More news about the Minerva project. I mentioned in a previous post my deep skepticism on this direct involvement of the DOD in sponsoring social science research. This is related with the ethical problematic of instrumentalizating social research to follow military purposes. In a recent article at the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog it is mention a essay which points out to one of the main criticisms on the Minerva initiative. In this essay , “David H. Price, an associate professor of anthropology and sociology at St. Martin’s University, warned that military-financed social science will crowd out other forms of academic inquiry”. I still believe that the participation of the NSF may not preclude some the inherent problems of this type of initiatives. For instances, Minerva final objectives may not be different from those found  in the 1960’s DOD project: Camelot.  Camelot was seen  as a component of a larger behavioral science project of social engineering whose contributions had very narrow instrumental purpose, oriented by a ‘conservative’ agenda of research,  of  finding effective instruments and knowledge to operationalize a notion of ‘order’ (e.g. anti-insurgency, etc) . The adverse reaction against Camelot in Latin America ended in a backlash against US scholars doing field research in Latin American countries.

From Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, June 30, 2008 by David Glenn”

In a memorandum of understanding that was signed today, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation have agreed to work cooperatively to support social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon.

As widely expected, the NSF has agreed to help review proposals submitted to the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative, a fledgling program that will offer grants to university-based scholars to study the Chinese military, the records of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and other specific topics.

The two agencies will soon — possibly within a week — release a joint request for Minerva-related proposals. Those proposals will be judged by the NSF’s typical merit-review panels, though the Pentagon has the right to nominate experts to serve on those panels. (The Pentagon is also accepting Minerva proposals through a separate pathway known as a broad agency announcement. Proposals that are submitted via this second track will reviewed through the Defense Department’s usual processes, not by NSF panels.)

But Monday’s agreement is broader than Minerva: It also creates a mechanism through which the Department of Defense can help to finance other national-security-related proposals submitted to the NSF. In such cases, scholars will have the option to decline the Pentagon’s money. (read full here)

The Pentagon as already started to invite universities to apply for grants of research for the Minerva initiative.

An interesting article at the Guardian arguing for teaching of philosophy as a learning practice in order to develop critical thinking skills in school. Anthea Lipsett mentions the book Philosophy in Schools, edited by Dr Michael Hand of the Institute of Education and Dr Carrie Winstanley of Roehampton University. The article puts forward several arguments mentioned in this book for including philosophy in the school curriculum.

FromThe Guardian, by Anthea Lipsett, July 2 2008:

Children of all ages should study philosophy in school to develop their critical thinking skills, education experts said today.

Academics suggest that, rather than start off with Socrates, teachers use common classroom disputes to help children learn about abstract philosophical principles such as fairness, morality and punishment. They give the example of apportioning blame for spilling paint (read here)

This site offers free access to a number of educational resources on global issues. 

The Global Dimension Website is managed by DEA, a UK education charity that promotes global learning. As well as the site editor, there are a number of editorial and curriculum advisors, bringing a wide range of experience in teaching and supporting the global dimension in schools(…..)

This website is a guide to books, films, posters and web resources which support global, intercultural and environmental understanding for all age groups and subjects.

From climate change to poverty, water to fair trade, you can find a huge range of teaching resources and background material(…..)

You can browse through the teaching resources database from any page of the site by choosing the curriculum subject, type of background material or topic .

(From Global Dimension )

Link: Global Dimension Website

An excellent Web Directory to use as a search tool, “Google ’s directory is a copy of the Open Directory, and it spiders Open Directory frequently. It gives sites listed on the Open Directory special popularity relevance in it’s search results.”(The Open Directory Project Analysis-SEO Logics)

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. (wikipedia)

From dmoz website:

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

The ODP powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines on the Web, including AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, and HotBot, and hundreds of others.

The ODP is 100% free. There is no cost to submit a site or to use our data. Anyone can download and use ODP data at no cost provided they comply with the ODP’s free license agreement and attribution. Also, there is no cost associated with listing and submitting sites.

