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Learning to Fail: How Society Lets Young People Down
by Fran AbramsDuring a decade of relative prosperity from the mid-1990s onward, governments across the developed world failed to crack one major issue – youth unemployment. Even when economic growth was strong, one young person in 10 in the United Kingdom was neither working nor learning. As the boom ended, the number of young people dropping out after leaving school – already acknowledged to be too high - began to rise at an alarming rate. As governments face up to the prospect of a new generation on the dole, this book examines the root causes of the problem. By holding a light to the lives and attitudes of eight young people, their families, their teachers and their potential employers, this book will challenge much of what has been said about educational success and failure in the past 20 years. For two decades, policy makers largely assumed schools were the key to ensuring young people got the best possible start in life. Yet for many children the path to failure began well before their first day at school. Through the stories of these young people, this book reveals how marginalised young people are let down on every step of their journey. Growing up in areas where aspiration has died or barely ever existed, with parents who struggle to guide them on life in the 21st century, they are let down by schools where teachers underestimate them, by colleges and careers advisers who mislead them and by an employment market which has forgotten how to care or to nurture. Learning to Fail goes behind the headlines about anti-social behaviour, drugs and teenage pregnancy to paint a picture of real lives and how they are affected by outside forces. It gives a voice to ordinary parents and youngsters so they can speak for themselves about what Britain needs to do to turn its teenage failures into a success story.
Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better
by Anthony S. Bryk Louis M. Gomez Alicia Grunow Paul G. LeMahieuAs a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than &“implementing fast and learning slow,&” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to &“learn fast to implement well.&” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how &“networked improvement communities&” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation&’s schools and colleges.
Learning to Improve: How America's Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better
by Alicia Grunow Anthony S. Bryk Paul G. Lemahieu Louis M. GomezAs a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than "implementing fast and learning slow," they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to "learn fast to implement well." Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how "networked improvement communities" can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation's schools and colleges. "In this hopeful and accessible volume, Bryk and his colleagues describe six tenets for addressing vexing problems of educational practice. Yes, systematic actions guided by serious scientific inquiry can lead to improvements in a vast array of contexts, topics, and settings. Drawing on numerous real life examples and illustrations, the authors demonstrate how to develop and then critically execute good ideas to produce reliably positive outcomes." --John Q. Easton, distinguished senior fellow, Spencer Foundation
Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet Russia: Vocational youth in transition (BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)
by Charles WalkerThis book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-Soviet Russia, a country dislocated by the experience of neo-liberal economic reform. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a provincial Russian region, it follows the experiences of vocational education graduates whose colleges continue to channel them into the ailing industrial and agricultural sectors. Rather than settling for transitions into ‘poor work’, the book shows how these young men and women develop a range of strategies aimed at overcoming the poverty of opportunity available to them in traditional enterprises, pursuing instead emerging opportunities in higher education, jobs in the new service sector and the prospect of migration. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Charles Walker analyses these strategies and their significance for wider processes of social change and social stratification in post-Soviet Russia.
Learning to Liberate: Community-Based Solutions to the Crisis in Urban Education (Critical Social Thought)
by Vajra WatsonFew problems in education are as pressing as the severe crisis in urban schools. Though educators have tried a wide range of remedies, dismal results persist. This is especially true for low-income youth of color, who drop out of school—and into incarceration—at extremely high rates. The dual calamity of underachievement in schools and violence in many communities across the country is often met with blame and cynicism, and with a host of hurtful and unproductive quick fixes: blaming educators, pitting schools against each other, turning solely to the private sector, and ratcheting up the pressure on teachers and students. But real change will not be possible until we shift our focus from finding fault to developing partnerships, from documenting problems to discovering solutions. Learning to Liberate does just that by presenting true and compelling community-based approaches to school reform. Drawing on over three years of ethnographic research, Vajra Watson explores the complicated process of reaching and teaching today's students. She reveals how four nontraditional educators successfully empower young people who have repeatedly been left behind. Using portraiture, a methodology rooted in vivid storytelling, Watson analyzes each educator's specific teaching tactics. Uncovering four distinct pedagogies—of communication, community, compassion, and commitment—she then pulls together their key strategies to create a theoretically grounded framework that is both useful and effective. A poignant, insightful, and practical analysis, Learning to Liberate is a timely resource for all educators and youth-serving practitioners who are committed to transforming "at-risk" youth into "at-promise" individuals who put their agency and potential into action in their schools and neighborhoods.
