State and territory education ministers say Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson's heavy-handed threats to school funding will not assist their ambitious initiative to develop consistent school curriculum’s in key subjects. [?]The ministers have announced in-principle agreement to work together to produce similar educational outcomes in English, Maths, Science, and Civics and Citizenship and are meeting in Perth later today. In a joint statement, the eight ministers have described it as an historic agreement, which will give parents who move between states greater confidence when their children switch schools.
CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP [?]
What is Civics and Citizenship Education? Civics and Citizenship Education focuses on What it means to be a citizen of Australia. NOT WHAT IT MEANS TO RESPECT A CITIZEN OF AUSTRALIA. How our system of government works. HERE ARE THE RULES! How Australian democracy evolved, and How to take part in the public affairs of Australia. NOT HOW TO RELATE TO OTHERS AND HOW TO RESOLVE CONFLICT.
Civics and Citizenship will be the first teaching program for 2003 developed as part of The Australian's resource program for schools. The program provides teachers and students the opportunity to examine and discuss a variety of issues relating to civics and citizenship, including:
The development of the ways in which Australians have been governed since 1788;
The role and importance of the United Nations [?] and the International Court of Justice [?]; and
Rights and freedoms of Australians compared to those of people from other countries.
[THE GENOCIDE OF THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE SINCE 1788!]
[THE UNITED NATIONS WAS COMPLICIT IN THE OCCUPATION AND GENOCIDE OF THE IRAQ WAR!]
[THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE HELD NO ONE TO ACCOUNT FOR THE ILLEGAL AND DEGRADING RESOURCE WAR IN IRAQ!]
[WHAT RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS DO IRAQI PEOPLE HAVE NOW?]
[SO WHAT ARE THEY PROPOSING TO TEACH THE CHILDREN?]
John Howard "At least people in this country have a right to protest".
The Civics and Citizenship program provides a wide range of resource materials for teachers including multiple copies of a special 16-page, three-part series, daily class activities, a 48-page Teacher's Handbook with activities and student worksheet masters, and a collection of four wall posters.
WHAT ABOUT A Life-Skills Course? Help your students prepare for life.
MANAGEMENT SKILLS PROGRAM
This evidence-based curricula and staff training provides troubled and underserved youth with, easy-to-understand, interactive, statistically proven life-management lessons, that have been shown by a five-year University of Miami study to motivate at-risk youth to become respectful, successful, productive individuals.
The Bensons guarantee ARISE interactive lessons will unlock the true potential of at-risk youth or your money back. ARISE is a nonprofit educational foundation established in 1986, by the husband and wife team of Susan and Edmund F. Benson.
To date, the ARISE group has researched, written, and taught all curricula. They have also trained and certified over 3,000 life-skills instructors who have gone on to teach more than 500,000 at-risk youth over 2,000,000 (Two Million) documented hours of ARISE Life-Management Skills Lessons across the U.S. no other life-skills program even comes close.
The ARISE professional life-skills training course can reduce staff turnover, lessen staff stress, improve staff communication skills, reduce liability exposure, and most of all, provide needed know-how to easily teach ARISE social skills to often reluctant students with serious behavior problems.
A FIVE YEAR EVALUATION (1997-2001)
Life-Management Skills program provides at-risk populations with the information, know-how and guidance they need to survive and succeed.
THE ARISE Foundation IN MIAMI IN THE USA started with an elementary school program in Miami-Dade County public schools in 1986 and has expanded to reach a large number of alternative schools and juvenile justice facilities throughout the State of Florida.
The ARISE program consists of over forty life-management skills curricula for pre-kindergarten through 12 grade. Since 1997, the ARISE Life Skills Lessons have been evaluated by two independent reviewers/researchers from the University of Miami (Florida) and from Quees University (Northern Ireland). The purpose of these evaluations has been twofold:
To examine success rates among various groups of learners
To monitor learner knowledge of program components closely, at times altering aspects of the program based on evaluation results. ARISE program data from entry and exit interviews have been collected at six different time periods, from 2,122 learners between January 1997 and June 2001. Data were drawn from several program sites including alternative schools and facilities under the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. Since 1997, participants in the ARISE
Life-Management Skills program has included African-American, Hispanic and White non-Hispanic learners whose ages have ranged from 13 to 18 years (with the majority of learners falling within the 15 to 17 age category).
Evaluation data over a five-year period show significant improvement in knowledge of issues included in the programs content: violence reduction, goal setting, anger management, drugs and alcohol avoidance and other life management skills. Based on results found in six evaluation reports covering the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, the data show that the overall test scores improved significantly after program completion.
Other evaluation data demonstrated that learners increased their scores for the vast majority of the 30 test items that were included in the entry-exit interviews. The tabular data also include summary evaluation data for ethnic and gender groups.
These data show that test scores improved significantly among learners of all ethnic groups for each of the six time-periods examined. The consistency of this result suggests that the program content is sensitive to and able to reach members of various ethnic backgrounds. The data also indicate that both female and male learners significantly improved their attitudinal scores after completing the ARISE Life-Management Skills program.
It is important to emphasize that since 1997 a number of learners have represented youth from high risk populations. The results from each of the six evaluations, however, indicate that program test scores improved across all program sites for which a sufficient number of cases was available for analyses, including those facilities that served primarily high-risk youth. To date, the Program has been contained within the State of Florida. Future plans are to present the ARISE Life-Management Skills program to Departments of Education and Departments of Juvenile Justice around the county, targeting frustrated, bored youth who would rather be any other place than school.
Department of Sociology Coral Gables, Florida
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