creative education on call

How Education On Calls came in Existence

We are pleased to Introduce Creative Education on call India Pvt. Ltd – Company for Domestic & International Education. CEOC is working under the Reg Act of 1882 Govt.of India We have been working in this industry since 2014 and more than 15000 students have successfully completed their Education with us. At CEOC we ensure quality of education and services to our students. We are constantly working on developing skills professionals as there is huge potential in the global market and India is regarded as the biggest manpower provider in world. We are an education consulting company helping student and organization with educational planning. We specialize in assisting students on their particular educational needs and we are an association of professionals focused exclusively on the practice of college admission. We provide advice to the college students seeking their higher educational needs. Creative Education on call (I)Pvt Ltd is a government registered independent educational company in India with a clear motive to provide quality service to the students whose endeavor is to seek Higher Qualification from India and overseas. As an educational consulting company, CEOC represents a global presence in the field and have finely tuned our ability to work with students and parents no matter where they are.

We believe that when children and adolescents are in the right school or college they thrive. Sometimes the consequences of not having their academic, social or emotional needs met can be quite serious. proves to be a valuable resource for our clients in the Australia, United States, UK., Malaysia, India and many more. Our unique ability to match our students to the right school or program has made a difference in many lives.

We have helped many educational organizations and universities by imparting vocational training and skills development to their students. We firmly believe that skill development along with the right degree is the need of the hour. We are passionate about coming up with innovative ways of learning and delivering quality education.

Vision - EOC is a leading top notch Education on call that provides the state - of - art distance education to professionals to enhance their career.

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Introducing Education On Calls Advantage

Get Face-to-Face Career Assessment

Combines your Distance Learning with Skills

Hassle-Free College Admission Assistance

Gain Access to Lifetime Career Support

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Key Benefits of Education On Calls

We help you get in the right distance learning college and develop your career-ready skill sets

University Selection

Suggest the right university for your distance education course.

Skill Development

Combine your distance university syllabus with skill-based courses.

Career Support

Assign experienced counselling team for placement and career support

Direct to university

All admission procedures happen directly with universities.

Cut All Middlemen

No need to pay the counselling fees to so-called consultants

100% Unbiased & Free Professional Guidance for your Career.

Students loved our approach

Placements through our different approach

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On-Call Educator

Position Title: On-Call Educator

Reports To: Education & Early Childhood Manager,  Exhibits & Public Programs Manager

Status: On-call, non-exempt, at-will, hourly

Schedule: Thursdays - Sundays, 9:30am - 4:30pm. Weekend availability preferred. Scheduling decided monthly based on  employee availability & staffing needs.

Desired Start Date: ASAP

Compensation: $20/hr

Organizational Description

The Children’s Creativity Museum is a hands-on multimedia art and technology experience designed to build creative confidence. Our mission is to nurture creativity and collaboration in all children and families. We believe that creative expression, innovation and critical thinking are core to fostering the next generation.  

Position Description

Our Educators work with the Education & Early Childhood Manager, Exhibits & Public Programs Manager, and other members of the Education team to serve general admission visitors in our interactive exhibit spaces and facilitate special programming (including workshops, museum events, summer camps, etc.).

Responsibilities

• Work with Educators and Volunteers during general admission hours to teach basic, intermediate, and advanced art and technology skills to youth and families
• Assist with special events, programs, and workshops, including field trips and camps during school breaks
• Prepare, maintain, and troubleshoot equipment and supplies in the exhibit/production areas; identify and report status of exhibits and supplies
• Responsible for opening and closing the museum floor and reporting on all issues related to running the museum
• Other related duties as assigned

Minimum Qualifications

• High school diploma or equivalent
• Experience or interest in teaching or working with youth in the visual, media, or performing arts
• Strong interest in art, education, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education, museum studies, or media studies desired
• Excellent customer service skills
• Outgoing, self-motivated, and creative problem-solver
• Ability to teach a variety of ages in a non-classroom setting
• Ability to learn new software programs and communicate their uses to students and teachers
• Able to interact with and manage large groups
• Able to occasionally lift items weighing between 26 - 50 lbs

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

The ideal candidate will possess all of the above minimum qualifications plus a flexible approach to problem-solving and a dedication to working in a non-profit, educational, arts environment for youth. We seek enthusiastic team players who are highly self-directed, deadline-oriented, forward thinking, and detail-oriented. Completion of or active progress towards a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree (ideally in education, arts, or electronic media) is desired.

Application Process: Send a cover letter and resume by email to [email protected]   with your FIRST and LAST NAME and On-Call Educator in the subject line. 

The Children’s Creativity Museum is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity at all levels. 

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Paul Collard – What is a creative education and why is it important?

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In this video, Paul Collard, Chief Executive of Creativity, Culture and Education, discusses the features of an effective approach to creative education. Paul draws on his experience of observing, designing and delivering programmes, not only in England but elsewhere in Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

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This speech was delivered at the Scottish Learning Festival 2012 and was published by Education Scotland in 2012.

What is a creative education and why is it important

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• October 3, 2022
• Bay Area , Job Post

On Call Educator, Children’s Creativity Museum

The Children’s Creativity Museum is a hands-on multimedia art and technology experience designed to build creative confidence. Our mission is to nurture creativity and collaboration in all children and families. We believe that creative expression, innovation and critical thinking are core to fostering the next generation.

Position Description

Our On-Call Educators work with the Senior Educators, other CCM Educators, and Education Interns to serve general admission visitors in our interactive exhibit spaces and facilitate special programming (including workshops, museum events, summer camps, etc.).

Primary Responsibilities

• Work with Educators and Volunteers during general admission hours to teach basic, intermediate, and advanced art and technology skills to youth and families
• Assist with special events, programs, and workshops, including field trips and camps during school breaks
• Prepare, maintain, and troubleshoot equipment and supplies in the exhibit/production areas; identify and report status of exhibits and supplies
• Responsible for opening and closing the museum floor and reporting on all issues related to running the museum
• Other related duties as assigned

Minimum Qualifications

• High school diploma or equivalent
• Experience or interest in teaching or working with youth in the visual, media, or performing arts
• Strong interest in art, education, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education, museum studies, or media studies desired
• Excellent customer service skills
• Outgoing, self-motivated, and creative problem-solver
• Ability to teach a variety of ages in a non-classroom setting
• Ability to learn new software programs and communicate their uses to students and teachers
• Able to interact with and manage large groups

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

The ideal candidate will possess all of the above minimum qualifications plus a flexible approach to problem-solving and a dedication to working in a non-profit, educational, arts environment for youth. We seek enthusiastic team players who are highly self-directed, deadline-oriented, forward thinking, and detail-oriented. Completion of or active progress towards a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree (ideally in education, arts, or electronic media) is desired.

Schedule:   Weekends, weekdays, evenings, and/or holidays as scheduled; especially seeking Saturday and Sunday availability

Desired Start Date:   June 1, 2022

Compensation:  $18/hr

Application Process: Send a cover letter and resume by email to [email protected]? with your FIRST and LAST NAME and  On-Call Educator  in the subject line.

The Children’s Creativity Museum is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity at all levels. 

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Supporters rally for $38 million in arts education funding at brooklyn academy of music.

Art education supporters gathered outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 8 to call for $38 million in program funding, which would ensure each school has at least one certified arts teacher and creative programs. 

At the height of National Teacher Appreciation Week, educators joined with Brooklyn leaders including the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and Music Educators Association of New York City to express the importance of art education and to ask city lawmakers for the protection of public art classes, proper funding and job security.

According to advocates, public schools started to experience a teacher shortage between 2020 and 2023, losing 425 full-time certified arts teachers. Representatives with the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable said 307 New York City public schools are currently going without a creative program. 

“Dance, music, visual arts, media, literary arts, and theater all have the power to change students’ lives while opening new doors for them to succeed in and out of the classroom,” Kim Olsen, executive director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, said in a statement. “But today, most public school students do not have sufficient access to the arts — and a dramatic decline in arts teachers is making it harder for schools to provide students with the holistic education they need.”

In an open letter to Mayor Eric Adams, leaders said to disinvest in the arts, is to disinvest in a holistic education experience. They said students who engage with an art program are more likely to thrive socially, emotionally and produce better academic results.

“The arts are essential, and our education system should reflect that,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said. “Art is a powerful tool that can be used to share information, advocate for what is right, grow a business, or express who we are and what we feel.” 

