NI 505 - September, 2017

Bad Education

A note from the editor

Being the best

Do you ever get that ‘I wish I’d been a teacher’ moment?

I get it, sometimes – usually at my seven-year-old son’s ‘sharing assemblies’. Hundreds of children fill the school hall, which is decorated by supersized creations – paintings, mobiles, 3-D shapes. Parents squeeze in at the back, teachers line the sides, using emphatic sign language, fingers to lips, to keep this jiggling, fidgety mass quiet and seated.

The headteacher welcomes everyone and cracks a few jokes. On stage, Year 2 pass around a microphone with excruciating slowness, making mostly inaudible statements about a recent school trip, to parents’ collective, ill-concealed delight.

The older children are gracious. They are used to this. Everyone gets a turn here – it’s built in the fabric of the school. The assemblies are all delivered under the motto over the stage that reads ‘Live, love, learn and be happy’. This order is important and not coincidental. Headteacher Rachel Crouch – a lifelong subscriber to New Internationalist, from whom you will hear more shortly – has always made hers an inclusive, welcoming school with equity at its heart.

But in this magazine we look at how the noble endeavour that is education – the kind that gives you the ‘wish I’d been a teacher moment’ – is under threat from powerful business interests, while introducing you to those working to take things in a different direction.

Elsewhere in the September edition, we unpick why stories that claim to reveal a biological basis to differences between men and women are so persistently popular and learn about how private corporations in Peru are hiring out the police to do their dirty work.

Hazel Healy for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

A child practises writing the days of the week on the wall of her house in Meme, Cameroon.

Photo: Chris de Bode / Panos

NI 505 - September, 2017

Bad Education

A note from the editor

Being the best

The big story

The Right has captured education all over the world. Hazel Healy makes the case for how to do things differently.

Features

An update on progress towards the dream of universal education

A snapshot of progress, setbacks and future prospects

Silicon Valley types say that with enough data, they can ‘fix’ education. Where are the teachers in this grand plan? asks Tamasin Cave.

Can a US chain of profit-making schools really help the poor? Patience Akumu reports on the impact of Bridge academies in Uganda.

Why is the West racing to copy Asia’s education system as fast as the East scrambles to reform it? Yong Zhao takes to task an unhealthy and deluded romanticization of education.

The world is full of extraordinary schools. We feature three inspirational stories about courageous teachers, second-chance education and progressive pedagogy in Yemen, South Sudan and Colombia.

Newspapers love to dish up stories of inherent differences between the sexes because we lap them up. Gavin Evans reflects on why we are still so susceptible.

Stephanie Boyd reports on a growing trend of private corporations hiring public law enforcers to protect their interests.

A wave of nostalgia is sweeping Latin America as the 50th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara approaches. Julio Etchart follows the ‘Che route’ to the remote spot where the revolutionary icon was executed.

Web exclusives

Indigenous communities in Colombia refuse to occupy an empty space in history, and believe their very cultural survival is at stake, reports Hazel Healy.

Opinion

Chris Coltrane explains.

View from America by Mark Engler

Agenda

Report from Nigeria

Report from the UK / Middle East.

Fast fashion around the world.

Report from South-East Asia

Profile by Richard Swift

Climate change imagery.

Report from Britain by Alessio Perrone

Report from Argentina by Anna Galkina

Report from Kelsi Farrington

Lullaby release; Greener states; A better catch

Regulars

Praise, blame and all points in between? Your feedback published in the September 2017 magazine.

By Rodrigo de Matos from Macau.

The wealthy West is an irresistible dream to many Bolivians, as Amy Booth discovers.

Cartoon by Simon Kneebone

Times are hard. High unemployment, rampant inflation and a collapse in the value of the tugrik, reports Tina Burrett and Christopher Simons.

Cartoon by P J Polyp

Cartoon by Marc Roberts

Tunisian singer Emel talks to Graeme Green about hope, helplessness and the Arab Spring.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

In Between; Quest; ¿Donde estás María?

¿Donde estás María?; Strangers

Democracy in Chains; Kingdom Cons; Art Sex Music; Don't Panic, I'm Islamic

Why Did We Stop Growing Tall?; Frank London and the Glass House Orchestra; The Work; Wind River; The Scribe; Loot; Entertaining Mr Sloane; No is not enough: defeating the new shock politics.

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