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españa.Policías y Guardias civiles piden a Hacienda que «abra la hucha» por la equiparación

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Europa/ España/ Diciembre del 2017/http://www.larazon.es/

 

Guardias Civiles volvieron a concentrarse hoy ante la puerta del Ministerio de Hacienda para reclamar la justa equiparación salarial con las policías autonómicas. Exigieron a Montoro que «abra la hucha» y que se incluyan en los próximos Presupuestos Generales del Estado una partida, cifrada en unos 1.500 millones de euros.

En la concentración, convocada por JUSAPOL la asociación Justicia Salarial Policial que aglutina a policias y guardias civiles junto a representantes de los sindicatos policiales y las asociaciones representantivas de la Guardia Civil, en unidad de acción reivindicaron que «no haya más mentiras» y que el Gobierno «cumpla sus promesas».

Casi una hora antes de la concentración frente al Ministerio de Hacienda los cinco sindicatos representativos de la Policía Nacional, las asociaciones de la Guardia Civil y JUSAPOL se reunieron en el Congreso con el portavoz de Ciudadanos en la Comisión de Interior, Miguel Gutiérrez quien les ratificó su compromiso con la equiparación.Fuente

Fuente:

http://www.larazon.es/espana/policias-y-guardias-civiles-piden-a-hacienda-que-abra-la-hucha-por-la-equiparacion-OF17214930

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https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/IWmhxO5wHg5BaoWgO3ss5hFSkA1ScJiM6TKncwhJQObr03mq8yjDQ2Ug4PJDkDcXHwYCREk=s152

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Canada: Record numbers of children are now homeschooled, but who’s keeping an eye on the parents?

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Américadel Norte/Canada/ Diciembre del 2017/https://theconversation.com

 

Nearly 30,000 children in the UK were educated at home in the 2016 to 2017 academic year. This is an almost 100% increase from 2011 – when just over 15,000 pupils were classified as home taught.

I have four school age children. Tomorrow I could, without any forewarning and without notifying my local authority, withdraw them from school and educate them myself at home. My wife and my children would probably kill me. But, from a legal perspective, I would be acting within my rights.

This is because the UK has one of the lowest thresholds for the regulation and monitoring of home educators in Europe – anyone can choose to home educate and there is no requirement to inform local authorities. And local authorities are neither required to monitor who is home educating or how they are doing it.

In part, this is a consequence of ambiguous legislation such as the 1996 Education Act. This tasks parents with ensuring their children receive an education “suitable” to their age, ability and aptitude. It does not however, require school attendance.

The need for regulation

The Badman Review in 2009 and more recently Ofsted both identified “risks” associated with home education. The Badman review was instigated following the tragic death by starvation of a seven-year-old girl in Birmingham. Her mother claimed she was home educating and consequently was able to deny social workers access to her home.

Ofsted’s more recent interest in home education followed investigations into allegations that some schools in Birmingham were being hijacked by radical Muslim fundamentalists whose aim was to teach a narrow Islamocentric curriculum. This led to fears that some children were being taken out of mainstream education and instead sent to small unofficial schools that had been set up by “Islamic hardliners”.

Not all just fun and games. Shutterstock

Micheal Wilshaw, the then chief inspector of schools, wrote to the secretary of state for education describing his extreme concern for the safeguarding of Muslim home educated children.

Both Ofsted and the Badman Review recommended introducing a national register, greater monitoring regimes and more clearly defined roles for local authorities. But so far, none of their recommendations have been implemented.

The right kind of education

My previous research with Gypsy families also revealed concerns about some types of families being identified as problematic “home educators”, who are “putting their children at risk”. Many Gypsy families have traditionally chosen to home educate, and following the Badman Review, these families came under scrutiny, with suspicions they were “using” home education to avoid prosecution when their children did not attend school.

Similar negative responses to home schooling are often seen with poor families who choose to home educate – with claims they are putting their children at risk of neglect and abuse. These findings echo the sentiments and suggestions that many Muslim families use home education as a “cover” to radicalise their children into non British values.

But quite often while Muslims, Gypsies and poor families are identified as potential sources of “risk” in terms of home education, other families such as those from middle class backgrounds seem to be portrayed in a more positive light.

Many home-schooled children are often taught in local groups. Shutterstock

Newspapers are often full of “lifestyle” stories exploring the different choices made by middle class home educators. Typically these families are portrayed as sacrificing the material luxuries of their daily lives in favour of extended child-centric travelogues.

