10. Go, Fight, Win: Texas Cheerleaders and the B-I-B-L-E
Don’t mess with the Bible in Texas. The cheerleaders at Kountze High School in East Texas took their words of encouragement to a whole new level when they wrote Bible verses on the banners that football players run through when taking the field. After the banners, with phrases like “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1), caught the eye of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, the cheerleaders were told by the school district to keep God off of their signs. In response, the 15 cheerleaders and their parents sued the district, claiming the ban violated the students’ freedoms of religion and speech. “As students, we still have rights,” cheerleader Rebekah Richardson told the Associated Press. “As Christians, not only is it our right, but it’s our job. It’s our duty as Christians to share the word with other people, and that’s what we want to do。” After nationwide outcry on both sides of the debate, Governor Rick Perry intervened, saying the ban was “a great insult,” and a judge issued a temporary injunction that allowed the cheerleaders to use the banners for the rest of the season. No word yet on what will happen next season。
10、加油,战斗,胜利:德克萨斯和b-i-b-l-e(圣经)啦啦队
在德克萨斯州,不要乱用“圣经”。东德克萨斯州的孔茨*的啦啦队队员,把圣经里的话当做鼓励奔跑在田径场上的足球运动员。当出现了类似这样的标语之后“让我们用耐力与上帝设在我们面前的比赛一同奔跑”(希伯来书12章1节),这吸引了威斯康星州以宗教自由为基础的基金会的注意,随后该学区的啦啦队员被告知在标语中不要出现上帝。作为回应,该区的15个 啦啦队员和他们的父母状告该区,声称该禁令违反了学生宗教和言语自由。“作为学生,我们也有权利”,啦啦队员利百加理查森告诉美联社记者。“作为一个基督
徒,这不仅是我们的权利,它是我们的职责。基督徒与其他人分享这句话,是我们义不容辞的责任,这就是我们想要做的。双方在发生了令*哗然的辩论之后,州 长瑞克·佩里干预,他说,这一禁令是“一个极大的侮辱,法庭颁发临时强制令,允许拉拉队在赛季余下的比赛中使用该标语。
9. The Rise of the Digital Textbook
“Over the next few years, textbooks should be obsolete,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on Oct. 2 in his remarks to the National Press Club. As tablet use both in and out of the classroom ticks upward, state governments, textbook publishers and tech companies are jumping on the digital textbook bandwagon. In January, Apple released the holy grail of education technology—slick, easy-to-navigate iPad textbooks that integrate video, photo and interactive graphics—and Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung and Google have all made advances into the industry as well. The benefits of digital textbooks are clear: they are more engaging, easy to customize and integrate with social networks, and can be updated more quickly than dead-tree books—and perhaps even save school districts money in the long run. But as cool as these new-age textbooks are, the hurdles to overcome are even bigger: many districts don’t have the money—or the mandates—to make digital books available to all students. (Voters in Idaho just defeated a ballot initiative that would have given every high-school teacher and student a laptop。) But those issues won’t be around forever. “The world is changing,” Duncan said. “This has to be where we go as a country。”
9、数字教科书的崛起
10月2日,在*新闻俱乐部上教育部长阿恩·邓肯(Arne Duncan)说:“在未来的几年中,纸质的教科书应该被淘汰。”随着平板电脑使用在课堂内外使用的不断增多,州政府,教科书出版商和科技公司都纷纷加入了数字教科书的行列。今年1月,苹果*了教育技术的一大法宝------很容易浏览的,整合了视频,照片和交互式图像的iPad的教科书,并且亚马逊,微软,三星和谷歌公司都有所进展。数字教科书的好处是显而易见的:他们更吸引人,容易定制并且和社交网络整合,同时比纸质的书籍更新的速度更快,甚至从长远角度来讲它也节省了学校的资金。这些新时代的教科书很酷,但是要克服的障碍也更大:许多地区没有资金或者没有权利给每个学生*电子图书。(爱达荷州的选民投票否决了给每一个*老师和学生每人一台笔记本电脑的倡议。)“但是,这些问题不会永远存在,*正在发生变化”,邓肯说,“这是我们一个国家必须要前进的方向。”
8. Harvard’s Cheating Scandal
“Students may not discuss the exam with others,” the directions explicitly stated at the top of the take-home final. But that didn’t stop some 125 students at Harvard University from allegedly doing just that, submitting answers on the final that were identical or what the school described as “too close for comfort。” While the Harvard scandal may have been the highest-profile cheating incident this year, it was hardly the only one. At the U.S. Air Force Academy, 78 cadets were suspected of cheating on a skills exam, while school administrators in El Paso, Texas, have been accused of orchestrating a scheme to prop up standardized test scores by keeping low-performing students from taking the tests. The incidents raised questions about high-stakes tests, the line between collaboration and cheating and the drive to succeed at any cost. And after 71 kids at New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School were caught exchanging answers on state tests via text message, the school newspaper offered this insight: “For years, cheating has gone unchecked, creating a perverse set of incentives in which the benefits of cheating outweighed both the probability and magnitude of punishment。”
8、哈佛作弊丑闻
“学生不得与他人讨论考试”带回家的指导语在*上面明确规定。但是这并没有阻止约125名哈佛大学学生涉嫌这样做,提交*终答案相同或像学校形容的“距离过近,舒适。”虽然哈佛丑闻可能是今年*引人注目的作弊事件,但它绝不是*的。在美国空军德克萨斯州埃尔帕索中心,78名学员在技能考试中涉嫌作弊,而学校行政管理人员被指控策划了该方案:为了支持标准化考试的成绩,不让表现不佳的学生参加这个测试。这些事件把不计任何代价参加高风险的测试,合作与欺骗和对胜利的渴望这些问题提出疑问。71名纽约*的史岱文森*学生,在参加州考试时通过短信交换答案被抓住之后,学校的报纸*这种见解:“多年来,作弊已经泛滥,创造出一个反常的激励,作弊的利益压倒了受惩罚的概率和力度。”
7. Shaming the For-Profit Colleges
After a two-year investigation of the for-profit higher education industry, the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee issued a report in July that condemned for-profits for delivering a poor-quality education for a monster price tag. The report said that the 30 for-profit colleges investigated, including DeVry, Kaplan and the University of Phoenix, misuse government funds, attract students with deceptive advertising and burden them with massive amounts of debt—some programs at for-profit schools cost as much as four times more than similar programs at non-profit schools—without providing graduates with good job prospects. And these schools do all of this on the backs of American taxpayers: In 2009-10 alone, for-profit colleges received $32 billion in federally backed student loans. But since Congress issued its scathing report, little has been done to reform for-profits. The Obama Administration’s “gainful employment” rule, which would stop awarding federal loans to for-profits whose students graduate with more debt than they can realistically repay, was slated to take effect in July, but a lawsuit brought by a trade association representing the for-profits has put the provision on hold. In the meantime, some for-profits are making voluntarily reforms—the University of Phoenix, for example, has implemented a three-week