(1996). Improving the Well-Being of Abused and Neglected Children. Hearing on Exploring How the Well-Being of Abused and Neglected Children Can Be Improved through Clarifying the Reasonable Efforts Requirement of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act To Make the Child's Health and Safety the Primary Concern, before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session. This hearing transcript presents testimony exploring how the well-being of abused and neglected children can be improved through an amendment clarifying the "reasonable efforts" requirement of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (1980) to allow the child's health and safety to take precedence over parents' rights. Testimony begins with a statement from Ohio Senator DeWine, which notes the frequency with which abused or neglected children are returned to unsafe or unhealthy home environments, and the number of children in foster care for longer than 2 years. Additional testimony in support of the change is presented from: (1) the acting assistant secretary for Children and Families, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Olivia A. Golden; (2) the director of the University of Rhode Island's Family Violence Research Program, Richard J. Gelles; (3) director of Montgomery County (Ohio) Children Services Board, Helen… [PDF]
(1991). African Americans. [Multicultural Studies for Grades 3 and 4, Reproducible Workbook.]. This workbook is designed for use with third, fourth, or fifth grade elementary school students and focuses on African American history and culture. Of the workbook's 14 lessons, Lesson 1 asks students to consider what they already know about Africa. Lesson 2 focuses on the geography of Africa. Lesson 3 presents current scientific theory about the origins of the human race. Lesson 4 tells an African creation myth. Lessons 5 and 6 tell about the glory of two ancient African civilizations, Egypt and Mali. Lessons 7 and 8 deal with the issues of the slave trade and slavery including ex-slaves' memories of what life was like for them as children. Lesson 9 deals with the civil rights movement. Lessons 10 through 13 describe several prominent African Americans: Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Marva Collins, Louis Sullivan, Condoleezza Rice, Maxine Waters, and Colin Powell. The final lesson suggests that students do a report on some African Americans of prominence and offers a list of…
(1993). Metaphors of Revolution: Gendered Definitions of Education. A study examined the responses of 10 students taking Miami University's 1990 College Composition Proficiency Exam which asked students to evaluate their own learning experiences with teaching, learning, and knowledge in and out of school. Scores ranged from 2 to 12; all 10 of the examined essays received a score of 11. Five students were male, and five were female. The 10 students responded in gendered ways–even in the context of a structured writing task which is notorious for eliciting similar responses. One of the clearest patterns discernible in the essays was that women operate predominantly within a morality of care, while men operate within a morality of rights. The 10 essays can be positioned on a continuum, with the 5 essays written by females clustering on the end where the focus is on the human community, connections between people, and social responsibility; and the 5 essays written by males clustering on the end which focuses on individuality, autonomy, and… [PDF]
(1996). The New Oregon Trail: Accountability for Results. Special Report #7. This report was designed to help policy makers and concerned citizens understand the context, culture, and history that set the stage for Oregon's efforts to reform state government, including those areas of government that affect education. This text offers a "snapshot" of what Oregon is doing to improve results, such as setting benchmarks to measure progress. The state is crafting a decision-making process that avoids program proliferation and micromanagement, trusting people to do it right. Oregon is also using tools such as training, waivers from federal laws, intergovernmental agreements, and budget accountability to make programs meet broad community and state goals. Although the picture presented in this report is promising, there are some pitfalls. For example, although benchmarks measure what is important, there are rarely neat cause-and-effect relationships in the complex human areas that so many of the benchmarks address. Moreover, the data needed to support the… [PDF]
(1991). Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program Annual Report: Oct. 1, 1989 through Sept. 30. 1990. This annual report of the Long-Term Care Ombudsmen Program of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services begins by stating the purpose of the program: to improve the quality of life and the quality of care of older residents of long-term care facilities in Oklahoma. It is noted that the Long-Term Care Ombudsman advocates for the rights of long-term care facility residents and acts as an objective mediator in problem situations, and that the State Ombudsman Program investigates and resolves complaints made by or for older individuals who reside in long-term care facilities; bridges between older residents of long-term care facilities and the aging network; and monitors the development and implementation of federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and policies that relate to long-term care facilities in the state. This report describes statewide Ombudsman Program activities during fiscal year 1990, including volunteer recruitment, screening, and training, and consumer education. It…