More recently, there was also sympathetic accounts of home education for children with special educational needs. Let down by failing, underfunded state schools parents were said to have been forced to make the difficult decision to home educate.

Parental choice

Our more recent research found that while there are many different types of home educators, a large majority of parents came to the decision to home school for similar reasons. Many ethnic minority families, including all the Muslim and Gypsy families we interviewed, described racism and bullying in schools as a significant factor in their decision. Families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds also described how letdown they felt by local schools.

In this way, we found that many home educators are simply parents who have actively made choices to help meet the needs of their children. But despite this, not all families who home educate are viewed positively. In this way, stereotypes of home educators distort both negative and positive accounts – home educators often seen as problematic not based on what they do, but rather on who they are.

This is where a national register of home educated children and the monitoring of their well-being would be a step in the right direction. This would not impose on parental choice, it would simply help to monitor what, can at times be, something of a grey area within the UK education system.

Ultimately, what all this shows is that for many families there is a real need for home education, because of problems with schooling, bullying or racism. And in this way, home education is not always a lifestyle choice. But even when it is, this decision should still be respected, because as our research shows, choosing home education is a difficult and challenging decision – but one that is often made with the best interests of the children in mind.

Fuente:https://theconversation.com/record-numbers-of-children-are-now-homeschooled-but-whos-keeping-an-eye-on-the-parents-88449

Fuente Imagen:https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/QtvQ7TFNeV_LIfWQNduiYkb6MZrplYp278NwrMvlehtmczTejrCtA2K8SANYJnhJ5Rfp=s85

 

 

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Francia: Pour l’école et les résultats scolaires, les neurosciences feront-elles le printemps ?

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Europa/Francia/Diciembre del 2017/https://theconversation.com/

L’automne n’est décidément pas une bonne saison pour l’École française. Les enquêtes PISA apportent régulièrement leur lot de nouvelles préoccupantes sur les performances en mathématiques des élèves de 15 ans. Pour ce qui concerne la lecture, les résultats de l’enquête Pirls (Programme international de recherche en lecture scolaire, touchant les écoliers de CM1) n’étaient pas très bons en 2012 (cf. Le Monde du 13/12/2012). Ceux de 2017 sont encore plus mauvais, au point de déclencher une prise de parole quasi immédiate du ministre de l’Éducation nationale.

La prise en compte des données apportées par ces enquêtes, dont le caractère préoccupant est indéniable, impulse logiquement une double recherche : des responsables ; et des solutions. On peut admettre qu’une partie de la responsabilité (au moins) appartient à la pédagogie, et qu’en conséquence une partie de la solution est d’améliorer celle-ci. Mais alors, comment ? Les pistes proposées par le ministre, avec en particulier la création d’un Conseil scientifique de l’éducation nationale (CSEN), sont-elles les bonnes ?

De la nécessité d’une « pédagogie vraiment éclairée »

Commentant déjà des résultats produits par des enquêtes PISA et Pirls, [Antoine Prost (Le Monde du 21 fevier 2013) « sonnait le tocsin », en reconnaissant que le niveau scolaire baissait vraiment. Mais il avertissait que le « vrai problème de pédagogie » que nous avons « ne se résoudra pas en un jour ». Et ajoutait que la seule façon d’« enrayer cette régression » est de « faire travailler plus efficacement les élèves ». Ce qui nous semble incontestable.

Pour rendre l’école plus efficace, il apparaît donc à la fois nécessaire, et urgent, de travailler à l’émergence de ce que Marcel Gauchet a désigné (Le Monde du 22 mars 2013) comme « une pédagogie véritablement éclairée », laquelle, pour lui, restait à inventer. Or, si nous ne savons toujours pas comment enseigner de façon vraiment efficace, c’est essentiellement, avertissait Gauchet, parce que nous ne savons pas encore ce que veut dire apprendre.

La recherche d’une plus grande efficacité exige ainsi un déplacement de curseur, d’une focalisation sur l’acte de « transmission » du professeur, à une focalisation sur l’acte d’appropriation qu’opère l’élève qui apprend, dans l’espoir de donner un fondement solide à cet acte. C’est pour atteindre cet objectif que Monsieur Blanquer mise sur « la lumière des sciences ».

Enseigner à la lumière des sciences ?

