• South Africa: Centre for Indian Studies in Africa to boost South Africa-India relations
• India: Strong economic growth and improved literacy leads to more reading
• US: Music can be path to language and math

• Film legend David Lynch takes to the road to promote his new book and Transcendental Meditation
• Consciousness-Based Education: Solution for WHO study of 200,000 students in 41 European countries - Part II
• Consciousness-Based Education: Solution for WHO study of 200,000 students in 41 European countries - Part I

• US: Government's reading programme hasn't helped - study
• England: Teachers hold first national strike in 20 years
• Iraqi children desperate to learn in ruined schools

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Positive Trends
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

South Africa: Centre for Indian Studies in Africa to boost South Africa-India relations
14 May 2008 - Wits University is establishing a Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), the first of its kind on the African continent. CISA will support research, teaching, and public debate about India and its growing presence across the African continent. The Centre has been set up in an effort to boost ties between India and South Africa as trade and investment between the two countries records significant upward growth. (more)

India: Strong economic growth and improved literacy leads to more reading
11 May 2008 - Revenue for newspapers and magazines in India, where reading at least one newspaper in the morning is sacrosanct, grew at an average rate of 15 per cent in the last four years, higher than anywhere in the world. With the economy having grown at an average rate of 8.75 per cent during that time, middle class incomes have risen, boosting demand for niche magazines on health, leisure, and finances. (more)

US: Music can be path to language and math
30 April 2008 - A national competition with the stated goal of encouraging entrepreneurial solutions to problems in US schools has been won by Michael Bitz for his idea of helping students learn academic subjects while creating their own record labels. An adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University, Bitz will bring that idea to schools across the country and use it to boost children's reading and math scores. (more)

South Africa: Western Cape Education Department to spend R40m on attracting good teachers
29 April 2008 - The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has allocated more than R40 million extra for rural schools to attract qualified and competent staff particularly in subjects such as mathematics and science. (more)

US: Gear Up programme successful in raising numbers of students attending college
28 April 2008 - Gear Up, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, has been successful is setting up counseling offices in middle schools and high schools across the US. About 31 per cent of low-income, college-age students enroll, compared to 75 per cent of high-income students. More than 55 per cent of students involved in Gear Up programmes enrolled in college within a year of graduation, Diane Jones, assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the US Department of Education said. (more)

South Africa promoting literacy and mother tongue story books
24 April 2008 - GreaterGood SA's Donate-a-Book campaign urges South Africans to empower future generations by buying mother tongue story books for pre-schools and early childhood development centres. Launched on Wednesday to coincide with World Book Day, the campaign is aimed at promoting literacy and a love of reading in communities without access to books. (more)

US: telecommunications giant to donate $100M to help keep children in high school
17 April 2008 - The US telecommunications giant AT and T will donate $100 million over four years to programmes aimed at boosting high-school graduation rates, Chief Executive Randall Stephenson was to announce 17 April. The phone company will devote the money to schools and nonprofit organizations and fund research and community 'dropout prevention summits' run by America's Promise Alliance, a coalition of nonprofits and corporations that was founded by former US Secretary of State General Colin Powell. (more)

US: School nutrition policy can prevent obesity
16 April 2008 - Philadelphia schools that cut out soda, revamped snack selections, and took other measures to prevent childhood obesity were able to halve the odds of students becoming overweight by sixth grade, a study has found. The schools also got parents involved through meetings and nutrition workshops that encouraged them to give their kids more fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods. (more)

Canada: Healthy diet means better school performance
14 April 2008 - Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit, vegetables, protein, fiber, and other components of a healthy diet were significantly less likely to fail a literacy test, Dr Paul J. Veugelers of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and colleagues found. (more)

South African children benefit from One Laptop Per Child campaign
8 April 2008 - School children in Kliptown, Soweto have become the first in South Africa to benefit from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) campaign. The laptops were localized to include content in both Zulu and English as well as educational software suited to the South African curriculum. The durable XO Laptops weigh only 1.3 kilograms and cost US$100 (R780) to manufacture. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

