Football – the American form of the sport – is an iconic part of American high school life, especially in small towns, like Macomb, Illinois, and everyone gets involved. Selah Hennessy report from Macomb, Illinois.
Students in the United States in their last year of high school are not performing as well on the same science tests as their peers in many other countries. Educators say there should be more emphasis on science in American schools. A visit to one school where a retired engineer is using his expertise in science to help both teachers and students shows how it can benefit everyone.
Thousands of Haitians sought refuge in the United States after last year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. Many are young people, now enrolled in U.S. schools, surrounded by a new language and culture. VOA’s Alex Villarreal tells us how one high school in Florida is helping the students adjust.
More than 1.5 million Muslims from around the world have gathered in Mecca for the Hajj – the annual pilgrimage – which begins later this week. At a Washington area mosque, American Muslim children learn about this pillar of their faith in a fun way.
If this film was designed to stimulate thought, it succeeds. We follow the lives of three small town high school buddies; “Gil Ames” who is rich and happy; “Dave Benton” who is poor and doomed; and “Ted Eastwood,” who is middle class and doomed. Gil is sent to an Ivy League school (where he meets “men of his own kind”), returns home wearing a bow tie, and takes over his father’s very profitable business. Dave gets married, has lots of kids, and winds up working in a gas station. Ted wants to be an artist, but he falls in love with “Mary” and becomes a white collar bookkeeper.
Mary, however, wants a man with a bigger bank account, so she dumps Ted, who then decides to move to Manhattan and “make something” of himself. After many years of hard work as an advertising artist and art director, Ted lands a painfully dull white collar job in an advertising agency and gets to play golf with rich men. This is “vertical mobility,” the narrator explains, “particularly characteristic of the United States.” Ted returns home wearing a snappy hat, but Mary has married Gil, and both really don’t want anything to do with him.
This film was produced to explain basic concepts of sociology, but ends up presenting a rather dark view of social class and mobility in America.
Producer: Knickerbocker Productions
Sponsor: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.
In the current economic downturn, many American schools are adding a new subject to the curriculum – financial literacy. One program in Virginia even gets students out of the classroom for a day to learn how far their money will go in the real world.
It’s the sole New York school reachable only by ferry, a short ride from the lower tip of Manhattan to Governors Island, a 70-hectare former military base where birds and trees greatly outnumber human visitors. The Urban Assembly Harbor School is located in a renovated Coast Guard building. A basketball court and a garden tended by students flank the entrance; inside, the rooms include a greenhouse, an aquaponics lab where tilapia and oysters are raised, and a boat-building workshop, where a sloop patterned on one that sailed the harbor in 1849 is under construction.
Teaching is regarded as a noble profession. The profession may not be that glamorous, but it’s a fact that every professional passes through the hands of a teacher. With the quest to take education to every part of the country gaining currency, teachers get posted to some hardship areas. NTV’s Rose Wangui looks at the plight of teachers in Laisamis, Marsabit County, and reports that despite working under harsh circumstances, they are devoted to nurturing the future generation.
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
“Wrong, Do it again!”
“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddie!”
SYNOPSIS (provided by Paramount Pictures)
For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children.
Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education statistics have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying drop-out factories and academic sinkholes, methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.
However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind.
Electronic books have changed the way many people read. Now digital text books — educational volumes that are read online — are changing the way many students learn. The Washington region’s largest school system with 175,000 students has begun to use online course material for its middle-and high-school students. VOA’s June Soh reports.
About 18,000 Burmese refugees have come to the United States each year since 2007. The communities where they have settled have tried to help them assimilate. A school and company in Howard County, Maryland have forged a partnership to teach refugee children by helping their parents learn English. VOA’s June Soh has the story.
Author and educator Michael Eric Dyson is decoding the rhymes of rapper Jay-Z to teach students at Georgetown University about race, gender and poverty. But critics argue lyrics about swag and hustle have no place in higher education. (Dec. 2, 2011)
A private boarding school connected with the Hershey chocolate company says it was trying to protect other students when it denied admission to a Philadelphia-area teenager because he is HIV-positive. (Dec. 2, 2011)
