TODAY’S education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share the belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology.

Neither strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason. It’s impossible to improve education by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy human relationships. All youngsters need to believe that they have a stake in the future, a goal worth striving for, if they’re going to make it in school. They need a champion, someone who believes in them, and that’s where teachers enter the picture. The most effective approaches foster bonds of caring between teachers and their students.

Marketplace mantras dominate policy discussions. High-stakes reading and math tests are treated as the single metric of success, the counterpart to the business bottom line. Teachers whose students do poorly on those tests get pink slips, while those whose students excel receive merit pay, much as businesses pay bonuses to their star performers and fire the laggards. Just as companies shut stores that aren’t meeting their sales quotas, opening new ones in more promising territory, failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools, with new teachers and administrators, take their place. (...) Closing schools treats everyone there as guilty of causing low test scores, ignoring the difficult lives of the children in these schools — “no excuses,” say the reformers, as if poverty were an excuse. While these reformers talk a lot about markets and competition, the essence of a good education — bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum — goes undiscussed.

Public schools have been spending billions of dollars on technology which they envision as the wave of the future. (...) While technology can be put to good use by talented teachers, they, and not the futurists, must take the lead. The process of teaching and learning is an intimate act that neither computers nor markets can hope to replicate. Small wonder, then, that the business model hasn’t worked in reforming the schools — there is simply no substitute for the personal element.

Disponível em: http://www.nytimes.com/. Acesso em 16 ago 2014.

Why do some people call it “soccer”?

Known to most of the rest of the world as football, or “fútbol,” the beautiful game is almost exclusively referred to as soccer in the United States, but many Americans may be surprised to learn that our outlier moniker actually originated across the pond.

Games played by kicking, hitting, throwing or carrying a ball have been around for thousands of years, but in the mid-to-late-19th century many sports—such as baseball, soccer, and American football—codified their rulebooks into the forms we recognize today. Modern soccer was born in 1863, when representatives from several English schools and clubs got together to standardize a single set of rules for their matches. They dubbed their new organization the Football Association, and their version of the game became known as “Association Football.” The word association was used to distinguish their specific sport from other popular games of the day such as “rugby football.”

The word soccer comes from a slang abbreviation of the word association, which British players of the day adapted as “assoc,” “assoccer” and eventually soccer or soccer football. (The habit of adding –er to nicknames in British vernacular is frequently attributed to Oxford students of that period, and can be found in other sporting slang such as “rugger” for rugby.)

The parallel names soccer and football (or the combined soccer football) were used more or less interchangeably to refer to association football until well into the 20th century, at which point football emerged as the dominant name in most parts of the world. However, in countries where another football variety was already popular—such as America and Australia—the name soccer stuck around.

Disponível em: http://www.history.com/. Acesso em 11 ago 2014.

One of science's most baffling questions? Why we

yawn

Yawning has puzzled scientists for more than two millennia. But could a new theory settle the question once and for all? David Robson investigates.

Mid-conversation with Robert Provine, I have a compelling urge, rising from deep inside my body. The more I try to quash it, the more it seems to spread, until it consumes my whole being. Eventually, it is all I can think about – but how can I stop myself from yawning?

Many theories have instead focussed on the strange, contagious nature of yawning – a fact that I know only too well from my conversation with Provine. “Around 50% of people who observe a yawn will yawn in response,” he says. “It is so contagious that anything associated with it will trigger one… seeing or hearing another person, or even reading about yawning.” For this reason, some researchers have wondered if yawning might be a primitive form of communication – if so, what information is it transmitting? We often feel tired when we yawn, so one idea is that it helps set everyone’s biological clocks to the same rhythm. “In my view the most likely signalling role of yawning is to help to synchronize the behaviour of a social group – to make them go to sleep more or less at the same time,” says Christian Hess, at the University of Bern in Switzerland. With the same routine, a group can then work together more efficiently throughout the day.

