights laws. There are tangible ways to start making changes now.</p>
<p>For starters, coaches should practice inclusive recruiting efforts for all school sporting activities, including direct outreach to disabled students. School districts can ensure training opportunities for all coaches and athletics directors focused on the best inclusive coaching practices.</p>
<p>I envision a future where headlines will reflect diverse teams, strengths of the student athletes and equal opportunity. Ignoring the civil rights of students with disabilities devalues their athletic skills. It’s also a violation of children’s <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/504faq.html">civil rights</a>. It shouldn’t take another 50 years for students with disabilities to get into the game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan MacDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although disabled students are supposed to have equal access to school sports, questions remain about whether they participate at the same rate as their nondisabled peers.Megan MacDonald, Professor of Kinesiology and School Head, School of Exercise, Sport, and Health Sciences, Oregon State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205872024-02-01T13:32:23Z2024-02-01T13:32:23ZAI can help − and hurt − student creativity<p>Teachers across the country are grappling with whether to view AI tools like ChatGPT as friend or foe in the classroom. My research shows that the answer isn’t always simple. It can be both.</p>
<p>Teaching students to be creative thinkers rather than rely on AI for answers is the key to answering this question. That’s what my team and I found in our study on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yjoc.2023.100072">whether AI affects student creativity</a>, published in the Journal of Creativity and representing scholars from the University of South Carolina, the University of California, Berkeley and Emerson College. </p>
<p>In the study, we asked college students to brainstorm – without technology – all the ways a paper clip can be used. A month later, we asked them to do the same, but using ChatGPT. We found that AI can be a useful brainstorming tool, quickly generating ideas that can spark creative exploration. But there are also potential negative effects on students’ creative thinking skills and self-confidence. While students reported that it was helpful to “have another brain,” they also felt that using AI was “the easy way out” and didn’t allow them to think on their own. </p>
<p>The results call for a thoughtful approach to using AI in classrooms and striking a balance that nurtures creativity while <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2022.100056">utilizing AI’s capabilities</a>. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Increasingly, students are using <a href="https://aiindex.stanford.edu/report/">AI for help with their schoolwork</a>. Whether it’s for drafting essays, learning new languages or studying history and science, AI tools are becoming a staple in students’ academic toolkit. </p>
<p>Students tend to view AI as having a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence10030065">positive impact on their creativity</a>. In our study, 100% of participants found AI helpful for brainstorming. Only 16% of students preferred to brainstorm without AI. </p>
<p>The good news is that the students in our study generated more diverse and detailed ideas when using AI. They found that AI was useful for kick-starting brainstorming sessions. Other research has shown that AI can also serve as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.880673">nonjudgmental partner for brainstorming</a>, which can prompt a free stream of ideas they might normally withhold in a group setting. </p>
<p>The downside of brainstorming with AI was that some students voiced concerns about overreliance on the technology, fearing it might undermine their own thoughts and, consequently, confidence in their creative abilities. Some students reported a “fixation of the mind,” meaning that once they saw the AI’s ideas, they had a hard time coming up with their own.</p>
<p>Some students also questioned the originality of ideas generated by AI. Our research supported these hunches. We noted that while using ChatGPT improved students’ creative output individually, the AI ideas tended to be repetitive overall. This is likely due to generative AI recycling existing content rather than creating original thought.</p>
<p>The study results indicate that allowing students to practice creativity independently first will <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100966">strengthen their belief in themselves and their abilities</a>. Once they accomplish this, AI can be useful in furthering their learning, much like teaching long division to students before introducing a calculator.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Our study primarily explored AI’s application in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_07">idea-generation phase of creativity</a>, but we also emphasized the importance of developing skills at the start and end of the creative process. The essential tasks of defining problems and critically evaluating ideas still rely heavily on human input.</p>
<p>The creative process typically involves three phases, such as problem identification, idea generation and evaluation. AI shows promise in aiding students in the idea generation phase of the creative process, according to our study. However, the current generation of AI, such as ChatGPT-3, lacks the capacity for defining the problem and refining ideas into something actionable. </p>
<p>AI’s <a href="https://tech.ed.gov/ai-future-of-teaching-and-learning/">growing role in education</a> brings many advantages, but keeping the human element at the forefront is crucial.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Content ownership, plagiarism and false or misleading information are among the current challenges for implementing AI in education. As generative AI gains popularity, schools are pressed to set guidelines to ensure these tools are used responsibly. Some states, such as <a href="https://www.edweek.org/technology/schools-desperately-need-guidance-on-ai-who-will-step-up/2023/11">California and Oregon</a>, have already developed guidelines for AI in education. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iotcps.2023.04.003">Ethical considerations</a> are vital for a positive relationship between creativity and AI.</p>
<p>Our team will continue to research the effect of AI on creativity, exploring its impact on agency, confidence and other phases of the creative process. AI in education is not just about the latest technology. It’s about shaping a future where human creativity and technological advancement progress hand in hand.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take on interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabrina Habib does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A study in which students brainstormed all the uses of a paper clip shows that AI can both enhance and harm the creative process.Sabrina Habib, Associate Professor, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197002024-01-28T19:03:43Z2024-01-28T19:03:43ZMaid author Stephanie Land reveals the ‘constant, crushing’ panic of her hungriest year, but this college memoir is ‘emptier’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573656/original/file-20240206-27-poso37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3594%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Margaret Qualley as Alex in Maid</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 2014, her senior year of college. Stephanie Land, bestselling author of <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stephanie-land/maid/9780316505116/">Maid</a>, is almost 35, still two years away from landing the publishing deal that will change her life.</p>
<p>A single parent of a six-year-old, she gulps coffee from an empty peanut-butter jar in college classes and struggles to stay awake after kindergarten drop-off. Before the year is out, she’ll be pregnant again, her circumstances infinitely harder.</p>
