Discusses the need for a forum to discuss public issues related to language. Introduces three papers that focus on current language issues. (Author/VWL)

Spam is not just a technology issue. It is a social issue, and it threatens something very dear: the viability of e-mail. Campuses struggle to support solutions that will control the costs of filtering spam, keep "false positives" to a minimum and not diminish their own marketing use of mass e-mails. The openness of the Internet, long touted as…

Much of the literature on the effects of conjugal bereavement has focused on the detrimental effects of losing a spouse. Although it is very important to be aware of the emotional, physical, and social problems often associated with bereavement, these difficulties are not universal accompaniments of grief. Accumulating evidence suggests that…

This research study describes a community-based pedagogical and theatrical project that centered on the use of creative writing, drama, and music as tools to unearth and cope with social problems. The class was grounded in the work of Brazilian teacher, actor, and activist Augusto Boal and philosopher Paolo Freire. The activities at a free summer…

The issues of violence and trauma over the past 20 years have generated a significant amount of research. However, the development of each field has remained, for the most part, exclusive from the other. Therefore, the goal of this article is to address this shortcoming within the literature by responding to three important questions: (a) What is…

This paper considers corruption in higher education in Russia as reflected in the national media, including such aspects as corruption in admissions to higher education institutions and corruption in administering the newly introduced standardized test. The major focus is on the opinions of the leading figures of the education reform as related to…

In June 2004, the American national media spent a considerable amount of airtime revisiting the events of June 1964 when three civil rights workers were murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. On the fortieth anniversary of the murders. National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" devoted airtime to a story, "Truth and Reconciliation in…

This paper questions the perceived divide between "science" subject matter and "moral" or "ethical" subject matter. A difficulty that this assumed divide produces is that science teachers often feel that there needs to be "special treatment" given to certain issues which are of an ethical or moral nature and which are "brought into" the science…

The central aim of the present paper is to analyse the degree to which welfare problems accumulate over time and to what extent such an accumulation is related to class position and household formation. We utilize longitudinal data from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions, following a panel that was first interviewed in 1979 and, thereafter,…

Negative self-images are a maintaining factor in social phobia. A retrospective study (Hackmann, A., Clark, D.M., McManus, F. (2000). Recurrent images and early memories in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 601-610) suggested that the images may be linked to early memories of unpleasant social experiences. This preliminary study…

Theorists often take a condescending stance when speaking about the educationalization of social problems. Given their confidence with postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the educationalization of social problems is easily perceived as a set of questionable interventions by governments into educational practices. In this essay, Bert…

This article describes the current relationship between management education in Colombia and the efforts of the management program at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) in Medellin to reduce local poverty. The article uses the metaphor of "the bubble" to illustrate how social class, family socialization, and the current UPB…

In this article, the author talks about "Safe Space," an after school program created by a parent-teacher advisory board which maintained that students needed a safe in-school environment where they could openly talk about their out-of-school lives. Being that the school's curriculum heavily focused on academic standards, students' affective…

In the present study, the authors investigated what prosocial-assertive, passive, and coercive strategies 6-year-olds (N = 257) would propose in response to stories about 2 socially challenging situations: displacing another child in a game and obtaining a toy from another child. The scenarios also varied the gender composition of the characters.…

Child abuse and neglect are serious social problems that make extraordinary demands on teachers' knowledge and professionalism. Yet the field of education has been slow to develop a discipline-specific knowledge base about child abuse and neglect for teachers and teacher education programmes and there is a paucity empirical research into teachers'…