Education,identity, and community: lessons from Jewish emancipation

Why do some minority communities take up opportunities for education while others reject them? To shed light on this, we study the impact of Jewish Emancipation in nineteenth century Europe on patterns of education. In Germany, non-religious and Reform Jews dramatically increased their rates of education. In the less developed parts of Eastern Europe, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities imposed unprecedented restrictions on secular education and isolated themselves from society. Explaining this bifurcation requires a model of education that is different from the standard human capital approach. In our model, education not only confers economic benefits but also transmits values that undermine the cultural identity of minority groups. We show that it is individually rational for agents who benefit least from rising returns to education to respond by reducing their investment in education. Group-level sanctions for high levels of education piggyback upon this effect and amplify it.     

Nonformal Education, Political Participation, and Democracy: Findings from Senegal

The relationship between nonformal education (NFE) and democracy has not been subject to empirical examination. Given the prominence that NFE has gained in many countries, such as those in Africa, this inattention is unfortunate. Using data from a survey involving a probability sample of 1484 Senegalese citizens, this paper examines the effects of education, both formal and nonformal, on political participation among rural Senegalese. The results indicate that NFE and formal education tend to have similar effects on several political behaviors, but the effect of NFE generally appears to be stronger. NFE has a positive impact on political participation. NFE increases the likelihood that one will vote and contact officials regarding community and personal problems. In addition, NFE has a strong, positive impact on community participation.Michelle T. Kuenzi, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Pkwy, Box 455029, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5029, USA (michele.kuenzi@ccmail.nevada.edu)     

Tiger Moms and Liberal Elephants: Private, Supplemental Education among Korean-Americans

This article discusses the transnational industry of private, supplemental education (PSE) among ethnic Koreans, especially in Southern California. PSE offers a unique vantage point to examine the educational struggles and values of students, parents and teachers. A “Tiger Mom” educational culture reflects the extreme competition for elite, educational credentials, which can foster academic cheating and racial prejudices among Korean-Americans. In response, a growing number of educators, parents and students espouse more traditional, liberal-humanistic values of developing individual interests and talents and of mutual respect among diverse persons. This “Liberal Elephant” culture receives significant support from some members of actively proselytizing, Christian churches.     

External and Domestic Determinants of Education Expansion: How Germany, Japan, and Switzerland Have Varied

How do economically successful countries like Germany, Japan and Switzerland differ in their post-primary education policies? After identifying great variations in the structure and capacity of secondary and higher education sectors, explanations are sought in terms of domestic and inter-national factors. Switzerland and Japan emerge as polar cases in how political variables - such as centralism-federalism, parties and bureaucracies - affected choice of vehicles and extent of educational expansion. Party influence is most clearcut in Germany, but varies by sector. Whereas German and Japanese reform agendas changed in the aftermath of occupation experiences, Switzerland went its own way until prospects for European integration induced greater accommodation to the training and credential practices of its neighbors.     

Citizenship Education: Anti-political Culture and Political Education in Britain

The British Government white paper 'Excellence in Schools' and the subsequent report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship Education for Citizenship recommend that schools educate pupils in citizenship and democracy. This recommendation is considered in the context of reasons why there has traditionally been no formal or well articulated political education in schools. Among these reasons a pervasive antipathy to politics and to government is identified as one of the most powerful. This antipathy is expressed from the left and the right wings of the political spectrum, and the 'critical' opposition to both, as well as from interests such as those defending professional and personal autonomy. These arguments imply that 'politics' is optional, not a set of practices and institutions with which individuals must be familiar. It is argued that this proposition cannot be valid.     

Residential Mobility and Turnout: The Relevance of Social Costs,Timing and Education

Residential mobility has substantial negative effects on voter turnout. However, existing studies have been unable to disentangle whether this is due to social costs, informational costs or convenience costs that are related to re-registration. This article analyzes the relevance of the different costs by studying the effect of moving and reassignment to a new polling station in an automatic registration context and using a register-based panel dataset with validated turnout for 2.1 million citizens. The negative effect of moving on turnout does not differ substantially depending on the distance moved from the old neighborhood and it does not matter if citizens change municipality. Thus, the disruption of social ties is the main explanation for the negative effect of moving on turnout. Furthermore, the timing of residential mobility is important as the effect on turnout declines quickly after settling down. This illustrates that large events in citizens’ everyday life close to Election Day can distract them from going to the polling station. Finally, residential mobility mostly affects the turnout of less educated citizens. Consequentially, residential mobility increases inequalities in voter participation, which can be viewed as a democratic problem.     

