How Education Became Nobody's Business

Political control has yielded a compulsory school curriculum of mindnumbing sterility, devoid of educational imagination or intelligence, and enforced by a crude technology. How did this come to be the outcome of a century of mass education, mass democracy, and social research? Where do educators and educational researchers go from here?     

Mobilization of community resources to work with abusive and neglectful families: Community organization in New York state

This article describes the community organization experience of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell University in connection with the federally financed Resource Center on Child Abuse and Neglect which it has operated since 1975. Early on, the Center decided to concentrate its efforts on organizing local task forces on child abuse and neglect which would work at the community level to improve services for families and children afflicted with the problem. As a result, over 50 such groups were organized and they have stimulated creation of over 100 new services including Parents Anonymous chapters, parent aides, multidisciplinary teams and parenting education projects. In short, the local community organization approach enabled a small state level staff to stimulate a major mobilization of resources for child abuse and neglect at the community level throughout the state. The process began with several “trial and error” experiences in rural New York. This led to technical assistance in task force formation for a dozen more counties and finally to regional workshops on task force organizations. The process culminated with formation of a statewide federation of the local groups. The Center is now implementing the approach in New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.     

Latent scrutiny: personal archives as perpetual mementos of the official gaze

This article examines the significance, in the lives of those who experienced out-of-home care as children, of the archived records of their institutionalisation. The affective ramifications of accessing the records as adults are discussed, with especial focus on the records’ capacity to revive past suffering. Drawing on the work of Bruner (Crit Inq Autumn 1–21,1991, Consumption and everyday life, Sage, London, 1997) and MacIntyre (After virtue: a study in moral theory, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981), a ‘narrative’ model of the self is utilised to account for the negative effect of systemic flaws in the records’ original composition. Such flaws, it is argued, have the potential to disrupt the individual’s sense of self. Both the authors, who experienced out-of-home care as children, present their own experiences of accessing the records, as case studies. The records’ manifold inaccuracies and inadequacies are interpreted in the light of prevailing welfare practices, in particular a highly damaging judgemental paradigm of gendered and moralistic assumptions of the inferior character of those in care. The authors conclude by arguing that research into the archives should involve the direct participation, as ‘insider researchers’, of those who experienced the matters contained in the records. Such participation is essential if the process of revealing and interpreting the archives is to maintain the dignity of the records’ subject individuals, and ensure the integrity of the research.     

Development of an aerobic capacity prediction model from one-mile run/walk performance in adolescents aged 13–16 years

A popular algorithm to predict VO_2Peak from the one-mile run/walk test (1MRW) includes body mass index (BMI), which manifests practical issues in school settings. The purpose of this study was to develop an aerobic capacity model from 1MRW in adolescents independent of BMI. Cardiorespiratory endurance data were collected on 90 adolescents aged 13–16 years. The 1MRW was administered on an outside track and a laboratory VO_2Peak test was conducted using a maximal treadmill protocol. Multiple linear regression was employed to develop the prediction model. Results yielded the following algorithm: VO_2Peak = 7.34 × (1MRW speed in m s^?1) + 0.23 × (age × sex) + 17.75. The New Model displayed a multiple correlation and prediction error of R = 0.81, standard error of the estimate = 4.78 ml kg^?1·min^?1, with measured VO_2Peak and good criterion-referenced (CR) agreement into FITNESSGRAM’s Healthy Fitness Zone (Kappa = 0.62; percentage agreement = 84.4%; Φ = 0.62). The New Model was validated using k-fold cross-validation and showed homoscedastic residuals across the range of predicted scores. The omission of BMI did not compromise accuracy of the model. In conclusion, the New Model displayed good predictive accuracy and good CR agreement with measured VO_2Peak in adolescents aged 13–16 years.