<p>Land’s mind is always somewhere else. <em>Rent. Bills. Groceries. Medicine, if the budget will stretch that far. An abusive ex-partner who’s stingy with child support.</em></p>
<p>“It’s pretty relentless”, a college professor remarks dismissively in the feedback on one of Land’s life-writing assignments, a quibble that “throbs” in the aspiring author’s head for days afterwards.</p>
<p><em>My life may be relentless</em>, she later writes in one of her many notebooks, <em>but goddammit so am I</em>.</p>
<p>So the days and weeks unfold in Land’s second memoir, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Class/Stephanie-Land/9781982151393">Class</a>, an insular but vivid reflection on a tertiary education system that seems to sabotage the very students who work hardest to be there.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Class – Stephanie Land (Atria)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“Of all the things in my life that I didn’t have access to or felt like I didn’t deserve for some reason, an education hadn’t crossed my mind as a thing I wasn’t supposed to have,” Land recalls.</p>
<p>Yet getting an English degree while struggling to put food on the table leaves Land frequently wracked with guilt, a “constant, crushing panic”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3222%2C2156&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3222%2C2156&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Class, Stephanie Land is still two years away from the publishing deal that will change her life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erika Peterman</span></span>
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<p>Pressing towards graduation, often on the brink of physical exhaustion, she reflects bitterly on the administrative hoop-jumping required of students with little financial or social support, striking at the corporatised core of higher education in America:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had forgotten the part of the game where no one’s education mattered more than the money the university could make from your opportunity to soak up all that learning. God forbid they would make it affordable or easy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The years she spends in snowy Missoula, Montana, are not just plagued by hunger in the literal sense. They are propelled by it too. She hankers for the respite of an easier life: financial security, reliable child care and possible entry to an MFA program.</p>
<p>But even as the book’s titular play on words conjures both the experience of class immobility and the college classroom Land sets out to critique, the book ends up being about neither in particular. As a sequel of sorts to Land’s celebrated debut, Class lacks the sustained storytelling that helped establish Land as an unflinching class commentator.</p>
<p>Maid makes unexpected connections to the privilege and plight of America’s precarious middle class – afforded by the author’s invisible but intimate presence in the homes she cleans. But Class turns inwards, often as disconnected and unfocused as the year it documents.</p>
<p>As one <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101160309-class?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=TuXFi7pBGX&rank=1">Goodreads reviewer</a> has commented, Class falters in its telling, feeling more like “a recitation of things that happened” than the feat of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/from-middle-class-to-homeless-a-mothers-unapologetic-memoir/2019/02/01/e4db6410-137c-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html">“unfussy prose and clear voice”</a> that glues Maid together.</p>
<p>“Not much actually happens in ‘Maid’,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/from-middle-class-to-homeless-a-mothers-unapologetic-memoir/2019/02/01/e4db6410-137c-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html">Jenny Rogers commented</a> in The Washington Post. Yet it “holds you”.</p>
<p>If Class has a looser grip, what else does it offer readers? </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/barbara-ehrenreich-never-stopped-trying-to-change-the-world-189953">Barbara Ehrenreich never stopped trying to change the world</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Mega-success with Maid</h2>
<p>If yours was one of the 67 million households that tuned into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_(miniseries)">Maid on Netflix</a>, you may be more familiar with <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/10/maid-netflix-margaret-qualley-andie-macdowell">Margaret Qualley’s “Alex”</a>, loosely based on Land, whose unplanned pregnancy and subsequent attempts to make it alone push her below the poverty line and into the houses of wealthier people whose toilets she scrubs. </p>
<p>Published at the beginning of 2019, Maid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2019/02/10/">launched at number three</a> on The New York Times Best Seller list and was praised by <a href="https://time.com/6101999/maid-review-netflix/">Time magazine</a> as “an empathetic portrait of poverty that dispels the myth of bootstrapping”. Former US President Obama handpicked it for his <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1J3hS-AyW5/">summer reading list</a> later that year. </p>
<p>And in 2021, Netflix’s ten-episode limited series based on the book was a commercial and critical success, laying bare what Lucy Mangan <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/01/maid-review-netflix-homelessness-drama">has rightly called</a> the “unflinching anatomisation of the red tape that surrounds every effort to access the (already minimal) help supposedly on offer to desperate women and their children”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Netflix’s commercially and critically successful Maid was based on Stephanie Land’s first memoir.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Class picks up where Maid leaves off. </p>
<p>In the acknowledgements pages, Land describes a sense of responsibility to her readers to continue the story she’d so far “only partly told”. She insists it’s the book she always wanted to write, focusing on her “hungriest year” – when her “stomach and brain lived in a constant state of anger and lightheadedness”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-just-go-to-school-with-no-food-why-australia-must-tackle-child-poverty-to-improve-educational-outcomes-178426">'I just go to school with no food' – why Australia must tackle child poverty to improve educational outcomes</a>
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<hr>
<h2>‘Easily’ reliving imposter syndrome</h2>
<p>To anyone who’s experienced persistent poverty, generational trauma or the vagaries of solo parenting firsthand, the pervasive themes of frustration and despair that reappear in Class will remain uncomfortably close.</p>
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<p>When Land looks down at her faded clothes and feels like “she always had on the first day of school: a nerdy new kid who didn’t know what to wear in order to fit in”, I can easily relive the imposter syndrome that haunted my own academic journey from start to finish. </p>
<p>The first in my working-class family to complete a university degree, I subsisted on a budget of only $200 a week when I first moved to Brisbane to complete my bachelor’s degree. Ten years later, after bouncing in and out of hospital with life-threatening depression, I was left to pay off thousands in medical debt through my PhD stipend and casual university teaching.</p>
<p>But no matter their background, I suspect few readers could come away from Class without a sharp sense of the unremitting fatigue, frequent indignities and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/books/review/maid-stephanie-land.html">“bleak mental arithmetic”</a> striving to stay afloat demands of the economically disadvantaged. </p>