Education,political discontent,and emigration intentions: evidence from a natural experiment in Turkey

Public Choice - We exploit the 1997 school reform that prolonged compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years to investigate the causal effect of education on emigration intentions. Our IV...     

Cosmopolitan Aspirations: New Media,Citizenship Education and Youth in Latin America

A wide variety of supranational organizations and networks are currently promoting educational initiatives aimed at disseminating particular values and notions of citizenship in Latin America via new media and in particular the Internet. These organizations exercise a growing influence on educational objectives and techniques in the region. Despite the fact that access is still modest among many sectors in Latin America, the hope is that these new media will contribute to the eradication among young people of undesirable behaviour such as delinquency and political apathy, and instead foster a stronger sense of civic responsibility. That sense might underpin a more constructive, entrepreneurial global youth culture espousing universal, multicultural values rather than particularistic, parochial ones. The Internet is presented in such initiatives as possessing intrinsically educational, entrepreneurial and democratizing properties. The article explores the activities of supranational organizations and networks operating in Latin America, and seeks to provide a glimpse of the idealised youth identities that they envision. It is argued that the new roles assigned to education are shaped by new media optimism, cosmopolitan aspirations and a post-national rather than nationally anchored conception of citizenship. Theories of governance and governability are used to understand how these developments can be seen in terms of the globalization of politics and the ensuing changes in the forms, rationalities and techniques of governance in a wide range of issue areas, including education.     

Education,epistemic virtues,and the power of toleration

ABSTRACT

Toleration is usually regarded as a pivotal democratic virtue that should be cultivated in the educational systems of liberal democracies. The concept of toleration, however, is marked by deep ambivalence. Power-theoretical criticisms of toleration as a political and educational ideal have emphasized that discourses of toleration are entangled with societal power struggles, and tend to naturalize social hierarchies and reify individual and collective identities. Given this criticism, toleration refers not just to justificatory problems concerning the limits of political or pedagogical authority, or to the peaceful negotiation of conflicts that pervade pluralistic societies. On the contrary, toleration itself seems to create and perpetuate precisely those political conflicts that it is meant to contain. This contribution develops a defence of toleration as a coherent and sound aim of public education and as a democratic virtue against the power-theoretical critique.     

Education,human error,and road crash risk: An empirical investigation in the Indian states

This study examines the road accident rates from 29 Indian states and 6 Union Territories during 2006–2015. In this paper, we have employed several empirical techniques such as regression, generalized method of moments (GMM), and threshold regression models to examine how education and attitude of the drivers impact the road accident rates. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that lawless driving is found to be positive and statistically significant while incorporating both state and year effects. We also find some interesting result in the context of education and road accidents. We notice positive relationship between higher education and road accident rates across Indian states, which tells us highly educated people are more prone to road accidents as compared with less educated people. In the threshold analysis, the study discovers the positive relationship between road injury and accidents caused by people with higher education, in cases of considering road injury rate from drunken driving as the threshold variable. There appears to be a large number of behavioral issues emanating from higher education, which contributes significantly to the road accident rates in the Indian states. Hence, there is a need for policy intervention.     

The Power of the Purse: Supranational Entrepreneurship,Financial Incentives,and European Higher Education Policy

This article shows how the European Commission cultivates policy shifts toward a particular idea of a common European Higher Education Area by using its considerable financial leverage. By making European Union (EU) funding dependent on grant recipients meeting certain strategically selected conditions, the Commission creates new incentive structures for domestic actors, in this case higher education institutions (HEIs), with two important consequences. First, the Commission turns universities into agents for its policies: Universities lobby governments to pass legislation, which would allow them to conform to Commission requirements. Second, HEIs try to comply with the Commission's requirements even in the absence of compatible national frameworks, thereby leapfrogging policy decisions on the national level. Describing this as a “soft” mechanism for achieving convergence, as Open Method of Coordination accounts posit, overlooks the fundamentally non‐negotiable nature of the process from the participants' perspective and considerably underestimates the Commission's real influence. We examine this argument through a case study of an EU‐funded higher education program, Erasmus Mundus.