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The Transatlantic Education Mega-Site...
Archived Civil Liberties and Human Rights Articles in the Media
Students can't get no privacy. Thanks to a new federal education law, high schools across the country are required to hand over students' names, addresses and phone numbers to military recruiters ...More from Wired NewsImmigrants told to speak English - even at home. David Blunkett faced a backlash from race groups after he said that parents should speak English to their children - at home - to prevent "schizophrenic rifts" between generations of their families ...More from The Times
Learning while black. You've heard of racial profiling on the roads and in the skies. But are minority kids also being unfairly singled out for discipline in schools? ...More from TIME
Court: 'God' makes pledge illegal. US schoolkids will no longer be allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance if a ruling by a federal appeals court that it is unconstitutional holds up ...More from Wired News
High Court Rules against students. US schools are now protected if they need to break laws requiring them to keep records secret, according to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ...More from Wired News
The Childrens Internet Protection Act under attack. The Childrens Internet Protection Act came under attack again when a three-judge panel in Philadelphia ruled that the act violates the First Amendment. The act was passed into law in 1999 and is intended to protect children from cybersleaze. Even the congressional commission that reviewed the act was against it ...More from Internet Wire
US Court: Library Filter Law Illegal. The Children's Internet Protection Act, which mandates that public libraries must install filtering software on Internet-accessible computers, is unconstitutional. Judges don't like the buggy technology, either ...More from Wired News
Weaving a global, native web. A new website is one of the many outreach programs of the United Nations' fledgling Indigenous Media Network, which hopes to serve the needs of native people the world over ...More from Wired News
World Bank pushes 'education for all'. Plans to ensure universal primary education are backed by finance ministers meeting in Washington ...More from the BBC
NSPCC launches campaign to stop parents from smacking toddlers. One of the billboard posters appearing at 2,000 sites in England, Wales and Ulster "shows a little boy bullying a schoolmate," says The Sun. "Its caption reads: Unfortunately, hitting your children does teach them a lesson." But in The Scotsman, The Christian Institute warns that the legal ban on smacking north of the border "would soak up vital police resources on trivial cases" ...More from What The Papers Say
'Mandate the Future' launches global youth forum event. Mandate the Future's global youth forum EVENT 2002 connects and mobilizes youth from all over the world - privileged and unprivileged, North and South, rich and poor - into a common forum to discuss and debate issues of immense significance to all of us ...More from Mandate the Future
Full Assault on Filter Software. One US librarian says being forced to install filtering software borders on evil authoritarian tactics as the challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act continues in court ...More from Wired News
Net Gambit: See Art, Pay Amnesty. Net artists haven't figured out how to make money from their art, but curators of a new exhibit hope an online show can raise funds for a good cause ...More from Wired News
Bearded schoolboy protests over ban. A 16-year-old Australian banned from school for refusing to shave off his beard is to stage a protest. Chris O'Hehir hasn't been to class for around three months because of the dispute over his five millimetre thick beard. The teenager says shaving gives him a rash, but MacKillop College in Werribee insist students be clean-shaven ...More from Ananova
Pakistani school chiefs enrage parents by demanding schoolgirl photos. Schoolgirls in part of Pakistan have been told to provide photos of themselves if they want to take their exams. The move in the Swat region of the country, where girls normally wear veils, has enraged parents. They say their daughters will pull out of education altogether rather than comply with the ruling ...More from Ananova
Larry Summers v Cornel West - A squabble at Harvard. These days university presidents are a hopelessly anodyne bunch. They mouth politically-correct platitudes, make nice comments to potential benefactors and, in general, do their utmost to avoid saying anything that might be misconstrued as either interesting or original ...More from the Economist
Human rights group exposes school ban on permed hair. Human rights campaigners in South Korea are lobbying the UN over severe school dress codes. Many schools ban permed hair and some even tell students what colour underwear they can wear. Campaign group Saranbang says the rules often come with no explanation and violate basic human rights ...More from Ananova
Slave Caster of Freedom. Dr. Eugene Walton former Coordinator of Affirmative Action Programs at the US Library of Congress writes for ed-u.com: When Freedom, the statue perched atop the dome of the Capitol, was hoisted in place on December 2, 1863, Philip Reid was there, in spirit if not in body, standing tall and relishing his greatest accomplishment ...More from ed-u.com - Internal Article
Anatomy of a Word: Harvard Professor Hopes to Take Away a Racial Epithet's Sting. The word is the most supercharged word in American society. It has started fights and ended careers. It has been used maliciously by some people and lovingly by others. It is forbidden for some to use, and permitted for others. Now it's the title of a Molotov cocktail of a book by Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy - "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word". It is likely to bring on a storm of reaction ...More from the Washington Post
UK schools keeping bullies in class because of Government targets. Headteachers claim pressure from the Government to reduce exclusions has led teachers to keep bullies in class. The allegation from a headteachers' association comes after the suicides of two teenagers who had complained of bullying. But it is warning that schools keeping bullies in lessons could be open to prosecution under the Human Rights Act for allowing pupils to be subjected to degrading treatment ...More from Ananova
Library: We Don't Want No Filters. San Francisco's board of supervisors bans filters at city libraries, lobbing another salvo at those who want public libraries and schools to keep adult material away from children ...More from Wired News
Pierced tongue teenager barred from school. A fashion conscious British teenager has been barred from classes after getting her tongue pierced. Julie Proctor, 15, was told to leave school premises soon after the start of the new term after mimicking pop star Mel B. The youngster was told to stay away from Blyth Community High School until the metal stud was removed ...More from Ananova
