"It used to be about the kids": nutrition reform and the Montreal Protestant School Board

The nutrition programs that developed in Montreal Protestant schools during the 1970s attest to a deepening awareness of child and adolescent welfare. The combination of grassroots activism and government support that brought about these initiatives took place in the context of post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, when Montrealers were grappling with the role that the newly activist state should play in social life. At the same time, school nutrition reform was part of a broader ongoing renegotiation of state responsibility. Both in Canada and the United States, governments were steadily assuming a mantle of responsibility for expanded liberal rights.     

Mapping schools' NAPLAN results: a spatial inequality of school outcomes in Australia

This article identifies spatial dimensions of educational outcomes using maps of the 2016 Grade 5 reading results for Australia's National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy for all Australian schools. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to overlay schools' results onto suburbs' advantage or disadvantage to visualise spatial patterns. We then examined the extent to which school results “cluster” in socio‐economically advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs and considered the consistency of spatial patterns for results across major cities. That work illustrates both how GIS can foreground educational inequality and how “the spatial” is more than corollary for student socio‐economic status. Results show substantial differences between urban and remote areas and towns of different size. Maps of cities visualise spatial “clustering” patterns of school results, with most schools in advantaged suburbs having high results and almost no schools in disadvantaged suburbs having high results. Educational outcomes strongly align to local socio‐demographic characteristics, and parallel host communities’ levels of advantage or disadvantage. Differences between public and private schools are less significant than within‐sector differences for schools in advantaged or disadvantaged locales. Patterns in all cities are consistent—schools in advantaged suburbs predominantly have high results, whereas non‐government schools generally perform better than government schools in disadvantaged suburbs. Most concerning is the persistent and increasing trajectory of results in advantaged, and more so in disadvantaged suburbs, of all cities since the first National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy in 2008. Ameliorating spatial inequality between primary schools is one of the greatest challenges for Australians.     

Growth of Rural Industries in Post-reform China: Patterns,Determinants and Consequences

The first question addressed by this paper relates to the very high growth rates achieved by China's rural industries during the post-reform period. While growth rates have undoubtedly been extremely high, they can only be put in a proper perspective when growth in different components of the sector (i.e. township- and village-owned and privately owned industries) is examined separately and compared with performance before the reforms. In this regard, an important finding of the paper is that as far as township and village industries are concerned, growth rates in the post-reform period do not represent a sudden break from the rates of the earlier period — particularly the 1970s. It is mainly in the emergence and growth of private enterprises that the growth experience of the 1980s differs substantially from that of the 1970s. The sharp decline in the growth of all rural industries in 1989 does not appear to mark a reversal in their growth environment, but the beginning of a period of consolidation and rationalization; and, contrary to popular notion, private enterprises are not the worst sufferers in this process. Finally, the paper looks at regional imbalance. Historically, rural industries in China have been concentrated more in the eastern provinces along the coast, and this regional concentration has increased during the post-reform period of high growth.     

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL POPULATION TRENDS IN THE USSR, 1979–89: PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM THE 1989 CENSUS

This article investigates national, macroregional, and economic regional population trends in the USSR during the 1979–89 intercensal period based on preliminary results from the 1989 census. The national total population growth rate during 1979–89 was roughly similar to that of 1970–79. However, the urban growth and urbanization processes slowed, while the rate of rural population change increased due chiefly to reduced rural-urban migration. Regional variations in rates of total, urban, and rural population change generally resembled those of 1970–79. Central Asia continued to exhibit the most rapid overall growth, although Siberia experienced a resurgence.     

REGIONAL POPULATION REDISTRIBUTION IN THE USSR: 1979-84

This paper examines regional redistribution and population growth rate trends in the USSR from 1979 to 1984, and compares them to preceding intercensal trends for 1959-70 and 1970-79. Total and regional rates of population change for 1979-84 were generally lower than in preceding periods. The most pronounced regional shift continues to be toward rapidly growing Central Asia, which has surpassed the Center as the most populous Soviet region. However, Central Asia now has net out-migration, and the degree of shift to Central Asia was less than during 1970-79. Between 1979 and 1984 a noticeable northward and eastward shift occurred. In particular, there appeared to be a resurgence of Siberia. After two decades of decline, the share of the Soviet population residing in Siberia increased between 1979 and 1984. Another notable development was the slowing of the rate of rural population decline, especially in the Non-Chernozem Zone of European USSR and in Siberia. It is possible that policies to promote migration to Siberia and to stem rural depopulation may be having some effect. The shift to cities in general and large cities in particular, however, continues. (The author would like to thank Robert Lewis for his useful comments and Jane Rowland for her excellent typing).     

