Cuba,YanquizaciÓn,and the cult of EliÁn Gonzalez: A view from the 'enlightened' states

Using the recent controversy surrounding Elian Gonzalez as a centerpiece, and employing a Marxian critique of United States capitalism and imperialsm as a heuristic device, this essay explores the major contradictions surrounding the position taken by the Miami Mafia with respect to Elian and Cuba's communist regime. In doing so, it criticizes the US media portrayal of the saga surrounding "the miracle child". Paramount in this controversy is the campaign of misinformation directed at creating an erroneous image of life in Cuba grounded in the reactionary and virulently negative critique continually waged against Cuba's postrevolution social project. The authors explore the role played by the "Miami Mafia," the anti-Castro Cuban exile population in the United States, in conjunction with official pro-capitalist, "anticommunist" government and media apparatuses designed to create an environment of defamatory rhetoric against the nation of Cuba. In doing so, the authors bring to the surface contradictions and injustices inherent in both the rhetoric and the reality of US capitalism. In addition, this essay highlights the many achievements of the Cuban socialist project, focusing specifically on education. The authors share a concern about Cuba's recent economic experiment and put forward an argument about why market socialism should not be a viable option.     

Paradoxes of Sahrawi refugees' educational migration: promoting self-sufficiency or renewing dependency?

Education is often prioritised by refugee children and families, as well as by their political representatives and international actors alike. This article explores the specificities of the Sahrawi refugee education system, focusing in particular on the nature, motivations and implications of Sahrawi refugee youths' educational migration to Cuba through a scholarship programme designed to promote self-sufficiency and socio-economic development in the Sahrawi refugee camps. Drawing upon interviews conducted with Cuban-educated Sahrawi refugees in Cuba and in their Algerian-based refugee camps I argue that, despite educational migration having become a central part of Sahrawi refugee children's, youths' and adults' imaginary landscapes, Sahrawi youths' educational migration to Cuba is ultimately paradoxical in nature, reshaping and reinforcing, rather than reducing, Sahrawi refugees' dependence upon Western aid providers.     

Absorbing the shocks: The case of food security,extension and the agricultural knowledge and information system in Havana,Cuba

Since 1959, Cuba has undergone a series of political changes, and since 1989, Cuba has had to invent, evolve, and implement a new system of food production that provides lessons from which others can learn. Many of the changes since 1989 caused shocks to the food-security system. As a result many institutions and individuals had to absorb the realities of a food production and distribution system faced with major disruption. These shocks led to adjustments and adaptations necessary to ensure a secure food supply for the 11 million inhabitants of Cuba. This article focuses on adjustments and adaptations made in the extension domain within Cuba's unique agricultural knowledge and information system.     

Form IV Cambridge School Certificate,Pupils' Aspirations in Zimbabwe

This article is based on two major studies. One study was carried out in 1985 and the other in 1987. The discussion examines Form IV Cambridge School Certificate pupils' aspirations in Zimbabwe with special reference to the post‐independence period. Among the main factors said to determine pupils' aspirations, highlighted in the study include: the class structures of scoiety, parents' occupations, gender, the urban‐rural dichotomy and the type of schools attended.

Pupils' aspirations for a developing country such as Zimbabwe have implications for the country's education policies. These implications are in areas such as the expansion of educational provisions, universal primary education, material provision, educational costs, manpower supply and demand and entry into the University.

As far as cost implications are concerned, there is debate in Zimbabwe as to whether the country can afford free and compulsory primary education given limited resources. At the same time limited resources have affected the quality of education. This article attempts to give suggestions as to what education policy makers could do to improve upon the situation.     