<p>In Class, Land continues to keep “obsessive track” of her bank account. She pockets toilet rolls from public bathrooms and carries a list of fixed expenses and estimated income with her wherever she goes. </p>
<p>“All my school notebooks had these tiny budgets written inside,” she writes. They’re taped to the wall beside her desk; she scribbles “different versions of it” in her day planner at the start of each month. A tangle of upbeat acronyms – sources of financial assistance like <a href="https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa">FAFSA</a>, <a href="https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/613">TANF</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program">SNAP</a> – represent a demoralising bureaucratic burden for little ultimate gain.</p>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, though, Class is strongest when Land allows herself to drift into a more digressive mode. Her commentary on contraceptive choices, for example, is far more interesting and well developed than the diarised recollections she shares in the lead-up to discovering her second unplanned pregnancy. </p>
<p>Partway through the book, she recalls a time when Missoula was labelled the <a href="https://jezebel.com/my-weekend-in-americas-so-called-rape-capital-5908472">“rape capital”</a> of America after a number of University of Montana football stars were accused of sexual assault. Curiously, she mentions only in passing that a flurry of letters to the editor in response to the news helped her recognise her own experiences of rape.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-most-disadvantaged-parts-of-australia-new-research-shows-its-not-just-income-that-matters-132428">Where are the most disadvantaged parts of Australia? New research shows it's not just income that matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Missed opportunities</h2>
<p>In this way, Class sometimes feels like a series of missed opportunities in the plotting, pace and development of what’s otherwise a compelling premise and an evocative setting. Land writes with an explicit distaste for having to justify or explain herself. She openly objects to the expectation (and veneration) of resilience or “success stories” in the face of gross inequity. </p>
<p>But in Class, this resistance often translates as an unsatisfying emotional distance.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In Maid, where Land speaks of the startling imprint of cleaning other people’s houses on her life – the vulnerabilities she’s exposed to “somehow reminding of her own” – we’re generously treated to what renowned memoirist <a href="https://www.marykarr.com/the-art-of-memoir.html">Mary Karr calls</a> the “totemic objects”, or the idiosyncratic details, that sophisticated writers strive to “place on every page”. The minutiae of her life — and those hers overlaps — feel real in the pungent whiff of her sick daughter’s breath, a client’s hidden cigarette stash, the flecks of vomit on an upturned toilet seat.</p>
<p>Class carries a greater sense of urgency, resorting to a more fervid yet mechanical style that belies its byline as a rumination on motherhood, hunger and higher education.</p>
<p>Land alludes to white privilege only once, commenting that her “plain” appearance has allowed her “an occasional break from my poverty, at least in terms of its visibility to others”. Of class hierarchies, she remarks fleetingly that “what society encouraged and what it actually supported were two different things depending on what economic class you found yourself in”. </p>
<p>Critical engagement with the intersections between identity and the ways we experience the world is noticeably absent. As a writer who labours to reveal the bergs of difficulty that may lurk beneath the appearance of success or stability, she is not always willing to excavate those depths outside her own immediate experience.</p>
<p>In a telling aside that mirrors the book’s inward focus, she exposes a habitual impulse for assuming her circumstances are exceptional, rarely interested enough to look deeper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My friendships were surface level only. Not because I necessarily wanted it that way. I just didn’t have much to give back. There was so much going on in my life between work, kid, and school that I didn’t have the bandwidth to sit and listen while someone talked to me about struggles they had. When I confessed this to anyone, they invariably said that friendship was a two-way street, a give-and-take, where one person needs more support and then the other might and so on. “Yeah, but I don’t know if I will ever not need more support,” I would say.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most baffling is Land’s treatment of her thwarted dream of enrolling in a Masters of Fine Arts (one of few anchoring elements of the narrative), when an unsympathetic college professor denies her application: “Babies don’t belong in grad school”. It’s a gut-wrenching disappointment Land brushes aside in less than a page. </p>
<p>Even America’s increasingly decentralised higher education system goes largely unexplained and unexamined, in a story the publisher packages as a “searing indictment”. </p>
<p>Class is an emptier book, hungry for the reservoir of rich episodic detail that spurred Maid to its unprecedented success as both a memoir and a televised adaptation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-single-parenting-with-a-disability-how-my-9-year-old-daughter-became-my-carer-in-shining-armour-176013">Friday essay: single parenting with a disability – how my 9-year-old daughter became my carer in shining armour</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Like its author, ‘Class works hard’</h2>
<p>Maid, however, was always going to be a tough first act to follow. The so-called “sophomore slump” (or, second-book syndrome) is a recognised phenomenon in the most ordinary of circumstances. An author whose debut has achieved bestseller status and been adapted to the screen invites inevitable comparison.</p>
<p>Even so, Class makes up for what it lacks in craft in its simple insistence on being heard.</p>
<p>Reflecting on her interactions with readers, Land explains that people often ask what motivated her to write about her own life. “The answer is both lofty and painfully basic,” she reveals at the back of Class:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the one hand, I wanted to dismantle stigmas surrounding single moms, especially those who parent under the poverty line. On the other, I needed the money. The prospect of publishing a book wasn’t just the answer to a lifelong dream – it was the discovery of a life raft on a sinking ship.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For readers like me, who’ve floated adrift on their own sinking ships, Class may well be a life raft of another kind. Land’s relentlessness – and her strident aversion to inspirational gloss-coating – creates a redemptive space for lives messily lived, intrusively bureaucratised, and unfairly judged.</p>
<p>At a time when the prohibitive cost of higher education deters so many from the liberal arts (in Land’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/cost-and-lack-of-majors-are-among-the-top-reasons-why-students-leave-for-profit-colleges-204671">America</a>, but also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-27/generational-hecs-debt-university-access-higher-education-cost/102480290">Australia</a> and elsewhere around the world), her story stands as an imperfect but powerful reminder that all voices matter. </p>
<p>Storytelling, Land reminds us, can serve a variety of purposes, discouraging silos of silence from expanding around experiences of marginalisation and expressions of outrage.</p>
<p>Much like Land herself, Class works hard.</p>
