UK: Secular neutrality is a pillar of higher education. We can't cave in to faith groups in our institutions – even if it causes offence

British universities shouldn't condone this kind of gender segregation

by Polly Toynbee

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/26/british-universities-gender-segregation-secular

UK: Universities should be the last place to ban free speech

Universities should be the last place to ban free speech
The censorship of an atheist bookstall at freshers' week is just another example of heavy-handed repression in our universities

by Nick Cohen

The Observer, 23 November 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/23/censorship-in-uk-universities

Pakistan: Campus Terror and the Muslim Right | Khaled Ahmed

Jamaat-e-Islami rules university campuses across Pakistan in general and Lahore in particular. It rules through the IJT and dominates teaching faculties too. The PU vice chancellor is on the defensive because of cases of sexual harassment registered against him and some other teachers. The latter are also periodically caught obtaining doctorates on the basis of plagiarised theses. As a result, PU

India: Charges Against Students for promting enmity on grounds of religion, race etc - Unsigned Student Pamphlet from Hyderabad,

OUTSOURCING DISCIPLINE, POLICING CULTURAL RESISTANCE

The English and Foreign Languages University has filed a criminal case (dated: 11/09/13) against six students (four students from the SC/ST/OBC communities and two women students) with the Osmania Police Station (Case Details: Crime No. 350/2013 U/S 153 (A) IPC). They are charged with the grave offence of,

"Promoting enmity between different

India - Karnataka: A novel way to curb free speech

The Hindu, September 20, 2013

A novel way to curb free speech

Bageshree S.

The arrest of Yogesh Master in Karnataka for allegedly insulting Hindu sentiments through his book deals another blow to the freedom of expression and creative literary interpretation

The Kannada novel Dhundi created history of sorts in Karnataka when, on August 29, its author was arrested on the charge of outraging

India: Atheist teacher gets backing from Bombay High Court

From: The Hindu
Mumbai, September 7, 2013

Atheist teacher gets backing from High Court

Staff Reporter


Can refusal to fold hands during prayer be called indiscipline, asks Bench

Nashik-based teacher Sanjay Salve, who refused to fold his hands during religious prayers at his school, has found support from the Bombay High Court. “How can a state-funded school term this indiscipline,” asked a

In India they openly promote of segregation, regionalism and ghettoes | JNU to have separate hostel for students of North East

The Times of India

JNU to have separate hostel for northeast students soon
TNN | Sep 6, 2013, 04.26 AM IST

ITANGAR: Clearing all hurdles for the construction of a 500-bed for northeast students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, the varsity authorities have finally identified land for the long awaited hostel.

The Northeast MPs Forum (NEMPF) has been urging the Centre for

India's Dept of Personnel Peddles Biased Religious Text for Training of Administrators

http://tinyurl.com/mozxetd

Academic research on Rushdie's literary work sabotaged by Deoband Ulema

LUCKNOW April 24: Taking a strong exception to the UGC's decision to award post-doctoral fellowship on Salman Rushdie's writing, Darul Uloom Deoband has demanded "immediate remedial steps to correct the high impropriety". The Islamic seminary is apparently miffed by the topic - "Use of Magic and Realism in the major novels of Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth" - chosen by a scholar in the Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut.

"To glorify Rushdie is a an overt act of treachery and a government body like UGC should have used its imagination better. This step raises serious concerns about its style of functioning. Darul Uloom Deoband strongly condemns it," official spokesperson Ashraf Usmani said on Monday."Our stance on Rushdie has been clear. The author of 'The Satanic Verses' has blasphemed against Islam and hurt sentiments of devout Muslims all over the world," Usmani told TOI over phone. "Any attempt to glorify him or his writings would only lead to promotion and build up of his image. He deserves to be shunned. Moreover, 'The Satanic Verses' still carries a ban by Indian government and going by the law, he should be considered blacklisted. Meerut University and the UGC, who are apparently party in the grant of the fellowship, must cancel it with immediate effect," he said..
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-24/india/31392019_1_darul-uloom-deoband-salman-rushdie-satanic-verses

Deoband heat 'forces' university to scrap paper on controversial author Salman Rushdie:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2135170/Deoband-heat-forces-university-scrap-paper-controversial-author-Salman-Rushdie.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Chaudhary Charan Singh University (CCSU) in Meerut has cancelled the post-doctoral fellowship of Prabha Parmar, who was awarded research work on the novels of three authors, including controversial writer Salman Rushdie. Darul Uloom Deoband had opposed any study on Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, which is banned in the country, though Parmer's ambit of research reportedly did not cover the novel.

