A National Pre-School Program

The needs of a two year old are very different to those of a four year old. A national pre-school program would provide much more than just childcare.

Canada Last: Insult to 3rd World Kids

UNICEF should be looking out for the human rights of kids in the developing world , not inflaming an international "Mommy War".

Is this in the exam?

Will Australia become a nation of followers, with no leaders?

Australia Day by any other name

It is still possible to "celebrate what's great" without denying what ain't.

Australian of the Year Mick Dodson is absolutely right that we "need to have a conversation" about what it means for us as a society that we celebrate Australia Day on January 26th, a "day of mourning" for Indigenous Australia.  However, it's doubtful changing our National Day to a different date would help that conversation develop or provide any healing.

Changing the date would be revisionist and revisionist history is a bad idea. The current issue is that people want to gloss over the fact that 26 January is the anniversary of a colonial invasion, but if we move the date then a few decades from now it might be even easier for people to gloss over that important fact in our foundation story all together.

Seeing Beyond the Words in Language

No matter how widely and deeply the English language empire spreads, foreign language study will always be essential to Australia’s destiny, as much for that disposition as for the ability to communicate.

The Australian‘s Higher Education Supplement ran an article on January 21 by Luke Slattery ("Let’s get more competitive"), which looked at warnings by Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, that the market for education never stands still.

‘To the extent that he sees a continued role for tuition in English, the world’s lingua franca,’ Slattery wrote, ‘Davis is optimistic about Australia’s role in the export education industry. But he is wary about competitive pressure.’

No quibbles with that. But ponder Slattery’s own view that followed.

Maternity “Leave”

In Canada, as in Australia, the maternity "leave" debate is stifled by a reluctance to value unpaid work.

The phrase "maternity leave" has both positive and negative connotations for the women’s rights movement.

On the one hand, recognizing that women sometimes take time away from paid labor for childbirth and are to be valued anyway is progress. That some women get subidized to stay home with their newborns is progress. It’s a huge leap forward from traditional economic "values".

But on the other hand, the term ‘leave’ is problematic. The meaning of "leave" is a holiday, as in ‘sailor’s leave’. It implies that being home with a baby is not useful. It implies that the right to take care of a baby is a privilege which must be earned through participation in the paid workforce. This is an odd criterion!

What will history make of George W Bush’s presidency

"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones" (Shakespeare)

With the departure of George W Bush from the world stage, many, including the man himself, are thinking about how history will eventually see him.

Fund the Child: Canadian Activism

 

From dirty diapers to CBS and back home to more dirty diapers: the fight for equal childcare rights continues.

Networking Online: Risks, Rewards and Manners

Affairs of the heart will always be risky no matter what the courtship medium.

2009 COPUS Year of Science

Let’s serve up a big slice of the science cake for the environment in 2009 please!

It is an indulgence to imagine that a whole year could be dedicated to solving just one of the world’s problems. Nevertheless, specific yearly themes are a good tool to help us focus. The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science Network (COPUS) has declared 2009 as the Year of Science.

Reducing Medical Misadventures: “My name is Atul Gawande and I’m a surgeon”

Safety is NOT the result of people not making mistakes – people make mistakes all the time. Safety occurs when a system is robust enough to catch mistakes.

When a team gathers in a hospital operating theatre to perform an operation, it seems a matter of basic politeness that members should introduce themselves to one another. However it turns out that it is more than this. According to a report just published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, improbable as it may seem, it is one of a set of basic actions that help determine whether the patient lives or dies.

The paper reports a study, conducted simultaneously in hospitals in eight countries round the world and covering nearly 8000 patients. It tallied outcomes for 3733 who received surgery before a procedural improvement was introduced and 3955 receiving it afterwards.

International Choice in Childcare

Childcare is a worldwide problem, says the National Family Childcare Association, a Canadian organisation advocating for equality in all childcare choices.