Presents abstracts of articles about laws on compulsory education in China; legislation affecting handicapped students in Czechoslovakia; laws on comprehensive schools in Finland; educational research on secondary education in Hungary; and reports of the Japanese National Council of Educational Reform. (CLB)

This study examines whether education had a causal impact on health, following synthetic cohorts using successive U.S. Censuses to estimate the impact of educational attainment on mortality rates. It focuses on compulsory education laws from 1915 to 1939, a time when at least 30 states changed their compulsory schooling and child labor laws, as…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the spread of astronomy contents throughout the Spanish pre-university educative system as stated in the curricula established by law. Possible contents of Astronomy were first classified in groups and then looked after in the official curricula of the different subjects throughout the Spanish…

As the secondary school has become an agent of mass education, it has been beset by complex problems, particularly in the identification of its educational role and its purposes as a social institution. Key features of the identity crisis in Australian secondary schools are described. (MLW)

British standards governing school attendance have been modified and strengthened by the 1993 legislation. The required education may be received outside the public school system, but alternative schools in the private sector remain subject to control or regulation. (77 footnotes) (MLF)

Data collected from 501 University of Central Queensland students required to attend at least one residential activity, such as science lab, found that significant numbers did not find residential experiences useful or important. The many reasons students choose distance education make it imperative that any necessary residential activities be…

Free but compulsory state education systems may be untenable. Contradictions appear between education in newly democratized eastern Europe and in Britain, where the government advocates free market but centralizes control of curriculum and instruction. Other contradictions lie between state education as social control and consumer choice. (SK)

Of the 50 states, 37 do not mandate education in prisons, although 8 are considering a policy change. Many programs include incentives and sanctions, and various evaluation criteria, such as General Educational Development achievement, test scores, and retention in the program are used. (SK)

Numeracy in the workplace is much more complex than the simple application of mathematical knowledge and skills learned in school or vocational education. Although the knowledge and skills developed in compulsory education or in formal adult and vocational education and training courses play a foundational role, they are inevitably transformed…

The Praeger Handbook of American High Schools contains entries that explore the topic of secondary schools in the United States. Entries are arranged alphabetically and cover topics as varied as assessment to the history of the American high school, from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to gay and straight student alliances, from the No…

Compulsory Greek education has long shown its need for revision. The Greek Pedagogical Institute (GPI) has presented the cross-thematic approach as a panacea, yet further changes are necessary in terms of experiential learning, school subject demarcation, teaching time management, teaching material, and the student/educator role. This article…

This study examines Soviet strategies for education during its first four decades as they may be deduced from the resources put at its disposal. Despite the political importance for education and for proletarian empowerment at the workplace ("vydvizhenie"), the total enrolment ratio was only one-third higher than in the Tsarist period,…

It is an underlying principle of Australian Education Review (AER) 54 that active efforts should be made to cultivate the latent bilingual potential within Australia's wider population and that this should be linked to major improvements in the quality of language teaching in schools. A combined approach of this kind will require investment in…

A review of material on driver education in Illinois was conducted to support the recommendation that the state mandate for driver education be removed. Examination of the historical background and the components of the mandate suggested that there were three major goals for driver education: traffic accident reduction, provision of driver…

In response to recent nostalgia about education's past, the author reviews the reality of educational history. In the 1950s schools were affected by disruption and violence. In the 1930s declining standards were cited. In the teens there was a 50 percent dropout rate. In the 1900s problems of student boredom and violence were documented. (MD)