In a continued attack against the education of women in Afghanistan, 160 female students were poisoned Tuesday at a school in the north-eastern province of Takhar. The second wave of violence in only a week’s time, the incident follows a similar pattern as the first, with police suspecting the classroom had been sprayed with a toxic material before the girls arrived to take their lessons.

Aged 10 to 20, the students reportedly smelled a strange odor upon entering the room, before experiencing symptoms such as headaches and dizziness, with many vomiting before losing consciousness. All were immediately taken to the hospital; most were discharged after only a few hours.

While none of the victims are in critical condition from the poisoning, there remains the obvious potential for emotional trauma after the incident – which is undoubtedly the true goal of this vicious assault. Extremists in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, have long opposed the many attempts to educate women in the country.

From throwing acid in the faces of girls on their way to school, to setting off bombs near institutions that allow education for both sexes, it has never been a secret how these groups feel about the women of their country garnering knowledge.  One of the major goals of their campaign is to keep women ignorant, and what better way is there to do so than to emotionally scar girls from attempting to go to school again? From making these children fear the concept of it?

While no one has formally claimed responsibility for the poisoning of the schools, many have already pronounced the Taliban as the guilty party due to their history of violence and threats against schools and women. The militant group, however, denies any culpability in the incident, instead going so far as to claim that NATO and the United States are attempting to frame them for the heinous act.

Whether the Taliban was involved or not, the poisonings only serve to further increase concern about a potential comeback for the insurgents in the government, after the Western states agreed to pull their military forces out of the country by the year 2014.

The Taliban held a strong reign on Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when U.S troops invaded to try and foster democracy within the nation.  Prior to U.S intervention, there was a ban on education for women, which many believe will come back into effect if the Taliban find themselves in a position to return to power.

Image Courtesy of   Lizette Potgieter / Shutterstock.com

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After 15 years of neglect, federal regulators are finally planning to tell phone companies selling services to schools and libraries how to comply with a rule requiring them to charge bargain prices.

Last week ProPublica revealed that the Federal Communications Commission had failed to provide guidance for the low pricing rule case since the 1997 launch of the school program, called E-Rate. Lawsuits and other legal actions in four states turned up evidence that AT&T and Verizon charged local school districts much higher rates than it gave to similar customers or more than what the program allowed.

The preferential pricing rule, called lowest corresponding price, was designed to give schools a leg up in the complicated world of voice and data pricing, and to make sure school children had access to the Internet. But despite evidence of inflated pricing, the FCC never brought an enforcement case against a service provider for violating the rule.

While the main victims of this failure are the nation’s schoolchildren who receive suboptimal broadband access, there’s another set of victims: the vast majority of people with a cellular or landline phone contract. That’s because the program provides a subsidy to schools to help them pay for the telecom services. Telephone consumers pay for this subsidy, usually through a “Universal Service Fund” charge on individual phone bills. The subsidy fund is capped at about $2.25 billion a year.

Schools and libraries draw on this fund to help pay for the services provided by the telecom companies — virtually all schools are eligible, but the poorer the school, the more it can draw. Here’s the rub: Requests for help almost always exceed the available funding. So when phone companies charge inflated rates to schools and government regulators turn a blind eye, this fund is depleted faster; fewer schools and libraries benefit; and money taken from millions of telephone customers goes to boost corporate profits instead of to help as many schoolchildren as possible.

Now, the FCC will finally teach phone companies about the preferential pricing rule. Over the next week companies that participate in the program will be attending annual training sessions in Atlanta and Los Angeles that are designed to explain the program’s rules. This year’s training sessions — unlike those in past years — will include lengthy discussions of the bargain pricing rule, according to a power point presentation posted on the website of the private company that administers the E-Rate program for the FCC, the Universal Service Administration Co.

The presentation tells companies that schools are “not obligated to ask” for the lowest corresponding price, “but must receive it!”

Asked to explain why the upcoming training sessions for providers were going to discuss the pricing rule for the first time, a spokesman for the FCC released a statement saying the new guidance was “prompted by an internal discussion last August of issues raised in the whistle-blower case.”