In March, the roundtable partnered with actors, students and educators to create a campaign called It Starts with the Arts . The campaign compiles ways the city could support public schools, including boosting the per-student art allocation from $80.47 to $100, restoring summer programs, securing baseline funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs and increasing data transparency. 

“It’s critical that our students grow up with access to these essential skills, and that’s impossible without a robust arts education system that includes teachers of the arts in every school,” Reynoso said.

About the Author

Jada Camille

Jada Camille is a Nashville native with a deep passion for story-telling. When she isn’t writing you can find her wandering the streets of the city, being a self-professed coffee snob or watching her favorite comfort shows.

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UK universities report drop in international students amid visa doubts

Creative UK and Universities UK urge government to reject plans to abolish or restrict graduate visa route

Universities are reporting a steep drop in international students applying to come to the UK, amid warnings that further restrictions on student visas would torpedo a vital flow of talent for Britain’s creative industries.

University and industry leaders fear that the graduate visa entitlement, which allows international graduates to work in the UK for up to three years, could be axed or curtailed, depending on the findings of a report by the migration advisory committee (MAC) due to be delivered to the government on Tuesday.

Creative UK, which represents the creative industries, says removing the ability for international students to stay and work in the UK after graduation would be a powerful disincentive to study here, damaging a sector worth £108bn a year.

Restrictions on international students imposed earlier this year may already have caused a decline in students applying from overseas, and uncertainty over the fate of the graduate visa appears to have set off a further fall, according to a survey of UK universities.

The poll of 75 institutions by the British Universities’ International Liaison Association found that nine out of 10 had fewer international applications for the next academic year, and there had been a 27% fall in total applications for taught postgraduate courses compared with last year.

A joint letter by Creative UK and Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, urges the government to reject plans to abolish or restrict the graduate visa route, arguing that international graduates are integral to the creative industries, which are now more significant than the UK’s aerospace, life sciences and automotive industries combined.

“Following further increases to visa fees and salary thresholds, the graduate visa represents one of the few routes left which enables talented graduates to remain in the UK and contribute to our growing creative industries,” the letter states. “Whether it’s a young Jimmy Choo developing his craft at Cordwainers or world-renowned DJ Peggy Gou , who studied at London College of Fashion, the role our universities play in attracting the best creative talent from around the world goes to show the soft-power influence of our institutions.”

Sally Mapstone, the vice-chancellor of St Andrews University and president of Universities UK, told Sky News on Sunday: “International students are incredibly important to UK culture. They contribute a huge amount to universities, to the economy, to skills and jobs and we think it would be a tragedy – calamitous not just for institutions but actually for the UK as a whole – if the government took what would actually be quite unnecessary further action to restrict the number of international students.”

The British Academy has told the MAC that removing the graduate visa would “stifle the vibrancy of the UK’s academic and research landscape”, with a continuing fall in international student numbers threatening the financial sustainability of universities, triggering course closures and staff redundancies.

Fears for the future of the visa have grown since March when the home secretary, James Cleverly, commissioned the MAC “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused. In particular, that some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration.”

Last week Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister, published a report with the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank that called for the graduate visa to be abolished, claiming it “allowed people to come and work in the gig economy and on very low wages”.

A government spokesperson said: “We are fully focused on striking the right balance between acting decisively to tackle net migration and attracting the brightest students to our universities, recognising the significant contribution they make to the UK.”

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Android is getting an AI-powered scam call detection feature

Google says the new protections utilize gemini nano and that it’ll share more details ‘later this year.’ .

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

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Google is working on new protections to help prevent Android users from falling victim to phone scams. During its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google announced that it’s testing a new call monitoring feature that will warn users if the person they’re talking to is likely attempting to scam them and encourage them to end such calls.

Google says the feature utilizes Gemini Nano — a reduced version of the company’s Gemini large language model for Android devices that can run locally and offline — to look for fraudulent language and other conversation patterns typically associated with scams. Users will then receive real-time alerts during calls where these red flags are present. 

Some examples of what could trigger these alerts include calls from “bank representatives” who make requests that real banks are unlikely to make, such as asking for personal information like your passwords or card PINs, requesting payments via gift cards, or asking users to urgently transfer money to them. These new protections are entirely on-device, so the conversations monitored by Gemini Nano will remain private, according to Google.

There’s no word on when the scam detection feature will be available, but Google says users will need to opt in to utilize it and that it’ll share more information “later this year.”

While scam calls may seem easily detectable to some after years of awareness campaigns and accessible guidance on how to avoid them, there’s always a risk of getting caught out . A report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance last October found that 1 in 4 people globally had lost money to scams or identity theft over the prior 12-month period, losing over $1 trillion during that time.

So, while the candidates who might find such tech useful are vast, compatibility could limit its applicability. Gemini Nano is only currently supported on the Google Pixel 8 Pro and Samsung S24 series, according to its developer support page .

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The video above is from ABC13's 24/7 livestream.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Dr. Elizabeth Fagen was put on leave after a revelation that the district had spent nearly $1 million in legal fees during a Title IX investigation involving her husband, who recently resigned as the district's athletic director.

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Renegade Theater’s creative rendition of ‘The…

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Subscriber only, renegade theater’s creative rendition of ‘the crucible’ rocks the actors’ theater.

Kyle Vasquez exudes the cool mom energy any theater company would be lucky to have. As the matron of drama, the maven of all things Salem, and the director of the dirge, Vasquez brought an abundance of energy to this highly ambitious production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” It is a serious play posing all kinds of artistic challenges, and this young company answered the call with courage and commitment. With these key qualities, anything is possible in the world of theater and it is a positive sign of things to come.

Ana Bogren went above and beyond in her duties as production manager. She managed to produce an exhibition of aesthetic and educational excellence with her assistant Hazel Termini and under the guidance of dramaturg Genevie “Q” Herbranson. The program is an informational and cultural portal complete with a YouTube playlist of the soundtrack of songs featured in the production. Most impressive, however, may be the “biographies” of the characters written by the actors with a photograph of them in costume, which are exhibited in the hallway outside of the theater. This creative approach to educating the public about the historical context of this important play gives it another dimension altogether.

Even the merch was cleverly crafted to match the theme of the play. The student-actors created a series of collectible tchotchkes that celebrate the witchy energy of the play. This multimedia aspect of Renegade Theater is a product of Vasquez’s Seven Directions Creative Learning Center. While Miller’s play has been produced many times, it has never been done quite like this. Through their creative collaborations, the production and design staff have created a unique dramatic experience.

Arthur Miller wrote beautifully about something poisonous at the core of colonial America, something unsettled and dangerous. Before there was a constitution that separated the power of the church from the state, superstition and rumor had devastating potency. The discovery of a ritual in the woods leads to a tragic era of miscarried justice famously known as the Salem Witch Trials. This version of the play, produced in a time when “witchiness” has been reappropriated as a strength, makes the judgmental piety of the parishioners that much more ironic.

It is exciting to have a new theater company in Santa Cruz. With this first non-musical production, Renegade Theater has announced itself as a creative force to be reckoned with. Check them out online at renegadetheaterco.org to learn more about their upcoming season, to donate, or to get involved with this interesting creative collective. “The Crucible” runs for one more weekend at the Actors’ Theater, 1001 Center St. in Santa Cruz, so be sure to get tickets early if you want to see this remarkable show.

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What is call handling? How the solution can improve customer satisfaction for small businesses

To manage a business properly, good call handling is critical. How your business handles calls determines the customer’s experience with your organization. For this reason, handle all calls in a manner that will maximize the caller experience. In this guide, we will explore what call handling is, the benefits it offers businesses like yours, some software to consider, and best practices to implement into your processes. 

What is call handling ?

Call handling is the system of call receipt your business uses to manage customers. When an inbound call arrives, the business decides whether to pick up or place the call on hold immediately. Managing how your customers are received is essential. You don’t want to keep customers on hold forever and you don’t want customers to think you don’t know who they are or that you’ve lost their previous interactions.

Based on research performed by Salesforce, about 80% of customers find customer engagement as important as product quality. Call handling keeps this firmly in mind with its design.  

How does call handling work?