La tâche prioritaire de la pédagogie est bien alors aujourd’hui de se centrer sur l’acte d’apprendre, en étant éclairée par toutes les disciplines pouvant légitimement apporter un savoir utile, qui soit susceptible de donner consistance à l’activité d’enseignement, laquelle a pour fin principale de faciliter le déploiement de cet acte d’apprendre. Avec l’espoir de sortir du débat d’opinion, en s’appuyant ainsi « sur ce qui est prouvé et ce qui marche à la lumière des sciences » (J.-M. Blanquer le 24 novembre 2017).

Mais, alors, il y a lieu de s’interroger sur le sens, et la portée, de l’expression « lumière des sciences ». Car il ne faudrait pas perdre de vue deux considérations qui nous paraissent essentielles, et de nature à prévenir des empressements excessifs, ou des choix contestables. La première est que toutes les contributions seront les bienvenues, et qu’aucune approche n’a le monopole de la connaissance de l’« apprendre ». La seconde est que, bien qu’il soit indispensable, un éclairage par les sciences n’a aucun pouvoir automatique de transformation des pratiques pédagogiques : la pédagogie sera toujours à inventer.

Les neurosciences n’ont pas le monopole de l’« éclairage »

Pour progresser vers une « pédagogie vraiment éclairée », trois apports (et non un seul) nous semblent aujourd’hui précieux.

Le premier est, en effet, celui des connaissances produites par la neurobiologie. Si les tenants d’une neuro-éducation, d’une part vont souvent un peu vite en besogne, et d’autre part se laissent trop facilement prendre au mythe d’une possible éducation scientifique, il n’en reste pas moins vrai que l’acte d’apprendre a une dimension neuronale incontestable, que le cerveau y joue un rôle essentiel, et que tout ce qui nous aide à comprendre les mécanismes cérébraux est utile à la progression dans la connaissance des conditions de construction des savoirs comme outils ou objets mentaux.

Ayant moi-même souligné, dès 1984, l’apport décisif des travaux de Jean‑Pierre Changeux pour la connaissance des processus d’apprentissage (« Neurobiologie et pédagogie : « L’homme neuronal » en situation d’apprentissage », Revue Française de Pédagogie, N° 67, 1984), je ne peux qu’approuver Stanislas Dehaene (devenu depuis Président du nouveau CSEN) lorsqu’il insiste (Le Monde du 5/11/2011) sur la nécessité de « prendre en compte les avancées de la recherche » en ce domaine. Mais à la condition expresse de ne pas croire que ces avancées feront de l’activité d’enseignement une science.

Un deuxième éclairage est apporté par les travaux portant sur l’apprentissage autorégulé (self-regulated learning ou SRL), qui ont permis de comprendre en quel sens l’autorégulation pouvait être vue à la fois comme un fait fonctionnel fondamental, et comme un idéal pour l’action éducative. Horizon d’une activité d’enseignement se voulant efficace, la maîtrise par le sujet qui apprend de ses propres processus d’apprentissage est aussi le moyen de tendre vers cet horizon (Hadji, 2012).

Enfin, la révolution numérique apporte un troisième éclairage. Si les outils et possibilités nouvelles qu’elle offre ne sont pas automatiquement synonymes de révolution pédagogique, et s’il ne faut pas croire que les nouvelles technologies pourront tout résoudre, la mise en œuvre des possibilités offertes par ces technologies nous permet de redécouvrir les trois grandes caractéristiques d’un apprentissage efficace : un apprentissage actif, contrôlé par le sujet lui-même, et à forte dimension collaborative.

Enseigner n’est pas une science

Mais, s’il existe, selon les termes de Stanislas Dehaene (Le Monde des 22 et 23 décembre 2013), « une approche scientifique de l’apprentissage », cela ne permet nullement de conclure avec lui qu’« enseigner est une science » ! L’efficacité éducative ne peut pas être prouvée a priori. L’utilité des pistes proposées par la neurobiologie, l’apprentissage autorégulé, et la révolution numérique, demandera à être éprouvée dans une mise en œuvre « expérimentale ». Il faut essayer, pour voir si vraiment « ça marche ». L’évaluation, nécessaire, ne peut venir qu’a posteriori, et n’apportera, compte tenu de la multiplicité des facteurs en cause, et de la difficulté, pour ne pas dire de l’impossibilité, d’établir des « groupes contrôle » (« Les dossiers de la DEPP », 207), qu’une « preuve » toujours relative et limitée de l’efficacité d’une stratégie éducative.