Defiant Retreat： The Relocation of Middle Schools to China＇s Interior, 1937-1945

This study focuses on the migration of middle school students to the interior of China after the Japanese invaded in 1937. It argues that the Guomindang （GMD） central government was generally successful in handling the 500,000 displaced students, making substantial efforts to monitor, register, educate, and provide training for them, as well as establishing government-run ＂national middle schools＂ during the war. Meanwhile, the GMD also exerted a strong influence on course curriculum, instructing educators how to implement the Three People＇s Principles and other party doctrines in classrooms. These processes expanded the state＇s hand in secondary education and allowed the GMD to include refugee students and schools in its wartime narrative of progress, praising the students＇ patriotic participation in defying the Japanese occupiers and their contribution to ＂national reconstruction＂ （jianguo）. However, there were still many challenges. Refugee students, teachers, and principals forcibly converted Buddhist temples into schools and clashed with local monks, farmers, villagers, and even the GMD military. With schools merging and moving inland, relocation also provided opportunities for unscrupulous administrators and teachers to exploit the situation for themselves, as government reports reveal many cases of corruption in the wartime schools.     

清末各省大学堂与现代中国大学的缘起

1901年9月,清廷应两广总督陶模奏请,谕令各省设大学堂,前因虽是戊戌变法期间康有为倡言在省会改书院为高等中学,却是混淆专门学的高等学与大学,令疆臣们进退维谷。袁世凯率先想出挂羊头卖狗肉之策,以大学的名义办中小学的正斋、备斋,化两难为两便。各省争相跟进,纷纷效法,上演了一出君臣之间心照不宣的闹剧。壬寅、癸卯学制拨乱反正,重回各省高等学堂的轨道。不过,作为普通学向专门学的过渡,来自日本特有的高等学堂究竟应该是一省教育的最高学府,还是大学堂的预科,直到民初仍然聚讼纷纭,摇摆不定。而各方就此展开的争论,对于时下平衡基础教育与高等教育的衔接,仍有借鉴作用。     

RECENT POPULATION TRENDS IN THE USSR

Pending the publication of new Soviet population data based on the 1979 census, to be hald next January, the author reviews population trends in the 1970's. After a steady decline through much of the Soviet period, birth rates and death rates have stabilized for the country as a whole, although marked regional differences continue. An unexplained rise in infant mortality and an apparent reduction of life expectancy have led to the suppression of data in these areas. No ready explanation is found for a recent increase in female fertility and age-specific death rates. Abnormalities in the age-sex structure, resulting from past population catastrophes, continue to persist and indicate future labor shortages. Geographical differences in population growth rates, resulting from differential rates of natural increase and migration, are analyzed. Urbanization, a typical phenomenon of the Soviet period, continues apace, with the biggest increases in large cities despite a policy designed to discourage big-city growth. A crucial question is the optimal disposition of the growing labor pool in the Central Asian region-whether to foster local employment or encourage migration from Central Asia to labor deficit areas elsewhere in the Soviet Union.     

Learning from Schools: School Choice,Political Learning,and Policy Feedback

This article investigates the policy feedback and political learning effects of school vouchers. Of particular interest is how market‐based policies affect the likelihood that program participants will connect their experiences with the policy to the government. I examine parent survey data from an evaluation of the Milwaukee school voucher program. I find that voucher parents are more likely than public school parents to perceive that the government has influenced their child's schooling and to believe that their experiences with their child's school have taught them about how government works. Further, voucher parents report that their experiences with the policy have made them more politically active. While majorities of voucher and public school parents support increased public school expenditures, there is some evidence that school vouchers may decrease support for public schools.     