Call handling works by propelling your inbound calls into your communications system. Not only does a call handling system help you manage inbound and outbound calls but it also helps route calls. Modern, software-based call handling systems use multiple technologies to manage calls. These include:

• An auto attendant forwards callers to the right department using menus and number inputs.
• An interactive voice response (IVR) system sends the customer to the right department or presents self-service options using number or voice inputs.
• Forwarding the call to the right department based on the customer’s history
• Call screening software that presents the call’s information within an app or the internet protocol (IP) phone’s display based on national caller ID name (CNAM) registries. This helps the business determine if the call is spam or if it should be addressed in another way before getting on the line.
• Call parking puts the call on hold so that it can be tackled by an agent either as received or when a specialist is available.
• Business hour answering rules allow the call to be forwarded to the company’s voicemail if made outside of business hours.

Not only is call handling a technology but, in some cases, it’s also a service. A call handling service receives calls as they flow into your business and sends them to the right department. These use live receptionists to manage inbound and outbound calling. This would be considered an external call handling solution while one working through a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) system would be considered an internal call handling solution. 

Inbound call handling isn’t the only use of this technology. With outbound calls, call handling is also critical, especially if you need to execute large calling campaigns. With outbound call handling, you’re typically using a dialer. This manages where calls are sent when hundreds of calls are made in an hour. Here are a few types of dialers:

• Predictive: Using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), this solution dials from a large list and predicts when agents are available to speak to the customers who respond
• Progressive or power: These dialers present numbers that an agent selects and dials
• IVR dialer: This is an agentless dialer that plays prerecorded messages

How can VoIP software help with call handling?

At their core, every VoIP provider has call handling features. For example, most provide an auto attendant with a base-level subscription. A virtual receptionist tool greets customers and helps them get to the right department, usually through number-based prompts and extension dialing. 

A more advanced version of this is the IVR. IVRs provide self-service options and free up your agent’s time. Both augment how customers are received―replacing the need for a human receptionist and helping improve agent workloads and efficiency. Other tools like call forwarding, routing, and screening also save time, and you’ll find most at the cheapest tier for VoIP providers.

Which businesses need call handling?

Effectively, every type of business that has telephone-based communications with customers can use a call handling system. Here’s a breakdown of how a few types of businesses can best utilize a solution for call handling:

• Banking: With banking, customers will call in periodically to check balances or set up payments. With a call handling system, this can be done with a self-service IVR. Also, setting things like business hours and routing calls to the correct branch is done easily.
• Retail : With retail options, a person typically will answer the phone to direct the call to the correct department. For this, you’ll need to make sure that the individual picking up the line knows how to address the caller and transfer them to the correct extension. This ensures the customer isn’t bounced around while waiting to talk to someone.
• Software support: When a customer faces issues with a piece of software, there might be frustration. Keeping customers on hold or sending them to the wrong department exacerbates this situation. With a call handling solution, customers are routed more efficiently to the right person with less time waiting. 
• Utilities: Call handling includes IVR systems, which provide self-service options for bill pay, reminders, and scheduling. This frees agents to manage customers who require more than self-service. 

The takeaway  

Using a call handling solution to manage both inbound and outbound calls helps a business keep customers satisfied with customer service. A solopreneur or small or medium-sized business (SMB) can access several key features with minimal investment. This includes an auto attendant system, which routes calls effectively to where they need to go, and other features, such as business voicemail, call screening, and CRM integration. 

Put simply, there’s no reason not to incorporate a strong call handling system into your business’s communication profile. Are you not sure where to start? Most VoIP providers include a free trial to determine if their solution fits your business. Take one for a test drive and determine if it fits your inbound and outbound call handling needs.

EDITORIAL DISCLOSURE : The advice, opinions, or rankings contained in this article are solely those of the Fortune Recommends ™ editorial team. This content has not been reviewed or endorsed by any of our affiliate partners or other third parties.

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The Compounding Value of Climate Competitiveness

• Members of younger generations demonstrate a near-universal awareness of and concern about the worsening climate crisis.
• To direct their concern into real-world action, schools can teach them to adopt “climate competitiveness,” a strategy based on developing simple yet effective solutions to social and planetary challenges.
• Schools can achieve this goal by showing students how they can generate positive societal impact throughout their lives and careers—starting with the experiential projects they work on during their degree programs.

When our daughter was eight years old, she was fascinated by the biological world. Once, as we were walking deep in our backyard woods, we found the skull of a deer. She was full of questions: “Dad, what happens to the tongue?” and “Dad, when does the retina signal its last message to the brain?”

Later that night, she and I had a similarly thoughtful conversation, as we explained to each other why we had chosen “8” as our favorite number. I argued that I loved how it looked like the relentless spin of a Mobius strip. She said, “It’s my favorite because I know that the number 8 meant ‘infinity’ from the start. That’s why it’s stronger than all other numbers.”

I thought to myself, “How has she become so steady in her interests and perspective?” Today, my daughter is a doctor, but even now after her professional medical training, she remains an honest and nuanced observer of what is happening around her—including what is happening with the planet. I have found that she and others of her generation are nearly universally aware of and concerned about the effects of climate change on the natural world.

Perhaps that’s why I have become such a staunch champion of the idea of climate competitiveness. It’s an idea that I think will be central to business success and human well-being in the future, and one that should be part of every business curriculum.

What Is Climate Competitiveness?

At its core, climate competitiveness is about using all the tools of capitalism, science, and technology to address larger societal and environmental demands. It’s about developing solutions that, for example, keep the handicapped mobile, the elderly engaged, the government well-informed, and the providers of goods and services focused on the net good of the human population and planet.

As I argue in my book  Wealth and Climate Competitiveness : The New Narrative on Business and Society , when businesses and individuals are climate competitive, they blend their proprietary scientific and market-based knowledge to create social and environmental solutions years ahead of when governments might address issues via taxes or regulations.

By the start of the 21st century, 20th-century assumptions were giving way to new presumptions that strike a better balance between building wealth and protecting the interests of the global commonwealth.

I have visited business schools in many parts of the world, and while many address sustainability, I find that it’s rare for schools to place a strategic response to climate change and social purpose on a par with profit maximization. However, I believe climate competitiveness is an essential strategy that students must learn so that they can help strengthen and improve the relationship between business and society.

A Return to a Classic Value

Throughout my own education, I have been made aware of the tensions between business and society—from my high school courses all the way through to my doctoral dissertation under literary historian  M.H. Abrams at Cornell University. For years, our educational systems have promoted the wrong-headed assumption that business and society are at odds.

But by the start of the 21st century, when my daughter and my students were going to school, a new social contract began to emerge. It was as if 20th-century assumptions were giving way to new presumptions that strike a better balance between building wealth and protecting the interests of the global commonwealth.

The irony is that, in many ways, we are returning to a classic worldview of competition and the social good. Just think back to Benjamin Franklin , one of America’s founding fathers. In the 1700s, he and others conceived the first public libraries and the first sidewalks for pedestrians. Franklin invented bifocals to help people see the world better and lightning rods to protect people’s homes from damage during storms. In essence, Franklin was an early socially conscious entrepreneur.

We are heading in the right direction, but as a whole, higher education institutions have yet to place Franklin’s ideal at the front and center of their curricula. To secure our collective future, today’s generation must learn to adopt a more Ben Franklin-like approach to business—to develop what I like to call “ doing-more-with-less ” innovations that can work anywhere in the world.

By implementing simple solutions that support a more resilient, self-sufficient, and sustainable society, business leaders will put their organizations and communities years ahead of those less focused on social solutions.

Lessons in Globalization

Journalist James Fallows dramatizes self-reliance and simple practicality in his book Our Towns , in which he and his wife visit and describe hundreds of small American communities where wealth and the commonwealth coexist in harmony.

I saw this same mindset in action when my firm hired young leaders from Madagascar, Northern Australia, and Ireland. These individuals came to work with their sleeves rolled up, prepared to take action on both protecting the climate and staying ahead of the competition. This dedication to the planet was not limited to their working lives—they also demonstrated climate competitiveness in their own reduced consumption of resources and commitment to social causes.

Societies in many parts of the world are working to restore the balance between building wealth and preserving social well-being. While this dedication is less true in urban America, I have found that the new generation of future leaders can envision a different path forward.

For individuals and organizations in every nation, climate competitiveness balances innovation with competitive frugality. It enables families and firms to compound value without squandering resources.

Let me present this generational shift in the context of our global, industrialized society. In my 2007 book World Inc. , I discuss the many ways that globalization has led to a deeper understanding of the implications of conscious capitalism, or “social response capitalism.” As I explored this idea, I met with decision-makers worldwide who realized what this new approach to business could mean, not only to the future of their organizations but to the lives of millions.