Regulating Minors' Access to the Internet Can Backfire. When Chris Manley, a high school senior in South Carolina, started thinking about applying for college, his teachers recommended he use the school library computer to research universities like Duke and Stanford. But he couldn't reach their Web sites. This was hardly a case of computer illiteracy. "At my school they have filtering software," Manley says simply, "and I can't get to these sites, because they've been blocked" ...More from the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner
Internet Banned in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Taliban militia has banned the Internet and ordered the religious police to punish users according to Islamic law, the official radio station reported ...More from the Nando Times
D.C. Wants to Catalog Its Kids. Privacy advocates decry a plan to keep digital fingerprint and photo files of schoolchildren in the District of Columbia ...More from Wired News
School desegregated, 31 years later. Miami-Dade County's public school system, the nation's fourth largest, has achieved desegregation and no longer requires the court supervision imposed 31 years ago, a federal judge has ruled. The remnants of discrimination in student, faculty and staff assignments have been eliminated under the 1970 order, U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas said ...More from CNN
Helpful Hints for Hate Haters. The Anti-Defamation League launches a website with the intention of helping law enforcement keep tabs on hate groups. But as one accused hater says, "I'm glad the ADL is giving us such good advertising" ...More from Wired News
Kabul's last Jew shrugs off fear of persecution. Sitting in the courtyard of he calls home, Afghan-born Zibollon Sementa calmly shrugs off the worldwide controversy that has erupted over the edict. THE only practising Jew left in Kabul seems unperturbed, detached even. Remarkably so, given that Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban has just ordered his Hindu neighbours to wear strips of yellow cloth on their shirts, so evocative of an oppressive period in his own people’s history ...More from the Times
Fears of a Website Inquisition. Spain's attempt to regulate websites has civil libertarians up in arms, to the point where they're even evoking the memory of Queen Isabella, who ruled Iberia with an iron fist in the 1500s ...More from Wired News
Hindus to wear identity label in Afghanistan. Hindus will be required to wear an identity label on their clothing in Islamic Afghanistan to distinguish them from Muslims. The hardline Taliban rulers, who control 95 % of this poor Central Asian state, plan to enforce the edict soon though an exact date has not been set, Mohammed Wali, Taliban's religious police minister, told The Associated Press More from Nine MSN
London shopkeeper Tak Ping Yeung claims feng shui is "inalienable human right" in tenancy dispute. Mr Yeung says his landlord cannot force him to relocate, reports The Financial Times, because his belief in feng shui (which gives "health and prosperity to people in homes and offices that balance yin and yang") is key to his religious freedom, protected by the Human Rights Act ...More from What The Papers Say
I Have a (Digital) Dream. Are minorities being left behind in the so-called digital divide? More to the point, is talking about a digital divide a self-fulfilling prophecy? ...More from Wired News
The United Nations withdraws USA's seat in Human Rights Commission. "The United States suffered a diplomatic humiliation at the United Nations," says The Telegraph, by failing to win re-election to the Commission for the first time since 1947 ...More from What The Papers Say
Ethnic awards honour Attenborough. Lord Attenborough has been honoured for his work against racism with the lifetime achievement award at the annual Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards in London. The prize recognises the director's film work including the movie Cry Freedom, which helped bring the injustices of apartheid to the world's attention. ...More from Wired News
Three New Places to Fight Hate. Fears that bigotry won a battle when Hatewatch.org shut down in January were quelled when three new anti-hate sites emerged to continue the fight ...More from Wired News
Uncover Your Hidden Biases. How do you feel about blacks? About women? C'mon, really. A Yale University psychology professor is shocked at the results. Not at the answers to the test, but that more than a million people have taken it ...More from Wired News
Student Web Sites Pose Rising Test of Free Speech Rights. Many contain violent, personal attacks. But their creators usually avoid school discipline if work is done off-campus. Student Web sites are pushing the envelope of free speech nationwide, forcing teachers, students, parents--and their attorneys--to contend with the fallout of unfettered adolescent expression... More from the Los Angeles Times
From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity. By Ross Shimmon. It may not always feel so, but we are the lucky ones in the digital revolution. As a prelude to considering the digital divide, I want to explore some characteristics of the world we inhabit... More from Unesco
Massacre of a culture. Our veteran observer of Afghanistan reports on the Taleban regime's systematic obliteration of the country's pre-Islamic past... More from the Times
China's New 'Purifying' Software. Internet Police 110, which will "prevent users from getting unhealthy information from foreign and domestic websites," is unveiled in China by the Ministry of Public Security... More from Wired News
So that no child is left behind. The challenge? Making information and communications technologies universally available, to begin to close the digital divide and help bring about early childhood care and development... More from One World
Drugs and death. The Guardian attacks the efforts of drug giants such as GlaxoSmithKline to safeguard their profits in the developing world, while Aids sufferers are dying because they cannot afford companies' expensive medications. Over 40 pharmaceutical giants are taking legal action to block the South African government from importing cheap medicines in a case closely watched by the rest of Africa. In the Guardian's comment pages, Madeleine Bunting argues that not only are patents killing people, but that intellectual property protection has "become a tool to make permanent the growing inequality of the global economy"... More from the Guardian
Human Rights 2.0. The Digital Freedom Network provides a voice for people who have been attacked for their beliefs. Bobson Wong, DFN's executive director, talks to the NetSlaves about advocating human rights... More from Wired News
Schools Grow Electronic Eyes. Video cameras and metal detectors are getting more popular in American schools. But can they really stop the next Columbine?... More from Wired News
Civil Liberties and Human Rights
Shrinking the world
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be:
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder: if you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married, you are very rare.
If you can read this message you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Someone once said:
Anonymous, Internet
"We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence" Martin Luther King, Jr'
We have all seen Martin Luther King, Jr's famous "I have a dream" speech on TV, or at least parts of it. Take a minute or two to read it, digest it and reflect on it. Click here.
