Ignoring Science: It’s Not Just The Schools
By Peter Schrag
Anyone looking for big news in the just released report on the teaching of science in California elementary schools may well file it under dog bites man.
In a word, elementary school science teaching is lame – an average of a little over an hour a week – by teachers most of whom say they’re not well prepared to teach it and have few resources to work with. Some 77 percent of elementary principals say teaching science is essential but only 44 percent say “that a student would receive high-quality science instruction in his/her school.” Is anyone surprised?
More pertinent, perhaps, is what the report, commissioned by the Center on the Future of Teaching and Learning, doesn’t discuss, and that’s the national environment of willful ignorance and proud denial of all intellectual discipline, science and economics particularly. Even the ablest teachers have a steep hill to climb.
Bridging the Income Gap
By Dick Meister
There's obviously no easy way to bridge the income gap between the rich and the rest of us or to combat the other serious economic problems raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement. But keep in mind the crucial if not decisive role that labor unions can play in righting our economic wrongs.
Union members earn a lot more than non-union workers overall and within particular occupations, and in age, gender and racial groups, and so spend more. They have more and greater fringe benefits, a greater voice in community and political affairs and otherwise are in a good position to span the income gap as well as contribute to the growth of the economy that's so badly needed.
The 99% Seek a Just Economy, Not Just an Economy
By Leo Gerard
United Steelworkers
Republicans jammed together a mess of old, failed and vague schemes and called it a jobs bill. Sen. John McCain conceded the reason for the rehash: “Part of it is in response to the president saying we don’t have a proposal.”
They still don’t. This despite the fact that they promised voters during their campaign to take control of the U.S. House one year ago that they’d create jobs. That they’d focus on jobs. That nothing was more important to them than jobs.