Les situations d’apprentissage sont toujours à inventer. Mais telle est justement la vocation de la pédagogie, comme « invention minutieuse et obstinée de dispositifs utilisables ici et maintenant », selon la belle formule de Philippe Meirieu (Meirieu/Cédelle, 2012, p. 183). Même si l’on se fondait sur une parfaite connaissance de l’acte d’apprendre, l’élaboration, et la mise en œuvre, de situations susceptibles d’optimiser cet acte, relèveraient encore et toujours d’un certain bricolage.

Ainsi, bien que la pédagogie, comme pratique, puisse trouver un fondement solide dans les apports des sciences éclairant les différentes dimensions de l’acte d’apprendre, l’approche scientifique de l’apprentissage n’a pas le pouvoir de faire de l’enseignement une science. Le légitime désir de dépasser le débat d’opinion ne doit pas nous jeter dans les bras d’un scientisme illusoire.

Fuente:

https://theconversation.com/pour-lecole-et-les-resultats-scolaires-les-neurosciences-feront-elles-le-printemps-88934

Fuente Imagen:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WfisCiGAFTbrOpN-sh-FERTIIL9WtGnrv39cJfqFErscaBJGjUTlaCmNVMfPRNV0elLxdw=s114

 

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Australia: NAPLAN 2017 results have largely flat-lined, and patterns of inequality continue

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Oceanía/Australia/Diciembre del 2017/https://theconversation.com

Today’s release of the 2017 NAPLAN National Report confirms preliminary findings released in August and offers deeper insights into achievement trends since the assessment program began a decade ago.

The results paint an overall portrait of plateauing student achievement in literacy and numeracy, mixed with pockets of improvement and persistent inequalities between young people from different backgrounds.

High level trends over the past decade

NAPLAN takes place annually. It assesses Australian school students in years three, five, seven and nine across four domains: reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, and grammar and punctuation), and numeracy.

Nationally, NAPLAN results have flat-lined in most areas since testing was first conducted in 2008. There are no statistically significant differences in achievement across the majority of domains and year levels.

Read more: NAPLAN is ten years old – so how is the nation faring?

Improvements can be seen in a limited number of domains and year levels. There are statistically significant increases in spelling (years three and five), reading (years three and five), numeracy (year five), and grammar and punctuation (year three).

National numeracy trends 2008-2017. ACARA

Year seven writing is the only area to show a statistically significant decline. It remains a major area of concern.

State and territory comparisons reveal good news for Queensland and Western Australia. Both show improvements across a number of domains and year levels.

New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory show high achievement, but results have plateaued.

The Northern Territory continues to lag significantly behind the rest of the nation across all domains and year levels.

The vast majority of young people meet the National Minimum Standards (NMS). NMS provide a measure of how many students are performing above or below the minimum expected level for their age across the domains.

NMS percentages are over 90% for the majority of domains and year levels. But NMS percentages vary widely. For example, only 55.7% of students in the Northern Territory meet the NMS for year seven writing, compared to 90.8% in Victoria.

Background affects achievement

This year’s results show clear patterns of achievement between young people from different backgrounds. In many cases, these differences reflect broader inequalities in Australian society.

Notable trends include:

  • gender differences are persistent. Female students perform significantly better than male students in writing, and grammar and punctuation across all year levels. For example, 88.1% of female students meet the NMS for year nine writing, compared to 75.4% of male students
  • students with a language background other than English (LBOTE) performed significantly better in spelling than non-LBOTE students across all year levels. LBOTE students have also shown gains since 2008 in reading (years three and five), grammar and punctuation (years three and seven), spelling (years three and five) and numeracy (year five)

Year 5 spelling: students with a language background other than English (LBOTE) compared to non-LBOTE students.ACARA
  • Indigenous students have shown statistically significant gains since 2008 in reading (years three and five), spelling (years three and five), grammar and punctuation (years three and seven) and numeracy (years five and nine). But Indigenous students still trail significantly behind non-Indigenous students across all domains and years levels

Year 5 reading: achievement differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. ACARA
  • parental education is a key factor determining student achievement. For example, in year three grammar and punctuation, the mean scale score for a young person whose parents have a Bachelor degree or above is 479.7, compared to 369.6 for students whose parents have a Year 11 equivalent or below. Similar patterns are reflected across all domains and year levels
  • geographical location also has a major bearing on student achievement. For example, in year three grammar and punctuation, the mean scale score for young people in major cities was 450, compared to 284.6 for young people from very remote and 411.5 for outer regional locations.