<p>It doesn’t always get where it wants to go, but there’s value in its effort.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amber Gwynne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephanie Land’s sequel to her mega-successful debut memoir Maid works as hard as she does – but while its details of low-income single-parent life as a student are valuable, it suffers by comparison.Amber Gwynne, Associate Lecturer in Writing, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207252024-01-26T13:20:10Z2024-01-26T13:20:10ZFrance’s biggest Muslim school went from accolades to defunding – showing a key paradox in how the country treats Islam<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569761/original/file-20240117-21-kh948e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1022%2C680&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students attend a class at the Averroès school in Lille, France, in September 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-attend-a-class-at-the-averroes-high-school-in-news-photo/1801185507?adppopup=true">Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>France is famously strict on enforcing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13310-7_6">what it calls “laïcité</a>”: keeping religion out of the public sphere. Yet more than <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport/289657-lenseignement-prive-sous-contrat">7,500 private schools</a> receive government funding, and most are Catholic. In a country where about 1 in 10 people are Muslim, just three Muslim high schools receive state support – or did.</p>
<p>In December 2023, local authorities of the French Ministry of the Interior confirmed a decision to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/frances-largest-muslim-school-threatened-closure-amid-scrutiny/story?id=105542824">revoke state funding from Lycée Averroès</a>, France’s largest and most acclaimed private Muslim high school. Authorities cited “<a href="https://www.la-croix.com/dissensions-autour-du-lycee-musulman-averroes-prive-de-subventions-publiques-20231211">serious breaches of the fundamental principles of the Republic</a>,” <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/11/27/lycee-prive-musulman-averroes-avis-consultatif-favorable-a-la-resiliation-du-contrat-avec-l-etat_6202633_3224.html">raised concerns over certain texts in religious education classes</a>, and accused administrators of opaque financial management, among various alleged infractions. </p>
<p>None of these claims are supported by previous inspection reports, and <a href="https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/hauts-de-france/nord-0/lille/lycee-musulman-averroes-syndicats-politiques-directeur-de-grande-ecole-tour-d-horizon-des-soutiens-affiches-2884994.html">many French scholars and activists have denounced the decision as politically motivated</a>, setting off a political firestorm.</p>
<p>Lycée Averroès, located in the suburbs of Lille, opened in 2003 and was granted state funding in 2008. In 2013, it was named the best high school in France, <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Urbi-et-Orbi/Actualite/France/Le-lycee-musulman-Averroes-de-Lille-meilleur-lycee-de-France-2013-03-28-926203">according to the Parisien newspaper’s rankings</a>, and has consistently <a href="https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/1309270/article/2023-03-29/lille-averroes-et-faidherbe-dans-le-top-3-des-lycees-de-la-region">ranked among the region’s best</a> in recent years. Teachers and administrators <a href="https://www.lycee-averroes.com/">pride themselves</a> on being dedicated to both French Republican and Islamic values. As <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2017.1303768">our research</a> has shown, the school often goes above and beyond to teach civic values such as equality and laïcité.</p>
<p>In many French Muslim communities, the school is seen as a beacon – an example of a Muslim institution that succeeded <a href="https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/religious-discrimination-against-muslims-in-france#:">despite discrimination</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/islam-and-the-governing-of-muslims-in-france-9781350214538/">political tensions around Islam</a>, and the French Republic’s <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/122/article/843095">strict secularism</a>.</p>
<p>The defunding decision represents a common paradox in contemporary France: Many of the steps its government takes to supposedly protect “<a href="https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/french-brief-reinforcing-principles-republic-french-paradox">French Republican values</a>,” better “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12942">integrate” Muslim minorities</a> or prevent radicalization have the potential <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-terrorism-muslims-confusion/2020/11/13/e40332be-2042-11eb-ad53-4c1fda49907d_story.html">to do the opposite</a>.</p>
<h2>High scores, high scrutiny</h2>
<p>Private schools in France <a href="https://books.openedition.org/pur/109889?lang=en">can receive state funding</a> for up to <a href="https://www.cafepedagogique.net/2023/06/02/enseignement-prive-8-milliards-de-fonds-publics-et-pas-de-controles/">about three-quarters of their operating budgets</a> if they agree to certain stipulations. Teachers can provide optional religious education, but otherwise must follow the national curriculum and admit students of any religious background, based on merit alone. </p>
<p>The first Muslim schools opened in 2001, and <a href="https://www.theses.fr/2021UPSLP080">dozens more have been established</a> since. But <a href="https://books.openedition.org/pur/109988?lang=en">as the first one to be granted state funding</a>, Averroès has been under <a href="https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/973367/article/2021-04-01/suspension-des-subventions-du-lycee-averroes-le-tribunal-administratif-rappelle">particularly close scrutiny</a> since its inception. The school has previously faced controversies related to <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/lycee-musulman-averroes-a-lille-la-region-sommee-de-verser-500-000-euros-a-letablissement-12-10-2022-LMTHICKKVNCR7PXBLWSUY4D6JQ.php">funding it received from an organization in Qatar</a>, and a former teacher’s claims, made a decade ago, that Averroès was <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20150206-teacher-quits-french-muslim-school-over-insidious-islamism">teaching “Islamism</a>.”</p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://static.blast-info.fr/attachments/stories/2023/gS9HjS-QQnumCrLXl7NLOw/attachment-kaCAkdjcQz2hkp2n1H3ixA.pdf">official 2020 report</a>, from 2015 through 2020 Averroès was inspected 13 times, making it “the most inspected school” in the region. Notably, it stated that “nothing in the observations … allows (us) to think teaching practices don’t respect republican values.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A statue of a seated man in robes on a pedestal, in front of a brightly lit stone wall at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570988/original/file-20240123-29-tsqi0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of the medieval Muslim philosopher Averroes in Cordoba, Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/wall-and-averroes-memorial-royalty-free-image/500351883?phrase=averroes&adppopup=true">Domingo Leiva/Moment Open via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several public figures have argued that the decision to defund Averroès is representative of “<a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2023/12/16/la-decision-de-deconventionner-le-lycee-averroes-a-lille-est-inequitable-et-disproportionnee_6206186_3232.html">inequitable and disproportionate” treatment</a> that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105022">French Muslims often face</a> compared to their non-Muslim peers. As our research has shown, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2022.2131735">many Muslim schools undergo more</a> surveillance and criticism <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/090223/homophobie-au-lycee-stanislas-six-mois-de-silence-du-ministre-qui-confinent-la-lachete">compared to their Catholic</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359479.001.0001">Jewish</a> counterparts. </p>
