The River of Hope

I watched a touching, inspiring story of a government funded organization, Earth Conservation Corps, that supported reform in one of the roughest, most crime and unemployment ridden areas of Washington DC by hiring youth 17 to 25 and leading them in conservation in their community, especially the Anacostia River ecosystem. Through this community based program, youth came off the corners and streets to come together in a meaningful endeavor and along the way learned critical skills for employment, such as tolerance, communication, leadership, technology and research. They developed a more caring, responsible, peaceful community around themselves.

Next, I watched the heartbreaking story of the emotional devastation of the same community when the insidious violence that characterized their area came among them and someone shot and killed the young and promising journalist for the Earth Conservation Corps. These two short videos illustrate the power of social justice and peace in the midst of violence and injustice. The youth were often transformed through this program from hopelessness and self destructive behaviors to caring, responsible members of society working with a meaningful purpose.

Watch The River of Hope

Watch In Memory and Honor of Aaron L. Teeter

Altruism and Game Theory Research

The issue of social justice is addressed in game theory presented in "prisoner's dilemma". Both players are better off if both cooperate and remain silent. The dilemma arises because one can gain an advantage by betraying the other, however, that backfires if both decide to betray each other.

An even more insightful game of social strategy was developed from the prisoner's dilemma game by Robert Axelrod. He created an artificial intelligence tournament (IPD Tournament) where computer programs were set up to play the game repeatedly. Past experience through repeated playing of the game added a new level of social considerations. Axelrod analyzed the top-scoring strategies and outlined several conditions that were necessary for a strategy to be successful over time: being nice initially, retaliating whenever betrayed, forgiving in order not to get stuck in an endless cycle of revenge, and being non-envious because the most successful strategy--being nice--makes it impossible to score more than the other player. Axelrod found that over many repetitions of the game with different strategies, greedy strategies tended to do very poorly and more altruistic strategies did best. Using this model, he theorized about "the evolution of altruistic behavior from mechanisms that are initially purely selfish." This game theory model has also been applied to learning theory such as the development of trust and cooperation within groups. Axelrod wrote The Evolution of Cooperation and its sequel, The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration.

Read the Wikipedia article Prisoner's Dilemma

Read the Wikipedia article The Evolution of Cooperation

Safety and Ethics 2.0

While looking at websites concerning the uses of wikis by teachers, I came across a slide show from a presentation on the safety and ethics of 2.0 technology. When we viewed the links our instructor provided for us to create our blogs, we were introduced to the author of this presentation, Cool Cat Teacher (Vicky Davis). Here she set "the current technology landscape in terms of the hardware that are causing concerns in schools." Teams discussed scenarios and then presented them to the group. In the slide show the technologies are outlined. The point was made that it would be extremely difficult to ban everything that gives students access to possibly problematic content and at the same time banning the technology would put students at greater risk concerning their safety. The author states, "The purpose was to bring all aspects of each ethical dilemma to light so that educators can return to their schools or classrooms and advocate well-informed policy changes." A lot of discussion details are missing from the slide presentation, however, the current technology she discusses is some I have not yet encountered personally and the points made concerning safety and ethics of this technology are interesting and important.

The presentation can be viewed at: Safety and Ethics 2.0

A related presentation by the same author: New Technologies in Education

No Child Left Behind Thwarts Refugees

Padron, the author of the commentary titled No Child Left Behind Thwarts Refugees, points out that the NCLB Act does not address the needs or realities of refugee students, categorized as Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE). According to Padron, "SIFE children enter the district at all grade levels throughout the academic year and are placed according to chronological age. So, a 10-year-old enters at fifth grade and a 15-year-old at 10th grade, depending on birth date. These students spent most of their lives running and in refugee camps where they may have received some but little formal schooling." I do not disagree with placing children according to age. I think inclusion is important for all children and that it promotes peace and social justice as long as the resources for meeting these children's needs are available to their schools and communities.

Concerning both SIFE children and ESL children, the author also points out that "Regardless of country or language, all students receive the one-year waiver and then are given grade-level exams under No Child Left Behind." This aspect of the NCLB must create a lot of stress on any school with SIFE and/or ESL students. Research shows that such children need instruction in their native language as they learn English and that it can take five to seven years to reach the proficiency to learn course content in English. As Padron emphasizes, "Many of these [SIFE] children are suffering from post-traumatic shock disorder and a host of health issues - not to mention their academic needs based on NCLB expectations. This is a fatal shortcoming of NCLB that needs further attention." I'll say!

Read the commentary: No Child Left Behind Thwarts Refugees