(1987). Self-Involving Reading in a High-Tech Culture. College students' troubles with reading are largely explained by commodity consciousness (materialism or the search for the fast fix) and contextual confusion (approaching a book as though it were television). The challenge for teachers of reading is to make it a human endeavor. For many students reading is an operation done to extract data from the page; it is not an experience. Approaching a book as if it were a television set, these students expect to be able to understand the contents exactly. Teachers encourage these attitudes by selling "right answers"–the one way to interpret a text. Though television seems the enemy of reading, it creates two things which teachers of reading should try to replicate for their students: a sense of identification and a sense of community. This can be done by encouraging students to listen and respond to the speaker in the text and by forming small autonomous discussion groups which are encouraged to come up with differing… [PDF]
(1987). The Undergraduate Curriculum: Who Is in Charge?. Perspectives on the undergraduate curriculum are offered at a faculty convocation by the President Emeritus of Ohio State University. Criticisms of the content and quality of college studies are noted. It is suggested that for the most part today's curriculum reflects the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s by emphasizing the individual's right to choose as well as variety and diversity. It avoids serious discussion of social issues and controversy, and the faculty has largely abdicated its responsibility for the design of the curriculum. Important educational goals are for graduates to understand the role of art and literature in illuminating the human condition, to have empathy for the poor, and to develop civic pride and responsibility. Currently colleges are reassessing and modifying their curricula and the government is asking higher education to define quality and measure college and student performance. The political pressure for student assessment results from discontent with… [PDF]
(1980). A Design for Cross-Cultural Unity: A Partnership of Church and Community College. Perspectives on the Church and the Community College, Paper Number Seventeen. Although the integration movement of the 1960's and the demands for cultural pluralism in the 1970's addressed the issues of racial unity and minority civil rights, a new consciousness of cross-cultural unity among all ethnic groups must be achieved if racial tension is ever to be abated. Accordingly, cultural differences must not be viewed as the expressions of fragmented self-interest groups; rather, they should be seen as the different expressions of the common human experience–as various dimensions revolving around the axis of life. To this end, political and social justice must be interpreted from the larger perspective of love and virtue; colleges must provide holistic, interdisciplinary learning; and corporations must pursue public, rather than private, goals. Socially, this movement towards unity would involve substituting communal consensus for voting and majority rule. On the personal level, each individual would recognize his or her inner traits and potentials and…
(1967). The Empty Fortress; Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. The nature, origin, and treatment of infantile autism are explored with a consideration of the child's world of encounter and case histories. The beginning of life, called the region of shadows, is mentioned; and the world of the newborn, body language, mutuality, autonomy, the autistic anlage, and the right side of time are examined for the beginning of the self. Disturbed children are considered as strangers to life and the development of emotional disturbance is discussed in terms of a reason to act, the extinction of feeling, extreme situations, and in spontaneous reaction. In particular, the dynamics of autism, including the dialectics of hope, the decline of the self, and the human craving for order are presented. Case histories are given of three autistic children treated at the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago: Laurie and Marcia, two mute girls; and Joey, a talking, mechanical boy. In persistence of a myth, reported cases of wolf children are discussed in terms…
(1974). Evaluation of the Law Focus Curriculum Project. Journal of Research and Evaluation of the Oklahoma City Public Schools, v4 n5 Jul. This evaluation of the Law Focused Curriculum Project of the Oklahoma Public Schools analyzes the human and nonhuman resources utilized in the project, and the nature and extent of activities. The first part of the document examines the program and its objectives. School-age citizens are to become acquainted with the law, the functions and procedures of the criminal justice system, and an individual's rights and responsibilities under the law and be affected in a positive way toward the role of law in American society. The project consists of a fifth-grade program with an emphasis on law incorporated into the present social studies program, an eight-grade course on governing and man using a new emphasis on law and the workings of the legal system, and a high school elective course dealing with practical knowledge of the legal system needed as an adult citizen. Part two deals with the evaluation of the Oklahoma project by analyzing the philosophy and goals of the project, comparing… [PDF]
