· April, 2009

Stories about Education from April, 2009

Cayman Islands: Same Old

  30 April 2009

“This election has the potential to again be nothing more than ousting current politicians who do very little and replacing them with politicians who are entirely incapable of bringing their generalizations to life”: The Cayman Islands’ Blog Man is afraid it's politics as usual for his country's upcoming elections.

Azerbaijan: Last day of April

  30 April 2009

Sheki, Azerbaijan comments on today's massacre of at least 13 students at a university in Baku and says that the end of April will now live on in the collective memory of the country as the day when the children of some families never came home.

Bangladesh: Value Achievements Not The Ancestry

  30 April 2009

Citing the example of Dr. Atiur Rahman, the newly appointed governor of the central Bank of Bangladesh who made a life out of nothing, Shada Kalo urges Bangladeshis to stop the practice of “inferring the quality of a human being based on his or her family background.”

China: Ongoing urbanization

  30 April 2009

With the Olympics long gone, the gentrification of Beijing neighborhoods continues. “Still, the signs go up, the schools and shops close down, and jobs, education and the prospect of permanent residence are suspended,” writes changing china blogger Ray Deng in his two-part photo essay.

Pakistan: This Is Not Islam

  29 April 2009

Pakistani blogger Faisal K. at Deadpan Thoughts questioned an enlightened scholar of Islam to confirm that what the Talibans are preaching is “hardly the Islam brought by the Quran and taught by the Prophet through his teachings.”

Jamaica: Mad Tax

  29 April 2009

Abeng News Magazine‘s Michael Spence says: “The new gas tax added in the latest Jamaican national budget is bad but when you tax reading material…this has to come from a government that has gone mad and is intent on helping the poor to get poorer.”

St. Lucia: The Heat is On

  28 April 2009

Repeating Islands reports that the race for the prestigious position of the Oxford Professor of Poetry has become “decidedly unpoetic”.

China: Peking University Humiliated

  27 April 2009

Veteran Party member and man of letters Ren Yanfang has spoken out [zh] online about the fate of an anthology set to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the founding of Peking University, in the spirit of the May Fourth Movement. Involving 188 high-profile academics and administrators, preparations began in 2004;...

Bangladesh: Student Politics

  21 April 2009

An Ordinary Citizen is worried about the continuous violence in different campuses of Bangladesh and comments that it is time to rethink about the objective of student politics in the country.

Azerbaijan: Student protest

  21 April 2009

Following the expulsion of Parviz Azimov from his university in Lankaran State University, the Dalga youth movement have staged an action demanding his reinstatement. Video of the protest at the Azerbaijani Ministry of Sport and Youth is available on YouTube.

Lebanon: Activists Experiment with Social Media

The use of social media tools such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and mobile technology has become increasingly popular in activism and advocacy work worldwide in recent years. In Lebanon, a group called Social Media Exchange teaches activists how to utilise social media to promote their work and reach a wider audience. Mohammmad Azraq digs into the Lebanese social networking and online scene to find out more.

Azerbaijan: Corruption in the education sector

  20 April 2009

Thoughts on the Road updates its readers on the case of Parviz Azimov who was recently expelled from his university. The blog says that if administrators and professors had hoped Azimov would now remain quiet about corruption in the education sector in Azerbaijan, they were very much mistaken.

Korea: Is teachers’ physical punishment toward students a crime?

  18 April 2009

A second grade student at a primary school was struck 27 times by her teacher because she gave the wrong answer to a math question. After her mother put a photo of her daughter’s bottom with bruises on the internet, parents’ associations and other netizens criticized the teacher’s behavior. In...

Maldives: Quality Of Education

  16 April 2009

Abdullah Waheed questions the education system in Maldives. Although some students found themselves ranked amongst the world top ten in the Cambridge O’ level exams this year, 73% of the 7000 candidates failed the exams.