<p>These double standards largely stem from a political environment rife with <a href="https://www.senat.fr/rap/r19-595-1/r19-595-12.html">fears over Islamic extremism</a> after <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210905-how-the-november-2015-attacks-marked-a-turning-point-in-french-terror-laws">numerous high-profile attacks on French soil</a>. </p>
<p>However, policies intended to <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/11/18/le-projet-de-loi-contre-l-islam-radical-et-les-separatismes-finalise-et-transmis-aux-deputes-et-senateurs_6060131_823448.html">save French Muslim youth from radicalization</a> can have an adverse effect, making young Muslims feel that they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3917/scpo.broua.2005.01">not seen as fully French</a>, and further alienating them. </p>
<p>For some, this sense of unequal treatment manifests in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/religion-paris-radicalism-secularism-france-951fe2ff0b42e8954193f6f9293b0803">frequent protests</a> and other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2018.1440197">demands for justice</a>. But it has sometimes fueled riots, vandalism and <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/01/17/les-emeutes-de-juillet-2023-dernier-episode-d-une-crise-politique-sans-fin_6211398_3224.html">social unrest</a>.</p>
<h2>Security and separatism</h2>
<p>Other policies that affect education and were made in the name of French secularism have also drawn controversy for potentially discriminating against Islam.</p>
<p>For example, a broad 2021 measure often referred to as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/15/frances-controversial-separatism-bill-explained#:%7E:text=Under%20a%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cseparatism,be%20banned%20from%20French%20territory.">the “separatism law</a>” aimed <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/en-bref/283224-loi-separatisme-entree-en-vigueur-des-premieres-dispositions">to combat perceived nonallegiance to French values</a>. Among many requirements, the law made independent schools harder to open and easier for the state to close. </p>
<p>Although the text of the <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rdr/1749">law does not explicitly mention Muslims</a>, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3917/migra.183.0003">political discourse surrounding the law</a> clearly targeted Islam. In an October 2020 speech defending the legislation, President Emmanuel Macron stated, “What we must tackle is Islamist separatism,” which he accused of “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2020/10/02/fight-against-separatism-the-republic-in-action-speech-by-emmanuel-macron-president-of-the-republic-on-the-fight-against-separatism">repeated deviations from the Republic’s values</a>.” </p>
<p>Yet there is <a href="https://theconversation.com/separatisme-et-si-la-politique-antiterroriste-faisait-fausse-route-149078?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton">little evidence of such alleged “separatism</a>.” Rather, studies have <a href="https://www.ined.fr/en/publications/editions/document-travail/trajectories-and-origines-survey-on-population-diversity-in-france-initial-findings-en/">consistently shown</a> that Muslim support for French institutions mirrors that of the larger population.</p>
<p>Other examples of policies that purport to rein in radicalization, but may further fuel Muslims’ isolation, include the 2023 <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/09/05/france-s-century-long-crusade-against-religious-symbols-at-school-from-the-crucifix-to-the-abaya_6124828_7.html">ban on abayas in public schools</a> and the <a href="https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/livre-la_politisation_du_voile_en_france_en_europe_et_dans_le_monde_arabe-9782747578875-18971.html">2004 “headscarf” law</a> that banned “ostentatious” <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691147987/the-politics-of-the-veil">religious symbols from public schools</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="About half a dozen women in headscarves look frustrated as they hold signs on the street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570989/original/file-20240123-17-fcypz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Veiled or not veiled, we want equality’: Parents and supporters protest in 2019 against a proposal to ban mothers who wear headscarves from school trips.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/parents-and-members-of-le-collectif-66-des-mamans-en-colere-news-photo/1146681939?adppopup=true">Raymond Roig/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>One study argues the 2004 ban <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000106">harmed Muslim girls’ graduation rates</a>, subsequently affecting their employment opportunities. Similarly, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/french-schools-ban-on-abayas-and-headscarves-is-supposedly-about-secularism-but-it-sends-a-powerful-message-about-who-belongs-in-french-culture-213543">abaya ban</a> has been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/27/how-do-you-distinguish-between-an-abaya-and-a-maxi-dress">criticized by human rights activists</a>, <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230830-un-criticises-france-for-banning-abaya-in-schools/">the United Nations</a> and the <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/releases-statements/uscirf-concerned-frances-expanding-interpretation-ban-religious">U.S. Commission for Religious Freedom</a> for unduly restricting freedom of religious expression and potentially fueling discrimination. </p>
<h2>The future of pluralism</h2>
<p>Based on <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/muslim-and-catholic-experiences-of-national-belonging-in-france-9781350380448/">our fieldwork</a>, we believe France’s Muslim schools <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-schools-are-allies-in-frances-fight-against-radicalization-not-the-cause-149802">may help reduce radicalization</a> and one of its causes: young people’s sense that being both fully French and fully Muslim <a href="https://www.europe1.fr/societe/selon-un-sondage-ifop-pour-le-journal-du-dimanche-78-des-francais-jugent-la-laicite-menacee-3927717">is incompatible</a>.</p>
<p>As one young French Muslim told us, “I’ve always been made to feel as though I’m not ‘une vraie française’ (a real French person).” Such “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2017.1323199">everyday exclusion</a>” can fuel <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-migrations-societe-2023-4-page-3.htm">alienation</a>, <a href="https://arcade.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/article_pdfs/Occasion_v09_hargreaves_final.pdf">resentment</a> or even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2022.2147913">emmigration</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions like Averroès, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2017.1303768">offer a haven</a> from the <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253218346/muslim-girls-and-the-other-france/">discrimination students may experience in public schools</a>, and create a space for pupils who want to wear a headscarf or abaya. In addition, they actively <a href="https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/provence-alpes-cote-d-azur/bouches-du-rhone/marseille/rentree-marseille-eleves-musulmans-catholiques-se-rassemblent-hommage-samuel-paty-1890562.html">denounce terrorism</a> and <a href="https://www.20minutes.fr/lille/1512739-20150108-lille-hommage-charlie-hebdo-lycee-musulman-averroes">radicalization</a>.</p>
<p>But recent actions suggest that the French government may have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-closes-mosques-with-powers-that-some-critics-say-use-secretive-evidence-2022-04-05/">lost confidence in Muslim institutions</a> as a way to foster French values. France shut down <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-report-on-international-religious-freedom/france/#:%7E:text=The%20government%20dissolved%20by%20decree,21%20mosques%20since%20November%202020.">672 Muslim establishments between 2018 and 2021</a>, including mosques and <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/france-has-shut-down-dozens-mosques-islamic-schools">independent Muslim schools</a>.</p>