(1970). The Computer as a Socializing Agent: Some Socioaffective Outcomes of CAI. The socializing role of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) was seen to be a positive one in this study. The students, predominantly Mexican-American, who experienced CAI, and other students, in a control group, who did not, liked the computer. They thought it gave the right answers and they respected it as having a vast array of information available to it. They also saw it as fair, trusted its evaluations as well as its handling of task assignments, and sometimes attributed to it an almost human role. Feelings of greater trust in the learning situation managed via computer as compared to a learning situation monitored by a teacher were especially evident among CAI students. On the other hand, while both groups tended to ascribe charismatic qualities to the computer rather than to the teacher, CAI students were more aware than their Non-CAI peers of the computer's unresponsiveness to students' eventual desires to change the course or the content of its lessons. Greater confidence… [PDF]
(1969). A Canibalistic View of Graduate Education. Graduate schools are failing to meet important educational needs of society. Three of the areas that need improvement and change are: 1) teacher preparation, 2) relevance of Doctoral education, and 3) university-society relationship. Most PhD programs, after paying lip service to the value of good teaching, proceed to deify the notion of research training, though there is ample evidence that most PhD recipients never publish or use their research training. A new PhD degree should be designed for the education of prospective junior and four year college teachers. The curriculum for this degree would be interdisciplinary and would include teaching internships. This new degree would strengthen the research value of the PhD. The standard PhD program needs to be made more relevant by linking the constancy of the human condition to the immediacy of social change. Improved communication is also needed between university and society because those who pay the bill have a right to know the… [PDF]
(1970). Tri-Cultural Sensitivity In-Service Training Program Report. The Tri-Cultural Sensitivity In-Service Training Program, funded by the Federal government under the provisions of Title IV, Public Law 88-352 (Civil Rights Act) of 1964, was developed in response to the results of a system-wide survey of the staff in 1967. Eighty-five percent of the teachers granted that a deficiency in knowledge, understanding, and the know-how of communication among the cultures of Mexican Americans, Indians, and Anglo Americans could be the reason for failure to meet the needs of the students. Among the objectives of the program were: to conduct training for the professional staff, the student population, the community, and non-certified personnel with regard to human values by means of in-service programs geared to the specific needs of each respective group; to conduct highly concentrated beginning-of-the-year orientation in-service sessions according to the individual needs of the staff; and, to prepare long-range sequential procedures, which will lead to a… [PDF]
(1971). Psychology and the Black Community: From Arthur, 1853 to Arthur, 1969. Psychologists and a few sociologists have provided the academic respectability for the political rationale that the American body politic's civil rights indigestion needs a resurrected, separate but equal diet. Today, it is intellectually respectable to question the genetic equality of whites and blacks, to assert the cognitive incapacities of blacks and Chicanos, and to worry about the demise of democracy as the result of too much equality. This has its intellectual roots in the racist theories of Count Arthur Joseph de Gobineau, who wrote \The Inequality of the Human Races\ in 1853. The putative relationship of the variables of racial genes and intellect as outlined by Dr. Arthur Jensen in 1969 is but a sophisticated rehearsal of a historically tired theme. Although there are a few white scholars concerned with the application of theories of cognition and pedagogy to the improvement of culturally divergent people, there are psychologists–mostly black–who are part of the solution… [PDF]
(1971). Promoting Social Justice in the Multigroup Society: A Casebook for Group Relations Practitioners. This volume represents a modest effort to meet the critical need for teaching materials of all sorts relating to work with racial and ethnic groups, both in social work and other human service professions. The approach taken here is to produce a range of source materials which illustrate and illuminate aspects of group relations practice. Such a source book, composed of cases, documents, episodes of practice, agency reports, etc., is intended to highlight issues and techniques and to provoke systematic analysis relative to this area of practice. Its purpose is both to teach and to stimulate further conceptualization concerning this very important field of work. The framework concerning group relations practice which is reflected in the book is broad and eclectic. The field is defined in terms of a series of functions designated Group Rights, Group Solidarity and Power, Intergroup Attitudes and Relationships, and Group Welfare. The term \group relations\ is used to describe…