They understood that, for individuals and organizations in every nation, climate competitiveness balances innovation with competitive frugality. It enables families and firms to compound value without squandering resources.

Here, we face a paradox: For members of the young generation to enhance their creativity and thinking skills, they need to consume resources, particularly through early global travel. So, ironically, while I argue that the world needs to embrace greater simplicity in its collective decision-making and habits, I also recognize the need for excess.

But there is a problem with excessive excess. Unlike many professionals who are part of older generations, my daughter and most of her peers see little advantage to owning and maintaining multiple homes or accruing surplus possessions. By the time my daughter graduated from medical school, she and her classmates placed more value on pursuing meaningful careers and maintaining a lifelong ecosystem of friends and associated firms.

Five Changes for Business Curricula

What lessons can business educators extrapolate from these tales about my daughter? From her, I have learned that institutions can best prepare graduates for success by ensuring they take five lessons to heart:

• Their efforts matter to the world.  Show students the importance of contributing to society throughout their lives. This starts in educational settings, through ethical case studies, job shadowing, and course projects. In fact, I believe that at least a third to a half of any degree program should include experiential learning in real-world settings. Students can learn more in one year participating in applied learning than in three years of learning theory in the classroom.
• No community or individual lives in a vacuum.  Highlight the intersections between individual communities and the larger global community. Here, business students can learn a great deal from studying subjects such as cultural anthropology that help them look beyond their own biases and lived experiences.
• Business success and the social good can work together.  Invite to the classroom executives and managers of large organizations whose leadership focuses on strengthening the relationship between business growth and the social good.
• Great leaders innovate with the larger society in mind.  Remind students at all levels, during every term, that after graduation they will have obligations to be innovative thinkers and influential leaders who are mindful and responsive to social needs.
• They have much to learn from those around them.  Reinforce the idea that, once students enter the workforce, their determination, adaptability, and willingness to appreciate and learn from the experiences of others will matter more than the degrees and certifications listed on their résumés.

Providing ‘Creative Force’ to the World

As a graduate student, I once traveled to the campus of the University of California Berkeley. There, I was waiting in line for a meal from a food truck when I saw a mural that students had painted on the side of the adjacent building. The painting depicted a long line of students crossing the stage at their commencement; as they each accepted their degrees and descended from the stage, their heads morphed from round to square. By the time they embarked on the road to their careers, their heads were as square as televisions.

The message of this painting haunted me then, and it haunts me today. What it represents—the commodification of knowledge and talent—is the opposite of the effect that global education should have in modern society and business.

Higher education institutions should take every step to produce graduates who are individuals, each ready to contribute unique talents and creativity to the world. The beauty of global education is not necessarily about inspiring outright revolution, but about increasing the creative force of future leaders.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority, … but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” Younger generations seem to understand this lesson of social history instinctively. That said, many young people—my daughter included—would prefer to use productive action rather than resistance to change the world for the better.

My hope is that educational institutions—especially those educating future global business leaders—will help their students effectively marshal and direct their creative talents toward positive change and societal impact. As they graduate and assume leadership roles, the beneficial effects of the solutions they implement will only continue to build over time. When educational institutions help reinforce the natural inclination of young people to address social problems, they will prepare this next generation of leaders to work toward the progress they want to see in the world.

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Cincinnati Public Schools unions take votes of no confidence, superintendent responds

All six unions that contract with Cincinnati Public Schools have made votes of no confidence in Superintendent Iranetta Wright. The superintendent has created a culture of fear and intimidation, union leaders said Monday, while adding to administrative bloat, mismanaging the district's budget, micromanaging workers and violating union contracts. The unions are calling for her resignation.

Representatives from the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers , the Cincinnati Federation of Office Professionals, the  Greater Cincinnati Building Trades Union , the Cincinnati Association of Administrators and Supervisors and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees gathered outside the district's education center Monday afternoon to announce the vote results. The sixth union, Local 20 International Union Of Operating Engineers , could not attend because their contract is still open.

None of the unions' leaders would say how many members voted, just that the votes were unanimous. The unions represent more than 6,000 employees with the district, including teachers, principals, secretaries, nurses, electricians, food service workers, custodians, security personnel and other workers.

Julie Sellers, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, said the district has become "significantly worse" under Wright's leadership and that the district "can't afford another year" with Wright in power.

"This isn't just one union that has taken a vote of no confidence. It is all of our unions in the district," said Michael Turner, president of the Cincinnati Association of Administrators and Supervisors. "That is definitely unheard of. There has to be change. All of us cannot be wrong."

More: Complaints mount against Cincinnati Superintendent Iranetta Wright: 'It's all about her'

In a statement to The Enquirer Monday afternoon, Wright wrote that she was disappointed in the votes of no confidence but that she is committed to continue "working with all our stakeholders on the continuous improvement of our students and our District."

Wright said she's met consistently with union leaders since March 2023 and requested their input regarding district decisions.

"While the outcome may not have always been their choice, I have been responsive and transparent," Wright said. "I’m committed to redoubling efforts to bring us together. No one knows better than I do that every step ahead of us relies on our hardworking teachers, principals and staff.

"It will take all of us, working together, to get where we need to go for our students. We’ve begun that journey, but we have much further to go. Now cannot be a time of division," Wright wrote.

Jeff Chrystal, a former union president for district administrators who spent 30 years with the district, said the unions have never had "such a broken relationship" with a superintendent.

"It has crushed the spirits of the loyal Cincinnati Public Schools teachers and administrators," he said.

Next steps are up to the school board, union leaders said. Eve Bolton, school board president, declined to comment Monday afternoon regarding the votes.

What led up to union votes of no confidence?

Last spring, union leaders representing over 200 district administrators, principals and assistant principals  sent a letter to the school board  listing several concerns with Wright's leadership. They said her micromanagement leads to inefficiencies and confusion among staff, that she “embarrasses employees in meetings” and has sparked a fear of retaliation for anyone who speaks up against her.

Current and former employees  recently spoke to The Enquirer detailing their experiences  with the superintendent and her inner circle. They said Wright "wants the spotlight" and has created a culture of bullying. One employee said the district is trying to fire her for speaking out. Her work email was deactivated last week, less than three weeks after she spoke with The Enquirer.

Wright declined an interview to respond to those complaints, but sent an email to all staff following the announcement of impending union votes. In it, she encouraged her staff to "consider the progress we have made in a short time" and wrote, "I have 100% confidence in each of you."

Ozie Davis III, a former school board member for the district, is one of Wright's supporters. He published an opinion piece in The Enquirer on Monday stating the unions' votes are a negotiating tactic and said firing Wright is not the answer to the district's budget issues.

"I believe Wright is a natural-born educator with a deep sense of love for our children, unique experience in teaching and principal leadership, and administrating school systems, who holds the highest expectations for our students and those that are responsible for their performance," Davis wrote.

The board met in executive session Monday morning to discuss the "employment of a public employee or official," according to a meeting notice. The board will hold another executive session on Wednesday, followed by a special public meeting at 4 p.m. at the Mary A. Ronan Education Center, located at 2651 Burnet Ave. The agenda for the public meeting has yet to be published as of Monday afternoon.

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 NYC Council Calls for Maintaining Investments for Early Childhood Education System and Programs that Support Students’ Recovery from Learning Loss

May 15, 2024

Mayor’s FY25 Executive Budget failed to fully reverse cuts to early childhood education, student support programs

City Hall, NY – Ahead of the City Council’s Executive Budget hearing by the Committee on Education, with the Committee on Finance, the Council called for funding restorations and deeper investments into the early childhood education and student support programs, many of which were previously supported by expiring federal COVID-19 stimulus funds.

The education budget priorities were outlined by the Council in its Preliminary Budget Response released in April, but several remained completely or partially unfunded in the Mayor’s Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget.

Early Childhood Education

The Council has called for:

• The Mayor’s Executive Budget separately maintained $92 million in expiring federal stimulus funds for 3-K operating costs
• Commitment of $60 million to expand full-day/full-year seats to better meet families’ needs
• $10 million in new funding for 3-K marketing and outreach ($3.5 million of which was included in the Mayor’s Executive Budget)
• $96 million to replace expiring federal stimulus funds for preschool special education ($81 million was included in the Mayor’s Executive Budget).
• $25 million in baselined funding to support expanding the reach of Promise NYC, which provides childcare vouchers for undocumented children and families that are ineligible for other programs.