Learning To Live Together: Promoting Social Harmony
by J. A. Scott KelsoThis book is devoted to the issue of how we can learn to live together in the face of division and conflict. It is dedicated to the life and work of a remarkable human being, Dr Epimenidis Haidemenakis, scientist, statesman, visionary leader, President Emeritus of the International S.T.E.P.S. Foundation and founding father of The Olympiads of the Mind (OM). The monograph consists of a collection of papers presented at the 8th and 9th Olympiads of the Mind held in Washington, DC and Chania, Crete respectively. Distinguished international scholars, government and corporate representatives, leading researchers and academics from multiple disciplines and Nobel Laureates Leon Lederman (Physics, 1988), Martin Perl (Physics, 1995) and Yuan T. Lee (Chemistry, 1986) address a broad range of issues all with the aim of improving the human condition and achieving cooperation among the people of the world. The topics include the environment, sustainability and security; diversity and how to achieve integration and peace among people in a fractured world; the important role of brain research; how to overcome poverty and inequality; how to enhance creativity and improve education at all levels; and how new technologies and tools can be used for common benefit. The culmination of the book is a call to action, to join what one might call the “OM Movement”—bringing the best minds in the world together to create solutions to world issues so that we can all live together in harmony.
Learning to Live with Datafication: Educational Case Studies and Initiatives from Across the World
by Luci Pangrazio Julian Sefton-GreenAs digital technologies play a key role across all aspects of our societies and in everyday life, teaching students about data is becoming increasingly important in schools and universities around the world. Bringing together international case studies of innovative responses to datafication, this book sets an agenda for how teachers, students and policy makers can best understand what kind of educational intervention works and why. Learning to Live with Datafication is unique in its focus on educational responses to datafication as well as critical analysis. Through case studies grounded in empirical research and practice, the book explores the dimensions of datafication from diverse perspectives that bring in a range of cultural aspects. It examines how educators conceptualise the social implications of datafication and what is at stake for learners and citizens as educational institutions try to define what datafication will mean for the next generation. Written by international leaders in this emerging field, this book will be of interest to teacher educators, researchers and post graduate students in education who have an interest in datafication and data literacies.
Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks
by Social Learning GroupThis book examines how ideas, interests, and institutions affect management practice; how management capabilities in other areas affect the ability to deal with environmental issues; and how learning affects society's approach to the global environment.
Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic
by Benjamin C. FortnaAn exploration of the ways in which children learned and were taught to read, against the background of the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic. This study gives us a fresh perspective on the transition from empire to republic by showing us the ways that reading was central to the construction of modernity.
Learning to School
by Jennifer WallnerAmong countries in the industrialized world, Canada is the only one without a national department of education, national standards for education, and national regulations for elementary or secondary schooling. For many observers, the system seems impractical and almost incoherent. But despite a total lack of federal oversight, the educational policies of all ten provinces are very similar today. Without intervention from Ottawa, the provinces have fashioned what amounts to a de facto pan-Canadian system.Learning to School explains how and why the provinces have achieved this unexpected result. Beginning with the earliest provincial education policies and taking readers right up to contemporary policy debates, the book chronicles how, through learning and cooperation, the provinces gradually established a country-wide system of public schooling. A rich and ambitious work of scholarship, it will appeal to readers seeking fresh insights on Canadian federalism, education policy, and policy diffusion.