But in an official communication dated April 23, 2012, sent to her, Prof. Arun Kumar, department of English, (CCSU), gave another reason for cancelling her fellowship: That she is on maternity leave and is yet to start the research work sanctioned by the UGC this January. 'This has reference to the UGC letter dated January 23, 2012, on the subject of the award for fellowship for the year 2011-2012 (Category OBC) for your topic Use of Magic Realism in the Major Novels of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth in the subject of English. 'You joined the department on February 13, 2012, and on the next day asked for maternity leave for three months till May 13, 2012,' the letter read. 'You have technically not started your research work, which was approved by the UGC on January 23, 2012.'Please be informed that the department of English will not be able to provide any facilities for your fellowship,' it stated.

Not ready to speak on the issue, Parmar merely confirmed the receipt of the letter on Wednesday. But a source close to her said that the department had not raised any objection before some members of the university tried to create a controversy. Ashraf Usmani, chairman of Darul Ifta, fatwa department of Darul Uloom, Deoband, had said on Monday they were preparing to oppose the fellowship. 'The CCSU had allowed a student to do research on a book (The Satanic Verses) which was banned in India. 'This means that the ban on the book is mere eyewash and the government supports a student to read it and do research on it,' he had said. Expressing his satisfaction over the fresh decision, Usmani said: 'They stand corrected. We are happy about it.'

***************************
NB: Over the past four months, the Deoband Ulema has contributed to the climate of intolerance and religious bigotry in India. First by opposing Rushdie's presence at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and now by sabotaging a perfectly legitimate subject for research. In the first instance they succeeded by riding on the backs of various hooligans disguised as 'Muslim leaders', and now by presenting themselves as the self-appointed representatives of 'hurt sentiment' - that tried and tested weapon of communal politicians of all colours. (Witness the hue and cry over AK Ramanujan's Many Ramayanas). They want Rushdies work to be excluded from bona-fide literary research, even if the research does not explicitly take up The Satanic Verses. In Jaipur, there were threats of violence - with talk of 'rivers of blood' etc. The Ulema ought to have condemned such statements in clear and explicit terms, but we did not hear of it. We only heard of their sentiments. After this precedent, the Deoband Ulema can continue dictating our research programmes indefinitely.


By any sensible standard of reasoning, to research something does not imply 'glorification'. If I study various versions of the Ramayana, this does not imply that I'm glorifying this or that version. If I study the bombardment of Hiroshima, this does not mean I approve of atomic warfare. The study of Mein Kampf does not imply an admiration of Adolf Hitler. If I read Golwalkar's or VD Savarkar's writings, it does not follow that I sympathise with the RSS. Studying Pol Pot does not make the researcher a proponent of genocide. The Deoband Ulema should reflect on the damage they are doing to the very basis of academic research by citing 'hurt sentiment' to oppose a legitimate literary research programme.


It's ironic that in India today we can study the ideas of mass murderers, Nazis, fascists, racists, imperialists, communalists etc etc., but Deoband will not let us study Rushdie. Wonderful! I suggest the Ulema examine the compatibility of their religious norms and sentiments with the brutal treatment of Asiya Bibi, a worker and mother of five children, condemned to hang on mere hearsay; and the acquittal of the men who assaulted Mukhtar Mai. The intellectuals of Deoband need to understand that by raising such issues repeatedly, they contribute to the fascist degeneration of the Indian polity - Dilip


See also: Communalism feeds on itself:
http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2012/01/communalism-feeds-on-itself.html

and: The purging of AK Ramanujan's Many Ramayanas:
http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2011/10/delhi-university-and-purging-of.html

"With force I have subdued the brains of the proud" - Epitaph on the tomb of Cardinal Saint Roberto Bellarmino, Cardinal-Inquisitor who ordered Galileo to abandon his ideas on heliocentrism in 1616.


NEWLY POSTED PRESS STATEMENT: "WE CONDEMN THE ATTEMPT OF BODIES LIKE DEOBAND TO ENCROACH ON OUR ACADEMIC SPACE" - 27 April 2012

Resist the Climate of Intimidation in Academics

It is a matter of deep distress that a threat from Darul Uloom Deoband has forced Prabha Parmar , a research scholar at the Chaudhary Charan Singh University to change the topic of her post-doctoral research: Use of magic and realism in the major novels of Salman Rushdie,Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth. Taking strong exception to the UGC's decision to award a post-doctoral fellowship to the scholar on a topic that included Rushdie’s writings, Darul Uloom Deoband demanded “immediate remedial steps to correct the high impropriety.” Terming the award an act of ‘glorification’ of Salman Rushdie, the seminary asked for the writer to be blacklisted and for the award to be cancelled with immediate effect. The atmosphere of fear and intimidation created by this statement led Meerut University to cancel the fellowship. Later the scholar withdrew her research proposal.