<p>Most immediately, the decision to defund Averroès will impact its students and staff. The school offers scholarships to <a href="https://static.blast-info.fr/attachments/stories/2023/gS9HjS-QQnumCrLXl7NLOw/attachment-kaCAkdjcQz2hkp2n1H3ixA.pdf">approximately 62% of its student body</a>, including its nonstate-funded middle school – a number which will likely prove untenable without funding.</p>
<p>More broadly, such steps may intensify challenges to French Muslims’ sense of value and belonging, obstructing the path toward peaceful pluralism and paradoxically <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/france-terrorism-muslims.html">increasing the risk of radicalization and separatism</a>.</p>
<p>Yet we believe there is a third risk, as well. The French Republic considers secular neutrality and equality <a href="https://editionsdelaube.fr/catalogue_de_livres/etre-francais/">core pillars of French identity</a>, but many critics view its policies on Islam as prime examples of inequality and bias. Such discord may <a href="https://www.ldh-france.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/HL195-Idees-en-debat-Loi-sur-le-separatisme-la-liberte-de-culte-entravee.pdf">undermine these values’ legitimacy</a>, if not their very essence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220725/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent Geisser is affiliated with organization
President of the Center for Information and Studies on International Migration (CIEMI, Paris)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Ferrara and Françoise Lorcerie do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some of the measures the French government has taken to fight radicalization can do the opposite, three social scientists argue.Carol Ferrara, Anthropologist & Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing Communication, Emerson CollegeFrançoise Lorcerie, Professeure, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)Vincent Geisser, Sociologue, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2185942024-01-25T20:45:52Z2024-01-25T20:45:52ZCommunity-controlled schools create better education outcomes for First Nations students<p>In Australia, more than a dozen independent, community-controlled First Nations schools were set up in the 1970s and ‘80s. These schools, some still in operation, offered culturally and linguistically relevant education to First Nations students reflecting Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. </p>
<p>Our research projects have explored <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17508487.2023.2249064">self-determination in Indigenous community-controlled schools in Australia</a>. We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220620.2022.2151578">found</a> First Nations-led schools can support self-determination and improve education outcomes for Indigenous young people. </p>
<p>This is also the lesson of a new children’s book <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781761269714/">In My Blood It Runs</a> by Arrernte and Garuwa man Dujuan Hoosan. The new book shares Dujuan’s experience of navigating an educational system not designed for him, and the benefits of First Nations-controlled education.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-is-promising-truth-telling-in-our-australian-education-system-heres-what-needs-to-happen-191420">Albanese is promising 'truth-telling' in our Australian education system. Here's what needs to happen</a>
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<h2>First Nations controlled schools</h2>
<p>Our research found many First Nations-led schools were set up in the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17508487.2023.2249064">1970s and 1980s</a>, as communities began to fight for appropriate education. This emerged after a long history of insufficient government-mandated education, forced exclusion from school, or forced attendance at missionary and reserve schools.</p>
<p>These included the community-controlled <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220620.2022.2151578">Yipirinya School in Mparntwe</a>. The school was set up by families in the town camps and their European allies. The school developed curriculum in Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Western Arrarnte (also known as Western Aranda), Lurijta and Warlpiri, as well as in English and Aboriginal English. Classes were initially taught in the town camps. </p>
<p>Others included the <a href="https://www.mabonativetitle.com/info/historyOfBCS.htm">Black Community School</a> in Townsville. The school was set up by Torres Strait Islander land rights campaigners Eddie “Kioki” Mabo, Bonita Mabo and Woiworrung and Yorta Yorta author and activist Burnum Burnum. Another example is the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/cabaret-tells-how-loved-melbourne-school-was-saved-from-kennett-closures-20210421-p57l8x.html">Northland College</a> for Koori kids in Richmond.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjr9IOUxvyCAxUsgK8BHWKdAgYQFnoECBMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.voced.edu.au%2Fcontent%2Fngv%253A20015&usg=AOvVaw3NAeXQ7hBhAnb7G58P8t9v&opi=89978449">Hughes Report</a>, published in 1988, became the basis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy for the next decade. It recognised First Nations-controlled schools as an important step in overcoming a long history of educational exclusion. The report called for self-determination in education, the training of First Nations teachers, and developing suitable curricula that embedded Indigenous languages and knowledges. </p>
<p>Bilingual and multilingual schooling <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0">began from community-led initatives in First Nations communities</a>. They demonstrated how schools controlled by local communities provide safe and sustaining places for First Nations young people. It was <a href="https://www.towardstruth.org.au/doc1778-leanne-holt-the-development-of-aborigina">around this time</a> the numbers of First Nations people participating in education increased most dramatically. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolments in universities <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED449932.pdf">increased</a> by 50% in the 1980s, and primary school enrolments increased by 40% in the 1990s.</p>
<p>However, policy began to <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.200192661824553">shift away</a> from this focus in the late 1990s and onwards. Education debates began to emphasise attendance as the key issue, and measuring English-only literacy and numeracy data as a way to gauge the success of education.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unreasonable-unjust-oppressive-how-a-police-program-targeted-indigenous-kids-216627">'Unreasonable, unjust, oppressive': how a police program targeted Indigenous kids</a>
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<h2>Recent developments</h2>
<p>Released last year, Dujuan’s story In My Blood it Runs, coauthored with his grandmothers Margaret Anderson and Carol Turner, illustrates how Indigenous children balance their existence in two distinct worlds. </p>
<p>After many years of struggling at school, Dujuan left Mparntwe (Alice Springs) to attend an Indigenous-led Garuwa homeland school on his father’s country in Borroloola, about 1,200km north of Mparntwe. Here, he was able to learn on Country, from Aboriginal teachers, in a nourishing and rewarding environment. He became excited to attend school and his learning journey took off.</p>
<p>First Nations-led non-profit organisation Children’s Ground recently released a <a href="https://childrensground.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/The-MK-Turner-Report-Childrens-Ground.pdf">report</a> responding to ongoing policy failures in First Nations education. This includes the dismantling of bilingual education.</p>
