The right to education has an established legacy in international agreements and debates, but has nonetheless proved difficult to achieve across the countries of the world. This paper explores why this might be so. It begins by locating the current architecture of rights in Enlightenment philosophy and the political and legal formations of…

The expansion of compulsory schooling after the Second World War represented an important reform common to the majority of European countries. Specifically, over the period 1950-2000, the fifteen Western European countries considered in this study have extended the school-leaving age by one year or longer. Interestingly, this change in legislation…

The retention or abolition of national college entrance examination (CEE) has triggered a fierce controversy in academe. Although controversial causes and focus vary from time to time, the result remains the same--adopting uniform national examinations and making it innovative all the time. Since CEE has political, social and educational…

Research on political education in schools suggests that an emphasis on formal structure, constitutional principles, formal citizen rights, and debates on current issues is common. The Norwegian national curriculum on political education envisions a different political education emphasizing that students should be critical of political life and…

Two years after many colleges resisted attempts by the Bush administration to impose more rigorous methods of student assessment, a leading coalition of private institutions is pressing its members to adopt an increasingly popular standardized achievement test. The push to adopt the assessment comes as the test faces new questions over its…

In her three years as U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings has been a celebrity contestant on "Jeopardy!," a guest on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," and an occasional subject of Washington's best-read gossip column. Above all, though, she's been the nation's leading spokeswoman for the No Child Left Behind Act…

In recent years, the rigor and quality of educational research have drawn much attention. This increased interest has been driven by state efforts to collect student achievement data, the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the explicit call for"scientifically based research" written into the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act,…

Certain cultural customs and practices are viewed as abhorrent by many people, yet contemporary American counselors rarely criticize any specific culture. In this article, the authors explore why counselors abstain from such criticism. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that universalism, often regarded as a politically incorrect and an…

People and organizations are inherently political. Library workplace environments have zones of tension and dynamics just like any corporation, often leading to the formation of political camps. These different cliques influence productivity and work-related issues and, at worst, give meetings the feel of the Camp David negotiations. Politics are…

This paper argues that imperialism continues to exist today. It focuses on the ideational dimension of such power constellation and highlights the role of "educational diplomacy". Specifically, it examines norm-settings within international educational politics as a way of identifying shifts within what might be called benevolent…

Lawmakers have been putting increasing pressure on private colleges to spend more of their endowments on student aid. Just a few weeks ago, members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee sent letters to dozens of institutions with endowments of at least $500-million, demanding detailed information about how they manage those endowments, how much…

Pale, once a just a village when Bosnia's war ended 13 years ago, is now a bustling town, the hub of "Serbian Sarajevo," and home to several divisions of the Bosnian Serbs' University of East Sarajevo, their homegrown alternative to the multiethnic University of Sarajevo. It was in Pale that Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian…

The author's argument revolves around the relationships between government agendas and the agency of teachers, and between them the intermediary role of management as "system leaders" of network forms. Network is a pluralistic concept: networks can serve very different educational-political interests. They offer the potential of new…

Fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity is growing in popularity in Australia, concurrent with the ascendancy of the new Christian school. This article examines the historical and policy landscapes that have given rise to this educational phenomenon and draws some links with other education systems, particularly the United States. It is argued…

Environmental education is commonly claimed to be at the centre of efforts to achieve sustainable development. Since the 1980s, Costa Rica has been one of the acknowledged leaders in efforts to promote environmental learning, and national policy includes a three-fold national development strategy which simultaneously promotes education,…