This is yet another assault on the space of scholarship and free enquiry which represents the essential character of a university. In recent months there have been many instances of academic institutions succumbing to threats issued by religious and sectarian bodies and withdrawing texts and films or modifying syllabi or curricula to please them. The point at issue is not the controversial nature of the text, because freely debating such texts is the very purpose of intellectual inquiry. Rather, the crucial point is the climate of intimidation and the thinly-disguised threat of violence that informs the language of those making such demands. They constantly remind us that their sentiments are inflamed enough to spark off bloodshed. They crush the spirit of inquiry by intimidating those who disagree with them. They assume the fake title of representatives of this or that community to enforce their claims. And our spineless authorities allow them to do this with impunity. This time it is the Deoband ulema who have claimed yet another academic victim.

We condemn the attempt of bodies like Deoband to encroach on our academic space. It is time for all Indian academicians and intellectuals who believe in the freedom of thought to firmly defend our right to free enquiry and the pursuit of knowledge. We appeal to Meerut University and the UGC to stand by the scholar and encourage her to pursue her research on a topic of her choice.

1.      Aditya Nigam, CSDS

2.      Amlan Dasgupta, Jadavpur Unv

3.      Aniket Alam, Senior Assistant Editor, Economic and Political Weekly.

4.      Anita Cherian

5.      Apoorvanand , Professor, DU

6.      Arma Ansari, ANHAD

7.      Arshad Ajmal, Sahulat, delhi

8.      Asha Bhagat

9.      Ashok Vajpeyi, poet, writer

10.  Biraj Patnaik, Right To Food campaign

11.  Dhruva Narayan, Managing Editor, Daanish Books

12.  Dilip Simeon

13.  Furqan Qamar, VC Central Unv of Himachal Pradesh

14.  Gauhar Raza, scientist, poet

15.  Gautam Bhan

16.  Harsh kapoor

17.  Irfan Khalifa, television journalist

18.  Ishwar Dost , Asst. Prof., CSSEIP, Goa University.

19.  J Devika, Centre for development studies, Trivandrum, Kerala.

20.  Jairus Banaji

21.  Jamal Kidwai

22.  Jyoti Punwani

23.  Jyotirmay Sharma

24.  Kausar Wizarat

25.  Kavita Panjabi, Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla

26.  Kavita Srivastava, PUCL National Secretary

27.  Khairunnisa Pathan, Parwaaj

28.  Khurshid Anwar

29.  Mahmood Farooqui, Dastango

30.  Mahtab Alam, civil rights activist and journalist

31.  Manoj Mitta, Journalist

32.  Mary E John,

33.  Mehtab Alam

34.  Moinak Biswas

35.  Momin Latif

36.  Mukul Sharma, Writer and Researcher

37.  Musab Iqbal, Editor, newzfirst.com

38.  Naseem Mansuri, Niswan

39.  Naseem Shaikh, Niswan

40.  Nasiruddin Haider Khan, Journalist

41.  Naveen Kishore

42.  Nayanjot Lahiri, professor, DU

43.  Nilanjana Gupta, Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata

44.  Nirantar, Resource Centre for Gender & Education

45.  Nivedita Menon, JNU

46.  Noorjahan Ansari, Niswan

47.  Noorjahan Diwan, ANHAD

48.  omair anas
,cwas/sis jnu

49.  Parthasarthi Bahumik, Jadavpur Unv

50.  Prof Rama Kant Agnihotri (Rtd., Univ of Delhi)

51.  Purwa Bharadwaj

52.  Ramchandra Guha

53.  Rehana Qureshi, Nyayagrah

54.  Rohan D'Souza

55.  S.Irfan Habib, historian

56.  Satya Shivaramn

57.  Satish Deshpande, DSE, DU

58.  Semeen  Ali

59.  Shabnam Hashmi, social activist, Anhad

60.  Shakeel Shaikh, Ahmedabad

61.  Shamina Diwan, Parwaaj

62.  Sharifa Chhipa, Niswan

63.  Sheba george, Sahr waru, Gujarat

64.  Shivam vij, journalist, delhi

65.  Shuddhabrata Sengupta, artist/writer

66.  Sohail Hashmi, Writer, Film Makerli

67.  Sucheta Bhattacharjee

68.  Usman Shaikh, Nyayagrah

69.  Waqar Qazi, Social Activist, Anhad, Gujarat

70.  Zafar Syed, banker, Mumbai

http://www.sacw.net/article2662.html

Secular Turks protest "dynamite" education bill

“According to what constitution can you pass 19 articles in 20 minutes?” 