Learning to Seek: Globalization, Governance, and the Futures of Higher Education
by Walter Truett Anderson Jim Dator Majid TehranianThe accelerating technological transformation in learn- ing has necessitated an ability to search and differentiate among the one billion web pages, libraries, databases, books, newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and opinion columns available online. This volume focuses on the normative challenges that the current technological transformation presents to all professionals engaged in higher education. Part I concentrates on the current social and technological trends. David Snyder presents an outline of technologies that have made open knowledge systems possible. Majid Tehranian argues that the new technological environment has made learning to seek out information more possible than ever before. Robert Fuller calls for an egalitarian rather than hierarchical approach to communication systems. Harlan Cleveland proposes integrative learning, broad thinking, and globally aware citizenship through "education for wisdom." Part II focuses on problems of governance and finance in the new technological environment. John Hinchcliff takes up the problem of values and argues for the maintenance of traditional altruistic rather than Promethean goals. Karou Yamaguchi comes to the problem of the futures with the tools of system dynamics. William Bergquist calls for a reorganization of higher education to meet the needs for creation, transfer, and inculcation of knowledge and skills. Hamid Shirvani calls for the core values of transparency, integrity, open communication, and dignitarian approach as the guideposts in educational leadership. Walter Truett Anderson concludes by attempting to bring the complex technological, social, economic, and political variables into a holistic approach for the management of higher education. In 2005, at the Universities of the Future Conference, participants were asked to envision the future of higher education. Part III, presents their visions.
Learning to Stop: Mindfulness Meditation as Anti-violence Pedagogy
by Remy Y.S. LowThis book is a philosophical and historical study that explores how meditative practices for cultivating mindfulness can be regarded as a unique form of education against violence—one that emphasizes stopping and contemplation as a necessary precursor to action. It brings together the idiosyncratic but insightful musings on violence by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek with recent research on mindfulness and violence as a lens. Using this lens, it looks at two exemplary educators and how they taught mindfulness meditation as a way of resisting the types of violence they and their students faced: the Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh amidst the brutality of the Second Indochina War (1955-1975), and the African-American studies professor and cultural critic bell hooks in the face of systemic oppression in the United States of the 1980s.
Learning To Teach in an Age of Accountability
by Arthur T. Costigan Karen Kepler Zumwalt Margaret Smith CroccoThis book documents the "brave new world" of teacher, administrator, school, and student accountability that has swept across the United States in recent years. Its particular vantage point is the perspective of dozens of new teachers trying to make their way through their first months and years working in schools in the New York City metropolitan area. The issues they grapple with are not, however, unique to this context, but common problems found today in urban, suburban, and rural schools across the United States. The stories in this book offer a compelling portrait of these teachers' encounters with the new culture of accountability and the strategies they develop for coping, even succeeding, within such demanding settings. Learning to Teach in an Age of Accountability: *introduces research on teaching and engages the "big ideas" concerning teacher research, highlighting what we know and where that leads us; *offers a rich set of teacher narratives that are organized to widen the angle of vision from biography, to classrooms, schools, and society; and *includes questions and activities to encourage discussion and further research about the ideas raised; and *addresses the possibilities for best practice and curricular decision making in light of the issues and ideas presented in the book. This volume--unique in its portrayal of new teachers' encounters with issues of accountability--makes a singular contribution to the educational literature on new teachers. It is relevant to everyone interested in the contemporary world of teaching, and is particularly appropriate as a text for preservice and in-service students. All readers who believe that the key to a good school lies in attracting and keeping good teachers will find the issues presented here both personally engaging and deeply troubling.
Learning to Teach in England and the United States: The Evolution of Policy and Practice (Routledge Research in Teacher Education)
by Maria Teresa Tatto Katharine Burn Ian Menter Trevor Mutton Ian ThompsonLearning to Teach in England and the United States studies the evolution of initial teacher education by considering some of the current approaches in England and the United States. Presenting empirical evidence from these two distinct political and historical contexts, the chapters of this thought-provoking volume illustrate the tensions involved in preparing teachers who are working in ever-changing environments. Grounded in the lived experiences of those directly affected by these shifting policy environments, the book questions if reforms that have introduced accountability regimes and new kinds of partnership with the promise of improving teaching and learning, have contributed to more powerful learning experiences in schools for those entering the profession. The authors consider the relationships between global, national and local policy, and question their potential impact on the future of teacher education and teaching more generally. The research adopts an innovative methodology and sociocultural theoretical framework designed to show greater insights into the ways in which beginning teachers’ learning experiences are shaped by relationships at all of these levels. A key emerging issue is that of the alignment – or not – between the values and dispositions of the individuals and the institutions that are involved. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, comparative education, higher education, and education policy and politics.
Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers' Classroom Inquiries
by Celia OylerThis book—co-authored by a teacher educator, a diverse group of five pre-service student teachers, and their student teaching supervisor—takes a unique, illuminating look at the experience of student teaching from the perspective of student teachers. It is premised on learning to teach as an inquiry process enriched by collaborative conversations. Readers are invited into student teachers’ dilemmas and decisions as they negotiate between their public school placements and their university-based coursework. Throughout the year of student teaching, the authors document their discussions and reflections about teaching in inclusive classrooms that shed light on the complex process of learning to teach and also offer insights into issues of teaching for equity. Each of the central chapters is written by an individual student teacher and tracks a specific question over the course of two semesters. Topics include: *contrasting models of inclusion and teachers’ differing orientations toward issues of community, difference, and normalcy;*how teachers foster peer relationships;*classroom management and discipline; *heterogeneous instruction; and*school-wide culture and systems that promote or mitigate against inclusion. A new perspective on what can be learned from student teaching is provided by the student teachers’ supervisor. In the concluding chapter, the teacher educators address the connections among the student teachers’ inquiries and offer an analysis from a disability studies/disability rights perspective on how inclusion fits into a social (rather than a medical) model of disability. All of the authors of this book seek to contribute to conversations that place advocacy, inquiry, contestation, and challenge at the center of the teacher’s role. This volume is their invitation to readers to join in a larger conversation about the challenges of, and necessity for, becoming inclusive teachers. Learning to Teach Inclusively is intended for inservice and preservice courses in elementary education, inclusion, and teacher research, and for field experience seminars. It is also suitable for graduate courses in teacher research, supervision, and research in teacher education.
Learning Transitions in Higher Education
by David Scott Gwyneth Hughes Carol Evans Penny Jane Burke Catherine Walter David WatsonThis book draws on a study of student transitions in higher education institutions to both unpack the concept of a learning transition and develop pedagogic strategies to enable learners to develop their learning careers. This book provides an original perspective on teaching and learning in higher education.
Learning versus the Common Core (Forerunners: Ideas First #55)
by Nicholas TampioAn open challenge to Common Core’s drive for uniformity Nicholas Tampio watched as his kindergartner’s class shifted from one where teachers, aides, parents, and students worked hard to create a rewarding educational experience to one in which teachers delivered hours-long lectures using packaged lesson plans. Learning versus the Common Core explains how standards-based education reform is transforming nearly every aspect of public education by looking closely at the standards, the agenda of people pushing standards-based reform, and how these fit within a global pattern of education reform. With a nod to the philosophy of John Dewey, Tampio concludes with a vision of what democratic education can look like today—and how people can form rhizomatic alliances across different political and ethical backgrounds to fight the Common Core.Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead
Learning While Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch (Chicago Studies in American Politics)
by Sean Gailmard John W. PattyAlthough their leaders and staff are not elected, bureaucratic agencies have the power to make policy decisions that carry the full force of the law. In this groundbreaking book, Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty explore an issue central to political science and public administration: How do Congress and the president ensure that bureaucratic agencies implement their preferred policies? The assumption has long been that bureaucrats bring to their positions expertise, which must then be marshaled to serve the interests of a particular policy. In Learning While Governing, Gailmard and Patty overturn this conventional wisdom, showing instead that much of what bureaucrats need to know to perform effectively is learned on the job. Bureaucratic expertise, they argue, is a function of administrative institutions and interactions with political authorities that collectively create an incentive for bureaucrats to develop expertise. The challenge for elected officials is therefore to provide agencies with the autonomy to do so while making sure they do not stray significantly from the administration's course. To support this claim, the authors analyze several types of information-management processes. Learning While Governing speaks to an issue with direct bearing on power relations between Congress, the president, and the executive agencies, and it will be a welcome addition to the literature on bureaucratic development.
