(2004). Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization. Facing History and Ourselves Facing History and Ourselves is a nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote a more humane and informed citizenry. As the name Facing History and Ourselves implies, the organization helps teachers and their students make the essential connections between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives by examining the development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide. It is a study that helps young people think critically about their own behavior and the effect that their actions have on their community, nation, and the world. It is based on the belief that no classroom should exist in isolation. Facing History programs and materials involve the entire community: students, parents, teachers, civic leaders, and other citizens. The Chapters are listed in the Table of Contents as follows: Chapter I, Identity and History;…
(2004). The School Law Handbook: What Every Leader Needs to Know. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development A parent objects to a curriculum that includes a unit on Greek gods, arguing that it violates the separation of church and state. As a teacher or administrator, how should you respond? This type of issue is one most educators will have to confront eventually, in addition to other hot-button issues such as zero-tolerance policies, drug and alcohol testing, and prayer in schools. The School Law Handbook is designed to enable educators to confront such issues with information, insight, and initiative. The issues are organized into five areas: (1) The School Environment; (2) Constitutional Issues; (3) Students; (4) Personnel; and (5) Accountability. Within each area are several chapters, each beginning with a realistic scenario followed by legal and practical analyses of the situation. Armed with this knowledge of the parameters governing each scenario, educators can more effectively manage their responses, asking and answering the key questions: (1) What are the legal boundaries?; (2)… [Direct]
(2005). Chronicle of Higher Education. Volume 51, Number 24, February 18, 2005. Chronicle of Higher Education, v51 n24 Feb. "Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This February 18, 2005 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "From Special Ed to Higher Ed" (Schmidt, Peter); (2) "University of Pennsylvania Says It Is Unable to Identify Purported File Sharers" (Read, Brock); (3) "Publishing Groups Say Google's Book-Scanning Effort May Violate Copyrights" (Young, Jeffrey R.); (4) "Colleges' Spending on Technology Will Decline Again This Year, Survey Suggests" (Kiernan, Vincent); (5) "A Degree You Hope You Never Need: Colleges Offer Online Courses in Preventing and Responding to Terror Strikes" (Carnevale, Dan); (6) "A Mind of His Own: The United Negro College Fund's New Leader Wants to Revitalize the Venerable Organization" (Fain, Paul); (7) "The Education Secretary's Knowledge…
(1984). Development of an Oral Proficiency Component in a Test in English for Academic Purposes. The development of the oral component of the Test in English for Educational Purposes (TEEP) for foreign students in British universities was undertaken using information from previous oral test development efforts and a survey of 645 university admissions officers concerning students' communication skill needs. The resulting test is intended to provide an individual profile of the student's use of spoken English, particularly in academic contexts. Assessment is made with a test prerecorded on tape that the candidates listen to and respond to at intervals, ideally in a language laboratory. Much of the recorded information is also provided in printed form. Candidates demonstrate proficiency in free connected speech, oral summary of material presented graphically, asking and answering questions, responding to remarks and situations, and responding to and expressing opinions. The pilot test, which will be refined, uses five assessment criteria: appropriateness, adequacy of vocabulary…
(2003). The Motivational Function of Private Speech: An Experimental Approach. Recently, some works have been published exploring the role of private speech as a tool for motivation, reaching beyond the classical research on its regulatory function for cognitive processes such as attention or executive function. In fact, the authors' own previous research has shown that a moderate account of spontaneous private speech of children aged between 4 and 8 has motivational content. To obtain more conclusive data on a hypothetical motivational function of this kind of utterances, a study used a factorial design, with private speech and task difficulty manipulated as independent factors, and task performance and persistence observed as dependent variables. Subjects were 83 preschool, second-grade, or fourth-grade children from a school in Madrid, Spain. The results show that the participants persist more in the free private speech condition. In addition, the number of utterances is greater in this condition. It can be also observed that the increase in persistence is… [PDF]
(1995). Sex and the Library. Confirmed by the Research: There is Sex in the Library [and] Alt.sex: Detour off the Information Highway [and] Sex in Public (Libraries): An Historical Sampler of What Every Librarian Should Know [and] Mission Position: Censorship in the Corporate Library [and] Hard Cases: Some Issues Concerning the First Amendment's Protection of Free Speech and Free Press [and] Subtle Censors: Collection Development in Academic Libraries. North Carolina Libraries, v53 n2 p51-77 Sum. Six articles address issues of censorship and sexuality in libraries. Highlights include: surveys of censorship in North Carolina, acceptable use policies for the Internet, perceptions of librarians' sexuality, the proprietary nature of corporate library holdings, contemporary views and interpretation of First Amendment rights, and collection development policies and access issues in academic libraries. (JKP)…
