U.S. President Barack Obama is turning to the nations governors for help in meeting his domestic priorities. State leaders came to the White House for closed-door discussions on the economy, health care and education.
The private meeting began with a few public remarks by the president, in which he focused on issues of vital interest to the governors. He said they are working together to rebuild the economy, after a series of emergency measures to end the recession and help key industries survive.
Mr. Obama said he understands the toll the recession took on state governments that found themselves with less tax revenue and a rising need for services.
Overall, the economy is in a better place than it was a year ago, he said. We were contracting by six percent. We are now growing by six percent. But I know that your states are still in a very tough situation and too many Americans still have not felt the recovery in their own lives.
The president spoke about ongoing efforts to create jobs. He also talked about actions to put America on a stronger economic footing in the future, by improving education standards across the country.
He said Americas primacy in the world is at stake.
I do not accept a United States of America that is second place, he said. That means that all of us have to work together to make sure that we are taking seriously the investments we make in our childrens future.
States and local governments provide most of the funding for the nations schools.
Mr. Obama offered help. He said he wants to change existing law so the federal government can give states aid for poor students. But he said the money would come with strings attached.
We will ask all states to put in place a plan to adopt and certify standards that are college and career-ready in reading and math, he said.
The president said he wants a dialogue with states on education reform. He said he also wants to hear ideas from the governors on improving the nations health-care system to improve access and affordability.
Just moments before he opened the meeting with the governors, the White House released a new set of proposals for health-care reform
With reform efforts effectively stalled in the Senate, Mr. Obama has invited Congressional leaders from both major political parties to a meeting Thursday to try to get the process moving again.
Republican lawmakers appear skeptical, but Republican governors say they are sharing ideas with their Democratic counterparts on the state level.
We hope as this debate goes forward we will have a chance to meet with you and your administration and the Congressional ideas that work that states can implement, so we can all work together, said Republican Jim Douglas of Vermont, Chairman of the National Governors Association.
Douglas said governors are approaching the issue in a bipartisan way. He said they all want to improve the health and well-being of their constituents.
One Laptop Per Childs office feels more like a playroom for geeky adults than a non-profit with a mission to save the world.
Plastic green laptops are strewn about in various stages of disassembly and upgrade, and the office is decorated with multicolor engineering and distribution charts, all organized by a young enthusiastic staff.
Dreaming big
Founder Nicholas Negroponte dreams big. His goal is to provide laptops to all the worlds children, especially the half-billion or more who live in extreme poverty. We invented a technology that was low cost enough that these laptops could be owned by the children, brought home and used for music, games, movies, books and learning 24/7, he says.
Almost a decade ago, when OLPC began, the idea of designing and manufacturing a rugged, laptop computer for anything close to $100 seemed laughable to some. Today, the device is already in the hands of 1.2 million children in 31 countries who speak 19 languages. One nation, Uruguay, has just completed delivery of laptops to every single child in the country.
Few doubt that giving children access to computers is a good thing. But buying the tens of millions of laptops many countries need can be expensive, even at the current price of $160 each. Critics of Negropontes approach say there are cheaper and more efficient ways to deliver computing power to the worlds children than to put a laptop literally into each childs hands.
A better way?
Steven Dukker, a pioneer in low-cost computing technology, is one of those critics. He founded nComputing, a company that makes software and hardware that allow a single, $300 desktop computer to run programs and applications for dozens of students at the same time.
NComputing networks are now in use at 40 thousand sites in 100 countries, including the United States. You think youve got your own computer all to yourself, explains Dukker, and you cant tell … that youre working on something other than a computer … and doing it at a much lower cost than having your own PC.
But Negroponte believes that when a child has his own laptop, it provides a personal connection to the technology, and to the use of that technology, that a terminal in a computer lab cannot.
A computer of their own
Our kids take the laptops home at night and sleep with them. Its their most cherished possession. Its a very different phenomenon, he says.
Matt Keller, OLPCs global advocacy director, says the real reason kids love their laptops so much is because they quickly learn to start customizing them to suit their own purposes.
Up until the age of five, children learn in a very dynamic, engaging way, says Keller. They learn how to walk and talk and they build things and they make mistakes and they knock them down, they lose their tempers, and they build them back up again. But they are learning through that dynamic interaction with things around them. Keller contrasts this with the rote memorization many children must do in their traditional schools.