ANKARA (Reuters) – Thousands of Turkish opposition supporters demonstrated in the capital Ankara on Tuesday against a government attempt to railroad a new education bill through parliament which secular parties say is designed to promote Islamic schooling. The government wants to overturn a 1997 law imposed with the backing of the military which extended compulsory education from five to eight years, but also stopped under-15s attending religious “imam hatip” schools. That led to a sharp decrease in the numbers at the schools which were originally set up to train Muslim clerics. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and nearly half his cabinet attended imam hatip schools. The main secular opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) agrees on the need for education reform, but says Erdogan is seeking revenge for the 1997 law and attempting to bring about his stated desire to raise a “religious youth”.

A 2010 World Bank study showed only 16 percent of 15-year-olds in Turkey attend schools with average reading, maths or science test scores comparable to or above an OECD average. Relying on its large parliamentary majority, Erdogan’s AK party is to introduce the education bill to the assembly later on Tuesday and plans to complete voting on it by Friday, or if that is not possible keep parliament open over the weekend until it is passed.

In response, the CHP decided to hold its weekly meeting of parliamentary deputies in an Ankara public square, the first time this has happened in the history of the republic since it was formed in 1923. The AK Party called it unconstitutional. “The people and the CHP are claiming their rights in this national struggle,” CHP deputy leader Erdogan Toprak told reporters, accusing the AK Party’ of bulldozing the bill through the committee stage where it packed the room so that no one from the opposition could get in.

“According to what constitution can you pass 19 articles in 20 minutes?” Toprak asked. “Despite all our efforts in the committee, neither were our contributions accepted, nor was any tolerance shown.” Faced with government efforts to rush it through parliament, Toprak said the CHP would do its best to hold up the bill, calling it “dynamite planted under the Turkish youth”.

While the AK Party has won three elections since 2002 and remains popular, there is a large minority of urbanised Turks who are wary of its roots in political Islam and suspect it has plans to overturn, piece-by-piece, the secular republic. At least 5,000 people filled Ankara’s Tandogan Square, waving Turkish flags and carrying placards against the “4+4+4” education bill, so-called because it extends compulsory education to 12 years – four years primary, four years middle school, followed by four years of secondary school or vocational training. Imam hatip schools would count as vocational training, allowing a boost to the numbers attending. “4+4+4+Erdogan = 0,” read one of the banners.

“I am a child of the republic. I am thinking of the future of my grandchildren,” said 55-year-old Naciye Sahin. “This law will open the way to more headscarves and imam hatip schools. We don’t want to be a part of that. We are children of the republic and we want to stay that way.”


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/27/uk-turkey-education-idUKBRE82Q0OU20120327

Charles Simic on the Age of Ignorance

"I recall being stunned some years back when I read that a majority of Americans told pollsters that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 terrorist attacks. It struck me as a propaganda feat unsurpassed by the worst authoritarian regimes of the past.."

Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit.

An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country. Most of our politicians and their political advisers and lobbyists would find themselves unemployed, and so would the gasbags who pass themselves off as our opinion makers. Luckily for them, nothing so catastrophic, even though perfectly well-deserved and widely-welcome, has a remote chance of occurring any time soon. For starters, there’s more money to be made from the ignorant than the enlightened, and deceiving Americans is one of the few growing home industries we still have in this country. A truly educated populace would be bad, both for politicians and for business.

It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.

Even regional history has gotten a short shrift. Students who come from old New England mill towns, as I have discovered, have never been told about the famous strikes in their communities in which workers were shot in cold blood and the perpetrators got away scot-free. I wasn’t surprised that their high schools were wary of bringing up the subject, but it astonished me that their parents and grandparents, and whoever else they came in contact with while they were growing up, never mentioned these examples of gross injustice. Either their families never talked about the past, or their children were not paying attention when they did. Whatever it was, one is confronted with the problem of how to remedy their vast ignorance about things they should have already been familiar with as the generations of students before them were.

