Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Education”
America’s founders believed education was insurance against loss of liberty. Jefferson said “(e)very government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved…” Public education is vital because it serves the public interest – giving meaning to “we the people.” …
On a day when Democratic presidential candidates sparred in a national debate over who would do more to help indebted students, the U.S. government launched a new attack on student debtors seeking loan relief. On Tuesday, the Department of Education intervened in the case of Robert Murphy, an unemployed 65-year-old who has waged a three-year legal battle to erase his student loans …
Public schools are among the primary institutions that serve the families in the 99 Percent. As primarily middle class institutions, they are coming under attack from the One Percent, the plutocrats—both Republican and Democrats—who control the levers of power. In a piece earlier this week the NY Times profiled 158 families across the country who have provided nearly half of …
Another week, another series of school and university shootings in the US, and another chance to hear phrases such as “active shooter” and “campus lockdown” repeated over and over by police, school administrators and journalists. These phrases – chilling in their clinicalness – are not only stark examples of the militarization of the language of everyday life, but also reminders of how the language …
A 2002 federal program that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to the country’s poorest schools is now at risk because of crony capitalism. Lobbyists from the frozen, fried, canned, and dried food industries are all jostling to have their products included in the government program, and their efforts are paying off. Reps. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR) have recently …
This September, millions of young Americans will start college, but at what cost? Each year, the collective student loan debt skyrockets as tuitions continue to rise and graduates compete for scarce jobs with stagnant wages. From 2011 to 2013, the amount of debt held by recent graduates increased a whopping 20 percent, reaching a total more than $1.2 trillion. While Americans struggle to …
The number of homeless children attending public schools in the U.S. has doubled since before the 2008 recession, reaching a record national total of 1.36 million in the 2013-2014 school year, according to new federal statistics released Monday. As the so-called recovery continues to bypass millions of Americans, the new data helps shed light on some of the challenges and …
In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.). When you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse. Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools …
Every college semester, I filled out my financial aid application, hoping I would receive more grants than loans. Either way, my fate was sealed: I was a college student in the United States, so debt was inevitable. The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Education are for 2012–13, my second year in college. That year, tuition, room, and board …
New York University is among the country’s wealthiest schools. Backed by its $3.5 billion endowment as well as its considerable fundraising prowess, the school has built campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, invested billions in SoHo real estate, and given its star faculty loans to buy summer homes. But the university does less than many other schools when it comes …
