Education

The Jagannath University of Dhaka, initiated in 1858, is one of the oldest public educational institutes of Bangladesh. Many people in the country cannot afford expensive private tuition and depend on these public educational institutes for their higher studies.

Recently on the prescription of World Bank the government has ventured to curtail subsidies in education by privatizing the public colleges and universities and Jagannath University has become one of their first experiments.

Student protests

Parvez Alam [bn] provides the background of the recent protests and demonstrations by the students of Jagannath University:

জগন্নাথ বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় শ্রেফ শুরু মাত্র, এরপরে দেশের প্রত্যেকটা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়রে ধরা হবে। একটা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ক্ষেত্রে বাস্তবায়ন করতে পারলে বাকিগুলাও আস্তে আস্তে করে ফেলা হবে।

It was revealed on September 13, 2011, that four out of ten South Korean diplomats find it nearly impossible to use proper diplomatic language in English, prompting the public to raise questions on the competency of Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials.

The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) recently produced a public service announcement aimed at encouraging Jamaicans to unconditionally accept members of their families who are homosexual. The organisation hoped to have had the spot broadcast on national television in August - but as a new month begins, the Jamaican media still appear to be firm in its stance that it will not air the advertisement, which features former Miss Jamaica World and Miss Jamaica Universe Christine Straw and her gay brother, Matthew, sharing their personal story.

There are over 10.5 million Internet users in the Balkans/the former Yugoslavia, which makes up 51.7 percent of the region's population, according to a recent report [sr; see the table below].

The findings [.zip, sr] cited by Huge Media, in collaboration with Marko Tomić, a student from the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, show that Slovenia has the highest Internet service penetration (63.29 percent), while Bosnia and Herzegovina has the lowest (51.76 percent of Internet users).

Hundreds of Chilean students, fighting to overhaul their education system, clashed with an intensified police force as they protested without permission on Thursday through the center of Santiago.

The Student Confederation of Chile (CONFECH) called students across Chile to protest in April, a month after school began. Students were fed up with the growing privatization trend in Chile that began under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1980s.

So far, every protest for education reform ended with marchers drenched by water cannon jets and clouds of tear gas. Thursday morning’s protest was no different, except some politicians said, this time the violence against students crossed the line.

The recent events at the Viqarunnisa Noon School and College (VNC), a prestigious girls educational institution in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, has stirred much buzz in the Bangladeshi blogosphere. Porimol Joydhor, a teacher of Bangla department of the school's Bashundhara campus, was accused of raping a female student of class ten at VNC while giving her private tuition in his premises.

Jing Gao from Ministry of Tofu highlights a video showing how a father teaches his kids to fight without mercy.

Daivarela, on his blog, tells [pt] the story of how a capeverdean journalist, Maria Zinha, has successfully received a diploma in Cinema and Audiovisual, despite the accessibility barriers she constantly faces in the island of Mindelo to do her job, where “stairs are the main difficulty”.

What do singer Shakira, actor Gael Garcia Bernal, chef Ferran Adria and writer Mario Vargas Llosa have in common? They are all part of the group of 30 celebrities who have shared through video their favorite word in Spanish as part of the celebrations for E Day by the Cervantes Institute.

ready to celebrate E day

The Cervantes Institute of Spanish has set out to celebrate the Spanish Language in a weekend of cultural and educational events all around the world at their institutes on the weekend closest to the Summer Solstice, and this year, that date will fall on June 18th.

Gil the Jenius deconstructs the argument by political conservatives that “Poverty is a choice”.