If this lack of knowledge is the result of the years of dumbing down of high school curriculum and of families that don’t talk to their children about the past, there’s another more pernicious kind of ignorance we confront today. It is the product of years of ideological and political polarization and the deliberate effort by the most fanatical and intolerant parties in that conflict to manufacture more ignorance by lying about many aspects of our history and even our recent past. I recall being stunned some years back when I read that a majority of Americans told pollsters that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 terrorist attacks. It struck me as a propaganda feat unsurpassed by the worst authoritarian regimes of the past—many of which had to resort to labor camps and firing squads to force their people to believe some untruth, without comparable success...

"Indianisation reforms" in schools another name for communalised curriculum

... Periodic reports emanating from different parts of the country, particularly from the States ruled by the BJP, have underscored the fact that the party and its multifarious associate organisations in the Sangh Parivar are systematically and quietly pursuing the Hindutva agenda in education.

In November 2011, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka introduced lessons and discourses on the Bhagvad Gita in schools. They sought to make the teaching of the Gita compulsory. But following widespread opposition from political parties, educationists and even Education Department officials, the governments in both the States were forced to make Gita studies optional. A Central government official told Frontline that officials in Karnataka had cautioned the State government that the introduction of Gita studies in the syllabus would lead to divisions among students from different backgrounds.

“On paper, the highly objectionable anti-minority, gender-insensitive contents of various textbooks introduced in Gujarat in 2001 have reportedly been withdrawn. But these portions are still brought into discussion in classrooms across the State.” The portions referred to by Father Prakash Lobo include the ones that brand minority communities as “one of the foremost problems facing the country”. This portion, introduced in the social studies textbook of class IX, was under the chapter titled “Problems of the country and their solutions”. It listed “minority communities” as the foremost problem, followed by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, smuggling, corruption and bribery. The chapter also termed Muslims, Christians and Parsis as “foreigners”. The government claims that these portions have been erased, but reports from different parts of the State indicate that references are made to these portions even now.

Father Prakash Lobo told Frontline that the elaborate but subtle political and ideological game being played in the State’s education sector subverts the constitutionally mandated parameters of the education system. Chief Minister Narendra Modi figures in the classrooms, from the primary to higher levels, in various forms. Modi’s life story is part of the suggested reading for classes at the secondary level. On Teachers Day, you see Modi addressing classes across the country through television and the Internet. “In many ways Teacher’s Day is not the day of teachers in Gujarat, it is Modi projection day..”

http://www.sacw.net/article2531.html

Citizen Philosophers - Teaching Justice in Brazil

In 1971 the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 eliminated philosophy from high schools. Teachers, professors in departments of education, and political activists championed its return, while most academic philosophers were either indifferent or suspicious. The dictatorship seems to have understood philosophy’s potential to create engaged citizens; it replaced philosophy with a course on Moral and Civic Education and one on Brazil’s Social and Political Organization (“to inculcate good manners and patriotic values and to justify the political order of the generals,” one UFBA colleague recalls from his high school days).

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?

I was intrigued when I first heard about the law and wanted to see for myself whether philosophy could do something outside of academia. My path to this subject is both intellectual and personal. I am an academic philosopher in Canada, with Brazilian roots: my parents were activists with a Marxist student group opposing the dictatorship and fled before my birth, though we returned to Brazil for four years after the 1979 amnesty for political refugees. With the help of colleagues and undergraduates from the UFBA philosophy department, I gained access to a broad range of schools in Salvador, where I was often welcomed as a guest teacher and had the opportunity to discuss with teachers their curricula, instructional styles, and hopes for the students.

In every classroom I was at first flooded with questions: Who is this professor from Montreal and what’s he doing here? the students wondered. I quickly learned that my excitement about Brazil’s experiment with philosophy is not universally shared. “Learning how to read and write and basic mathematics is useful,” one student said. “But why should I care about Plato’s concept of the soul?”

I conceded to the class that learning philosophy for the sake of erudition may not be the best use of their time. “But if you want to build a just and democratic society, isn’t it useful to get as clear as possible on what you mean by justice and democracy and to examine if you have good reasons to pursue these?” I asked. “And aren’t your intuitions about knowledge, goodness and beauty worth investigating?”..