Film legend David Lynch takes to the road to promote his new book and Transcendental Meditation
16 May 2008 - Hollywood film director David Lynch is traveling the US promoting his bestselling book, 'Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity', which explains how the practice of Transcendental Meditation has helped his creative life. He is also working on his new documentary with Donovan and John Hagelin, and speaking about why he created the David Lynch Foundation. (more)

Consciousness-Based Education: Solution for WHO study of 200,000 students in 41 European countries - Part II
13 May 2008 - Dr Eckhart Stein, Director of Education for Invincible Germany, a leading quantum physicist and researcher in quantum chromodynamics, reported on a recent Maharishi Global Family Chat about a wave of press articles on the problems of education in Germany and a conference on Consciousness-Based Education held in response to these articles. (more)

Consciousness-Based Education: Solution for WHO study of 200,000 students in 41 European countries - Part I
12 May 2008 - Dr Eckhart Stein, Director of Education for the Global Country of World Peace in Invincible Germany, a leading quantum physicist and researcher in quantum chromodynamics, reported on a recent Maharishi Global Family Chat about a wave of press articles on the problems of education in Germany, and their solution in Consciousness-Based Education. (more)

Founder of Himalayan Buddhist monastery plans to introduce Maharishi's programmes
12 May 2008 - The Venerable Bhikkhu Sanghasena, founder of the Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre in Ladakh, high in the Himalayan mountains of northern India, recently visited the International Capital of the Global Country of World Peace Peace in Meru, Netherlands, to plan for the introduction of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's programmes in the schools and monasteries in Ladakh. (more)

Recording industry leader Russell Simmons plans US conferences on Consciousness-Based Education
12 May 2008 - Speaking recently on Maharishi Global Family Chat, Dr Robert Roth, National Director of Expansion for the Global Country of World Peace in the United States, reported on a recent meeting with legendary record producer and entrepreneur Russell Simmons. During their meeting, Mr Simmons and Dr Roth planned for the National Conference on Transcendental Meditation and Education, to take place in New York this fall. (more)

Ideal Maharishi School to be built in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, USA
9 May 2008 - Speaking recently on Maharishi Global Family Chat, Dr Robert Roth, National Director of Expansion for the Global Country of World Peace in the United States, reported new plans for the building of an ideal Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa. Teams are currently approaching foundations which are looking to establish model educational institutions, which can then be replicated throughout the country. (more)

Peace colony, schools will promote progress towards Invincibility in Argentina
7 May 2008 - Dr Jose Luis Alvarez, Raja of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace, reported recently on the rise of Invincibility for the 30 million people of Argentina, and announced that Dr Julio Pereyra, mayor of Florencio, has given 12 hectares of land in his city to build a Maharishi Tower of Invincibility and 150 homes built according to Vedic Architecture. (more)

Third annual David Lynch Weekend attracts record numbers
7 May 2008 - Speaking recently on Maharishi Global Family Chat, Dr Robert Roth, National Director of Expansion for the Global Country of World Peace in the United States, related the events of the third annual David Lynch Weekend, recently held at Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA. (more)

'Community Hours' offer Venezuelan university students a platform to create national invincibility through Yogic Flying
6 May 2008 - On a recent Maharishi Global Family Chat, Raja Jose Luis Alvarez, Raja of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace, spoke about a new plan for creating 40,000 Yogic Flyers at a university in Venezuela. (more)

Maharishi Academy: How students can create a peaceful world
6 May 2008 - Students at Maharishi Academy of Total Knowledge - High School for Leadership in New Hampshire, USA will help create a peaceful world. Fifty scientific studies have shown that the Transcendental Meditation Programme can be used to defuse acute societal stress, as measured by reduced crime, terrorism, and conflict. Through their group practise of Transcendental Meditation students will radiate a measurable influence of calm and coherence throughout society. (more)