As always, tread cautiously with data

NAPLAN is one useful measure of student achievement in Australian schooling.

When interpreted carefully, it can help policy makers, researchers, school leaders, teachers, students and parents better understand and debate literacy and numeracy achievements. It also serves to highlight pockets of underachievement and disadvantage, and can play an important role informing policy interventions and investments.

Read more: Evidence-based education needs standardised assessment

But NAPLAN is not an oracle and can only tell us so much. So we should treat these results carefully.

To get a more accurate picture of achievement trends, we need to take a number of indicators into consideration. This should go beyond the basics of literacy and numeracy, including achievements in ATAR subjects, year 12 attainment rates, and more.

NAPLAN results should also be considered in relation to other standardised assessments, which do not always tell the same story.

For example, the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) suggest reading achievement among Australian children has improved significantly, whereas the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows steadily declining Australian results in all areas, including reading.

It’s also important to analyse school and student level NAPLAN data, which will be released in March 2018. It will no doubt lead to another round of debates about the role of NAPLAN in our schools.

Fuente:

https://theconversation.com/naplan-2017-results-have-largely-flat-lined-and-patterns-of-inequality-continue-88132

Fuente Imagen: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Nrc1tCbuLew0bcSfJHcRtqiLgR64N4zyqP1PCV8oJ4kxIrvTh4VXCXAlG-akl-zAfD2BkQ=s124

 

 

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South Africa has a reading crisis: why, and what can be done about it

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Afríca/Diciembre del 2017/https://theconversation.com

The teacher stands in front of her Grade 4 class. The 45 nine and ten-year olds are crammed together at desks, huddled over shared books. Some are sitting on the floor. “Now, class, read from the top of the page,” the teacher says. They comply in a slow sing-song drawl.

“Stop,” says the teacher. “It is not ‘Wed-nes-day’, you say it ‘Wensday’. It is what?” “Wensday,” the class responds. “Again.” “Wensday.” The reading resumes, the teacher frequently stopping to correct her pupils’ pronunciation.

Sometimes the children read aloud in groups. At other times, she calls a child to come to the front and read aloud. Not once does she ask a question about what the story means. Nor do the children discuss or write about what they have read.

This is the typical approach to how teaching is taught in most South African primary schools. Reading is largely understood as an oral performance. In our research, my colleague Sandra Land and I describe this as “oratorical reading”. The emphasis is on reading aloud, fluency, accuracy and correct pronunciation. There is very little emphasis on reading comprehension and actually making sense of the written word. If you were to stop the children and ask them what the story is about, many would look at you blankly.

Pronunciation, accuracy and fluency are important in reading. But they have no value without comprehension. Countries around the world are paying increasing attention to reading comprehension, as indicated by improving results in international literacy tests.

The problem with the oratorical reading approach is evident in the results of the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 tests. PIRLS’ purpose is to assess reading comprehension and to monitor trends in literacy at five-year intervals. Countries participate voluntarily. Learners write the test in the language of learning and teaching used in Grades 1 to 3 in their school.

The tests revealed that 78% of grade 4 pupils in South Africa fell below the lowest level on the PIRLS scale: meaning, in effect, that they cannot understand what they’re reading. There was some improvement from learners writing in Sesotho, isiNdebele, Xitsonga, Tshivenda and Sepedi from a very low base in 2011, but no overall improvement in South Africa’s performance.

South Africa was last out of 50 countries surveyed. It came in just behind Egypt and Morocco. The Russian Federation came first followed by Singapore, Hong Kong and Ireland.

South Africa also performs poorly in the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality surveys. These show that in reading and numeracy South Africa is lagging behind much poorer African countries such as Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Our research on reading at a rural primary school and an adult centre in the KwaZulu-Natal province showed that the oratorical approach to teaching reading was dominant both in the school and adult classes. Both adults and children were not learning to read with meaning, and so were not achieving literacy despite attending classes. Our findings confirmed the results of other South African studies.

So where does the problem lie and how can South Africa address it?

Rote learning

To understand the situation more deeply we interviewed teachers and explored how they had learned to read. We found that they teach as they were taught; an indication that oratorical reading is a cycle repeated from one generation to the next unless it is broken.

Teachers told us they assessed pupils’ reading ability just as they were assessed by their teachers: by having them read aloud. Marks were allocated for individual oral reading performance. This was based not on understanding the passage, but on fluency and pronunciation. There was no written assessment of reading comprehension. Reading was about memorising sounds and decoding words.

