General Education,General‐Technical Education and Integration

Summaries

English

Answers to questions pertaining to general education and basic subjects, as well as to vocational education (general‐technical education in particular) and the principle of integration cannot be reduced to formal speculations or to bare definitions, no matter how elegant and correct. In our era, which is the era of logic and of data‐processing, of automation and computers‐‐the analysis of the question of general and general‐technical education and the corresponding basic subjects of contemporary education must have the qualities of logical and epistemological necessity. The renaissance of formal and mathematical logic in contemporary general education and the inroads made by these subjects into the content and structure of contemporary vocational training‐‐are facts and trends without precedence in the history of education and school. Other developments from which there can be no retreat are the inclusion of data‐processing into the content and structure of the general education school, and the heavy reliance on mathematics in the process of vocational training, combined with elements of cybernetics, formal and mathematical logic, and science of management and control. Also, the time has come for a new principle of teaching, the principle of integration.     

A microfluidic platform for measuring electrical activity across cells

In this paper, we present a microfluidic chip that is capable of measuring electrical conductance through gap junction channels in a 2-dimensional cell sheet. The chip utilizes a tri-stream laminar flow to create a non-conductive sucrose gap between the two conducting solutions so that electrical current can pass across the sucrose gap only through the cells. Using the chip, we tested the effect of a gap junction inhibitor, 2-APB, on the electrical coupling of connexin 43 (Cx43) gap junction channels in NRK-49F cells. We found that 2-APB reversibly blocks the conductivity in a dose-dependent manner. The tri-stream chip further allows us to simultaneously follow the conductance changes and dye diffusion in real time. We show that 2-APB affects both conductance and diffusion, supporting the interpretation that both sets of data reflect the same gap junction activity. The chip provides a generic platform to investigate gap junction properties and to screen drugs that may inhibit or potentiate gap junction transmission.     

The Activist Professional and the Reinstatement of Trust

Public sector reform in the field of education has been ongoing and relentless. Whether in the UK, Europe, the USA or Australasia, there has been an expectation that the education 'industry' can be managed in the same way as any other commercial enterprise with an emphasis upon forms of accountability which require less and less professional judgment on the part of practitioners. In this article we examine the growth of the 'audit society' and its consequences for professional practice in education. We indicate that there are two responses to bureaucratic surveillance: to act as an entrepreneurial professional or as an activist professional. We argue that the latter is achievable when trust is reinstated through the community of professional practice itself. We illustrate our case using issues surrounding the establishment of professional standards for teachers and we develop strategies for activist professionalism in education.     

Adult learning in ontario

Ontario, a province located in central Canada, has a population of over 8 million people. Although the total area of the province is over 400,000 square miles (over I million square kilometres), the overwhelming majority of the population lives in southern Ontario, which includes less than one-third of the area of the province.The Ontario school system offers elementary and secondary education to all children and young persons able to profit from instruction. The school programme covers kindergarten, eight years of elementary instruction, and five years of secondary school. Compulsory school attendance has been enforced since 1870. At present the age of compulsory attendance is 6 to 16; kindergarten is voluntary at the age of 5, but nearly all children of this age are enrolled. Since the second half of the 1960s, junior kindergarten is being offered in many schools, and by 1974 the percentage of Ontario's 4-year-olds enrolled in junior kindergarten was 33 per cent. As far as the secondary school is concerned, in 1974/75 the net enrolment rate¹ of persons age 16 was 87 per cent; of age 17, 69 per cent; and of 18, 34 per cent.The post-secondary educational system consists primarily of two major components: community colleges with over ninety compuses serving all the major economic regions of Ontario; and universities.The community colleges were introduced in the 1960s with the main purpose of providing joboriented programmes beyond the secondary level for high-school graduates who require post-secondary training and education other than university. They also offer programmes to meet the educational needs of adults and out-of-school youth, whether or not they are secondary-school graduates.In 1975/76 the post-secondary enrolment of full-time students in community colleges was about 60,000, and in universities about 160,000. However, the number of part-time credit students enrolled in colleges considerably exceeds full-time enrolment, while the number of part-time university students reached 75,000. In addition, many hundreds of thousands of adults participate in non-formal learning opportunities offered by the colleges and universities, as well as by a great variety of other organizations, such as the local school board, social, community and cultural organizations, municipal authorities, private schools, sports and interest clubs, etc. author of numerous educational films, television programmes and publications, among others, Broadcasting for Adult Education: A Guidebook to World-wide Experience (Unesco Press).