Study: High schools fail to teach First Amendment
Almost half of high school students believe newspapers should not publish stories without government approval, the largest-ever survey of student First Amendment sentiment has found.
Paid for by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the survey questioned more than 100,000 high school students across the nation, at least a third of whom said they believe the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
Much of this sentiment is the result of poor or inadequate instruction at schools about the importance of the Bill of Rights and its role in society, the report stated.
“The study suggests that First Amendment values can be taught — that the more students are exposed to news media and to the First Amendment, the greater their understanding of the rights of American citizens,” it stated. “But it also shows that basics about the First Amendment are not being taught, that 75 percent of students surveyed think flag burning is illegal, that nearly 50 percent believe the government can censor the Internet, and that many students do not think newspapers should publish freely.”
Students who write for school papers posted better knowledge of the subjects, it found.
“These results are not only disturbing, they are dangerous,” Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III said. “Ignorance about the basics of this society is a danger to our nation’s future.”
Education Department late in updating data, GAO says
An investigation by the Government Accountability Office has faulted the methods used by the Department of Education to annually update the tax tables used in determining financial aid.
Had the Education Department acted in 2004-05 to include updated tax information from individual states in the formulas used for aid calculations, the government would have saved $290 million, the agency’s report stated.
The release of the report came less than a month after the department moved to update the tax information to use in 2005-06. The decision has been criticized by student and education groups because it will cut down the number of students receiving Pell Grants by almost 90,000.
In previous years, the department relied on 1988 tax data, when taxes in most states were higher, causing its calculations to overestimate student need.
Though the Department of Education must update its tax tables annually, it had not attempted to use new tax information between 1993 and 2003, the GAO found and in 2003, the update was suspended.
Part of the problem was that the department relied exclusively on data maintained by the Internal Revenue Service and did not try to find alternate sources, the report stated.
Spellings sworn in to head Department of Education
In a public ceremony at the Department of Education, Margaret Spellings was sworn in as the new Secretary of Education on Jan. 31.
In his introduction, President George W. Bush said Spellings would work to increase the maximum Pell Grant and expand access to community colleges.
“Margaret understands we need to make higher education more affordable and accessible for all Americans,” he said. “We will reform the student aid system and increase college assistance for low-income students.”
Many of San Diego’s mentally ill living on street
Fifteen percent of mentally ill people in San Diego County may be homeless, UCSD researchers reported in a February study.
Appearing in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the study suggests that the number may be reduced or prevented through programs treating substance abuse and public-funded health benefits.
Although between one-fourth and one-third of homeless persons are estimated to be mentally ill, the report is one of the first to describe how many of the mentally ill are homeless.
New language may indicate foundations of grammar
A new sign language created in a small Israeli village may hold crucial insights into understanding the roots of human grammar, a campus professor believes.
In a linguistic analysis of a naturally arising language, communications professor Carol Padden and a group of researchers have studied a new alternative sign language used in a community of about 3,500 deaf and hearing people.
“Because [the language] developed independently, it may reflect fundamental properties of language in general and provide insight into basic questions about the way in which human language develops from the very beginning,” Padden said.
