Have a great summer everyone!

It was a pleasure sharing this semester with all of you. Through your posts I got to know you a bit better and you taught me a lot.
I know that many of you are graduating and moving on to other universities, some close, some far away.
So, what I have to say to you is this:
Go! Do it! And do it well!

God bless you all!

OUR LAST POST FOR THIS SEMESTER

Suspects in video beating could get life in prison

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/

(CNN) -- Eight Florida teenagers -- six of them girls -- will be tried as adults and could be sentenced to life in prison for their alleged roles in the videotaped beating of another teen, the state attorney's office said Thursday.

You may read the whole story at

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/

Do you think girls' violent behavior is on the rise? And what are your thoughts on teens being tried as adults?

US high school dropout rate: high, but how high?

US high school dropout rate: high, but how high?


By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON






The national dropout rate is notoriously hard to pin down, and the latest effort to do so - showing alarmingly low graduation rates in some parts of America - is likely to intensify the statistics wars.
Nearly 1 in 3 high school students in the Class of 2006 will not graduate this year, the Editorial Projects in Education (EDE) Research Center reported Tuesday. ....

You may read the whole story at http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0621/p03s02-ussc.htm

What is the problem with our school system so that that one in every three students will drop out of high school?

Beyond America’s Original Sin

March 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Beyond America’s Original Sin
By ROGER COHEN

There are things you come to believe and things you carry in your blood. In my case, having spent part of my childhood in apartheid South Africa, I bear my measure of shame.
As a child, experience is wordless but no less powerful for that. How vast, how shimmering, was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand!
The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered.
Once, a black nanny took me out across the road to a parapet above a rail track beside that harbor. “You wouldn’t want me to drop you,” she said. ....

You may read the whole article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20cohen.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Do you observe any types of segregation or discrimination on any of the following lines? Race, ethnicity,religion,age,sexuality,disabilities...?
Please share personal experiences if you wish.