肯尼迪政府初期的美国对古巴政策探微

肯尼迪上台后，基本上延续了艾森豪威尔政府时期的美国对古巴遏制政策，一方面为了防止古巴革命向拉丁美洲扩散，准备武装颠覆卡斯特罗政府的步伐随即加快；另一方面成功地说服美洲国家组织成员国及欧洲盟国支持其贸易禁运政策。然而其政策没有达到消灭卡斯特罗的目的，反而使古巴对苏联更加依赖，同时也加深了卡斯特罗政府对美国入侵古巴、扼杀古巴革命的恐惧，使古巴对苏联寻求更多的经济、军事援助。最后导致古巴导弹危机爆发。     

Effects of social class and school conditions on educational enrollment and achievement of boys and girls in rural Viet Nam

This study examines the effects of parental SES, school quality, and community factors on children's enrollment and achievement in rural areas in Viet Nam, using logistic regression and ordered logistic regression. Multivariate analysis reveals significant differences in educational enrollment and outcomes by level of household expenditures and parental education, especially mother's education. Mother's status is more important in determining school enrollment than educational outcome. In contrast, father's education increases the probability of learning. Once school quality is taken into account, differentials between the majority Kinh and ethnic minorities are not significant. Girls still do not have equal access to education, since girls doing badly in school drop out, while their male counterparts remain in school. The presence of a school in poor village does not override the effects of family background on educational enrollment. Controlling for school quality actually increases gap in educational enrollment by household expenditures and village income. Although educational costs consume, on average, one quarter of household expenditures per capita, school fees do not determine school enrollment, because many of the poor already receive exemption from or reduction in these fees.     

卡斯特罗与古巴

在卡斯特罗执政的近五十年内,古巴政权一直稳若磐石,这是与卡斯特罗的统治方略和人格魅力分不开的。无论在冷战时期,还是苏东解体后,他始终把经济发展和关系到民生大计的政策放在首位。同时他也与时俱进,审时度势,意识到古巴现代化的必然性。带领古巴人民走出了一条具有古巴特色的社会主义道路。这也是为什么卡斯特罗政权在美国历届政府的封锁下。依然受到古巴最广大人民拥戴的原因。     

Samuel Bowles,Herbert Gintis and Diane Ravitch: a classic controversy in education revisited

Two important books in the field of US education, Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America and Diane Ravitch's Revisionists Revised, are reviewed. The author contends that the dynamic tension in the debate on US education that existed in the late 1970s when these two books were published has virtually disappeared from the mainstream of educational thought. After more than a decade of conservative national leadership the mainstream debate on educational reform has centered on more technical and institutional issues and away from the fundamental philosophical debate over the role of schools in US society. The radical analysis informed by Marxism which Bowles & Gintis employed has been essentially eliminated from the mainstream of educational thought, while the conservative‐to‐liberal analyses have moved to the right politically. Diane Ravitch has continued to be a force in this debate; she is currently a US Assistant Secretary of Education. The author examines Ravitch's response to the radical critique represented by Bowles & Gintis and argues that without the latter's challenges to conventional reason, liberal educational thought will become increasingly conservative, sterile and reactionary. No salutary dialogue can emerge from parties (i.e. US conservative and liberal thought) who share similar basic assumptions about the nature of society and education.     

Getting the Distance Right: Ideal and Nonideal Theory in Philosophy of Education

When the debate over the value of ideal and nonideal theory crosses from political philosophy into philosophy of education, do the implications of the debate shift, and, if so, how? In this piece, Amy Shuffelton considers the premise that no normative political theory, ideal or nonideal, is of any use to human beings unless it can be affiliated with a credible educational theory that connects human beings as they are to human beings as that theory requires them to become. In her response to the five articles in this symposium, Shuffelton addresses their overlapping yet varied treatments of human subjectivity as developed through education. If one accepts that ideal theory is the appropriate starting place for political philosophy because otherwise we would have no polestar by which to orient ourselves, Shuffelton concludes, a corresponding philosophy of education is required to survey the trajectory between here and wherever one aims to go. To do so, it needs to keep its feet on the ground, even as it looks to the stars. If, on the other hand, ideal theory fails to heed the Yankee truism that you can't get there from here, such that philosophers who attempt to do so inevitably get lost on back roads, philosophy of education is still necessary to chart paths to reachable destinations.     