<p>The report calls for a First Nations-controlled education system and the establishment of an independent governing body to oversee it. The recommendations in the report align with the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>. This includes a key focus on self-determination in education. </p>
<p>In particular, Article 14 of the Declaration recognises the right of Indigenous peoples to establish and control their own educational systems. This would ensure education is culturally and linguistically relevant to Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>And the recent release of a report from the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Affairs/UNDRIP?utm_source=miragenews&utm_medium=miragenews&utm_campaign=news">Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs</a> into whether Australia should implement the UN declaration has renewed attention on self-determination.</p>
<p>Similar discussions have been had in Canada for many years. Recent treaties have included provisions to transfer control of education of First Nations students to First Nations groups. Graduation rates have been positively impacted for groups who have obtained authority over education. When First Nations group Mi'kmaq from northeastern Canada initially took control of their education system in 1998 only 30% of their students were graduating from secondary school. According to the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_AUxQnaOXJpm4BwO6ljIIUsLddsDOiw3/view">most recent annual report</a>, 83% are now graduating.</p>
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<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>We can look to successful examples in Australia, such as Yipirinya School in Mparntwe, the Black Community School, and recent education reforms in Canada, as important lessons on how to support First Nations-controlled education in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. </p>
<p>We can also look to Dujuan’s story. His book is a call to action to reform education, juvenile justice, child welfare and racist practices.</p>
<p>Dujuan’s story invites us to imagine how we can make school work for First Nations children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samara is a co-founder and director at the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition who partnered with the In My Blood it Runs production team to launch the Learn Our Truth campaign.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Archie Thomas has provided research material to the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition (NIYEC) and the In My Blood it Runs production team. Archie is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.</span></em></p>Research shows the many benefits of First Nations-led education systems and schooling.Samara Hand, PhD Candidate, UNSW SydneyArchie Thomas, Chancellor's Research Fellow, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218592024-01-25T16:27:41Z2024-01-25T16:27:41ZInternational students cap falsely blames them for Canada’s housing and health-care woes<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/international-students-cap-falsely-blames-them-for-canadas-housing-and-health-care-woes" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has announced <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2024/01/canada-to-stabilize-growth-and-decrease-number-of-new-international-student-permits-issued-to-approximately-360000-for-2024.html">a new cap on international students</a>. </p>
<p>In 2024, IRCC aims to issue 360,000 study permits, a 35-per-cent reduction from 2023. This announcement comes on the heels of a doubling of the cost-of-living requirement, whereby international students coming to study in any province except Québec have to demonstrate they have <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/study-canada/study-permit/get-documents.html#doc3">access to $20,635</a>.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that <a href="https://cfsontario.ca/2022/05/26/private-for-profit-colleges-jeopardizing-international-student-communities-across-ontario/">predatory private colleges</a> and <a href="https://opseu.org/news/the-ontario-government-must-address-exploitation-of-international-students-and-properly-fund-public-colleges-opseu-sefpo/178678/">exploitative international student recruiters</a> have acted unethically, and steps must be taken to address their actions. </p>
<p>International students also deserve access to supports and services they need to thrive in Canada.</p>
<p>But dominant media narratives illustrated in headlines like “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-set-two-year-cap-international-student-permits-2024-01-22/">Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch</a>” are inaccurate and harmful. They also shift responsibility away from those truly responsible: Elected officials at all levels of the government and predatory private colleges. </p>
<h2>Baseless blame</h2>
<p>Media coverage of the cap has also failed to consider the people at the heart of the issue — the international students themselves who, despite their <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/cimm-mar-03-2022/international-students.html">significant economic ($22.3 billion) and social contributions to Canada</a>, are being blamed for many of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-capping-foreign-students-wont-solve-canadas-immigration-problem/">Canada’s biggest and long-standing challenges</a>.</p>
<p>The media has also reported on the cap’s <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-international-students-cap-reaction/">consequences for public post-secondary institutions</a> which, for years, have commodified international students, viewing them as an important revenue source in the face of <a href="https://www.caut.ca/resources/almanac/2-canada-provinces#:%7E:text=The%20share%20of%20college%20funding,34.1%25%20in%202019%2D2020.">shrinking provincial government grants</a>. </p>
<p>These stories have focused on how this policy will have a dire impact on the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10230540/student-concern-queens-university-financial-woes/">financial sustainability</a> of universities, and how they might be forced to hike domestic/Canadian students’ tuition, which will adversely affect Canadians. </p>
<p>This ignores the impact on international students themselves, who have been exploited by provinces and universities for years and <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/no-house-no-jobs-canadian-dream-turns-nightmare-for-indian-students-canada-india-news-immigration-2440331-2023-09-26">who are already struggling to make ends meet in Canada</a>. </p>
<p>Some editorialists have argued the cap on visas and stricter work-permit rules will <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-ottawa-finally-acts-on-international-student-visas-setting-a-challenge/">fix the exploitative post-secondary education “industry.”</a> </p>
<p>The federal government has committed to creating a <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2023/10/changes-to-international-student-program-aim-to-protect-students.html">“recognized institution” framework</a> that will see institutions set higher standards for supports, services and outcomes for international students and fast-track study permits.</p>
<p>Likewise, several provinces have committed to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-bc-ontario-planning-crack-down-on-bad-actor-colleges-preying-on/">“cracking down” on predatory colleges</a>.</p>
<p>But there are other ways to prevent the exploitation of international students, including <a href="https://ontariosuniversities.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Committed-to-Supporting-International-Students-Feb-2023-final.pdf">supporting the transition to studying and living in Canada</a> and creating inclusive learning environments.</p>
<h2>Who’s responsible for the housing crisis?</h2>
