Throughout much of the world higher education has been subject to scrutiny, including for example cost, outcomes, stakeholder value, and change. The intensity of the scrutiny and the possible consequences in terms of change have accelerated as a result of 2009 being the year of financial turbulence and scarce resources being used to prop up…

A case pending in a federal court of appeals in California may clarify a surprisingly murky question: Do faculty members at public universities enjoy a special privilege to speak freely about institutional matters, or, as far as the First Amendment is concerned, are they just another category of government hirelings? Juan Hong, a professor of…

Many people in the early childhood education field are afraid of government relations work, intimidated by politicians, and believe the whole process is unseemly. The author asserts that they should not be afraid nor be intimidated because government relations is not rocket science and fundamentally officeholders are no different from the rest of…

One of the most important topics for today's information technology professional is the study of legal and regulatory issues as they relate to privacy and security of personal and business data and identification. This manuscript describes the topics and approach taken by the instructors that focuses on independent research of source documents and…

On their visit to the National Archives Experience in Washington, D.C., students in Jenni Ashley and Gay Brock's U.S. history classes at the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, participated in a pilot program called "The Constitution by Cell." Armed with their cell phones, a basic understanding of the Constitution, and a willingness to…

Recent years, increasing diverse attitudes to religious education in the classroom make many private and public school face the controversy of "should religion be taught as a subject at schools?" (Kaiser, 2003; Slattery & Rapp, 2003; Wallace, Forman, Caldwell & Willis, 2003.) As a result, many administrators and teachers are making efforts in…

This article discusses the interpretations of the court's ruling in "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District 1." The decision handed down June 28, the last day of the Supreme Court's term, does not prohibit school districts from voluntarily integrating schools as long as the school district meets certain legal…

Allowing public funds to be used for tuition and other expenses in private schools through a voucher system has been the source of debate in legislative and educational forums for almost half a century, but only recently have school vouchers become a serious school reform strategy. This article provides a brief overview of the voucher plans…

The process of voting is a fundamental right and privilege of any democracy. In fact, "Merriam-Webster" defines the word democracy as "a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free…

Civic education began wandering in the curricular wilderness in the 1960s, when Vietnam and then Watergate brought disenchantment, rebellion, experimentation, a loss of faith in traditional institutions and traditional leaders, the breakup of consensus, the weakening of the core culture and ultimately the erosion of curricular requirements in…

Enshrined in the First Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights that was added to the then 4 year old US Constitution in 1791, it should be no surprise that freedom of speech may be perhaps the most cherished right of Americans. If anything, freedom of speech, which is properly treated as a fundamental human right for children, certainly stands out…

Last December saw another predictable report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a self-described watchdog group, highlighting how higher education is supposedly under siege from a politically correct plague of so-called hate-speech codes. In that report, FIRE declared that as many as 96 percent of top-ranked colleges…

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the people of the United States from unreasonable searches and seizures. On first reading, these protections seem clearly defined. The amendment was meant to protect Americans from the kinds of random searches and seizures that the colonists experienced under British colonial rule. Under…

Free speech in American higher education was sorely tested by three bizarre events in the waning days of September and another incident in early October. Each one has potentially grave implications for free expression and academic freedom, and thus merits closer scrutiny. The first event was the extension, then withdrawal and eventual…

In this article, the author describes the experiences middle school students on a field trip to the new Constitution in Action Learning Lab in the Boeing Learning Center at the National Archives can expect. There, middle school students take on the roles of archivists and researchers collecting and analyzing primary sources from the holdings of…