The power of civic education to elicit positive student outcomes has been empirically documented. However, the field is only now beginning to understand the causal processes that bring about these positive changes in young people. "The Civic Mission of Schools" report commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE (2003) lays out…

In 2002, the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh established the Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP). CRSP, which is the first race research center to be housed in a school of social work, has six foci: economic disparities; educational disparities; interracial group relations; mental health; youth, families, and elderly;…

This issue of "The Link" newsletter contains the following articles: (1) Evidence-Based Practice: Developing a New Business Model from the Inside Out (Jeremy Kohomban, Paul Schiller, and Patricia O'Gorman); (2) The School to Prison Pipeline and Criminalizing Youth: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (Marsha Weissman); (3) Group Homes Appear…

The United States is rapidly becoming a fatherless society. Fatherlessness is the leading cause of declining child well-being, providing the impetus behind social problems such as crime, domestic violence, and adolescent pregnancy. Challenging the basic assumptions of opinion leaders in academia and in the media, this book debunks the prevailing…

The mere act of living in today's society is dangerous to the health and well-being of children and adolescents. The concept of the socially toxic environment is offered as a parallel to the environmental movement's analysis of physical toxicity. Social life is more risky than it was just 40 years ago, and the level of social and cultural poison…

This lecture decries the lack of any real sense of community in the modern university. It argues that the fundamental difficulty of creating a greater sense of community in higher education institutions is a problem of values. Competitiveness and materialism are emphasized more than those values that support and nurture a sense of community. There…

This book introduces African-American history and culture to children. The first Africans in America came from many different regions and cultures, but became united in this country by being black, African, and slaves. Once in America, Africans began a long struggle for freedom which still continues. Slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, and the…

This book expands the meaning of today's education for work by offering five multidisciplinary approaches--school-to-work transitions, gender equity, labor education, economic democracy, and vocational education--revealing the complexities of personal, social, and cultural transformation. "Critical Education for Work" (Richard D. Lakes)…

This newsletter focuses on the results of Safe Schools Program activities funded by the North Carolina Center for Prevention of School Violence and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction from January 1994 to June 1995. These activities included conflict resolution and peer mediation, coping with anger, crisis response teams, a…

This report is intended to support the goal of primary prevention of violence. The report examines how violence affects the development and learning abilities of children and youth. Seeing family violence, living in unsafe neighborhoods, witnessing violence, and being exposed to the harsh lives often faced by immigrants and refugees places…

Steroids have become one of society's "short cuts" to athletic prowess and success. This guide includes information and teaching materials for educators and others who work with youth on how to teach that steroids are drugs, that drugs can harm and kill, and that a "no-use" policy applies to steroids as well as to alcohol and…

This article addresses the problems of racism, prejudice, and bigotry and how they restrain academic achievement in minority students and the need for leadership to confront and reverse these effects. Politics (suburban/urban differences in funding), technology (computer gap), and family income are three factors that impact differentially upon the…

"The Bell Curve" by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray has ignited a fierce academic debate. They assert that IQ as measured by tests has replaced family wealth and status in determining jobs, income, class, and place in American life; that whites average 15 IQ points higher than blacks; and that high-IQ ruling elites, with…

Four papers address how individual scholars may see their obligations to the wider public. In the first paper, "The Social Responsibility of the Academy and Its Academicians," George R. Garrison considers the role, purpose, and mission of Liberal Arts Institutions of Higher Education and examines the civic and social responsibilities of…

The three essays of this collection explore the prevention of violence in urban schools. The first, "Preventing Violence in Schools," by Mary Hatwood Futrell and Lee Etta Powell, focuses on how to prevent violence in schools and offers recommendations on what schools and communities can do. The factors contributing to school violence are…