Litigation and Learning: Tensions in improving university lecturers' assessment practice

Current debate about assessment in higher education raises educational and political issues. Lecturers who wish to make their assessment more reliable and rigorous, as well as more effective in improving students' learning, need more than technical help to do so. This paper reports findings from an action research project which focused on assessment practice at the University of Sunderland, UK. It highlights tensions between genuine educational concerns to improve practice and more instrumental pressures, for example, to defend one's assessment practice from challenges by students, colleagues and external bodies. It is argued that improvement, rather than mere change, will require the commitment of people who possess intimate day-to-day contextual knowledge of assessment, and who recognise its educational and political complexities. The findings highlight two areas for further research: ways of inducting and involving students in an 'assessment community', and institutional staff development designed to improve assessment practice.     

The Coming Crisis in Cuban Education

Since the revolution of 1959 Cuba massively expanded and, in many respects, transformed its education system. While the strategy under Fidel Castro initially differed from other LDCs in its emphasis on mass education and technical training, with time the island has been inflicted with the same ‘diploma disease’ as so many other LDCs. And once inflicted, it has had exceptional difficulty curing the illness. The country has come to be overeducated, relative to the employment opportunities available. Overeducation has become a political as well as fiscal problem following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Soviet aid and trade in turn. Faced with the problem, the government is attempting to deschool the younger generation. However, families are resisting the downward mobility implicit in the education restructuring.     

Higher education in Vietnam: key areas need assistance

Many developing countries are in the process of restructuring their higher education system to meet their nation's socio-economic development. As their educational budget is not unlimited, working with international educational institutions has become one of the attractive solutions to improve the quality of their education and to make it relevant to meet their nation's educational demand for economic development. This paper identifies some key issues which have prevented the Vietnamese higher education system from serving effectively its country's open-door policy and provide necessary recommendations to help Vietnam overcome its short-comings and weaknesses. The issues identified together with recommendations, on the other hand, may help some educational policy makers from developed countries select their fields of assistance or cooperation as well as to establish their long term educational strategies to deal with developing countries such as Vietnam.     

Humans,Animals and the World We Inhabit—On and Beyond the Symposium ‘Second Nature,Bildung and McDowell: David Bakhurst's The Formation of Reason’

David Bakhurst's 2011 book ‘The Formation of Reason’ explores the philosophy of John McDowell in general and the Aristotelian notion of second nature more specifically, topics to which philosophers of education have not yet given adequate attention. The book's widespread appeal led to the symposium ‘Second Nature, Bildung and McDowell: David Bakhurst's The Formation of Reason’, which appeared in the first issue of the 50th anniversary volume of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2016. Despite its obvious educational relevance, whether and how Bakhurst's McDowellian line of philosophical argument shapes the domain of educational enquiry or discourse remains up for debate. The rich contributions of Sebastian Rödl, Paul Standish and Jan Derry help us confront this issue. Proceeding with an analysis that is partly explanatory and partly critical of the central aspects of their respective views, I try to show that the basic attraction of the McDowellian/Bakhurstian line of argument concerning educational thinking is that it enables us to address education in the proper context of the natural and the social. In other words, their depiction of a human being as a natural animal in a normative world allows us not to be perturbed either by the natural‐scientific conception of the natural or by the social constructivist thinking of the social, both of which have occasionally distorted how education is addressed and therefore impoverished our understanding of education itself. I conclude with a brief word on the significance of continuing and advancing the conversation initiated by the symposium by noting two viable examples of future work.     

Automatic promotion or large-scale repetition — which path to quality?

This article will examine two educational policies which are at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the decision to promote students from grade to grade — large scale repetition and automatic promotion. After summarizng the debate over repetition as it exists in developed countries, the implications of the two policies will be examined as they function within the educational systems of Ghana and Togo, neighboring West African countries. Automatic promotion is written into Ghana's 1987 educational reform package while Togo has some of the highest repetition rates in the world. In these two countries, as in most regions of the developing world, increasing social equity through provision of education for all is balanced with the need to maintain and improve educational quality.     