<p>The government’s official news release, along with the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-set-two-year-cap-international-student-permits-2024-01-22/">media coverage</a> of the announcement, continues to <a href="https://theconversation.com/international-students-are-not-to-blame-for-canadas-housing-crisis-213338">scapegoat international students</a> for some of Canada’s biggest challenges, stating that rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada put “<a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2024/01/canada-to-stabilize-growth-and-decrease-number-of-new-international-student-permits-issued-to-approximately-360000-for-2024.html">pressure on housing, health care and other services.</a>” </p>
<p>This is neither accurate nor fair. It’s overly simplistic, untrue and xenophobic. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-dramatic-shift-in-canadian-public-opinion-about-immigration-levels-219193">What's behind the dramatic shift in Canadian public opinion about immigration levels?</a>
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<p>Canada’s housing availability and affordability crisis has been decades long in the making. <a href="https://www.cicnews.com/2023/08/is-immigration-causing-canadas-housing-crisis-0838904.html#gs.3hvgdr">Experts believe</a> the housing bubble was caused by a confluence of factors including municipal, provincial/territorial and <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/what-s-behind-canada-s-housing-crisis-decades-of-policy-failures-says-former-deputy-pm-1.6544653">federal government policies</a>, municipal zoning laws, developers’ interests and central bank policies. </p>
<p>Immigration Minister Marc Miller himself has said <a href="https://www.cicnews.com/2023/08/marc-miller-canadas-immigration-levels-to-remain-steady-or-continue-climbing-0836673.html#gs.3hvi36">immigrants are key to solving the housing crisis</a> because they bring skilled labour into the country. </p>
<p>By overly focusing on demand for housing — and scapegoating immigrants and international students — the government is drawing attention away from immediate actions it could take to increase supply. </p>
<p>The majority of international students cannot afford to compete with Canadians for homes or for rentals. </p>
<p><a href="https://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/punjabinewcomers/">York University Prof. Tania Das Gupta’s research</a> on Punjabi international students has found many students can only afford to spend a few hundred dollars a month on rent, forcing them to live in <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-patrick-brown-brampton-international-student-visa/#:%7E:text=Brampton%20Mayor%20Patrick%20Brown%20is,and%20curb%20unsafe%20living%20arrangements">overcrowded and illegal basements</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-costly-housing-market-leaves-international-students-open-to-exploitation-204242">to share beds, to live in their cars</a> or to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-international-student-sleeping-under-bridge-helped-by-strangers">face homelessness</a>. </p>
<p>These students aren’t the primary driver of rising home prices or rental costs in Canada, and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/canadas-international-student-cap-may-offer-temporary-relief-on-rents-some-economists-say/article_0e96f0fc-b941-11ee-bbea-4b52d2a9f68d.html">some economists</a> doubt the cap will have any impact on rental prices. </p>
<h2>Who’s responsible for health-care crisis?</h2>
<p>International students are also being blamed for health-care challenges, despite Canada’s health-care system being <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-s-health-care-system-is-collapsing-around-us-warns-cma-president-1.5948416#:%7E:text=The%20strain%20placed%20on%20Canada's,opens%20in%20a%20new%20tab">significantly strained since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic</a> — a time when there was a massive decrease of international students coming to Canada.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pandemic-exposed-the-vulnerability-of-international-students-in-canada-174105">The pandemic exposed the vulnerability of international students in Canada</a>
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<p>In fact, most Canadians believe our provincial/territorial health-care systems have been in decline for more than a decade due to <a href="https://angusreid.org/cma-health-care-access-priorities-2023/">structural issues</a>. </p>
<p>The College of Family Physicians of Canada has been sounding alarm bells for years about Canada’s need for more family physicians <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10125184/">More than six million Canadians don’t have a family doctor</a>. </p>
<p>In its recent <a href="https://www.cfpc.ca/CFPC/media/Resources/Health-Policy/HPGR-FP-Reform-Policy-EN.pdf">policy proposal package</a>, the organization states the most pressing needs for family doctors today include higher remuneration and reduced administrative burdens. International students — or immigrants, more broadly — aren’t named anywhere.</p>
<p>That the federal government is blaming international students for “putting pressure” on the health-care system is both a misrepresentation and an abdication of responsibility.</p>
<h2>Replicating power, privilege</h2>
<p>The cap, as well as the new financial requirements for international students, represent the federal government’s attempt to solve some of the pressing challenges in an ecosystem they helped create. </p>
<p>As Lisa Brunner, an immigration scholar at the University of British Columbia, argues, there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v13i5S.4061">complex ethical issues</a> involved in the ties that bind migration and education. International students will be shut out of Canada due to these new policies, which will ultimately replicate power and privilege. </p>
<p>This pattern of scapegoating in government rhetoric and in media coverage is deeply troubling. It’s already affecting <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-dramatic-shift-in-canadian-public-opinion-about-immigration-levels-219193">public attitudes toward immigration levels</a>, and may spill over to create negative attitudes and behaviour toward immigrants and international students themselves. </p>
<p>Understandably, <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2043859/some-international-students-in-toronto-welcome-study-permit-cap-others-worry-for-their-future">international students are concerned</a> and speaking out against the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/10245744/maritime-universities-say-international-students-not-to-blame-for-housing-crisis">unfair blame being placed on them</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/international-students-are-not-to-blame-for-canadas-housing-crisis-213338">International students are not to blame for Canada's housing crisis</a>
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<p>It is the responsibility of all levels of government to fix the issues they’ve helped create. This requires taking swift steps to effectively crack down on <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-bc-ontario-planning-crack-down-on-bad-actor-colleges-preying-on/">predatory colleges and unethical recruiters</a>, and significantly increase government grants to public universities and colleges. </p>
<p>The government must also invest in health care and create affordable housing. </p>
<p>International students have not created these problems, and the government and media must stop blaming them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Hamilton receives funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Su does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Who’s responsible for the factors that led to the federal government’s recently announced cap on international students, and what are the implications for those directly affected?Leah Hamilton, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Faculty of Business & Communication Studies, Mount Royal UniversityYvonne Su, Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.