The Least Among Us: Waging the Battle for the Vulnerable
by Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauroThe outspoken Connecticut congresswoman provides &“a powerful case for protecting and expanding America&’s safety net&” (Elizabeth Warren). Cynical politicians like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump argue that the people of the United States would be better off without food stamps, Obamacare, and workplace protections. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro knows these folks are just plain wrong. Growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, DeLauro saw firsthand how vulnerable hard-working people are in the face of corporate indifference and government neglect. From fatal industrial fires to devastating childhood poverty, DeLauro witnessed it all—and emerged convinced that social programs are worth going to the mat for, again and again. Worker protections, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance lift up all Americans; they fulfill this country&’s promise of opportunity for everyone and are essential for our country&’s health. For twenty-five years, DeLauro has been fighting for everyday Americans, earning a reputation as the most impassioned defender of our social safety net. The Least Among Us tells the story of a quarter-century of deal-making on behalf of people too often overlooked, told by a woman as fearless as she is opinionated. Part House of Cards, part progressive manifesto, The Least Among Us shares lessons about power—how it&’s gained and how to wield it for everyone&’s benefit. &“Can you imagine how cool the world would be if we had Rosa DeLauro getting s*** done instead of Congress being held hostage by terrible people!&” —Wonkette &“An impassioned, urgent defense of democratic values and the role of government to serve and benefit all citizens.&” —Kirkus Reviews
Least Developed Countries and the WTO
by Helen HawthorneA norm of special treatment for LDCs, created by the UN, has spread to various international organisations including the WTO. Within the WTO evidence of the institutionalization of the norm can be found both in the agreements and legal documents and the way in which the LDCs have been treated by other states. Helen Hawthorne investigates how norms impact on negotiations in international organisations. She shows that few studies of international organisations focus on the role of the weaker states in the organization, the majority focus either on the major states or the emerging economies. By ignoring the role of the poorer, weaker states in the GATT/WTO we are ignoring the history of these states in the organisation and do not get a true picture of the organization, how it operates in relation to them and their impact on the organisation.
The Least of All Possible Evils
by Eyal WeizmanThe principle of the "lesser evil," which asserts that it is acceptable to pursue an undesirable course of action in order to prevent a greater injustice, exercises a powerful influence on Western ethical philosophy and modern politics. In The Least of All Possible Evils, Eyal Weizman examines the dark side of this pragmatism, arguing that too often the end becomes a mechanism for perpetuating the means. Weizman traces a genealogy of the "lesser evil," from classical ethics and Christian theology, through the political theory of Hannah Arendt to contemporary debates on humanitarianism.He examines the application of this principle through his signature forensic-architectural investigation of sites of contemporary conflict: the relief centres set up by Médecins Sans Frontières during its intervention in Ethiopia in the 1980s; the legal debates around the building of the separation wall in Israel-Palestine; and developments in the application of international human rights law in Bosnia, Palestine and Iraq.But it is in relation to Israel's domination of the Gaza Strip that the theoretical and political reflections of the book converge. Gaza, where the principle of the lesser evil is invoked to justify a new type of humanitarian violence, is the proper noun for the horrors of our humanitarian present.
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl And Meth
by Sam QuinonesFrom the New York Times bestselling author of DREAMLAND, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair. Sam Quinones traveled from Mexico to main streets across the United States to create Dreamland, a groundbreaking portrait of the opioid epidemic that awakened the nation. As we struggled to put back the pieces, Quinones was among the first to see the dangers that lay ahead: synthetic drugs and a new generation of kingpins whose product could be made in Magic Bullet blenders. In fentanyl, traffickers landed a painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. They laced it into cocaine, meth, and counterfeit pills to cause tens of thousands of deaths--at the same time as Mexican traffickers made methamphetamine cheaper and more potent than ever, creating, Sam argues, swaths of mental illness and a surge in homelessness across the United States. Quinones hit the road to investigate these new threats, discovering how addiction is exacerbated by consumer-product corporations. "In a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers," he writes, "our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community." Amid a landscape of despair, Quinones found hope in those embracing the forgotten and ignored, illuminating the striking truth that we are only as strong as our most vulnerable. Weaving analysis of the drug trade into stories of humble communities, The Least of Us delivers an unexpected and awe-inspiring response to the call that shocked the nation in Sam Quinones's award-winning Dreamland. SAM QUINONES is a journalist, storyteller, former Los Angeles Times reporter, and author of three acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction, including New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic. "The most original writer on Mexico and the border" (San Francisco Chronicle), he lives with his family in Southern California.