Making a difference
Keller recalls a class of 12 year-old girls in Rwanda, where the president ordered the purchase of 120,000 laptops for the countrys children. Within days of receiving their machines, these rural girls had become experts at a programming game where they could design characters, dress them, make them do things, and tell stories together.
I thought to myself If you have a generation thats capable of designing software, of building things with technology and they are connected, why couldnt you a have a Silicon Valley in the middle of the most remote place on earth?
The main difficulty seems to be securing the funding and safe distribution for large numbers of computers in poor countries facing war and poverty; places like Afghanistan. The Afghani government desperately wants OLPC for it citizenry, says Keller. The Ministry of Education says OLPC will end the isolation of its citizens. The UN in Afghanistan says this is the solution for girls education in Afghanistan.
Negroponte believes that, in addition to educating children, the computers enable both girls and boys to become agents for social change. We find in Peru that as many as 50 percent of the kids, because they are in remote villages, are teaching their parents how to read and write.
He says evidence suggests that, in communities and schools worldwide where OLPC has made inroads, discipline problems go down, parents become more involved and kids literally run to school. And, adds Negroponte, in some of our earliest projects, in 2001 and 2002, every child that was in that experiment in first and second grade is still in school today. And that kind of impact, to me, is extraordinarily heartwarming.
Its clear that various factors market forces, technical breakthroughs, local communication networks and, most importantly, political will, must be aligned before all children get their hands on the tools they need to thrive and contribute in our interconnected world. Still, One Laptop Per Child is doing everything it can, one laptop computer at a time.
American Lisa Nesser moved to northern Thailand six years ago to help refugees from Burma. Lisa discovered many minority children from Burma were unable to attend regular schools in Thailand so she started giving the children free evening classes and her small group of students soon grew into a unique school. As we hear from VOAs Daniel Schearf, Nesser is making a difference in the city of Chiang Mai through her school - Thai Freedom House.
Lisa Nesser chops watermelon slices in the kitchen of a traditional Thai-style wooden house. The fruit is for about 15 stateless children from Burma who are sitting on the floor, having their evening English class.
Nesser says she never planned to open a school for stateless children from Burma. But when she saw children late at night on the streets of Chiang Mai who had no access to education, she decided to teach them herself.
Word spread about the free classes. And as more students showed up, Nesser enlisted volunteers, hired a small bus and used her own money to turn her house into a school.
So I was really trying to get them into regular schools, said Lisa Nesser. And they just wouldnt take them, even when I offered to sponsor fees.
Most of Lisa Nessers students are children of migrant workers from Shan state in Burma. They do not have Thai citizenship or language skills - making it difficult for them to enroll in Thai schools.
Many of her students do not have the time or money for regular school because they have to work to support their families.
So I have a lot of 12-year-olds that work, she said. They work on a construction site; they mix cement; they carry buckets; they clean up. Some of them work in noodle shops, maybe from like a street stall, from 5:00 p.m. till 2:00 in the morning. So they cant go to school at 7:00 in the morning.
Nesser says that in the last few years, her school, Thai Freedom House, has taught about 200 children English, Thai and art. The school also teaches the Shan language because most students did not receive a good education in Burma
Nesser also arranges for craft makers to teach the children how to make things they can sell to help support their families.
They dont have a country, said Nesser. They dont have their family structure here to support them. But if you can give them education and language and ways to express themselves, which is why we focus on the arts, that gives them another kind of freedom that otherwise they wouldnt have.
Fourteen-year-old Nam Gao says that when she moved to Thailand three years ago, her parents tried to enroll her in a Thai school. But because she does not have a birth certificate, she was rejected.
I want to say, Thank you, to the teachers [at Thai Freedom House], said Nam Gao. If there was no home like this, I would have no place to go to continue my education. Thank you for Freedom House.
Lisa Nesser has spent most of her savings to keep the school open. Although she solicits donations for the school, Nesser says they are never enough
Still, she says, educating her students is worth the struggle.
