Touchy Subject

"In the United States, sex education is more than just an uncomfortable rite of passage, it's an amorphous curriculum that varies widely based on the politics, experience, resources, and biases of the people teaching it. Most often, it's a train wreck, overemphasizing or underemphasizing STIs, teen pregnancy, abstinence, and consent. In Touchy Subject, philosopher Lauren Bialystok and historian Lisa M. F. Andersen make the case for thoughtful sex education, explaining why it's worth fighting for and which kind most deserves our fight, despite all the inconveniences and compromises along the way. They argue that democratic and humanistic aims can be used to provide the tools to reason about the content and form of sex education. In practice, this amounts to a curriculum that meets what are currently considered highly comprehensive standards, incorporates ethics and civics education, and substantially modifies some aspects of teacher training and school design; it also assigns different responsibilities to different actors inside and outside schools, and it responds to the salient features of young people's evolving worlds, including the inequities that put some students at much higher risk of sexual harm than others. Throughout their inquiry, the authors show the reader how sex education has progressed and how the very concept of "progress" remains contestable"--

In this sparkling collection of nineteen stories, the bestselling author of Slammerkin returns to contemporary affairs, exposing the private dilemmas that result from some of our most public controversies. A man finds God and finally wants to father a child-only his wife is now forty-two years old. A coach's son discovers his sexuality on the football field. A roommate's bizarre secret liberates a repressed young woman. From the unforeseen consequences of a polite social lie to the turmoil caused by the hair on a woman's chin, Donoghue dramatizes the seemingly small acts upon which our lives often turn. Many of these stories involve animals and what they mean to us, or babies and whether to have them; some replay biblical plots in modern contexts. With characters old, young, straight, gay, and simply confused, Donoghue dazzles with her range and her ability to touch lightly but delve deeply into the human condition.

In seventeenth-century philosophy the mind-body problem and the nature of personal immortality were two of the most controversial and sensitive issues. Nicholas Jolley seeks to show that these issues are more prominent in Locke's philosophy than has been realized. He argues further that Locke takes up unorthodox positions in both cases. Although Locke's official stance on the mind-body problem is agnostic, in places he presents arguments that, taken together, amount to a significant case for a weak form of materialism. Locke also seeks to show that the solution to the mind-body problem is irrelevant to the issue of personal immortality: for Locke, such immortality is conceptually possible even if the same body is not resurrected at the Day of Judgment. Jolley throws new light on such central topics in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding as substance and personal identity: he also pays close attention to such neglected topics as his account of the status of animals and his polemic against the thesis that the mind always thinks. Throughout, the book examines Locke's arguments against the background of Descartes' views. Jolley argues that Locke's criticisms of Descartes are no mere defences of common sense against dogmatism; rather, they are controversial responses to some of the most challenging metaphysical and theological issues of his time.

A play in 13 sequences.

Nicholas Jolley shows that the mind-body problem and the nature of personal immortality are more central to Locke's philosophy than has been realized. He argues that Locke takes up unorthodox positions in both cases, and holds that Locke's criticisms of Descartes were controversial responses to challenging metaphysical and theological issues.

A humorous look at life in the secondary school classroom from the point of view of an experienced supply teacher expressed in a series of letters to her absent colleague, Cassie. Over several years, Cassie, an art teacher and full-time member of staff has always lent an ear and provided support to Beth, during snatched chats at lunchtime conducted in Cassie's welcoming art room, providing reassurance and hope that the supply teacher's essentials- the textbooks, lined paper and window pole- will, eventually, one day be found. However, when Cassie goes on long-term sick leave and the tête-à-têtes come to an end, Beth decides to put pen to paper to keep her colleague abreast of school happenings and, with the boot on the other foot, bolster her friend's spirits, regaling her with the latest antics to beset the beleaguered supply teacher. Interwoven with learning the lessons and pitfalls of supply teaching, Beth takes a wry look at family life, keeping Cassie up to date with events taking place nearer to home.

The Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary defines the vocabulary students need to succeed in high school and beyond. Entries cover more than 2,000 content-area vocabulary items, as well as general academic vocabulary and full coverage of everyday words and phrases. The CD-ROM lets students search for vocabulary by subject area, includes audio of all entry words, offers word family and frequency information, and has a thesaurus and instant lookup feature. The CD-ROM is compatible with Windows XP/Vista and with Mac OSX 10.4 (32-bit only).