Yet we also yawn during times of stress: Olympic athletes often do it before a race, while musicians sometimes succumb before a concert. So some researchers, including Provine, believe that the strenuous movements might have a more general role in rebooting the brain – when you are sleepy they make you more alert, or when you are distracted they make you more focussed. Spreading through a group, contagious yawns could then help everyone reach the same level of attention, making them more vigilant to a threat, for instance. The mechanism is somewhat hazy – though one French researcher, Olivier Walusinski, proposes that yawning helps to pump cerebrospinal fluid around the brain, which could trigger a shift in neural activity.

I’m willing to bet you’ve been stifling a few yawns yourself by this point – as Provine points out, reading or even thinking about yawning can be enough to set us off. So go ahead, let it out – and do so in the knowledge that you are enjoying one of life’s most enduring mysteries.

Disponível em: http://www.bbc.com/. Acesso em 12 ago 2014.

(adaptado).

“J.K Rowling has recast her ‘Harry Potter’ magic and reportedly brought Dumblebore back to life. A spokesperson for the author confirms Rowling sent a letter and a package to a Texas teenager who optimistically found strength in the words of a "Harry Potter" film after witnessing the murder of her immediate family.

Fifteen-year-old Cassidy Stay lost both parents and four siblings to a gunman in Texas last month. Cassidy was shot in the head and survived the gunshot wound only because she played dead. Authorities have called her survival a miracle. Cassidy had seen the unimaginable, but was still thinking about happiness. At a memorial for her family, Cassidy gave a speech in front of media saying she believed her family was ‘in much a better place.’ She quoted the words of Dumbledore, the wise headmaster of Hogwarts, she said ‘Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.’

The same day Cassidy gave her speech, a Facebook page called ‘We want JK Rowling to meet Cassidy Stay’ formed and quickly gained traction. While the group page acknowledges that Cassidy is not a follower of the page, the creator claims to know a friend of Cassidy's who ‘confirmed that JK Rowling did, in fact, write her a personalized letter from 'Dumbledore' (hand-written with purple ink). She was also sent a wand, an acceptance letter to Hogwarts with a school supply list, along with the 3rd book with JK's autograph’ the group post said.

Rowling's spokesperson told CNN: ‘We can confirm that J.K. Rowling sent Cassidy Stay a letter and package, but the contents of the letter and how it came about are private and between her and Cassidy. We're not commenting any further on the letter or what it contained.’”

Disponível em http://www.edition.cnn.com. Acesso em: 8 ago 2014

“J.K Rowling has recast her ‘Harry Potter’ magic and reportedly brought Dumblebore back to life. A spokesperson for the author confirms Rowling sent a letter and a package to a Texas teenager who optimistically found strength in the words of a "Harry Potter" film after witnessing the murder of her immediate family.

Fifteen-year-old Cassidy Stay lost both parents and four siblings to a gunman in Texas last month. Cassidy was shot in the head and survived the gunshot wound only because she played dead. Authorities have called her survival a miracle. Cassidy had seen the unimaginable, but was still thinking about happiness. At a memorial for her family, Cassidy gave a speech in front of media saying she believed her family was ‘in much a better place.’ She quoted the words of Dumbledore, the wise headmaster of Hogwarts, she said ‘Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.’

The same day Cassidy gave her speech, a Facebook page called ‘We want JK Rowling to meet Cassidy Stay’ formed and quickly gained traction. While the group page acknowledges that Cassidy is not a follower of the page, the creator claims to know a friend of Cassidy's who ‘confirmed that JK Rowling did, in fact, write her a personalized letter from 'Dumbledore' (hand-written with purple ink). She was also sent a wand, an acceptance letter to Hogwarts with a school supply list, along with the 3rd book with JK's autograph’ the group post said.

Rowling's spokesperson told CNN: ‘We can confirm that J.K. Rowling sent Cassidy Stay a letter and package, but the contents of the letter and how it came about are private and between her and Cassidy. We're not commenting any further on the letter or what it contained.’”

Disponível em http://www.edition.cnn.com. Acesso em: 8 ago 2014