In the last 20 years, a reversal of the gender gap in higher education (HE) has been observed both in developed and developing countries. Nowadays, more women than men are studying HE. Nevertheless, averages tend to high disparities and gender gaps are still observed when indicators take poverty and ethnicity into account. This paper uses…

The aim of this paper is to present and explain the long and bitter contestation between two poles over the orientation, the aims and the content of education as well as the form of the Greek language to be used in the school textbooks. During the last seventy years (1750-1821) of the Ottoman rule of Greece the poles were cultural but were…

Focusing mainly on the United Kingdom, this article reviews a decade of national and international policy and legal changes in relation to disabled children and their families. It discusses attempts to transform the ways that disabled children are perceived and the rights accorded to them. The UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons,…

At the conclusion of many courses on race and racism, students, having learned, some for the first time, about the existence, origins, and complex dimensions of racial domination in America, are left pondering their next steps. "What is to be done?" many ask. "And what, exactly, is it that we want?" Important as they are, these…

Even before withstanding one of the most devastating economic crises in American history, families living in poverty have battled a dominant discourse that labels them as lacking personal responsibility, initiative, and the ability to make "good" choices. This discourse is reflected in the parent-involvement mandates of the No Child Left…

Panda-hugger and dragon-slayer are phrases used to describe two different kinds of China-watchers, and increasingly, two different types of people in the general public. A panda-hugger is someone who says that almost everything going on in China is good, that China's progress is a great thing for the world, and that any problems are peripheral. A…

Increasing rates of school enrolment have changed childhoods in the global South, so that it is now the norm for children to attend at least some years of primary school. This paper explores the extent to which valuing of children as educational projects and outcomes may be displacing previous valuations of children as contributors to the domestic…

Popular discourse and advocacy efforts characterize homelessness as a social problem bound by the present-centered concerns of physical affliction and material deprivation. Wayne Powers's documentary film "Reversal of Fortune" exemplifies this tendency by performing a "social experiment" to investigate how giving a homeless man $100,000 would…

This article is a part of the "Why I Teach" series. The author has been immersed in the culture of Selma, Alabama for the past 15 months. The world knows Selma as a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement. Presidents and presidents-to-be have come here to commemorate the city's role in the struggle for equal voting rights. Despite the city's…

People face four fundamental dilemmas, which are essentially moral choices: (1) alleviating poverty; (2) removing the gap between rich and poor; (3) controlling the use of violence for political ends; and (4) changing the patterns of production and consumption and achieving the transition to sustainability. The world in which future generations…

Article considered the problems Mexico must face in caring for the educational and social needs of its people. (RK)

This article talks about the large achievement gap between children of color and their white peers. The reasons for the achievement gap are varied. First, many urban minorities come from a background of poverty. One of the detrimental effects of growing up in poverty is receiving inadequate nourishment at a time when bodies and brains are rapidly…

Surveys arguments for and against income redistribution in the United States against the background of the latest empirical and theoretical findings. (Author/JDH)

Explores the historical development of adoption and fostering attitudes and practice in Britain, noting the influence of socioeconomic class, of the stigma of illegitimacy, and of national economic prosperity in child welfare trends since the Middle Ages. (HTH)

The language in which we discuss public issues and public officials subtly evokes problematic beliefs about the nature of social problems, their causes, their seriousness, our success or failure in coping with them, which of their aspects are remediable, which cannot be changed, and what impact they have on which groups of people. Social cues…