District 75 Programs

The Council has called for the restoration and baselining of the $3 million cut to District 75 programs that provide highly specialized instructional support to students with special needs. Given increasing Carter Case expenditures and the increase in other due process cases related to special needs services and education, there is a greater need for schools to provide quality special education services. The lower-than-expected spending used to justify this cut was due to vacancies in District 75 teaching positions and other special education-related positions. To fulfill the exigent need for the provision of special education services, the Administration should be hiring for these positions rather than cutting spending based on anticipated future vacancies.

Restorative Justice

The Council has called for $22 million to restore the $12 million in expiring federal funds and provide an additional $10 million to expand current programming. Restorative Justice programming and coordinators help teach students how to manage their emotions and deescalate conflict. It has also served as an alternative to punitive discipline and suspensions, which are linked to a greater likelihood of future involvement in the justice system.

School Food

The Council is calling for an additional $60 million for the school food program, including $17 million to restore cafeteria staff headcounts to pre-pandemic levels and at least $3 million to fund nutrition committees in schools. After initially cutting $60 million from school food funding in the November Financial Plan, the Administration announced a partial $25 million restoration in March.

Mental Health Continuum

The Council has called on the Administration to baseline $5 million for the Mental Health Continuum, a cross-agency partnership between the Department of Education, NYC Health + Hospitals and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that provides mental health support to students in-person and virtually. In April, the Administration announced 16 new school-based mental health clinics would be funded $3.6 million in funds from the Continuum but the Executive Budget provided no allocation for the Continuum in Fiscal Year 2025 and beyond.

School Based Nurses

The Council has called for the restoration and baselining of $65 million to replace expiring federal stimulus funds and maintain nurses for over 130 schools and 70,000 students.

Youth Peer Support Program

The Council has called for $15.3 million to fund a youth peer support program that would utilize a school-based peer-to-peer model to empower young people between the ages of 14 and 24 years old to recognize and reduce stigma of mental health illness and support fellow students dealing with mental health challenges.

Student Success Centers

The Council has called for the restoration of $3.3 million to continue Student Success Centers that create partnerships between community-based organizations and high school campuses. They serve as critical opportunities for high schools to build a system of support that can improve students’ success in the college admissions processes. Expiring federal stimulus funds supported Student Success Centers in high schools.

Immigrant Family Engagement

The Council has called for the restoration of $4 million to continue supporting improved engagement between schools and immigrant families by providing school information and updates in families’ native languages.

Title VI Coordinators

The Council has called for an additional $4.4 million to hire one Title VI coordinator in each of the city’s 32 school districts to address acts of bias within schools and re-establish the Division of School Culture in the New York City Department of Education (DOE). Recent incidents of hate involving students and teachers in the city’s public school system have led to the initiation of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on possible Title VI violations by the DOE. Considering the gravity of the investigation and the numerous incidents that have taken place during this school year, this is an important step that should be taken by the City. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides protections against discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any institution or program that receives federal funding from ED.    

“New York City students are recovering from historic, pandemic-era learning loss that requires additional support through critical education programs,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams . “The Council has consistently called for funding commitments to these vital initiatives that were at risk due to expiring federal stimulus funds. While the Administration’s commitment of more than $500 million to replace some of the expiring federal funds was a step forward, there is more work to be done to restore tens of millions of dollars for education programs that students and families need. Education must be a top budget priority for our city, and we will continue to push for the investments our children and communities deserve.”

“Investments in education programs and associated supportive programs for students save us, and make us, money in the long run,” said Council Member Justin Brannan, Chair of the Committee on Finance . “Our kids deserve our support, which is reason enough to make sure they have every opportunity to grow, learn, and thrive in our school system. But investing in education isn’t only the right thing to do, it’s also the fiscally responsible thing to do. Today’s students will inherit our city, so investments in education today are investments in New Yorkers’ health, wealth, public safety, and culture of tomorrow.”

“With the loss of billions in federal funds, it is imperative the City invests in maintaining funding for early childhood education, preschool special education, community schools, school food programs, restorative justice initiatives, and beyond in the Adopted Budget,” said Council Member Rita Joseph, Chair of the Committee on Education . “The mayoral administration must recognize the paramount importance of these areas for our students and the promise of giving them a high-quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances.”

“While the Mayor’s proposed budget makes important investments in education, there are still critical education programs on the chopping block,” said Annie Minguez Garcia, Vice President of Government and Community Relations at Good Shepherd Services, on behalf of the Emergency Coalition to Save Education Programs . “From restorative justice practices and the Mental Health Continuum, to 3-K and preschool special education, to community schools and immigrant family communication, to Student Success Centers, these are initiatives and services that students and school communities can’t afford to lose. We appreciate that the City Council called to restore funding for each of these programs in its response to the preliminary budget and want to ensure the final budget includes funding to sustain these vital supports.”

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•  NYC Council Calls for Maintaining Investments for Early Childhood Education System and Programs that Support Students’ Recovery from Learning Loss May 15, 2024
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3. Writings On Education From Introduction To Tolstoy's Writings by Ernest J Simmons (1968)

After Tolstoy's speech at the Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature in 1859, the president of that organization, devoted to popular views of the immediate social significance of literature, coldly reminded him that, however eternal truth and beauty may be in art, the artist is a man of his own times, and that the present historical moment was one in which self-indictment acquired a special meaning and an indefeasible right and hence must manifest itself in literature.

The time would come when Tolstoy's own views on literature for the people would radically change, but at the moment he had reached a point of despair and thought of abandoning literature forever. To scribble stories was stupid and shameful, he told A. A. Fet in a burst of enthusiastic confidence when he learned that this poet was thinking of settling on an estate near him and subordinating literature to farming. Literary friends, learning of his intention to plunge into educational theory and start a school at Yasnaya Polyana, pleaded with him not to deprive Russia of his literary leadership. He answered that his new endeavours bore a direct connection with his retreat from literature. For whom did Russian authors write, he asked? For themselves and the cultured few. For masses of illiterate Russian peasants literature was useless. If they could not read his writings, then he would teach them. This, he declared, was the first and essential step toward the creation of a "literature for the people." Here was a purpose that would satisfy his thirst for activity and moral influence.

When Tolstoy opened his school in the autumn of 1859 in a single room of his large manor house at Yasnaya Polyana, free education for peasant children did not exist in Russia. Occasionally, a village would boast of a priest or an ex-soldier who taught a few children at so much per head. The subjects were elementary, the method a mixture of blows and learning by heart, and the results negligible. This situation Tolstoy wished to remedy by substituting public education based on entirely original pedagogical methods.

With half a year of highly successful teaching behind him, it was almost inevitable that Tolstoy should find himself bedevilled in a maze of speculation on pedagogy and obsessed with schemes for improving national education. In March, 1860, he wrote to a friend, E. P. Kovalevsky, brother of the Minister of National Education, of his efforts and mentioned that he already had fifty students and that the number was growing.

"Wisdom in all worldly affairs it seems to me," he continued, "consists not in recognizing what must be done but in knowing what to do first and then what comes after."

He boldly questioned the value to progress in Russia of roads, the telegraph, literature, and the arts, as long as only about one per cent of some seventy millions of people were literate. As a remedy he proposed the establishment of a Society of National Education. Among its duties would be setting up public schools where they were most needed, designing courses of instruction, training teachers in suitable educational methods, and publishing a journal devoted to the dissemination of the society's pedagogical ideals.

Tolstoy received no official encouragement for his proposed program, but from the evidence of fragments of pedagogical essays at this time it is obvious that he had begun to think out his own course of instruction. In one fragment, entitled " On the Problems of Pedagogy ," he wrote:

"For every living condition of development, there is a pedagogical expediency, and to search this out is the problem of pedagogy."

Aware that he was trying, without sufficient knowledge, to handle large abstract concepts of educational theory, which in Russia were entirely dominated by Western European influence, he went abroad in 1860 to study them at the source. A full account of this effort reveals how thoroughly he pursued his objective. He visited schools and participated in classroom work in Germany, France, and England; he talked with teachers and leading educational theorists in these countries; and he collected and studied quantities of textbook samples and read numerous foreign treatises on education. After visiting schools at Kissingen, he jotted down in his diary:

"It is terrible! Prayers for the king; blows; everything by rote; terrified, beaten children."

Another entry shortly after:

"The idea of experimental pedagogy agitates me. I can scarcely contain myself...."

And in still a third entry, after reading Montaigne, he wrote:

"In education, once more, the chief things are equality and freedom."

