WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was not a hearing. It was the mere burlesque of a hearing, rendered meaningless by a preposterously accelerated process that rendered all questioning perfunctory and that left all cheap evasions hanging in the air of the committee room the way cigarette smoke used to canopy the proceedings back ... Read More »
Democrats sliced holes in billionaire Betsy DeVos’ credentials to be the next U.S. Education Secretary at a confirmation hearing on Tuesday, raising doubts whether President-elect Donald Trump’s pick will win approval in the full Senate. The nomination of DeVos to head an agency that sets policy for younger children and ... Read More »
Senate Democrats hit Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, on all sides at her confirmation hearing Tuesday night. But the question that made her look worst required her to demonstrate a basic understanding of education policy — a test DeVos failed. Sen. Al Franken asked DeVos to explain ... Read More »
After Tom Casperson, a Republican state senator from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, began running for Congress in 2016, he assumed the family of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to be education secretary, would not oppose him. The DeVoses, a dominant force in Michigan politics for decades with a fortune ... Read More »
It’s shaping up to be a contentious year on the education beat, fueled in part by Donald Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election. For starters, in the weeks and months since his election, his campaign call for expanding school choice has sparked widespread discussion and debate. And while federal ... Read More »
The confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, the billionaire philanthropist who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of education, has been delayed for almost a week. DeVos’ hearing was scheduled for Wednesday, but late on Monday night, the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions announced it had been ... Read More »
Moral degradation has spread its tentacles far and wide, including in our education system (“Teaching peace to humanity”, Jan.6). The future generation is left to mechanically absorb factual knowledge, not wisdom. This rat race is a dangerous predicament. The ultimate goal of education — that of emancipating oneself — is ... Read More »
The most important matters in school education, about the nature of education itself and its place in a just and humane society, are not waiting to be discovered. We forget them at our peril. And if we do, we risk repeating the egregious mistakes of the past. We can also ... Read More »
Schools are in access of students, but what about education? The question that arises here is whether the enrolment ratio is enough to say that our students are getting education. Can we say that if there are a large number of schools then the literacy rate will increase in next ... Read More »
As part of the nation-wide movement by the All India Forum for Right to Education against the NDA Government’s draft New Education Policy, 2016, the Telangana Save Education Committee will conduct protest meets and rallies between January 1 and 31. Also a bus tour will be conducted in villages in ... Read More »
The odds are good that privatizing education will be part of the agenda for President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration. The Republican platform calls for increasing the role of banks in giving out student loans. And Mr. Trump and the platform advocate an expansion of both vouchers, which enable students to ... Read More »
For almost a decade now, 34-year-old Niranjan Giri, a night school teacher, says he has had only one priority — making night schools popular. He travels to different corners of the city, convincing those who can’t access school during the day to take up education in night schools. “Night shift ... Read More »
