Out of every state in the nation, South Carolina offers the most single-sex school programs. As a matter of fact, they're offered in more than 150 South Carolina schools.

A survey conducted this year revealed the reason--more than 5,000 students, 720 parents, and 680 students gave the programs rave reviews, saying the programs help students in areas such as confidence, independence, and class participation. Both boys and girls showed improvement, and African Americans were the ethnicity that showed the largest improvement.

A South Carolina paper also mentioned that "Nearly three-fifths of the students said single-gender classes had increased their grades, self-confidence, interest in trying new ways of learning, class participation and ease in making friends."

However, critics of single-sex education point out that students will have to interact in a mixed-sex environment eventually, and that single-sex programs don't help students learn how to interact with other genders.

Furthermore, students who might not conform to gender norms--or who just don't feel comfortable interacting with only one sex--can be very isolated and left-out in such programs.

What do you think about single-sex programs? Do you think they help students? Or are they actually debilitating? Comment below!

President Obama gave a speech on education in Madison, Wisconsin on November 4th, to talk about his "Race to the Top" plan and how to revamp "No Child Left Behind." Obama claimed that "What we [the administration] want to do is try and get testing right," but also called on parents to toughen their own standards for their kids, sharing a story about how he and the First Lady pushed their daughter Malia to excell, and even revealed some of Malia's recent test scores.

In Britain, new legislation will make sex education a required course in 2011 starting at the age of five, with lessons on "different kinds of relationships, how to manage their emotions and the physical changes to their bodies in childhood," according to the Guardian. This program is being enacted to combat Britain's high teen pregnancy rate. However, although religious schools would be required to teach the courses as well, they can modify the courses according to their own "ethos," and parents can remove their children from the sex ed programs until the age of 16.

We all know that higher education tuition is skyrocketing, but there are now 58 colleges that have hit the $50,000+ marker compared to last year's 5, according to the New York Times. These colleges include Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown. However, costs can also be significantly more, due to textbooks, housing, and other student expenditures.

In Pakistan, where education spending remains at about 2.9% of its gross domestic product, private schools have been popping up to combat the inadequate public school system and the religiously-oriented madrassas. Though these private schools are small and still contain much religious content, Pakistani parents continue to send their children there, and the United States is sending a small amount of aid to private schools in the hopes that they will counter religious extremism often spread by madrassas.

Google’s logo informs me that Sesame Street turns forty this month.

I didn’t watch much of Sesame Street – when I was a toddler, there were a great many programs aired in my home language and I didn’t have the need for more. I do remember Friday afternoon movies of The Muppets when I was a bit older, and those were awesome.

As transformation in South Africa progressed, however, TV programs in all eleven South African languages were being aired. This obviously allows little children to be more exposed to and comfortable with the languages of their fellow citizens.

One of these programs, with its debut in 2000, was Takalani Sesame. Said programme is a localised version of Sesame Street. As with the American version, the program has a huge educational undertone. However, it has been adapted to be more culturally relevant to the young South African audience.

[Takalani Sesame logo]

A great many of the same characters are used, but they have South African names and speak South African languages in South African accents.

Takalani Sesame’s educational sphere includes, like the original, educational ideals regarding Health and Wellness, Respect and Understanding, Literacy and Numeracy as well as Emotional Wellbeing.

Above and beyond this, the programme plays a major role in racial integration and AIDS education in South Africa. Characters of different races interact on a South African streets, while two characters who are best friends, have a Black South African accent and a White South African accent, respectively.

A muppet on the show is asymptomatically HIV-positive. Through her vibrant personality and friendly advice, the producers strive towards teaching respect and awareness in children from a young age.

[Kami, the HIV-positive muppet of Takalani Sesame]

At the risk of boring my regular readers to death, I don’t think it is necessary for me to explain why I love Sesame Workshop, UNAIDS and SANLAM (a South African company) for their input with the localization of Takalani Sesame.

Their focus on AIDS prevention as well as education are both factors that I have ranted about consistently for their importance in controlling, solving and preventing poverty.

So, to Sesame Street:

“Halala ngosuku lokuzalwa; Ngiyabonga; Ngikufisela inhlanhla!” [Zulu]

“Veels geluk met jou verjaarsdag; Dankie; Sterkte!” [Afrikaans]

“Imini emnandi kuwe; Enkosi; Amathamsanqa!” [Xhosa]

That is... Happy Birthday; Thank you; Good luck!

This issue has reared its head in the press again this week and has sparked much conversation and debate. The argument put forward this week is that more should be done to deter parents from lying to get their child in to the school of their choice and there should be a bigger crackdown on those parents that have done this.

Now if you ask many parents they will say that they want thee best for their children and I think you have to commend parents that put their children first and do anything they can to give their children the best upbringing possible but the question is where do you draw the line?

If you as a parent are willing to cheat and lie to get your child in to the school of your choosing what message does that send to your children. As parents we have to be examples to our children. There are other problems associated with cheating to get in to schools like if other children find out that you cheated to get your child in they may pick on your child or you yourself may have problems with other parents at the school.

Schools can be a bit of a postcode lottery at times which I don’t think is fair but cheating is not the answer. If you happen to have a house in the radius of a good school your lucky but then what can happen is that wealthier families can afford to buy and move in to houses near these schools to get their children in which isn’t cheating but unfair on low income families who can’t do that.

I think more needs to be done to improve failing or underperforming schools as this is the only way we will avoid this situation. At the moment it seems more is being done on the prevention side but not the cure. It is only when we work on the cure that we will improve education for young people which is the real issue here.

What are your thoughts on cheating to get a school place? We would love to know and you can share your thoughts by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=789

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

As much as I love learning, I definitely have some BEEF with education today. First and foremost these teachers must be picked out of a hat because in high school and college I have never seen so many teachers so unpassionate about their jobs and so careless. If I were a teacher, I might be the same way, however, with a group of students who do not care at all and a salary not much to care about.

I dropped out of college. I was at Santa Monica College (CC or JC) and things weren't that bad at first. But, the more time I spent there the more time I felt was wasted. I was doing general education classes to transfer to a Cal State and also doing classes in support of my major, for graphic design. I am okay with English classes, but I'll be honest and say I have no passion for math classes. So, when my graphic design class became questionable as well, I could not take it anymore.

I wasn't learning what I needed to learn in my graphic design class and I was wasting my time in a math class I had no passion for, and in an English class with a bunch of students who don't even care. Their apathy made me equally careless and the entire idea of education came undone.

Higher education should be more direct. I want to do graphic design. That's it!!! I apologize that I'm not a sort of math wiz and that even when I do get the material I just don't care for math at all. I would rather spend my time doing what I NEED, however.

So, education sucks. Nothing new. Any good education is like over $25,000 a year. And nothing has changed. Thanks for reading, assuming that you are at this point because you read this far. Please comment below and agree/disagree with my blog...