Julius Froebel, nephew of Friedrich Froebel the celebrated educational reformer and founder of the kindergarten system, has left an interesting account of his discussion with Tolstoy:

" 'Progress in Russia,' he told me, 'must come out of public education, which among us will give better results than in Germany, because the Russian masses are not yet spoiled by false education."'

Tolstoy went on to inform him of his own school in which learning was in no sense obligatory.

"'If education is good,' he said, 'then the need for it will manifest itself like hunger."'

And Froebel also relates that Tolstoy spoke of the Russian masses as a "mysterious and irrational force," from which one day would emerge an entirely new organization of the world, and said that from the Russian artel would develop in the future a communistic structure.

This report reflects the proud, dogmatic, almost arrogant attitude that Tolstoy adopted toward European personalities he met on this educational study trip. While sincerely seeking knowledge, he invariably made it clear that he belonged to no school of thought, had his own point of view on most questions, and that Europeans did not understand the real failings of their civilization.

From his visits to the schools of Marseille, Tolstoy took away a gloomy impression of the futility of the subjects taught and the lifeless, unimaginative methods of teaching them. On the other hand, when he talked with workers and children on the streets, he found them intelligent, free-thinking, and surprisingly well informed, but with no thanks to their schooling.

This situation led him to conclude in a later account of these experiences, in an article entitled " On National Education ":

"Here is an unconscious school undermining a compulsory school and making its contents almost of no worth.... What I saw in Marseille and in all other countries amounts to this: everywhere the principal part in educating a people is played not by schools, but by life."

This is the kind of characteristic half-truth that Tolstoy was fond of deducing from incomplete experience, and it became an important factor in his educational theorizing. But even half-truths that blasted away the hard shell of traditional and erroneous thinking on vital social problems had their value for him.

Tolstoy returned to Russia in the spring of 1861. He erected a three-room schoolhouse at Yasnaya Polyana, and, with several teachers employed to assist him in the instruction, he worked for the next year and a half with self-sacrificing zeal on theoretical and practical problems of education. He expounded his theories and described his practice in twelve extensive articles and a series of notes published in a magazine he founded called Yasnaya Polyana, the issues of which appeared between February, 1862, and March, 1863. Teachers and students also contributed to the magazine. Much of what follows here is based upon Tolstoy's articles, which for that time were quite original in substance but often weakened by perverse and exasperatingly dogmatic reasoning. Though truth was his sole aim, he occasionally forgot that his sweeping generalizations were based on limited experience with his own little school and on the efforts of unique students and a unique teacher. A persistent scepticism was the trade secret of his thinking in educational matters as in other fields of human endeavour.

Over the door of the school Tolstoy placed the inscription: " Enter and Leave Freely ." Perhaps he was thinking, by way of contrast, of Dante's inscription over hell: " Abandon Hope, All Ye who Enter Here ," which he would hardly have hesitated to place above the entrance to most European schools he had visited. Certainly the atmosphere of his own school convinced the children that education was a precious and joyous heritage.

Tolstoy believed that all education should be free and voluntary. He supported the desire of the masses for education, but he denied that the government or any other authority had the right to force it upon them. The logic of things, and his study of the operation of compulsory education abroad, convinced him that in this form it was an evil. Pupils should come to learn of their own accord, for if education were a good, it would be found as necessary as the air they breathed. If people were antagonistic, then the will of the people should become the guiding factor. Tolstoy's faith in the " will of the people ," even though the people might oppose commonly accepted notions of progress, contained the seeds of his later anarchism, and was a direct slap at radical reformers who would uplift the masses against their will.

Tolstoy also believed that education should answer the needs of the masses, but his conception of their needs had nothing in common with that of contemporary progressive thinkers. Nor did he have any patience with the widespread pedagogical conviction that education should mould the character and improve the morals of students. These were matters for family influence, he declared, and the teacher had no right to introduce his personal moral standards or social convictions into the sanctity of the home. In public education he was concerned primarily with peasants, the vast majority of the population. But he was not bent on elevating them above their class by the power of education (a definite evil in his eyes); he was concerned with making them better, more successful, and happier peasants.

In this context the individualistic direction of Tolstoy's thought was apparent. The assumption of civilization's progress in Macaulay, Buckle, and especially in Hegel, he firmly rejected. For some time opposition between the good of the individual and the good of society had been troubling him. He was already developing a philosophy hostile to the pragmatic ideal that progress could be achieved only by social education of the people through the medium of democracy. Progress was personal, he felt, and not social. Education must serve the individual and not society, for the individual's capacity to serve humanity was what gave meaning to life. Yet he did not appear to see the contradiction in his rejection of the whole modern concept of progress. He would teach the peasant child what he needed, but what he needed was often conditioned by the social system in which he lived.

In his article " On National Education " Tolstoy defined education as "a human activity based on desire for equality and a constant tendency or urge to advance in knowledge." Education, he asserted, was history and therefore had no final aim. Its only method was experience; its only criterion, freedom.

Tolstoy attempted to realize in practice even the more extreme aspects of his educational philosophy. Since he believed that the functioning of a school must be adapted to the peculiar conditions of the pupils, he conceded that his own village school might well be the worst possible model for those elsewhere. Attendance was non-compulsory and free to all. Classes ordinarily ran from eight o'clock to noon and then from three o'clock to six, but, as Tolstoy proudly wrote a friend, the students often continued an hour or more beyond closing time,

"because it is impossible to send the children away — they beg for more."

During the morning, elementary and advanced reading were taught, composition, penmanship, grammar, sacred history, Russian history, drawing, music, mathematics, natural sciences, and religion; in the afternoon there were experiments in physical sciences and lessons in singing, reading, and composition. No consistent order was followed, however, and lessons were lengthened or omitted according to the degree of interest manifested by the students. On Sundays the teachers met to talk over the work and lay out plans for the following week. But there was no obligation to adhere to any plan, and each teacher was placed entirely upon his own. For a time they kept a common diary in which were set down with merciless frankness their failures as well as their successes.

Originality was the guiding spirit. Freedom ruled, but never to the extent of anarchy. When Tolstoy purposely left the room in the middle of a lesson to test the behaviour of his students, they did not break into an uproar as he had observed was the case in similar circumstances in classrooms he visited abroad. When he left, the students were enjoying complete freedom, and hence they behaved as though he were still in the room. They corrected or praised each other's work, and some-times they grew entirely quiet. Such results, he explained, were natural in a school where the pupils were not obliged to attend, to remain, or to pay attention.

Tolstoy insisted that only in the absence of force and compulsion could natural relations be maintained between teacher and pupils. The teacher defined the limits of freedom in the classroom by his knowledge and capacity to manage. And the pupils, Tolstoy wrote, should be treated as reasoning and reasonable beings; only then would they find out that order was essential and that self-government was necessary to preserve it. If pupils were really interested in what was being taught, he declared, disorder would rarely occur, and when it did, the interested students would compel the disorderly ones to pay attention.

The successful functioning of such a school demanded unusual ability on the part of the teacher. Tolstoy admitted this, and justly claimed for himself a certain pedagogic tact. Always in his mind was the pupil's convenience in learning and not the teacher's in teaching. He argued that there was no best method in teaching a subject; the best method was that which the teacher happened to know best. That method was good which when introduced did not necessitate an increase of discipline, and that which required greater severity was bad. The method should develop out of the exigencies of a given problem in teaching, and it should please the pupils instead of the teacher. In short, teaching, according to Tolstoy, could not be described as a method; it was a talent, an art. Finality and perfection were never achieved in it; development and perfecting continued endlessly.

In this free atmosphere of student-dominated learning, certain traditional subjects were resisted in a manner that led Tolstoy to doubt their ultimate usefulness and to question the desirability of teaching them to youngsters. Grammar was such a subject. Although his emphasis in instruction favoured analysis, the kind involved in grammar put the students to sleep. To write correctly and to correct mistakes made by others gave his pupils pleasure, but this was only true when the process was unrelated to grammar. After much experimentation with teaching the subject, he concluded in an article in Yasnaya Polyana that

"grammar comes of itself as a mental and not unprofitable gymnastic exercise, and language — to write with skill and to read and understand — also comes of itself."

In the pages of his educational magazine, Tolstoy provides vivid accounts, filled with all the charm of his realistic art, of daily life at the school. On a cold winter morning the bell would ring. Children would run out into the village street. There was no lagging on the way, no urge to play the truant. Each child was eager to get there first. The pupils carried nothing in their hands, no homework books or exercises. They had not been obliged to remember any lesson. They brought only themselves, their receptive natures, and the certainty that it would be as jolly in school that day as it had been the day before.

