“Despite the fact that the vast majority of Haitian children grow up hearing and speaking exclusively Haitian Creole … the minute they start school they are forced to start all over in a language they don’t know [i.e., French].” Says MIT professor Michel DeGraff, “Haiti will never be able to rise to its potential if you have 90 percent of Haitians who cannot be instructed properly.”
Tag: 07.24.11
Tracey Ullmann Returning To London Stage After 20-Year Absence
“The British star, who established herself as a household name in America in the 1980s,” will star in Stephen Poliakoff’s My City, “about two 30-year-olds going back to meet up with their teachers” in inner-city London.
Is Richard Neutra House In L.A. About To Be Torn Down?
“The Kronish House, one of a handful of Beverly Hills residences designed by Modernist architect Richard Neutra, appears headed for demolition.”
The Problems With Moral Relativism
“To many thoughtful people, and especially to those who are unwilling to derive their morality from a religion, it appears unavoidable. … Relativism is not always a coherent way of responding to the rejection of a certain class of facts. When we decided that there were no such things as witches, we didn’t become relativists about witches.”
Democratizing The Arts Tastemakers
“Decisions about what Australians see, hear, watch and listen to are made by a handful of individual tastemakers who are ultimately forced to rely on their own judgment. By their nature, these decisions are subjective and personal. Yet they are increasingly informed by the desires of an educated and vocal public: power in the arts is in the process of being democratised.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Battles With Union Over Release Of Financial Information
“Lawyers for the pension fund of the American Federation of Musicians argued in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that their side was entitled to a large-scale probe of the orchestra’s finances and operations to help determine whether the endowments might end up being used to satisfy the pension fund’s potential claim as the largest creditor in the orchestra’s Chapter 11 case.”
Group Auctions Globe Theatre On EBay
“The head of a Shakespeare troupe in Berlin said Thursday he has been forced to auction off on eBay a life-sized replica of the famed Globe Theatre used in a film by Hollywood director Roland Emmerich.”
Study: Adults Can Learn New Languages Better Than Children
“The adults were consistently better in everything we measured… When asked to apply the rule to new words, the 8-year-olds performed no better than chance, while most 12-year-olds and adults scored over 90 per cent. Adults fared best, and have great potential for learning new languages implicitly.”
Did Operation For Castrati Condemn The Singers To Headaches?
“The operation may have preserved the 18th-century singer’s treble voice into adulthood, making him a musical legend, but it also condemned him to a skull deformity that may have affected his mind.”
Bill Gates: Why Fixing Schools Is Bigger Than Big Philanthropy
“It’s worth remembering that $600 billion a year is spent by various government entities on education, and all the philanthropy that’s ever been spent on this space is not going to add up to $10 billion. So it’s truly a rounding error.”