Rethinking Nature and Nurture in Education

This paper evaluates how our understanding of natural talent affects questions of educational justice. We argue that education debates currently suffer from a naïve understanding of ‘nature versus nurture’ and present a more rigorous approach that allows us to see what is required for fair treatment of students. As it stands, there is controversy over the extent to which a student's achievements are a result of their natural talent, as opposed to the quality of their education. For those on the nature side of the debate, students who are performing poorly just are not cut out for academic life, and redoubling efforts at furthering their education is both a waste of resources for society and pointless torture for the student. For those on the nurture side, failing students are a sign of a failing education system. To make progress on educational justice, we must move away from attempts to simply assign proportional influence to natural talent and education, respectively, and instead look at the broader landscape of individual reactions to a range of educational environments.     

Educational science,mental testing,and the ideology of intelligence

Abstract

Early childhood education has been characterised in recent times by discussion associated with the similarities, differences and various merits of developmental and sociocultural theory as theoretical informants to curriculum and educational practice. In the main, these discussions centre on the way each theory views development and positions the child as a learner. This article argues that the debate may be furthered by considering the extent to which each perspective is related to the other and draws on Kuhn's conceptualisation of the evolution of knowledge in communities of practice in order to examine the extent to which newer explanations for development are being considered in relation to traditional ideas. The article concludes with an emphasis on the idea that the evolution of knowledge concerned with children's development and learning is a process of continued growth and one that requires an active awareness as to how and why it is utilised and interpreted as an informant to early childhood education.     

Opinion polling and the measurement of Americans’ attitudes regarding education*

Abstract

The meaning, measurement, and implications of ‘public opinion’ have long been a source of debate. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the educational priorities of elites in the US reflect the educational priorities of the American public. To do so, we focus on one particular segment of the education policy-making elite – education poll creators. Through a content analysis of questions asked between 1969 and 2013 in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools, we examine the salience of key educational issues over time. We compare these trends to the proportion of poll respondents who label those issues the ‘biggest problem’ facing schools, thereby approximating two different conceptions of public opinion regarding education. We find that the issues that receive the most coverage by pollsters do not typically match the issues that respondents claim to be the biggest problems in schools. In light of the important role that opinion polls may play in shaping discussion and debate over educational issues, we argue that further study of the construction of public opinion is warranted.     

The upward Brain drain and a myth

Abstract

A recent article on education in China succeeded in giving a fresh tweak to the arguments concerning whether aptitude or achievement testing is more likely to promote equality of educational opportunity. In ‘The Diploma Disease’ Ronald Dore expounded the view that aptitude testing is to be preferred for selection purposes on the grounds that it gives more weight to ‘innate potential’ (his term) than does achievement testing which produces results more affected by quality of schooling, an influence which is all too variable, especially in emerging countries. Although shot through with considerable ambivalence, Dore's view could still be instrumental in persuading educational and political authorities in those countries that aptitude testing will do what he says it will do ‐ ‘make for greater equality of educational opportunity and be more effective in mobilizing all available talent’. And even if these authorities have never set eyes on Dore's book, there is sufficient evidence that some of them are acting as if they had taken Dore's view on board for it to be worth re‐opening the question. It is argued here that Dore's position cannot be supported.     

Newman's Theory of a Liberal Education: A Reassessment and its Implications

John Henry Newman provided the basic vocabulary and guiding rationale sustaining the ideal of a liberal education up to our day. He highlighted its central focus on the cultivation of the intellect, its reliance upon broadly based theoretical knowledge, its independence of moral and religious stipulations, and its being its own end. As new interpretations enter the debate on liberal education further educational possibilities emanate from Newman's thought beyond those contained in his theory of a liberal education. These are found in Newman's broader idea of a university education, incorporating social, moral, and spiritual formation and in his philosophical thought where he develops a theory of knowledge at odds with the Idea of a University. There are, in addition, intriguing possibilities that arise from Newman's theory of reasoning in concrete affairs both because of their implicit challenge to inherited theories of a liberal education and because of the educational possibilities they hold out in their own right and in actual educational developments to which they may lend support.     

A history of the right: The battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.