Do not turn teachers into spies!
Recently the European Bangladesh Forum invited me to participate in a debate on violent extremism. At stake was the question: How to prevent violent extremism?
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A Long Way to Go: An Analysis of Inclusive Education for Disabled Girls Globally
Disabled girls are among the most marginalised and poorly educated groups in the world. They have not been a priority in international development, education, or arguably, disability organisations.
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Preparing for Difficult Conversations
How can educators facilitate difficult conversations in their classrooms? If we believe that democratic citizenship is linked with engagement in social issues, then undoubtedly these topics also include those that make us feel uncomfortable. Or are complex or even unresolvable. If there are different points of view on a hot topic, is it wiser for a teacher to set these aside and allow learners to resolve their points of view on their own?
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Teacher union renewal: developing the power of the profession
The challenges that face teachers often look very similar around the world. Global league tables are often behind the relentless pressure to drive test scores up, whilst the forces of global economic competition explain a race to the bottom on teachers’ working conditions. Teachers experience ever rising workloads, but perhaps even more seriously, they also face the constant undermining of their professional judgement. Increasingly it is politicians who want to tell teachers what to teach, how to teach it and how to...
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School Privatizer to Head US Department of Education
While it is doubtful that US President-elect Donald Trump ever read George Orwell’s 1984, Trump’s cabinet choices appear to come right out of the doublethink that ruled Orwell’s dystopian society. In Orwell’s book, the Ministry of Plenty rationed essentials while the Ministry of Truth manufactured falseho...
Read MoreTeaching Students to Improve the World
The Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States documented a record figure of 867 bias incidents in the ten days following the Presidential election, arguably a result of the very divisive presidential campaign in the United States, with its anti-immigrant and anti globalization undertones. This development, and others such...
Read MoreReflections on “Democracy and Education”
The American philosopher, educator, and long-time member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) John Dewey (1959-1952) wrote “Democracy and Education: A Philosophy of Education” a century ago. It has been interpreted, re-interpreted and, according to Dewey, misinterpreted many times. I will not fall into that t...
Read MoreDefending Freedom: Educating in the Trump Era
“It’s a subtle thing, freedom. It takes effort; it takes attention and focus to not act something like an automaton … Anyone whose automatic brain mechanisms habitually run in overdrive has diminished capacity for free decision making, especially if the parts of the brain that facilitate conscious choice are i...
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