The Least Possible Fuss and Publicity: The Politics of Immigration in Postwar Canada, 1945-1967 (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History)
by Paul A. EvansOver the two decades following the Second World War, the policy that would create "a nation of immigrants," as Canadian multiculturalism is now widely understood, was debated, drafted, and implemented. The established narrative of postwar immigration policy as a tepid mixture of altruism and national self-interest does not fully explain the complex process of policy transformation during that period. In The Least Possible Fuss and Publicity Paul Evans recounts changes to Canada's postwar immigration policy and the events, ideas, and individuals that propelled that change.Through extensive primary research in the archives of federal departments and the parliamentary record, together with contemporary media coverage, the correspondence of politicians and policy-makers, and the statutes that set immigration policy, Evans reconstructs the formation of a modern immigration bureaucracy, the resistance to reform from within, and the influence of racism and international events. He shows that political concerns remained uppermost in the minds of policy-makers, and those concerns – more than economic or social factors – provided the major impetus to change. In stark contrast to today, legislators and politicians strove to keep the evolution of the national immigration strategy out of the public eye: University of Toronto law professor W.G. Friedmann remarked in a 1952 edition of Saturday Night, "In Canada, both the government and the people have so far preferred to let this immigration business develop with the least possible fuss and publicity."This is the story, told largely in their own words, of politicians and policy-makers who resisted change and others who saw the future and seized upon it. The Least Possible Fuss and Publicity is a clear account of how postwar immigration policy transformed, gradually opening the border to groups who sought to make Canada home.
Leave it in the Ground: The Politics of Coal and Climate
by John C. BergEmploying scientific explanations and hard data, this book shows why coal is such a problem, how the pro-coal forces got to be so powerful, and how those forces might be defeated through political activism. <P><P>Coal provided the energy to build modern civilization. This energy source raised standards of living, multiplied the earth's population, and enabled people in developed countries to enjoy leisure time. Today, we know that if we burn all the coal available, climate change will continue to increase. But the use of coal isn't purely an environmental issue; there are also political and economic forces at play. This book examines the politics and environmental impact of coal production and distribution, presenting a clear point of view―that we must shift away from coal use―backed by hard data and supplying specific prescriptions for opposing and regulating the coal industry. <P><P>Author John C. Berg explains how ending the burning of coal (and of oil and natural gas) is a political problem rather than a technical one; explodes the "clean coal" myth, providing scientific documentation of how burning coal emits more greenhouse gases per unit of energy than any other fuel; and describes how controlling coal use in the United States will also serve to restore the possibility of a meaningful international climate agreement. Additionally, readers will understand the critical importance of activism―from local to international―in spurring government regulation to control the coal industry, which can only be defeated politically. <P><P>Examines scientific data to provide a clear explanation―in layman's terms―of the relation of coal to climate change <P><P>Illustrates how activism can lead to meaningful government policy change <P><P>Provides non-expert readers with a clear understanding of the political issues surrounding coal mining and coal burning as well as the domestic and international politics of coal and climate <P><P>Shows the interconnection of coal's role in labor exploitation, the environmental destruction of Appalachia and other coal areas, and the acceleration of climate change
Leave It to Abigail!: The Revolutionary Life of Abigail Adams
by Barb RosenstockIn this inspiring tribute, award-winning author Barb Rosenstock and New York Times bestselling artist Elizabeth Baddeley tell the true story of one of America's greatest founding mothers: Abigail Adams.Everyone knew Abigail was different.Instead of keeping quiet, she blurted out questions. Instead of settling down with a wealthy minister, she married a poor country lawyer named John Adams. Instead of running from the Revolutionary War, she managed a farm and fed hungry soldiers. Instead of leaving the governing to men, she insisted they "Remember the Ladies." Instead of fearing Europe's kings and queens, she boldly crossed the sea to represent her new country. And when John become President of the United States, Abigail became First Lady, and a powerful advisor.Leave it to Abigail--an extraordinary woman who surprised the world.