This suggests that the problem in learners’ performance lies in how reading is taught in most South African schools. Learners are taught to read aloud and pronounce correctly, but not to understand the written word and make sense of it for themselves. Another consequence is that the pleasure and joy of discovery and meaning-making are divorced from school reading.

New approaches

There are no quick fixes, but there certainly are slow and sure ones. The first is to get reading education in pre-service teacher training right. A report by JET Education Services, an independent non-profit organisation that works to improve education, found that universities don’t give enough attention to reading pedagogies.

Universities need to teach reading as a process that involves decoding and understanding text in its context, not just as a “mechanical skill”. Countries such as India, with its great diversity and disadvantaged populations, have begun to address the need for this change in how reading is taught.

The second “fix” concerns in-service training. The Department of Basic Education has a crucial role to play here. Teachers need to reflect on how they themselves were taught to read and to understand the shortcomings of an oratorical approach.

Effective reading instruction, such as the “Read to Learn” and “scaffolding” approaches, should be modelled and reinforced. In a multi-lingual African context, strategies that allow teachers and learners to use all their language resources in making meaning should be encouraged. Teachers’ own reading is vital, and can be developed through book clubs and reading groups.

The school environment is also crucial. According to the PIRLS interviews with principals, 62% of South African primary schools do not have school libraries. These are central to promoting a reading culture, as work in New Zealand shows.

Schools should develop strategies such as Drop Everything and Readslots in the timetable, library corners in classrooms, prizes for reading a target number of books and writing about them, and creating learners’ reading clubs. Learners can draw on local oral traditions by gathering stories from elders, writing them and reading them to others.

Finally, the home environment is vital. The PIRLS research showed that children with parents who read, and especially read to them, do better at reading. Our research found that children with parents who attended adult classes were highly motivated to learn and read with their parents. Even if parents are illiterate, older siblings can read to younger children. The Family Literacy Project, a non-profit organisation in KwaZulu-Natal, has done excellent work in creating literate family and community environments in deep rural areas, showing what is possible.

Developing families as reading assets rather than viewing them as deficits can help to strengthen schools and build a reading nation.

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EEUU: Harvard students and DOJ will find answers elusive in quest to learn about admissions decisions

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América del Norte/EEUU/Diciembre 2017/https://theconversation.com

After weeks of negotiation, Harvard University recently agreed to provide the Department of Justice access to its admissions files. The department is reopening a complaint by 63 Asian-American groups that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The complaint was previously dismissed under the Obama administration. Many worrythat government lawyers plan to use the case to argue that all race-conscious admissions – including affirmative action – are a violation of the Civil Rights Act.

Separately, Harvard undergraduates have recently begun to take advantage of their right to view their own admissions files, often only to become frustrated in their efforts to pinpoint exactly why they got admitted.

The inquiries of the Department of Justice and the curious Harvard students have something in common: Both are unlikely to turn up any evidence of why some applicants make the cut and others don’t. That’s because both inquiries rest on the faulty assumption that admissions decisions are driven by an objective, measurable process that will yield the same results over and over again. As a Harvard professor who has studied and written a book about college admissions and their impact on students, I can tell you that’s just not how it works. I am not speaking officially for Harvard and I am not involved in undergraduate admissions.

Elite private universities have made clear time and again that their admissions decisions are made through a holistic decision-making process that involves a series of discussions among the admissions team. This means, for example, Harvard rejects 1 in 4 students with perfect SAT scores. The University of Pennsylvania and Duke University reject three out of five high school valedictorians. Despite universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford having closely aligned admissions criteriaand similar rates of admission, just because an applicant gets into one school does not mean the applicant will get into another. That’s why it makes headlines when a student is reported to have gained admission to all the Ivies. This is a rare, unexpected event.

What a holistic approach entails

So, how do universities make admissions decisions? William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, writes of an “expansive view of excellence.” This includes “extracurricular distinction and personal qualities” in addition to test scores and grades. Evaluating applications is a long process. At Harvard, it involves at least two readers of each file. It also involves discussions among a subcommittee of at least four individuals that last up to an hour. The process is similar for other selective colleges. Admissions officers at the same university often differ about which students to admit. The process is more art than science.