(1986). Influences of Television on Children's Behavior: Implications for War and Peace. Television is robbing children of their childhood. Moreover, it is destroying children's developing symbolic processes, and inhibiting their creativity and play. Television has remarkable influence over children's behavior. At this point, it is plausible to hypothesize linkages between television viewing and numerous social problems involving children and youth. Research suggests that movie and television violence increases racism, militarism, opposition to free political speech, opposition to foreign aid, and support for authoritarian rather than democratic forms of government. Research additionally shows that viewing cartoon violence increases aggression in children, increases verbal hostility, reduces sharing behavior, increases aggressive language, increases anger and intensity of violent responses, decreases enthusiasm for school, produces and increases anxiety, causes violence on the playground, maintains long-term aggression, produces false understandings of social realities,…
(1978). The Effect of Formal Instruction on the Pidginized Speech of One Second Language Learner. The effect of formal instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) on the pidginized speech of a second language learner was studied. The subject was a 76-year-old Italian woman residing in the United States since the age of 37. Four one-hour tapes were made of the subject's speech in April of 1976, and during the last five months of a two-semester elementary ESL course. In the fall of 1977, at the beginning of an intermediate ESL course, elicited imitations were recorded. The subject's speech samples, which consisted of both free and elicited speech, were examined for changes in the production of negatives, the copula, regular and irregular past tense, third person present tense \s\, and plural. Results indicate no significant effect on any of the above features. Age, social distance, and motivation are discussed as possible explanations for the minimal effects of instruction on the subject's pidginized English. (AM)…
(2008). Extended Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Trial of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, v43 n6 p649-661 Nov. Background: In the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention, parents present verbal contingencies for stutter-free and stuttered speech in everyday situations. A previous randomized controlled trial of the programme with preschool-age children from 2005, conducted in two public speech clinics in New Zealand, showed that the odds of attaining clinically minimal levels of stuttering 9 months after randomization were more than seven times greater for the treatment group than for the control group. Aims: To follow up the children in the trial to determine extended long-term outcomes of the programme. Methods & Procedures: An experienced speech-language therapist who was not involved in the original trial talked with the children on the telephone, audio recording the conversations using a telephone recording jack. Parental reports were gathered in addition to the children's speech samples in order to obtain a balance of objective data and reports from a wide range of… [Direct]
(1991). Fatal Attraction: The Selling of Addiction. Special Double Issue. Media & Values, n54-44 Spr-Sum. This issue of \Media & Values\ provides essays and teaching ideas for addressing the influence of the media in society and the growing incidence of addiction. Articles in this issue include: (1) \Culture of Addiction\ (Rosalind Silver); (2) \Crack and the Box\ (Pete Hamill); (3) \When It Comes to Drugs, Beware the Censor's Fix\ (David Musto); (4) \How Free is Commercial Speech?\ (Steven Shiffrin; Kerry Gerot); (5) \Deadly Persuasion\ (Jean Kilbourne); (6) \Cigarettes Under Fire\ (Richard Pollay); (7) \The More Things Change…\; (8) \Anti-Smoking Campaign Fights Fire with Ads\ (Eric Vollmer); (9) \Alcohol and Television\ (Kathryn Montgomery); (10) \How Advertisers Sell Addiction\; (11) \The Selling of Addiction to Women\ (Carol Moog); (12) \Learning from Television: Commercials Influence Kids\; (13) \Cultural Dynamics Mold Hispanic Marketing\ (Bruce Maxwell; Michael Jacobson); (14) \Cancer is an Equal Opportunity Disease\ (Marilyn Kern-Foxworth); (15) \Giants in the Advertising…
(1985). Classroom FL Instruciton and Syllabus Design. The central objective of language classroom instruction is learning to speak, and while the use of language for communication has a place in the classroom, it must be taught alongside other activities for which language is used. To achieve a significant level of speaking success in the classroom, the traditional syllabus must be replaced with one more compatible with the use of language for communication, but not to the exclusion of grammatical instruction. This kind of syllabus should be essentially notional and based on an inventory of semantic concepts (time, quantification, possession, modality) rather than, as traditionally, in terms of surface linguistic features. Implementation of this syllabus faces three major problems: the unavailability of notionally based grammars, the mismatch between most grammatical descriptions and the target language vernacular, and the difficulty of tapping the learners' internalized grammar. Both the more conservative norms for relatively…
(1979). Speech Communication Instruction Based on Employers' Perceptions of the Importance of Selected Communication Skills for Employees on the Job. To determine which communication skills employers in business and industry perceive as important for employees, a questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of personnel directors in business and industry in the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. Of the questionnaires mailed, 89 were returned (29.3% response rate). Analysis of the responses indicated that communication skills judged as important for employees to possess included accurate listening, credibility, ability to organize ideas in an orderly way, a clear and distinct voice, personal confidence when speaking to others, sensitivity to others, correct grammar and pronunciation, ability to interpret a message to another person, persuasiveness, establishment of face-to-face contact with others, and ability to use the formal organizational channels of communication and to make decisions cooperatively with others. Communication skills rated as unimportant for employees included ability to use a special technical vocabulary,…