Featured series 
Tag: Education
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Nation & World
Closing the ‘achievement gap’
The achievement gap in American K-12 schools is well-documented, and is characterized by racial and class differences.
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Campus & Community
HMNH’s Wild Wednesdays receives sponsorship
Distrigas of Massachusetts/SUEZ Energy Resources has announced its support as the lead corporate sponsor of Wild Wednesdays, a program for urban youth at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH).
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Campus & Community
John Harvard Book Project to provide books to local schools
Few names are as universally known as Harvard, yet little is known about John Harvard. What is known is that the donation of his personal library to a fledgling Colonial college helped lay the foundation for the largest academic library in the world. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the University’s original benefactor’s birth…
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Science & Tech
Over the river, through the woods
For close to 30 Hyde Park preschool children, a recent trip to the Arnold Arboretum, the majestic 265-acre botanical garden run by Harvard University in Jamaica Plain, meant a journey to a world alive with natural wonders and surprises.
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Nation & World
Chidambaram talks about ‘rich poor’ India
At 60 years old, India is a young nation. It is also a country that is both rich and poor.
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Nation & World
How Sputnik changed U.S. education
Education experts said Oct. 4 that the United States may be overdue for a science education overhaul like the one undertaken after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite 50 years ago, and predicted that a window for change may open as the Iraq war winds down.
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Health
Data on life expectancy show many countries clustered in high mortality ‘traps’
Growing recognition of the importance of health as a contributing factor to economic development and societal change has prompted the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to add a new subsection on sustainable health to its existing section on sustainable Development.
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Campus & Community
Initiative is designed to underscore importance of republicanism
Daniel Carpenter’s new educational initiative will reaffirm the significance of the history of republicanism and its influence on the American political system. Carpenter is supported by an $875,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to launch a program at Harvard regarding American political history and political thought.
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Nation & World
Labor and management, together at last
Harvard University hosted “The Future of Labor Forum” last week (Oct. 2), a first-ever conference that brought together prominent voices from the sometimes adversarial worlds of management, unions, government, and the academy.
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Campus & Community
Taking distance education to the next level
A major advance in distance education was initiated this fall in a specially equipped classroom at the Harvard Extension School. Classes held there give online students the ability to view on-campus lectures in real-time and actually take part in classroom discussions. The facility also serves as an experimental locus to test distance education teaching methods…
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Science & Tech
Harvard brings the Earth to high school
Steam vents in Yellowstone National Park are part of the area’s unique environment, seen in a case study exploring Yellowstone and the reintroduction of wolves into the park. This case study is part of a new environmental science course for high school science teachers.
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Nation & World
Kozol campaigns for educational reform
At times as he spoke in the Memorial Church last Thursday (Sept. 20) Jonathan Kozol, educator, activist, and author, sounded more fervent than an impassioned man of God preaching eternal salvation.
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Campus & Community
HBS program casts wider net for undergrads
A future in business might be right for anyone — and for some, the earlier the better. That’s the thinking behind the Harvard Business School’s (HBS) 2+2 Program, a new effort to expand the School’s applicant pool to students who might not normally consider a business degree or career.
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Arts & Culture
Little Rock Central: 50 years later
It’s been half a century, but it feels like just yesterday for at least one member of the “Little Rock Nine.” “I can’t feel this so strong, it doesn’t make sense … you are supposed to be over it,” says an emotional Minnijean Brown Trickey in the opening of the film “Little Rock Central High:…
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Campus & Community
Lectores y Amiguitos: Reading and sharing
Katie Ferrari (right) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) reads with second-grader Alicia Morency from the Amigos School on Putnam Avenue. Ferrari participates in the Lectores y Amiguitos program managed by the Office of School Partnerships and Cambridge School Volunteers.
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Campus & Community
‘Being good for something’
In her classroom, Sherri Geng ’09 has put up a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.” Being good for something and thereby becoming an agent of change is an idea she wants to get across to her students. “If you’re truly invested in what you’re…
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Campus & Community
Kennedy School’s Greer aims for real change in city schools
When a friend asked Jacqueline Greer to become a volunteer mentor for city middle school kids, she agreed only reluctantly. After working with the kids a short time, however, their education became her passion.
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Science & Tech
‘Digital immigrants’ teaching ‘digital natives’
Students coming into universities today are ‘digital natives’ and fundamentally different in their use of technology than the ‘digital immigrants’ who teach them, according to John Palfrey, executive director of…
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Nation & World
Advances in genetics can help kids learn
Education was becoming a no-brainer, some people at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE) complained. Kurt Fischer and his colleagues looked at the revolution in brain scanning, genetics, and other biological technologies and decided that most teachers and students weren’t getting much benefit from them.
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Nation & World
Military model may help close gap
Does the military have anything to teach educators? Absolutely, said Brookings Institution senior fellow Hugh Price, who, 18 months out of Yale Law School in 1968, gave up his career to become a youth counselor.
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Campus & Community
HMS launches Ruth M. Batson Social Justice Award
The Office for Diversity and Community Partnership at Harvard Medical School (HMS), together with HMS teaching affiliate Cambridge Health Alliance, bestowed the inaugural Ruth M. Batson Social Justice Award on Tuesday (April 10) at the School’s New Research Building during the Reflection in Action: Building Healthy Communities event.
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Campus & Community
Bridge-crossing
The Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy recently celebrated the success of its pilot program ‘SEIU Career Pathways at The Bridge.’
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Campus & Community
Through a child’s eye
At first glimpse, the photos don’t seem particularly revealing: a fish on a plate, a television, clean dishes on a rack, a toddler with outstretched arms, a lighted porch. But to Wendy Luttrell, these pictures — and 1,600 others like them in her data base at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — open…
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Campus & Community
Match Day sets the course
Gordon Hall’s second-floor hallway was alive with the chatter of more than 100 medical students catching up with classmates and renewing old acquaintances as they waited to be summoned past a cluster of colorful balloons, up a short flight of stairs, and into Room 213 where their futures waited. The students, members of Harvard Medical…
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Nation & World
The achievement gap, a look into causes
Paul Tough’s prescription for making children better students sounds like a license to have fun: Read to them, sing, play, emphasize encouragement over criticism, and converse a lot. Research shows a correlation between how many words a child hears in the first three years of life and brain development, he said. The more words, the…
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Campus & Community
Singer Prize to acknowledge teachers’ impact
The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) has asked Harvard College seniors to nominate secondary school teachers who have impacted their lives. As part of a new award given by the dean’s office, the Singer Prize for Excellence in Secondary Teaching — funded by the Paul Singer Family Foundation — will recognize the extraordinary work…
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Nation & World
HGSE sponsors alumni of color conference
In a crowded banquet hall at the Cambridge Center Marriott, William Demmert Jr. Ed.D.’73 — a Tlingit who grew up in southeast Alaska — finished up a detailed lecture on Native American languages, culture, and early childhood education. And as soon as the talk ended, the 72-year-old writer and researcher was on the crowded dance…
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Nation & World
HBS sponsors program for NFL pros
Is there life after pro football? The Harvard Business School (HBS) thinks so. For the third year, it’s sponsoring an executive education program for young athletes from the National Football League. In separate three-day modules, one in February and another in April, experts help the players conserve and invest the dollars they earn on the…
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Nation & World
Young scholars show findings at HGSE Student Research Conference
In a basement classroom in Larsen Hall on Friday (Feb. 23), there was everything young learners need: chalkboards, a screen, bright lights, sturdy chairs – and good teachers. In this case, four good teachers – all of them Ed.M. students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). The four were among 230 young scholars…