Holistic evaluation allows admissions officers to take into account opportunities, hardships and other experiences that may have affected an applicant’s grades and SAT scores. They may also consider how those things affected their participation in activities outside of school. Nevertheless, the outcomes of admission to the most elite colleges are unequal. In fact, while 37 percent of young adults in the United States are black or Latino, just 19 percent of students at the top 100 colleges in the country are.

In addition, while only one-third of American adults have a bachelor’s degree, a review of Ivy League universities’ published data reveals that about 85 percent of students have a parent with a bachelor’s degree. So, even if holistic evaluation does a better job than looking at test scores and grades alone, the process still concludes by systematically undervaluing working class, poor, black and Latino young men and women. That is, if we assume that talent and “personal qualities” are equally distributed in our society, this disproportion should tell us something is amiss.

In addition to the holistic evaluation process, admissions teams need to consider the needs of specific groups on campus. These needs vary from campus to campus and from year to year. Coaches can recruit top athletes for positions on their teams played by graduating seniors, and those recruits enter the fast lane to admission. And, just as the baseball coach can recruit a shortstop, the orchestra director may request a top bassoon player to fill a missing part in the orchestra. Since needs of campus organizations and teams vary from year to year, you can’t glean much from admission files in isolation like the DOJ and curious students hope to do.

Merit is overrated

Are there any discernible patterns between who gets in and students who were seriously considered but rejected? Probably not. Harvard President Drew Faust has said that Harvard could fill its incoming class twice with high school valedictorians.

In fact, we should discard the notion that admissions is a meritocratic process that selects the “best” 18-year-olds who apply to a selective university. When we let go of our meritocracy ideals, we see more clearly that so many talented, accomplished young people who will be outstanding leaders in the future will not make it to the likes of Harvard, Stanford and Yale. There simply are not enough places for all of them at those universities. Further, many more disadvantaged young people have never had the opportunity to cultivate talents because their parents did not have the resources to pay for private music lessons or a pitching coach. In fact, the gap between what wealthy and poor parents spend on extracurricular activities has dramatically increased in recent years. So looking for explanations for why you did get in, or whether some groups are favored over others, misses the broader picture of the lack of clarity on what gets anyone into elite colleges. It also ignores the unequal opportunities young Americans have in the process.

One way forward for college admissions, which I have suggested as a thought experiment in my book, “The Diversity Bargain,” is to take all qualified students for a selective college and enter them into an admissions lottery. The lottery could have weights for desired characteristics the college deems important, such as social class, geographic diversity, race and intended major. This method would make clear the arbitrariness in the admissions process. It would also help students admitted — and those not admitted – understand that admission — and rejection — should not hold the strong social meaning in American society that it does today. In “The Diversity Bargain,” I show the downsides of maintaining students’ beliefs that college admissions is a meritocracy. Most students expressed strong faith in a process that ultimately underselects black, Latino and working class applicants, among others. They will take these understandings with them as they ascend to positions of power and make hiring decisions, design tax policies and shape media discourses.

Until the Department of Justice and admitted students understand the arbitrary nature of how admissions decisions at elite colleges are made, they will be perplexed by the complex art that is elite college admissions.

Fuente: https://theconversation.com/harvard-students-and-doj-will-find-answers-elusive-in-quest-to-learn-about-admissions-decisions-87985

Fuente imagen : https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GzeaBDJYXiZk6_iTjvIUXi0t1GW8wE-RMRdOBan4cBENNGJuEFqSQnJIx_4IMuI9Pjr8r1A=s128

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Cineasta Ai Weiwei: «La única conclusión es que hay mucha inhumanidad en nosotros»

Entrevistas

Por Steven MacKenzie

@stevenmackenzie

El gran problema: ¿Cómo se asustó a los refugiados?

Ai Weiwei: No hay nadie que voluntariamente deje su hogar.Nadie renuncia a todo aquello con lo que está familiarizado, como su idioma o su religión, sin ser obligado por la fuerza.Todos los refugiados en este mundo son expulsados, como un árbol sacado de la tierra por una tormenta. Vemos cómo puede aparecer la naturaleza trágica después de que pasa una gran tormenta. La tragedia humana es cien veces mayorya que podemos compartir la tristeza y las dificultades que experimentan esas personas. Podemos ver cómo esos hombres, mujeres y niños han perdido el apoyo y la seguridad de su vida; podemos ver que están buscando refugio, pero no pueden encontrar uno. También vemos gente volteando intencionalmente la cara y proponiendo todo tipo de razones para no actuar. La única conclusión que se puede extraer es que hay mucha inhumanidad, cobardía y egoísmo dentro de nosotros.

