The economization of every aspect of life in today’s consumer society has had a particularly pernicious influence on public education. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, society saddled education with the task of infusing respectable knowledge in young people’s heads. Politicians...
I'm a nationally syndicated columnist, author of several books and a speaker on global business, labor and economic trends. I'm also a beneficiary, not a victim, of dyslexia, a learning disability characterized by reading, writing and decoding difficulties. Why do I say beneficiary? Read...
When it comes to teaching, there is a common saying: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” This perception of the profession in the United States makes it a rather unattractive field. This might explain why public schools have been haunted by staffing problems for decades. US...
Bill Gates had his first extended moment in history at the end of the 20th century. He regularly appeared as the richest, but also the nerdiest, man on earth. His rarely eclipsed top ranking lasted for at least two decades. Perhaps bored by the idea of holding wealth, he eventually decided to...
Every publication has a worldview. Each cultivates a style of thought, ideology or philosophy designed to comfort the expectations of its readers and to confirm a shared way of perceiving the world around them. Even Fair Observer has a worldview, in which, thanks to the diversity of its...
Two decades into the 21st century, humanity is faced with a plethora of unprecedented global crises. After SARS-1, multiple novel avian influenza strains, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the current COVID-19 pandemic is by far the most severe and widespread public health crisis in at least...
This week, Fair Observer featured an article with the title “Social Learning Can Help Transform Crisis Into Opportunity.” The authors, Deborah Brosnan, Andreas Rechkemmer and James Bohland make some important points related to the global crisis affecting education that the coronavirus pandemic...
A new report from the International Monetary Fund says that COVID-19 will increase income inequality in emerging markets and developing countries, “further widening the gap between rich and poor” and increasing the urgency for “investment in retraining and reskilling programs can...
It was instructive that probably the most consequential event in the life of the Indian Republic merited nothing more than three pro-forma single-sentence references to “epidemics and pandemics” in the recently-adopted National Education Policy 2020. The policy must have been discussed and...
The union cabinet of the government of India recently announced its 2020 National Education Policy (NEP). This is the first education policy developed by a non-Congress party government since independence. Coming 34 years after the last formulation of a fully-fledged education policy, Indians...
In 2015, world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly agreed to 17 goals for a better world. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the aim is to meet these objectives by the year 2030 in a bid to end poverty, achieve gender equality, ensure access to quality education,...
