Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Safe routes to school

Thursday, June 9th, 2022

Galway City Council are currently running a set of consultations regarding proposed developments under the 'Safe Routes to School' programme, for a number of schools in Galway city. The schools involved include those in Mervue, Renmore, Raleigh Row (Scoil Íognáid), Shantalla, and Westside (GETNS and St Joseph's). The Renmore proposals ...

Eulogy – Dr Anne Boyle

Thursday, February 7th, 2019

We had the memorial service for my mother today - she died Monday, and the Irish tradition is to have a short few days of funereal rituals prior to the burial. In Mom's case - always the non-conformist - she asked for a non-religious service and a cremation, so the ...

Unless…

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

The Change.org people have been touting a Nicholas Kristof piece about successful petition drives on their site. His first example is of a petition by a fourth grade class, looking for changes in how a movie (of a Dr. Seuss book) is promoted - "Don't lose the environmental message!" A ...

Why Phil Knight’s eulogy of Paterno was so problematic

Saturday, January 28th, 2012

In Knight, we also have someone who pays college coaches a fortune so “student-athletes” can wear and by extension advertise their products. We have someone who ploughs millions to the University of Oregon football program funding state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, while the school endures terrible cuts. We have someone who ...

Marking Bloomsday

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Two different suggestions today from Labour politicians about appropriate ways to mark Bloomsday. Joe Costello notes that Ireland has one of the lowest numbers of public holidays in Europe (9 per year, only exceeding the 8 of England and Wales) and suggests that making the day a holiday could provide ...

More DoE hypocrisy

Friday, November 26th, 2010

The Irish educational system has some strange features. One is that while school staff have their wages and conditions set - and paid for - by the Department of Education - they are not viewed, in law, as employees of the Department. Historically this has been used as a fudge ...

GEO wins tuition waiver security! Pickets suspended!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

In a successful 2-day strike - the first by a union local at the University of Illinois in 10-years, and one of the largest in the history of graduate unions in the US - the GEO has secured a commitment to retain tuition waivers for graduate employees. The University had ...

Call to action: Call the U of I this Wednesday, and support graduate employees

Monday, November 9th, 2009

This Thursday, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees will meet in Springfield. Members of the GEO will be there to remind them of the urgency of reaching agreement on a fair contract. You may not be able to be in Springfield, but you can play your part in persuading ...

Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

The Irish Times aren't generally known for coherent or incisive editorials, but their reaction to the Ryan report makes for sobering reading: We have to call this kind of abuse by its proper name – torture. We must also call the organised exploitation of unpaid child labour – young girls placed ...

This is integration

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Amidst a BBC report on Roma migration in Europe is this note on education policy in Hungary, which : In Hungary, an earlier policy to give money to schools for the mentally disabled, to which a disproportionate number of Roma were sent, was abandoned when it was realised that it encouraged ...