At the end of a lesson Tolstoy would announce that it was time to eat and play, and, challenging them to race him out-doors, he would leap downstairs, three or four steps at a time, followed by a pack of screaming laughing children. Then he would face them in the snow and they would clamber over his back, desperately striving to pull him down. He was more like an older brother to them and they responded to his efforts with devotion and tireless interest. Their close, even tender, relations are touchingly reflected in one of the magazine articles. He describes how, after school, he accompanies several of the pupils home on a moonless winter night by a roundabout way through the woods, entertaining them with tales of Caucasian robbers and brave Cossacks. The youngest, a ten-year-old boy, furtively clasps two of his teacher's fingers during the most fearful part of a story. At the end of the narration, by one of those quick transitions of children, an older pupil suddenly asks why do they have to learn singing at school? "What is drawing for?" Tolstoy rhetorically asks, puzzled for the moment about how to explain the usefulness of art. "Yes, why draw figures?" - another queries. "What is a lime tree for?" a third asks. At once all begin to speculate on these questions, and the fact emerges that not everything exists for use, that there is also beauty, and that art is beauty

"It feels strange to repeat what we said then," Tolstoy writes, "but it seems to me that we said all that can be said about utility, and plastic and moral beauty."

The ten-year-old was the last of the group to be delivered to his home. He still clung to Tolstoy's hand, out of gratitude it seemed, and as he entered the miserable thatched hut of his poverty-stricken parents, in which his father and the drunken village tailor were gambling, the lad said pathetically:

"Good-by! Let us always have talks like this!"

Tolstoy ended this account in his article by meditating on the age-old question of the moral and practical utility of educating the masses. The cultured, he wrote, would remonstrate: Why give these poor peasant children the knowledge that will make them dissatisfied with their class and their lot in life? But such a peasant boy, concluded Tolstoy, addressing the upper class,

"needs what your life of ten generations unoppressed by labor has brought to you. You had the leisure to search, to think, to suffer — then give him that for which you suffered; this is what he needs. You, like the Egyptian priest, conceal yourself from him by a mysterious cloak, you bury in the earth the talent given to you by history. Do not fear: nothing human is harmful to man. Do you doubt yourself? Surrender to the feeling and it will not deceive you. Trust in his [the peasant boy's] nature, and you will be convinced that he will take only that which history commanded you to give him, that which you have earned by suffering."

The question of art and its relation to his young peasant pupils interested Tolstoy. With his customary freshness, attention to detail, and marvellous power of direct vision he discussed the subject in one of his most remarkable articles, " Who Should Teach Whom to Write, We the Peasant Children or the Peasant Children Us ?" It was inspired by an exciting experience in composition in his school. Themes on the usual subjects, such as descriptions of a forest, a pig, or a table, drove the children to tears. Tolstoy then suggested that they write a story on peasant life, to illustrate a proverb. The pupils found this difficult too, but one boy proposed that Tolstoy write the story himself, in competition with them. He composed several pages and then was interrupted by Fedka, who climbed on the back of his chair and read over his shoulder. Tolstoy explained the plot of the story and the boys immediately became interested. They criticized what had been done and suggested different ways of continuing. Fedka took the leading part in this discussion and surprised Tolstoy by his imagination and sense of proportion, important qualities in every art. Tolstoy set to work to write to the dictation of his pupils Syomka and Fedka, who angrily rejected superfluous details offered by others and eventually took command of the situation. The rest of the boys went home.

Tolstoy described how he and his two pupils worked feverishly from seven in the evening till eleven. Neither hunger nor weariness bothered them. In his account of their collective effort, he gave a number of convincing examples of the artistic rightness and fitness of details, descriptions, and selection that the boys argued and insisted upon. They drew from their experience of village life and characters; and they were nearly always right. Tolstoy was tremendously excited and admitted that he had felt such a strong emotion only two or three times in his life. He was amazed at his discovery of such artistic and creative powers in two peasant lads who could scarcely read or write, and it seemed almost offensive that he, a nationally known author, was virtually unable to instruct these eleven-year-old pupils in his art.

The next day, and still a third day, they continued the story with equal enthusiasm. Then the work was interrupted because Tolstoy had to go away for a few days. During his absence a craze for making popguns out of paper swept the school and the unfinished manuscript of the story was unwittingly sacrificed to this childish diversion. When Tolstoy discovered the loss upon his return, he was deeply chagrined. Fedka and Syomka, aware of his keen disappointment, offered to reproduce the tale themselves. They came after school one evening at nine o'clock and locked themselves in his study. Tolstoy listened at the door and heard them laughing. Then all grew quiet, except for subdued voices discussing the story, and the scratching of a pen. At midnight he knocked and was admitted. Fedka still had a few more sentences to dictate to Syomka, who stood at the large table busily writing, his lines running crookedly across the paper and his pen constantly stabbing at the inkpot. At last Tolstoy took the copybook. After a merry supper of potatoes and kvas, the boys lay down on their sheepskin coats under the writing table, and until sleep over-took them, their healthy, childish laughter rang through the room.

Tolstoy read the story over and found it very similar to the original draft. Some new details had been added, but the tale contained the same truth, measure, and feeling for beauty of the first version. Under the title of the Russian proverb, " The Spoon Feeds, but the Handle Sticks in the Eye ," he printed it, with very few changes, in his pedagogical magazine.

From this unusual experiment in composition Tolstoy drew some interesting conclusions. He declared that nearly all contemporary art was intended for people of leisure and artificial training and was therefore useless to the masses, whose demand for art was more legitimate. He dismissed with some vexation the stale notion that in order to understand and appreciate the beautiful a certain amount of preparation was necessary.

"Who said this?" he asked in his magazine account of the writing of the story. "Why? What proves it? It is only a dodge, a loophole to escape from the hopeless position to which the false direction of our art, produced for one class alone, has led us. Why are the beauty of the sun, of the human face, the beauty of the sounds of a folk song, and of deeds of love and self-sacrifice accessible to everyone, and why do they demand no preparation? "

Tolstoy's position was no doubt extreme, and there was also considerable exaggeration in his unqualified praise of the literary ability of his pupils, who were unquestionably inspired by his own artistic interests. Yet such schoolboy efforts helped to teach him the fundamental truth that the need to enjoy and serve art was inherent in every human being, and that this need had its right and should be satisfied.

Although the Society for National Education that Tolstoy projected found no support among government officials, his school was not without its influence. After the emancipation of the serfs, the government encouraged them to open their own schools. Peasants in the Tula district, where Yasnaya Polyana was situated, appealed to Tolstoy for teachers, and he willingly suggested a number. By 1862 there were no less than thirteen village schools in his area, and their teachers were all zealous disciples of Tolstoy's pedagogical approach. They caught from him a devotion and enthusiasm in what was essentially a pioneering venture. Living like peasants in the dirty, stuffy huts where they held their classes, and using tables for blackboards, they worked from seven in the morning until late at night. At first, like Tolstoy, they had to overcome the ignorant suspicions of peasant fathers and mothers who distrusted these newfangled methods of teaching and were alarmed because their children were not regularly beaten by the masters. But the fact that they were entirely free to send them to school or take them out overcame resistance. Finally, the happiness of the youngsters and their obvious progress in so short a time eventually won the parent's complete confidence in the system.

In a brief note " To the Public " that introduced his pedagogical magazine, Tolstoy eagerly invited criticism. Much of it was hostile and unconstructive, and particularly that which came from progressive thinkers of the time. He was called a " pedagogical nihilist " and his experiment was castigated as a complete overthrow of educational order and discipline. In a few periodicals, however, several teachers, weary of slavish Russian devotion to foreign models in pedagogy, bravely encouraged the less extreme aspects of his school. But, in general, his efforts failed to inspire enthusiastic acceptance among educators. His principle of freedom for both teachers and pupils was too radical a demand for even the most progressive theorists.

Worse still, in the eyes of critics, was Tolstoy's conviction that his educational ideas amounted to a revolt against established opinion in the name of healthy common sense. More-over, he scorned scientific exposition in his articles and used the simple and forceful prose of which he was a master. If he had elected to write treatises on experimental pedagogy in the accepted trade jargon, buttressed with elaborate footnotes and well-chosen citations from approved authorities, he would doubtless have gained a hearing, even if an unfavourable one.

