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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Schools Matter: Bloggers Beware: The Online Bedbugs Want to Hitch a Ride

Schools Matter: Bloggers Beware: The Online Bedbugs Want to Hitch a Ride:


Bloggers Beware: The Online Bedbugs Want to Hitch a Ride


The fat bedbugs that run the online diploma mill business are unrelenting.  They write lengthy friendly comments to blog posts, and just underneath some of the verbiage, they attach their swollen transparent red blood-filled carcasses in hopes that some unsuspecting reader will take their links home.  That is how their blood-sucking infestations spread, and once victims have given them an opening, it is too late.

Another trick they use on bloggers is to write emails inviting themselves to write articles for your blog on, who knows, how to be happy when covered with bedbugs, or how to use bedbugs to get ahead in life.

A Child-Centered Nation (Hint: Not the U.S.)

Those of us who are decades into our careers as educators and educational scholars/historians are likely more than exhausted by and deeply skeptical of (if not cynical about) international comparisons.

More often than not, international comparisons connected to U.S. public education are oversimplified at best andunforgivably misleading at worst, but our exhaustion, skepticism, and cynicism must be tempered when international comparisons offer authentic and complex evidence of how entire nations are committed to child well-being through their social and educational commitments—especially as those commitments contrast with the discourse and policies coming from either major political party in the U.S.

If you care about democracy and equity, and if you care about the role of universal public education and all public