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/carlos_fraenkel_brazil_teaching_philosophy.php

The Death of Honesty by William Damon

..as George Orwell once observed, the very function of political speech is to hide, soften, or misrepresent difficult truths. Orwell was clearly skeptical about any expectation to the contrary. In “Politics and the English Language,” he put it this way: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”


Although in this case Orwell himself may have been guilty of overstatement for purposes of rhetorical effect, his claim cannot be totally dismissed. It would be naïve (or cynical) for anyone in today’s world to act shocked whenever a politician tries to hide the real truth from the public. For ordinary citizens, keeping up with the daily news means a constant process of speculating about what the politicians really meant by what they said and what they actually believe. It certainly does not mean taking what any of them say at face value.


Yet to recognize that honesty is not an absolute standard demanded for every life circumstance—and that we can expect a certain amount of deceit from even our respected public figures—is not to say that the virtue of honesty can be disregarded with impunity. A basic intent to be truthful, along with an assumption that people can be generally taken at their word, is required for all sustained civilized dealings.


Teaching honesty is no longer a priority in our schools.


No civilization can tolerate a fixed expectation of dishonest communications without falling apart from a breakdown in mutual trust. All human relations rely upon confidence that those in the relations will, as a rule, tell the truth. Honesty builds and solidifies a relationship with trust; and too many breaches in honesty can corrode relations beyond repair. Friendships, family, work, and civic relations all suffer whenever dishonesty comes to light. The main reason that no one wants to be known as a liar is that people shun liars because they can’t be trusted.


Honesty’s vital role in human society has been observed and celebrated for all of recorded history. The Romans considered the goddess Veritas to be the “mother of virtue”; Confucius considered honesty to be the essential source of love, communication, and fairness between people; and of course, the Bible’s Old Testament prohibited bearing false witness. It is also noteworthy that the two most universally heralded U. S. presidents (George Washington, who “could not tell a lie,” and Abraham Lincoln, who was known as “Honest Abe”) were widely acclaimed for their trustworthiness.


In a similar vein, religious leader Gordon Hinckley has written that, “where there is honesty, other virtues will follow”—indicating, as did the Romans, the pivotal role of truthfulness in all moral behavior and development. Hinckley’s comment was made in the context of his alarm-sounding book on “neglected virtues,” and it points to the problematic status of honesty in our society today. Although truthfulness is essential for good human relationships and personal integrity, it is often abandoned in pursuit of other life priorities.


Indeed, there may be a perception in many key areas of contemporary life—law, business, politics, among others—that expecting honesty on a regular basis is a naïve and foolish attitude, a “loser’s” way of operating. Such a perception is practically a mandate for personal dishonesty and a concession to interpersonal distrust. When we no longer assume that those who communicate with us are at least trying to tell the truth, we give up on them as trustworthy persons and deal with them only in a strictly instrumental manner. The bounds of mutual moral obligation dissolve, and the laws of the jungle reemerge.


Our serious problem today is not simply that many people routinely tell lies. As I have noted, people have departed from the truth for one reason or another all throughout human history. The problem now is that we seem to be reaching a dysfunctional tipping point in which an essential commitment to truthfulness no longer seems to be assumed in our society... 


http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/104721

From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model

Ever since Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million that does not start formal education until age 7 and scorns homework and testing until well into the teenage years, scored at the top of a well-respected international test in 2001 in math, science and reading, it has been an object of fascination among American educators and policy makers.

Finlandophilia only picked up when the nation placed close to the top again in 2009, while the United States ranked 15th in reading, 19th in math and 27th in science

In his country, Dr. Sahlberg said later in an interview, teachers typically spend about four hours a day in the classroom, and are paid to spend two hours a week on professional development. At the University of Helsinki, where he teaches, 2,400 people competed last year for 120 slots in the (fully subsidized) master’s program for schoolteachers. “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine,” he said.

Dr. Sahlberg puts high-quality teachers at the heart of Finland’s education success story — which, as it happens, has become a personal success story of sorts, part of an American obsession with all things Finnish when it comes to schools.

Take last week. On Monday, Dr. Sahlberg was the keynote speaker at an education conference in Chicago. On Tuesday, he had to return to Helsinki for an Independence Day party held by Finland’s president — a coveted invitation to an event that much of the country watches on television.

On Wednesday, it was Washington, for a party for the release of his latest book, “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?,” that drew staff members from the White House and Congress. And Thursday brought him to the Upper West Side, for a daylong visit to the Dwight School, a for-profit school that prides itself on internationalism, where he talked to those seniors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/from-finland-an-intriguing-school-reform-model.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share