Legislation and Liberalization: The Debate About Corporal Punishment in Schools in Postwar West Germany, 1945--1975

Between 1945 and 1975 West Germany became modernized and liberalized.School education was one of the key fields in which this processwas played out. Methods of school discipline, corporal punishmentin particular, were the subject of heated public debates, reflectingthe broader political and moral issues of West German postwarreconstruction. The article examines the debate and its conclusionin the 1970s by focusing on Hesse, the only Land that bannedcorporal punishment in schools completely in 1946, and Bavariaand North Rhine-Westphalia, which both allowed it under restrictions.Proponents of corporal punishment pointed to the problems withdeviant youth in the postwar years and declared the use of thistype of sanction to be a right given to teachers by customarylaw. Opponents, however, put forward pedagogical, psychological,political, and moral arguments and called for a clear breakwith authoritarian methods of the past as necessary for rebuildingdemocracy. The pace and character of change, however, was determinedin the field of law. While a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 supportedthe opponents' position, a 1957 ruling by another Chamber ofthe same court reaffirmed the traditional customary-law viewof a teacher's right to wield the cane. Customary law couldonly be superseded by written law, but when most Land governmentsfinally abolished corporal punishment in schools in the early1970s, they did so, following Hesse's example, by administrativedecree only. While teachers who violated the ban therefore werenot automatically subject to criminal proceedings, courts remainedreluctant to uphold the ban. The abolition of corporal punishmentin schools, which also came at the price of an increase in bureaucraticregulations about school discipline and school life, can thusbe seen as reflecting the ambivalence of modernization and liberalizationafter 1945.     

Geographical Patterns and Some Causes of Spatial Econoetic Variations in Perth,Western Australia

The 54 government senior high schools (SHS) in the Perth metropolitan area provide enough points for a spatial analysis in the search for indicators and correlations that may be used in relation to the results of the Australian scaling test (AST) and the tertiary entrance examination (TEE) in Western Australia. Spatial data are shown by maps, and statistical correlation pairings by graphs. The findings emphasize the great importance of socio-economic factors, such as parents' own education and employment, income and housing standard, as influences on the children's educational choices and results. The disadvantaged position of Aborigines in this respect is also stressed. This type of analysis may help in the planning of new school locations and in the choice of subjects to be offered by each school according to the suburb's socio-economic characteristics. From this analysis emerges a strong geographical pattern which separates a western prosperous belt from an underprivileged eastern belt. This separation has a long history and is due to a combination of landscape morphology, soil quality and drainage.     

Geographies of environmental learning: an exploration of children's use of school grounds

There has been limited recent geographic research on children's use of school grounds. This study explores the impact of school grounds on the play behaviours of children in primary schools. It examines the way in which some features of school grounds stimulate more of the type of play that is likely to produce environmental learning. The paper reports on research findings from two primary schools in Canberra, Australia. At each school, multiple research techniques were employed, including behaviour mapping of children's play, interviews with children, and analysis of children's drawings of their school grounds. Children's play in one school displayed high levels of interaction with the natural environment. The paper provides insights on the potential of school grounds as sites for environmental learning.     

Whig Party Fortunes in the Yorkshire County Election of 1708

Abstract

The impact of State intervention in rural education was not to supplant the role of the aristocracy and gentry in providing schooling for those who lived on their estates. Rather it brought about a partnership between evolving State policy on the one hand and continuing propertied paternalism on the other. This article argues that the point of conjunction in the partnership occurred through the acquisition of government grants that were, throughout the period, linked to evolving conditionality. The responsibility for obtaining and maintaining school grants expanded the roles of landowners, as they became school managers as well as benefactors. Through the use of school logbooks these dual roles will be illustrated to show the complex relationship that some landowners in Northumberland had with their village schools which primarily focused on fulfilling the criteria for gaining government finance.     

Local Markets and the Polarization of Public-Sector Schools in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the recent change of government, UK educational policy continues to stress school performance tables, parental choice and competition – reflecting an acceptance by New Labour of Tory notions concerning the role that market mechanisms play in improving school performance. In view of the 1997 Education White Paper's insistence that the new government's goal was to 'overcome the spiral of disadvantage … passed from one generation to the next', this implies that the DfEE remains unimpressed by long-standing arguments concerning the socially-divisive consequences of market forces in education.
This paper seeks to add empirical weight to this debate. Arguing that recent analyses of aggregate levels of social stratification have masked polarization occurring at the local level, our analysis places schools in the context of the local markets within which they operate. This yields clear evidence that educational markets tend to exacerbate existing differences between schools in terms of both their performance and social status.     

