What the left needs is an account of how the suffering we experience in our personal lives stems from capitalist values, and to replace this system with one built on values of love and caring.
When looking at large-scale international studies and comparisons of education systems worldwide, everyone’s always talking about Finland. Finland seems to set the benchmark for education worldwide. Foreign educational experts, delegations of teachers and educational politicians...
For those who seek to understand today’s social movements, and those who wish to amplify them, questions about how to evaluate a campaign’s success and when it is appropriate to declare victory remain as relevant as ever. To them, Gandhi may still have something useful and unexpected to say.
Next up on the global development agenda: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). The UN hopes the goals will form a framework of rules and ideals that can influence development plans and actions around the world...
- By Ralph Nader
If there is one person in the world most suited to govern the turbulent land of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani would be, by knowledge, temperament and sense of democratic justice, that person. Lo and behold, he was just elected president of Afghanistan!
Capitalism, democracy, and liberal education are the crowning achievements of the mental age of evolution in which the mind evolves. These three represent a quantum leap in ordinary people's access to what the mind does best: process deep questions of meaning...
While in the timeframe of Earth’s lifespan human events are relatively short, the imprint of even small, collective action is large. A good example in relation to food and the environment is the impact of the Neolithic revolution of farming on who we are today and the world in which we live.
- By Robert Reich
I was phoned the other night in middle of dinner by an earnest young man named Spencer, who said he was doing a survey. Rather than hang up I agreed to answer his questions.
On the heels of what many are calling a historic convention of over 1,200 fast food workers held in the Chicago suburbs last weekend, the campaign for "$15 and a union" won a major National Labor Relations Board decision that, if upheld, could have significant repercussions throughout the industry...
That eating beef is environmentally costly is by now widely appreciated. But little has been done to curtail the amount of cattle farmed for meat consumption.
- By R Jennings
Nothing shocks me too much anymore about online abuses of privacy. It is hard to know just who you can trust online these days. We are being asked "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes". Well, it appears my eyes haven't been lying too much lately...
Mostly, the work of social change is a slow process. It involves patiently building movement institutions, cultivating leadership, organizing campaigns and leveraging power to secure small gains. If you want to see your efforts produce results, it helps to have a long-term commitment.
An estimated 10,000 gallons of the coal-processing chemical MCHM, along with an unknown amount of a second substance called PPH, spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River — just upstream from a municipal water intake that serves nine counties. While government and industry have been slow to respond, some remarkable community organizing has taken place...
All institutions are the mirror image of the motivations that make them work. So when politics and economics are based on the worst aspects of human nature, the inevitable result are societies riddled with inequality and violence.
It is an old question in social movements: Should we fight the system or “be the change we wish to see”? Should we push for transformation within existing institutions, or should we model in our own lives a different set of political relationships that might someday form the basis of a new society?
Raising children in today's world is much more challenging than it was in the Fifties. Many parents, whether in intact families, single-parent families, divorced families, or remarried families with stepchildren and half siblings, are crying out for help. The role of public schools needs to be expanded and revamped...
Research study compares traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.
- By Robert Reich
More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class.
International corporate volunteerism gives future leaders real-life experience facing challenges in emerging markets and could create self-perpetuating sustainable businesses.
The girl behind the checkout counter at the Shop Rite supermarket sighed deeply and pushed her manager call button. “WIC,” the checkout girl said, turning the three letters that stand for the government-funded supplemental nutrition program in the USA into a long whine...
Good education for children cannot be deleted from tight budgets or thwarted by religious zealots without a country’s prosperity and very existence suffering. Because this is true, I’m going to tease you with some unique ideas that are already in use and achieving incredible results...
Is it climate change, which makes droughts more severe and more likely to persist? Is it the labor policies that allowed the worker's wages to be cut? Or is it that NAFTA has flooded the Mexican market with cheap, U.S.-grown corn since 1996, forcing him to leave his family’s farm and migrate to California in the first place?
The fact of an ageing society isn’t new; it has been proceeding quietly across all developed countries for 174 years: data on female life expectancies starting in 1840 reveal an increase...