¿Pueden las artes y los artistas cambiar el mundo más que la política y los políticos?


El arte es muy importante como actividad mental porque se relaciona con la salud de la moralidad y la filosofía. La comprensión del arte puede afectar profundamente las emociones, el comportamiento y el juicio racional del ser humano. Sin arte, la condición de racionalidad sería pobre y no reflejaría las emociones humanas. En ese sentido, el arte no solo cambia la sociedad, sino que es el ingrediente principal de uno.

La gente sabe que hay una crisis migratoria pero estos problemas pueden sentirse muy lejos. ¿Cómo podemos conectarnos con ellos?


Las mejores cualidades que tenemos son empatía y la capacidad de ayudar a los demás. La humanidad se convierte en una palabra vacía cuando esas cualidades no se aplican.Siempre ha habido personas que son desafortunadas o victimizadas por aquellos que se benefician del sistema establecido. Solo al crear una comprensión de que la humanidad es una, que debe ser compartida y protegida por todos, podemos comenzar a mejorar esta situación.

Una vez que la sociedad ha establecido los derechos humanos y la libertad de expresión, ¿se olvida inevitablemente de otros que todavía luchan por los suyos?


El mundo está dividido, y no solo por el territorio, las diferencias religiosas o la desigualdad económica. También está dividido en su comprensión de las necesidades de la humanidad. Sin estar bien informados o sin comprender realmente la verdadera condición humana, no puede haber ningún desafío a nuestra propia ideología. Esa ideología, si tiene algún valor, debe ser desafiada. La libertad y la libertad no son palabras vacías. Son valores que no solo necesitan protección, sino redefinición: un nuevo contexto y un nuevo significado. No existe la libertad o la libertad; inyectamos el significado. Esto requiere cada generación y el esfuerzo de cada individuo.

The Big Issue es una revista galardonada en múltiples ocasiones, editada por el Editor actual del año de la Sociedad Británica de Editores de Revistas (BSME).

Pero, ¿los individuos tienen algún poder?


El individuo tiene el máximo poder para decidir su destino y el tipo de sociedad en la que vive. Esta forma de pensar es la razón por la cual Occidente se ha desarrollado más rápido que otros lugares durante los últimos cien años. La ciencia y la creatividad, el conocimiento y la imaginación, han sido bien protegidos y nutridos. Más importante aún, esas ideologías y beneficios sociales deben volver a un individuo. Un individuo no es solo alguien que inicia una mejor comprensión, sino que también es un beneficiario de esa comprensión.

En este momento hay el mayor desplazamiento de personas desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial. ¿Está el mundo actualmente librando una guerra de otro tipo, que no siempre tiene que ver con el conflicto sino con la desigualdad, los prejuicios y el medioambiente?

Podemos ver que hay una guerra contra los valores humanos.Al sacrificar a las personas más débiles y vulnerables, aquellas que tienen poca educación, están desplazadas y carecen de poder, este es un desafío para la civilización, nuestras sociedades democráticas en funcionamiento y nuestra visión del futuro para los humanos. Este es probablemente el mayor desafío que los humanos hayan conocido; menos obvio que el derramamiento de sangre, pero que ha dejado una profunda herida psíquica.

Ai Weiwei viajó por todo el mundo para documentar la crisis de refugiados en el flujo humano

¿Los costos de ayudar serían eclipsados ​​por el precio que tendríamos que pagar al no ayudar?


El verdadero costo de no ayudar no es simplemente dejar a los necesitados en la oscuridad, sino que se puede ver el deterioro de la sociedad humana. Puedes ver las mejores partes de la mente humana desperdiciadas debido a la miopía, la búsqueda de ganancias, la cobardía y el egoísmo. Esto es realmente trágico para un individuo y la sociedad.

¿Es absurdo el concepto de fronteras entre diferentes áreas de la tierra?

Siempre habrá fronteras mientras haya ricos y pobres y mientras haya naciones de rápido desarrollo y menos motivadas. Los bordes son como montañas físicas y ríos. No desaparecerán pronto. Sin embargo, existen fronteras aún más severas en los corazones y las mentes de las personas, que pueden detener la capacidad de la humanidad de unirse.

El flujo humano de Ai Weiwei está en los cines ahora

Fuente: https://www.bigissue.com/interviews/ai-weiwei-conclusion-lot-inhumanity-us/

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