The Forgotten Schools

By the end of the nineteenth century it became evident to Iran's ruling Qajar elite that the state's contribution to the promotion of modern education in the country was unable to meet the growing expectations set by Iranian society. Muzaffar al-Din Shah sought to remedy this situation by permitting the entry of the private sector into the field of modern education and in 1899 the first Baha'i school was established in Tehran. By the 1930s there were dozens of Baha'i schools. Their high standards of education drew many non-Baha'i students, from all sections of society.Here Soli Shahvar assesses these 'forgotten schools' and investigates why they proved so popular not only with Baha'is, but Zoroastrians, Jews and especially Muslims. Shahvar explains why they were closed by the reformist Reza Shah in the late 1930s and the subsequent fragility of the Baha'is position in Iran.

Most high school administrators, teachers, and staff concentrate on the student who is in the college preparatory track, while those who may not even finish high school have less attention paid to their curriculum and their educational needs. If the role of the school librarian is to prepare all students for lifelong learning, school librarians must work closely with teachers in charge of courses preparing students to go from school to work. They need to remind other teachers who are in general courses that many of the students in their classrooms who will not go to college, but will take jobs which pay them much more than the college graduate makes in many areas of the work force. This book points out the role of the school librarian in working with aIl the students and maps out the route to take to make this happen.

Written tests to evaluate students were a radical and controversial innovation when American educators began adopting them in the 1800s. Testing quickly became a key factor in the political battles during this period that gave birth to America's modern public school system. William J. Reese offers a richly detailed history of an educational revolution that has so far been only partially told. Single-classroom schools were the norm throughout the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge by rote recitation of lessons and were often assessed according to criteria of behavior and discipline having little to do with academics. Convinced of the inadequacy of this system, the reformer Horace Mann and allies on the Boston School Committee crafted America's first major written exam and administered it as a surprise in local schools in 1845. The embarrassingly poor results became front-page news and led to the first serious consideration of tests as a useful pedagogic tool and objective measure of student achievement. A generation after Mann's experiment, testing had become widespread. Despite critics' ongoing claims that exams narrowed the curriculum, ruined children's health, and turned teachers into automatons, once tests took root in American schools their legitimacy was never seriously challenged. Testing Wars in the Public Schools puts contemporary battles over scholastic standards and benchmarks into perspective by showcasing the historic successes and limitations of the pencil-and-paper exam.

What sets Staten Island apart from the rest of New York City? The island’s identity has in part been defined in opposition to the city, its physical and cultural differences, and the perception of neglect by city government. It has long been whiter, wealthier, less populated, and more politically conservative. And despite many attempts over the years, Staten Island is not connected by the subway to any of the other four boroughs. Kenneth M. Gold argues that the lack of a subway connection has deeply shaped Staten Island’s history and identity. He chronicles decades of recurrent efforts to build a rail link, using this history to explore the borough’s fraught relationship with New York City as a whole. The Forgotten Borough ranges from when Staten Island first contemplated joining the city in the 1890s to the opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in 1964, highlighting pivotal moments when the construction of a subway appeared possible. The economics and engineering of tunnel construction, the difficulty of uniting Staten Islanders around a single solution, competition from the other boroughs, and resistance from powerful corporations and public authorities all undermined a rapid transit connection. Gold demonstrates that the failure to establish a rail link during this period caused Staten Island to diverge culturally, demographically, and politically from the other four boroughs. Drawing on extensive archival research, The Forgotten Borough shows how transportation infrastructure and politics shed new light on urban history.

Strategy literature is abundant, but there is no book that shows you how to actually think strategically. The Forgotten Vocabulary of Strategy (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) fills this gap. For the first time it reveals the ways of thinking, acting and teaching of successful Western and Asian strategists as well as Arab and Indian mirrors for princes and looks 2500 years into the past. In its essence, the book demystifies the 12 most renowned strategic approaches, distills them into a holistic system and thus enables the reader to develop a universally strategic mind through a scientifically founded process. STRATEGISTS THINK IN PATTERNS These patterns, also called Strategic Principles, are based on the rules of the social world. They are learnable and limited in number. Decision-makers, project managers as well as specialists and leaders of all levels and areas need this universal, practical knowledge, as they are involved in social interaction every day. These two textbooks are therefore aimed at all strategy teachers who are looking for a timeless, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural strategy perspective. Practising autodidacts will also benefit, since the complete vocabulary of strategy, consisting of 153 literarily described principles, is presented in a systematised format. The principle-oriented strategy teaching - PriOri - enables the strategist to master not only the rational but also the irrational level of the mind. PriOri provides a fundamental insight into the functioning of the human mind and reveals which evolutionary mechanisms help strategic action in social interaction to succeed. By successively learning the principles, the reader develops social strategic competence - the foundation of common sense. It enables the reader to reduce complexity, simultaneously analyse interaction, avoid wrong decisions and ultimately master his daily work more calmly and efficiently.

Located in a rapidly-growing county in the southeastern United States, Peachtree Alternative School is a dumping ground for chronically disruptive students that regular teachers can no longer handle. The school has some of the toughest kids that society has to offer: kids who have dealt drugs, attempted rape, brought weapons to school, and made terrorist threats. Neglect, understaffing, and overcrowding create a volatile situation; Teachers survive threats, assaults, brawls, and rampages with their therapeutic philosophies barely intact. The Forgotten Room is a teacher survival story. It examines the darker side of American education through chronicling the course of Peachtree Alternative School's tenth and final year. It offers a glimmer of hope in the safe zones created by hardworking teachers, but it is also a cautionary tale about the consequences of bureaucrats neglecting troubled teens. Hollowell's multidisciplinary book provides a rare look at public alternative schooling in America. This gritty and compelling ethnography is part of a growing movement in academia to make ethnographic studies more accessible. It exposes punitive school policy, demonstrates the prison-industrial complex, and reveals school board corruption. In addition, it pinpoints quality teaching of chronically disruptive youth. As ethnographic nonfiction, The Forgotten Room breaks down the walls between social science and literature.