That case was brought in 2008 by Todd Heath, who audited school telecom bills in Wisconsin. He alleged in federal court that Wisconsin Bell, a unit of AT&T, was charging several schools far more than others for essentially the same services, thus violating the pricing rule. The company says it follows the E-Rate rules and is contesting Heath’s allegations in court. One of their defenses is the FCC’s lack of guidance about the pricing rule.

ProPublica interviewed several FCC officials responsible for E-Rate last December, in a discussion mostly about the lowest corresponding price rule. None of them mentioned the prospect of new training about the rule, even after it was pointed out that the FCC had provided phone companies virtually no guidance on the price rule for the previous decade.

by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica, May 8, 2012, 11:33 a.m.

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As reports circulate that the Prime Minister plans to leave the Crown/First Nations gathering early to attend the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, six First Nations young people, including Shannen’s Dream youth spokesperson 16 year old Chelsea Edwards, are planning a trip of their own.

On February 6, 2012 First Nations young people from across Canada will meet with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva to explain what it feels like to grow up getting fewer government services such as education, health care and child welfare on reserves.

The trip was inspired by the late Shannen Koostachin, a youth education advocate from Attawapiskat First Nation, who had her own First Nations/Crown gathering in 2008 when she met with the Minister of Indian Affairs to demand proper schools and culturally based education for First Nations children on reserves.

She was tired of the horrible conditions of many First Nations schools and knew that even in First Nations that had proper schools, the federal government short-changed First Nations children by $2000 to $3000less per student per year for teachers, books and learning supports.

Her own “school” in Attawapiskat First Nation was composed of a bunch of run down portable trailers set beside a toxic waste dump. Shannen saw talented children in grade 5 dropping out because of the deplorable conditions and she wanted this to change.  The Minister told her the government did not have enough money and she told him she would never give up because “school is a time for dreams and every kid deserves this”.

Shannen was nominated for the international children’s peace prize awarded by the Nobel Laureates in 2008. Sadly, she died in a car accident in 2010, waiting for her dream of equality for First Nations children to come true. Chelsea Edwards says that “I hope the Prime Minister will do the right thing but we are tired of waiting.  Shannen was our Rosa Parks and we have been sitting at the back of the bus our whole lives and we don’t want to wait there anymore.”

Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society says solving the inequities is not rocket science; “there are multiple solutions on the table and racial discrimination against children is not a legitimate fiscal restraint measure. Children only have one childhood. Canada must treat First Nations children fairly now.”

The Shannen’s Dream supports Parliamentary Motion 202 (introduced by MP Angus) to close the funding gaps and give First Nations children a chance to succeed and be proud of who they are.

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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention released Bullying in Schools: An Overview, the first of five bulletins examining bullying in schools and support schools can provide bullying victims.  Bullying is a complex social and emotional problem impacting children and schools.  In extreme cases, victims face shooting, physical assaults, or other harassment that may cause them to turn to suicide.

“Parents and schools across the country worry about the devastating harm bullying can cause, and we share this concern for our nation’s children,” said Jeff Slowikowski, OJJDP’s Acting Administrator.  “This new study highlights the impact of bullying and recommends effective anti-bullying strategies that schools can implement to keep students safe.”

Conducted by the National Center for School Engagement in 2007, the OJJDP-funded study focused on the connection between bullying, truancy, and low academic achievement and examined whether engaging students in academics or extracurricular activities mediates these factors.

Bullying does not directly cause truancy, researchers found.  A caring school community where students are challenged academically and adults support them can serve as a powerful antidote.  Victimization often distances students from learning and contributes to a myriad of other problems, including truancy and academic failure.

The researchers found “bullying in a box” curriculums—generic, pre-fabricated, anti-bullying curriculums—to be an ineffective substitute for intentional, student-focused engagement strategies.

The researchers further recommended these strategies for schools:

• Offer mentoring programs;
• Provide students with opportunities for community service;
• Address the difficult transition between elementary and middle school (from one single classroom teacher to teams of teachers with periods and class changes in a large school); and
• Start prevention programs early.

OJJDP’s bullying series examines the relationship among bullying, school attendance, school engagement, and school achievement; presents survey findings of young adults bullied in grade school; provides teachers’ observations on efforts to ameliorate school bullying; and compares findings to existing research on bullying.

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