As a matter of fact, certain government officials regarded Tolstoy's activities in education with dark suspicion. In October, 1862, the Minister of the Interior wrote to the Minister of National Education to complain about the harmful aspects of the pedagogical magazine. He pointed out that its general direction and spirit perverted the fundamental values of religion and morality, and he suggested that the censor's attention should be specifically directed toward correcting the situation.

In part, the fears of the Minister of the Interior were correct: Tolstoy's educational articles did call into question the whole contemporary concept of morality. His extremely radical position represented a danger not only to the whole foundation of educational practice, but to the authority of the State. The freedom that he advocated seemed to verge on rebellion, and children educated in this spirit would hardly grow up with proper reverence for those institutions of tsarist government that had been infested by corruption and oppression. His educational philosophy would place the human worth and well-being of the individual above the well-being of the State. In short, the spirit of Christian anarchy that Tolstoy was later to preach so openly and eloquently had already crept into his thinking. For in his educational articles he condemned the false morality of government and society, their despotism, the use of force, and the belief in the legality of punishment. And he frankly stated his belief that the masses could exist without the educated classes, and hence without government, but that the educated classes could not exist without the masses.

Because of his marriage, various discouragements, and a suddenly renewed interest in fiction writing, Tolstoy abandoned his school and the pedagogical magazine at the end of 1862. But his concern for the education of the young, which soon revived when his own children came along, remained with him for the rest of his life, as frequent references to it in letters and in his diary indicate. For example, in 1872 he published his first ABC Book, in which, he said, he had put more work and love than in anything else he had done. It contained a complete curriculum for beginning pupils. There are sections on reading and writing, with drawings, exercises, and various typographical devices to aid in spelling and pronunciation; there are also sections on natural sciences and arithmetic. He realized the importance of effective examples and exercises, and his selections are original and often reveal rare artistic taste. The frame of reference is restricted by the limitations of the students and their daily lives.

"From the natural sciences," he wrote a friend, "I did not choose what may be found in books or anything that I by chance knew or what appeared to me necessary to know, but only that which was clear and beautiful, and when it seemed to me insufficiently clear and beautiful, I tried to express it in my own way."

Several of the stories used as examples in the ABC Book are entirely Tolstoy's own; others are drawn from various folk sources.

The ABC Book, based upon pedagogical theories that Tolstoy had developed and put into practice in his village school was designed, as he said, for the teacher who loved both his calling and his pupils. The work firmly eschews useless or erudite knowledge, or facts beyond the comprehension or experience of beginners. For the chief significance of teaching, he maintained, was not in the assimilation of a known quantity of information, but in awakening in students an interest in knowledge.

Tolstoy was sadly disappointed at the reception of the ABC Book, in which he had deliberately tried to avoid extremes in his theorizing. However, the innovations infuriated pedagogues, and a deluge of sharp, even vicious, reviews resulted. The reviewers charged that the work was an attack on accepted methods of instruction, that he had opposed to a pedagogical system of reason one of faith, to a system of science one of instinct and imagination, and to a system of conviction and ideas one of moral principles. Stubbornly he turned once again to teaching peasant children in his district, in order to demonstrate the methods he advocated in his ABC Book.

In 1873 an invitation from the Moscow Committee on Literacy to explain his educational system to them again aroused Tolstoy's conviction that he had a national public service to perform in education. One result of the meeting was a request to test his ideas on teaching, in several subjects, against the conventional methods employed in the schools. Two groups of Moscow children of similar ages and social backgrounds were provided. One of Tolstoy's experienced Yasnaya Polyana teachers instructed a group, and a teacher designated by the Moscow Committee on Literacy the other. At the conclusion of seven weeks of teaching, six members of the committee examined both groups of students. Although there was no unanimity among the examiners, a majority decided that the pupils taught by Tolstoy's opponent had excelled in all three subjects — reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Tolstoy felt that the test had failed to prove anything because it had been conducted under the worst possible conditions. And he submitted the article previously mentioned, " On National Education ," to the popular magazine, ' Notes of the Fatherland '. It is in the form of a letter addressed to the head of the Moscow Committee on Literacy. The article (September, 1874) is largely a reaffirmation of the views Tolstoy expressed in the pages of his own pedagogical magazine twelve years before. With ruthless dogmatism he condemns outright the phonetic and visual methods of teaching then used in Russian elementary schools. And those native teachers who burned incense to German pedagogical theory he sharply criticized for failing to understand or respect the educational needs of the Russian masses. All a teacher has to know, he declares, is what to teach and how to teach. To find out what to teach, one must go to the people, to the students and their parents. At present, he asserts, the people demand that their children learn how to read and write and to cipher. Until they demand something more, teachers have no right to teach more. As for how to teach, he sums it up in his old phrase: the only criterion for pedagogy is freedom, the only method is experience.

The article created a great stir among the public, infinitely more so than all of Tolstoy's publications on educational themes in the past. To be sure, the work was attractively written, but now it had also come from the pen of the famous author of ' war and peace ', and he had had the good sense to print it in a widely read periodical. In a real sense the effort suddenly made the public pedagogically minded and inspired a surprisingly large number of articles and letters in a variety of magazines. Although the experts, with few exceptions, vigorously attacked him, his views elicited widespread sympathetic response among laymen. After years of striving he at last had the satisfaction of knowing that his theories had reached the general public.

With such encouragement, Tolstoy felt impelled to try for further success. In February, 1875, he published his New ABC Book. It was shorter, cheaper, more practical, and as he remarked in the foreword, adaptable to any method of teaching. Here, too, he now won success, for the Ministry of National Education recommended the work. It was widely adopted by schools and ran into many large editions (100,000 copies were printed for the 1900 edition).

At the same time, Tolstoy published four children's Readers, which contained material taken mostly from his first ABC Book. The excellence and variety of the selections, the artistic simplicity of the narratives, and no doubt the inexpensive price gained an enormous market for these little books, and over the years they sold in tens of thousands.

Tolstoy's old dream seemed on the point of realization — he was beginning to exercise a pronounced influence on the course of elementary education in Russia. And the dream expanded. He wanted to take a prominent place in the larger field of national education, and he wrote to the minister to inquire whether the government would consider a detailed program that he was contemplating on instruction in the schools and another for training teachers. Although the reply was favourable, it was delayed so long that the impatient Tolstoy had already charged off in another direction. Breaking a rule he had set up for himself, he accepted election to the County Council and an appointment to its Education Committee.

One naturally thinks of the poet Matthew Arnold, inspector of schools in England at this time. With Arnold, however, the post was a means of livelihood and a most unpoetic business. Tolstoy, in his more restricted sphere, found a world of poetry in the work of inspecting local schools. He agitated with some success for inexpensive instruction in the district, and he launched his pet project of establishing at Yasnaya Polyana a teachers' training seminary, for he wished to train peasant teachers to take their place in the milieu in which they had grown up and to provide the kind of education for peasant children that would not instill in them alien desires or render them unfit for the performance of duties to which they would be called by their position in life. This was to be, he remarked, a " university in bast shoes ."

In 1874 the Ministry of Education approved Tolstoy's carefully prepared plan for a teachers' training seminary. And his request to the Tula government for financial assistance in return for a certain number of tuition teaching scholarships was granted. But for some unexplained reason, perhaps because educational centers in the Tula government did not favour the idea, only twelve candidates applied for the program. This poor showing discouraged Tolstoy and he refused to open his " university in bast shoes ." It was his last constructive effort to improve formal education in Russia. A long and arduous chapter in the history of Tolstoy's civic conscience had come to an end.

Despite hostility to Tolstoy's educational practices and writings during his lifetime, since then there has been a tendency to acclaim him a brilliant innovator and one of the most significant of educational reformers. Experimental schools in America and abroad have profited from the full accounts he left of his own experiences. His methods of teaching the alphabet and reading, his insistence on self-reliance by obliging students to do manual labor, and his belief that the child should be allowed as much freedom as possible in the classroom — these features of his system have had their influence in later progressive education. And one of his principal theses, that the school should always remain a kind of pedagogical laboratory to keep it from falling behind universal progress, has found wide acceptance as an educational premise.

In one respect it may be said that his first absorbing educational experiment between 1859 and 1862 fulfilled another purpose: the school at Yasnaya Polyana contributed as much to the historical development of Tolstoy as it had to the education of peasant children — it brought him back to the career of fiction writing. It was as though a kind of catharsis had been effected that once again left his mind and spirit free for artistic work.