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Flops
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

US: Government's reading programme hasn't helped - study
5 May 2008 - The $6 billion reading programme at the centre of President Bush's signature education law has failed to make a difference in how well children understand what they read, according to a study by the programme's own champion, the US Department of Education. The programme, Reading First, was designed to help boost student performance in low-income elementary schools, but failed to improve reading comprehension. There was no difference in comprehension scores between students who participated in Reading First and those who did not, the study found. (more)

England: Teachers hold first national strike in 20 years
24 April 2008 - Thousands of schools will be forced to close on Thursday as England's teachers stage their first national strike in 20 years, in a dispute with the government over pay. The Local Government Association said more than one in six schools would be affected, according to a survey of 91 councils. It said 1,896 schools would be shut all day with another 2,006 partially closing. (more)

Iraqi children desperate to learn in ruined schools
23 April 2008 - The education system in Iraq, once the envy of the Middle East, is now in tatters. Violence, a collapse of school infrastructure and the mass displacement of both pupils and teachers have turned many of Iraq's schools into fetid overcrowded ruins, jeopardising the futures of millions of children. At the end of the 1980s, Iraq had virtually eliminated illiteracy. But now, after two decades of economic sanctions and war, one third of Iraqi adults cannot read. (more)

Afghanistan: Half of all children not in school, UN says
21 April 2008 - Half of Afghan children are still not going to school and the biggest group missing out on an education are girls, the United Nations said on Monday. Working children, street children, children in prison and disabled children were among those excluded, but by far the biggest group are girls. The main reasons for girls missing out on school were that many of them either work to support their families or marry young, the UN said. There is also a lack of women teachers. (more)

Low high school graduation rates in US cities
1 April 2008 - Seventeen of the US's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 per cent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis, and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said. (more)

Chile: Rocks, tear gas in annual youth protests
29 March 2008 - Masked youths threw stones at police who responded by firing tear gas and water cannon in the Chilean capital on Friday at the start of annual protests against the government and the country's free-market system. Dozens of youths, some in school uniforms, threw objects into the Santiago's main street, the Alameda. The protests were aimed at Chile's capitalist-style economic model and the government, which the groups say manipulates the education system to favour the wealthy and exclude the poor. (more)

AP Poll: Students in US colleges overwhelmed by stress
22 March 2008 - US college students are so frazzled they can't sleep, eat, or study. They're even anxious about spring break. Most are just overwhelmed by stress, from everyday worries about grades and relationships, to darker thoughts of suicide, according to a poll of undergraduates from coast to coast. Four in 10 students say they endure stress often. Nearly one in five say they feel it all or most of the time. One in five say they have felt too stressed to do schoolwork or be with friends. Majorities cite classic stress symptoms including trouble concentrating, sleeping, and finding motivation. Most say they have also been agitated, worried, too tired to work. Many cite eating problems and say they have felt lonely, depressed, like they are failures. (more)

US: Drinking prevention needed in grade school - study
11 March 2008 - A significant number of US children are already drinking by middle school, suggesting that prevention needs to start in the elementary grades, researchers conclude in a new report. About 17 per cent of sixth-graders at 61 Chicago schools said they had drunk alcohol in the past year. These children were more likely than their peers to have a range of risk factors for early drinking -- such as delinquent or violent behaviour, a lack of adult supervision out of school, and having friends who drank alcohol. (more)

Tibetan language seen hurt by China's neglect
25 February 2008 - The Chinese government is neglecting and actively undermining the Tibetan language as part of continuing efforts to dilute the region's unique culture, a human rights group said. (more)

Iraq: Syriac language struggling to survive
31 December 2007 - Syriac is an Eastern Aramaic language that was once a major literary language spoken throughout the Middle East. The influence of Syriac language is declining in Iraqi society. According to the Syriac culture and arts department in Iraq's Kurdistan, over half of the Syriac community cannot read or write in their native tongue. (more)