education
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Google’s ‘Dress Code’ Event Inspires Teens by Merging Computer Science With Fashion in Ingenious Ways
When you hear of careers in computer science and coding, you may immediately think of stereotypically boring nerds in short-sleeved button-ups and pocket protectors staring at lines of binary scrolling across a screen. But what if code could create a holographic dress or a purse that lights up in different colors depending on who is…
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‘You Are My Slave’: Ga. Mom Furious After White Student Targets Son During School’s Civil War Day
A Kennesaw, Ga., mother is demanding answers after a white student called her son a slave during the school’s Civil War Day last month. According to the Associated Press, Big Shanty Intermediate School—which is near Kennesaw Mountain, where Confederate soldiers once fired their cannons at Union troops—encouraged fifth-graders to dress up as characters from the…
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Somebody Lied: Education Alone Can’t Dismantle White Supremacy
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. Americans like to think that if individuals are educated in great schools, they can pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps and bring their families with them. From childhood,…
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Can an All-Boys, Afrocentric Education Close the Achievement Gap?
“I am the pink flower” is not the kind of thing a ninth-grade boy usually says with a straight face, especially not in a room filled with other teenage boys. But the young men in Schalette Gudger’s English class at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, a new all-boys public school in Washington, D.C., were…
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Someone Left Bananas at Dorm Rooms Occupied by Black Students at Temple University
This week at Temple University in Philadelphia, there were two alleged instances of bananas being left at dorm rooms occupied by black students, and now the campus Police Department and the Department of University Housing and Residential Life are investigating them as “bias-related” incidents. The Temple News reports that the first incident happened Monday when…
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How This Country’s Historical Efforts to Prevent the Education of Black People Have Continued Into the 21st Century
As we all know, it was illegal for slaves to learn to read and write during slavery. Even free blacks living in the North before the Civil War were forced to walk long distances from their homes, often passing white schools along the way, to attend the one school designated to educate blacks. These were…
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Betsy DeVos Wants to Rewrite Obama-Era Campus Sexual Assault Policy to Add More Protections for the Accused
Betsy DeVos, head of the U.S. Department of Education, said Thursday that she plans to rewrite the Obama administration’s guidance for how colleges and universities handle sexual assaults on campus so that it better protects students who have been accused of committing assault. (Insert needle scratching the record here.) DeVos made her announcement while speaking…
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Is There a Such Thing as a Dumb Question? Yes. That Was a Dumb Question
One of the most common refrains heard in school and workplace conference rooms is that there’s no such thing as a dumb question, OR, if there is such a thing, the only dumb question is the one that goes unasked. I hate to tell you this, but that shit is absolutely false, ludicrous and Plymouth…
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Closing Low-Performing Schools More Likely to Negatively Affect Black and Hispanic Students: Report
Charter schools are on the rise across the country, and as more public K-12 schools are found not to be delivering the type of high-quality education that students in their districts deserve, the push to close low-performing schools has increased. A recent study has concluded that when those closures happen, schools that serve predominantly black…
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Black Women and Girls May Run the World, but They’re Not Safe in It
In black America during the 1970s, the portraits of MLK, JFK and Jesus hung on every family’s wall. Today, the new trinity of Oprah, Beyoncé and Michelle Obama could almost replace them. But the increasing power and cultural influence of black women don’t equal protection. Black women’s accomplishments, despite their continuing struggle, illuminate how sexist…