Getting an education in rural Sierra Leone is difficult. Thousands of schools were destroyed during the civil war and many teachers fled to the capital or left the country. The biggest challenge to universal primary education is a severe shortage of trained teachers, especially in rural areas.
With one year of secondary school under his belt, 50-year-old Francis Sao Turay is the sole teacher at the RC Primary School in Kasokra, a small village in the Sula mountains of central Sierra Leone.
Almost 50 children, from toddlers to teenagers, squeeze onto wooden benches in a makeshift structure. Turay arranges them according to class and then teaches one class at a time, trying to keep the others quiet.
Turay says it is very difficult to teach in these conditions. When you only have one classroom, but you have four different classes, you can only separate them by benches. So when you talk to class four, he says, then it is difficult to teach the little kids in class one. Turay says he finds it especially hard because he teaches just from his own experience.
The school, set up by Catholic missionaries, is registered with the government, but has no qualified teacher. Village leaders chose Turay to teach in an effort to keep their children in school.
Sierra Leones 2004 Education Act made primary education free in Sierra Leone. Since the civil war, the government has increased primary school enrollment dramatically. The number of students doubled between 2000 and 2005, due in part to the introduction of free primary education. The government also subsidizes exam fees.
But for community schools like the one at Kasokra, there is little government support. Parents here rely on peanut and rice farming to survive. They have little cash to pay for the indirect costs of education like school uniforms, transport, lunch money, tutoring fees and books.
Turay teaches without a salary, accepting instead offers of rice and farm-labor as payment.
Horatio Nelson-Williams is coordinator of the Education For All program at Sierra Leones Ministry of Education.
One of the major challenges is to get qualified teachers to teach in rural schools, said Horatio Nelson-Williams. You know, that is the major challenge. You know. So recently what we did last year we organized a workshop on formulating a new remote area policy. In the past, the remote area policy was working very well. But with inflation and all of the economic challenges that have taken place in the world, the allowances that were given to teachers for working in the remote areas have now become ridiculously low.
Nelson-Williams says the government does not have the funds to support community schools or train community teachers. He says they do get support from NGOs and the United Nations.
In 2009, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma launched a review of the education system following abysmal exam results at both the primary and secondary level.
Education coordinator Madiana Samba, of the advocacy organization Action Aid International, says the government must address the shortfall if they are to achieve real universal primary education.
We need to train those teachers out there that are really not trained, said Madiana Samba. Because if you are talking about a teaching force of over 35,000 and you are saying 40 percent of those ones are untrained and unqualified, then it is a big issue.
Turay would like to become a fully qualified teacher so he can provide a better education for the children in Kasokra and also make a decent wage. But he cannot afford to pay for the three-year distance-learning qualification program offered by the government.
Less than half of Sierra Leones population can read and write. But resources are limited in this post-conflict state where the education sector says it needs almost $250 million to meet the goal of free basic education for all children.
Foster children, who are in state custody because their parents are unable to care for them, can have a difficult time growing up. Unlike children who have a family they can count on if they have difficulty making it on their own, foster children may not have anyone to rely on but themselves. A cafe that opened In October 2009 in Frederick, Maryland, outside of Washington, is helping them get started on the right track.
Serving more than coffee and pastries
Moxie Bakery and Cafe seems like many other eateries that offer coffee, pastries and light meals, but its much more.
Its a training ground and a classroom, says Elin Ross, executive director of Cakes for Cause, the program behind Moxie. Cakes for Causes role is to provide job training and life skills training to youth who have aged out of the foster care system, who are living in public housing or are otherwise identified as being at risk in the Frederick community.
Christina Quinn is about half-way through her six-month apprenticeship. When she turned 18 last year, she says, I didnt know what to do with my life.
Someone told her about the Cakes for Cause program, and Quinn was eager to apply. I love baking, so I thought, Okay thats really cool. And she was like, Theyll help you with future goals as well, like cosmetology. And I said, Thats so cool. And she said, Also they are going to pay you to do it.
Learning more than how to bake cupcakes
Quinn earns $8 an hour, which is more than minimum wage. And even though she doesnt plan to be a baker or work in the restaurant business, she is learning skills she can use in any career, like how to relate to customers or how to take direction from a supervisor.