泰国华文学校的世纪沧桑

泰国华校发展受中国、泰国、泰国华人以及世界发展的影响,经历初兴、艰难繁荣、极度衰落、复兴四个阶段。华校20世纪初产生,随即迅猛发展。二战后,华校勃兴,其校所、生源在泰国华文教育史上都是最多的。1948年始,泰国全面执行限制政策,学校不断减少。经几十年的限制,到20世纪80年代中期,落入最低谷。其后,泰国逐步开放华文教育,华校复兴。百年间,华校的命运与近代以来中国的命运息息相关。     

Soybeans,Development and Conservation on the Amazon Frontier

Bolivia's rate of deforestation throughout the 1990s was among the most rapid anywhere in the Amazon Basin. This drastic clearing stood in sharp contrast to the relatively slow rates of landscape change that had prevailed in previous decades. This article reviews the models used for explaining deforestation, and argues that the new context of globalization, structural adjustment, regional integration and rapid technological change contributed to accelerated forest cutting during the 1990s. The author suggests that many environmental policy approaches developed during the 1970s and 1980s no longer address the current clearing situation effectively, and that today's frontiers differ profoundly from previous ones. The widely held idea that intensive production per se reduces forest destruction may not be valid on tropical agro‐industrial frontiers, such as the soybean zones of Bolivia and Brazil.     

Nigerian Oil and Exchange Rates: Indicators of ‘Dutch Disease’

This article assesses the impact of expanding oil revenues on non-oil sectors of the Nigerian economy from 1960 to 1985/6. Emphasis is placed on the effects of exchange rate appreciation during the 1970s on the agricultural, manufacturing and non-traded goods sectors. The analysis is conducted within a Dutch disease context. Two main conclusions are that the decline of Nigerian agriculture during these years can be attributed to a combination of low real producer prices and insufficient government investment, as well as the overvalued Nigerian naira; and that the high real exchange rate may have benefited the manufacturing sector.     

School Vouchers and Student Attainment: Evidence from a State‐Mandated Study of Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program

In this article we examine educational attainment levels for students in Milwaukee's citywide voucher program and a comparable group of public school students. Using unique data collected as part of a state‐mandated evaluation of the program, we consider high school graduation and enrollment in postsecondary institutions for students initially exposed to voucher schools and those in public schools at the same time. We show that exposure to voucher schools was related to graduation and, in particular, to enrollment and persistence in a 4‐year college. These differences are apparent despite controls for student neighborhoods, demographics, early‐career test scores and—for a subsample of survey respondents—controls for parental education, income, religious behavior, and marital status. We conclude by stressing the implications for future scholarship and policy, including the importance of attainment outcomes in educational research.     

A Visit to Burma

ABSTRACT

Closure of small schools has been a contentious policy issue, addressed most recently in the Schools Consultation (Scotland) Act 2010. Local authorities are currently delivering public service under great financial pressure and, given the high per capita costs of running small schools, have often sought to close them. One of the arguments for retaining small schools is the purported contribution that they make in maintaining rural community vibrancy. However, the evidence base for retaining small schools as ‘the heart of the rural community’ is largely untested, and such evidence as there is suggests that school closures have a modest effect on community vibrancy. School catchment studies show a long-term pattern of adjustment to demographic changes but this process may be curtailed by government policy in Scotland. A solid employment base and affordable housing are deemed by many to be more important factors in rural socio-economic wellbeing than the presence or absence of a primary school.     

The cobbler — a mountain shaped by Rock Slope failure

During the 1960s and 1970s, Malta's mass tourism industry developed in a relatively unplanned fashion and was characterised by a mixed assortment of benefits and dis‐benefits, as well as dependence on a narrowly defined market. This paper examines the international trends and government policies that have resulted in the diversification of the tourist industry in Malta since the mid‐1980s. Focusing on one particular type of niche‐marketing, that of cultural tourism, the paper explores some of the possible impacts following from the changing patterns of tourism. The paper questions whether cultural tourists are a blessing or blight, and considers the emerging implications for the sustainability of tourism in Malta, examining Malta as a sensitive test case for tourism development strategies.