Link: http://www.dmoz.org/

From Eldis

Title:Teacher supply, recruitment and retention in six Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries
Authors: D. Sinyolo
Publisher: Global Campaign for Education , 2007

Full text of document

This document reports on a survey conducted by Education International, which investigated teacher supply, teacher attrition, teacher remuneration and motivation, teacher absenteeism and union involvement in policy development in six Anglophone African countries. The survey was undertaken in The Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The main findings of the survey are:

• four of the six countries involved in the survey (66.7 per cent) had a shortage of qualified teachers, namely The Gambia, Lesotho, Tanzania and Uganda
• all six countries have a shortage of mathematics and science teachers
• the average rate of teacher attrition in the six countries is 4 per cent
• teachers’ salaries are generally low and below the poverty datum line or cost of living
• there is an urgent need to improve the teachers’ conditions of service in order to make the teaching profession more attractive
• the trade union leaders in all six countries expressed the need for training in collective bargaining/negotiations, policy development and advocacy
• teacher absenteeism was reported to be a problem (not a major one, though) in 50 per cent of the countries (Lesotho, Tanzania and Zambia)
• collaboration between the Education International (EI) affiliates and United Nations (UN) agencies, and the World Bank, was either weak or non-existent, in most countries, and needs to be strengthened.

The survey therefore recommends that Education International (EI) continue to:

• lobby governments, UNESCO, the World Bank, the IMF, UNICEF and other UN agencies and organisations, the African Development Bank and the African Union to support the training and recruitment of properly trained and qualified teachers

• encourage its affiliates to recruit untrained, volunteer, contract or para teachers as members and to defend their rights

• scale up the EFAIDS Programme and cover as many teachers and students as possible in order to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS on the education sector

• lobby governments to provide proper in-service training to untrained, volunteer, contract or para teachers

• organise regional and national capacity building workshops on collective bargaining and negotiations

• support its affiliates in calling for the establishment of effective collective bargaining structures and systems in all the participating countries and the region

fight for the general improvement of the image of the teaching profession and its status.

This website offers access to a variety of resources, including a very useful documentary library with reports and documents on topics related with education, child protection and living conditions of disadvantage children (For instances see the 2008 report Last in Line, Last in School)

The Child protection project in Europe website is a product of the Regional Child Protection Project, located in Budapest, Hungary.

This project is implemented by Terre des hommes - Child Relief, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Terre des hommes - Child Relief launched in mid 2005 the Regional Child Protection Project (RCPP) for South Eastern Europe. At the end of the pilot phase, in January 2007, Tdh decided to concentrate the efforts of the RCPP to contribute to the common goal: children in migration are better protected against exploitation.

Links:

• Child protection project in Europe
• Terre des hommes

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) as recently publish a report analyzing the impact of the bologna process ‘for the future of the UK as a destination for international students’. “The Bologna process and the UK’s international student market” indicates that ‘UK has been an active and influential participant in
European higher education reform’. A recent article at the Guardian, “UK universities at risk of losing foreign students“, offers an overview of the report an points out that the paper warns that UK could lose out lucrative international students as a result of the Bologna process. In short, “the Bologna process means that other European countries are providing the bachelors then masters degree structure that was unique to the UK” thus, this is resulting in an increasingly competitive market in a context that erodes some of the competitive advantages that UK universities had.

Links:

Report: “The Bologna process and the UK’s international student market” (HEPI), May 2008

Article: Lipsett, Anthea (May 22, 2008). “UK universities at risk of losing foreign students” The Guardian.

“it is of paramount importance for anthropologists to study the roots of terrorism and other forms of violence.” But Ms. Low, who is a professor of environmental psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, argues that it would be better for such research to be financed by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Endowment for the Humanities because, she says, those agencies are more familiar with anthropology and have established structures for peer review.

Are American anthropologists being called upon to cure the pathologies of their own society, to reduce the toxic glorification of war and the malignant sanctification of brutes in uniform, or to provide practical advice on how to better control subject populations?

From The Chronicle of Higher Ed. News Blog posted by Andrew Mytelka May 28 2008:

New Delhi — India has asked Britain for help in setting up a world-class central university in what one local newspaper reported is the first such request for foreign assistance in almost 50 years. India has not asked for foreign help to establish a university since it sought assistance in the late 1950s and early 1960s from the Soviet Union, Britain, and West Germany to create some of the older Indian Institutes of Technology, the newspaper, The Telegraph, said.

Last year India’s prime minister announced that the country would set up 14 world-class central universities to compete with institutions like Harvard and Cambridge. The locations of the universities were announced in March.

“We want the help in the form of skill development, faculty support, and necessary training,” said D. Purandeswari, India’s junior higher-education minister, according to a statement issued after meetings this week with Bill Rammell, Britain’s higher-education minister.

Indian officials were looking to settle details of the collaboration as soon as possible because the new academic session in India starts in July, but Mr. Rammell did not commit to any timeline. Further talks to iron out the details are scheduled to be held in July in London. —Shailaja Neelakantan