If, at the end of six months, they hate cupcakes, thats fine, says Ross. They can go into a retail job, they can go into a customer service job, they can go into a phone bank job. They can go into any number of jobs and have some basic transferable skills that will help them be successful in those positions.
Quinn plans to become a hair stylist, and Ross is helping her by letting her spend part of her apprenticeship at a salon in Frederick.
In addition to Ross, there are two full-time staff members at Moxie Bakery. They are not only professional bakers and chefs, they are also teachers. And Quinn is really the focus of all of their work
The entire staff is my support team, and when I got into our first meeting it was pretty much, Okay, Christina, what do you want to accomplish? I never had that before and it was a great experience.
Quinn isnt alone. Visit Moxie Bakery and Cafe on other days of the week, and you may meet another apprentice getting that attention. Elin Ross would eventually like to replicate the program in other communities.
For many decades, schools in the American south were segregated based on race. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation was unconstitutional, many states fought the decision, and it took years before their schools were fully integrated. In rural areas of the South, buildings that once served as schools for African Americans have been abandoned for decades. Now, some former students are at the forefront of efforts to preserve them
Buckingham Training School in Dillwyn, Virginia, is being restored to serve a new generation, thanks in large part to Wilbert Dean. I was moved to do something, he says. It had turned into a trash dump. They were collecting trash at this site where I went to school.
Dean went to school here for three years, beginning in 1953, when he was 11 years old and in the 5th grade. Without this school, I would not be standing here today, because the school gave me an opportunity to finish high school. Dean would go on to get a masters degree in business administration
Harvey Shelton, who attended Buckingham Training School from 1947 to 1953, credits it with setting him on the path that led to a doctorate degree from Virginia Tech. I probably would have gone to high school and maybe even college if this school hadnt been here. But Shelton says it would have been more difficult. What this school provided me was inspiration, people that told me I could do whatever I wanted to do.
One of thousands
Built in 1923, Buckingham Training School provided generations of African Americans with that inspiration. It was one of more than 5,000 Rosenwald schools built with funding from Julius Rosenwald. The co-owner of Sears and Roebuck, one of Americas largest retailers, financed the effort at the urging of Booker T. Washington, a former slave who became a prominent educator.
But Rosenwald only footed half the bill. The local community had to come together and provide the other half of the money to build these schools, says David Brown, executive vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is guiding efforts to save the Rosenwald schools.
They were begun around 1912, and that was a time when there was no education for blacks in the rural South, so this was a big step forward for the black community.
Built along plans that were comparable to schools being built for white children, the Rosenwald schools were considered state of the art for their time. But by the time schools in the South were integrated in the mid-20th century, they were out of date, and soon abandoned.
Serving the community again
Brown says the National Trust for Historic Preservation began hearing from alumni in late 1990s, seeking help to save their schools. Since then, seven schools have been given new life in their communities with help from Lowes home improvement stores and volunteers.
We really want to see these places reused, says Brown. They were built as symbols of community pride and they were centers of community life and we want them to continue in that vein.
Wilbert Dean says Buckingham Training School will reopen as a community center at the heart of a four-acre county park, Ellis Acres. The park is named for Rev. Stephen J. Ellis, the man who led the campaign to establish the Buckingham Training School when black children were barred from attending the county secondary school.
We can take this land that was designed to segregate the county and split it apart, we can use the same land and these same facilities to bring the county together, Dean says, to make Buckingham a better place and improve the quality of life.
Scrabble School, in Castleton, Virginia, is already doing that. The history of the school and the struggle African Americans faced to get an education is prominently displayed along one wall. But when Scrabble reopened its doors in May 2009, it did so as the Rappahannock County Senior Center, at the suggestion of Dorothy Warner. I went up to the old senior citizens building one day, and they were in a room that was half this size, and we had a meeting that night, and I said, We can put our seniors in there.
Warner didnt go to school at Scrabble, but her husband, who was at the forefront of restoration efforts, did. E. Franklin Warner, who became a budget analyst in the White House, died in 2003, and Dorothy took up the cause. She says the school was a reminder to him of how far he and his classmates, some of whom became doctors and lawyers, had come. He would probably say we made something of ourselves coming from a two-room school.
Many graduates of Rosenwald schools did, despite the fact that when they were students, African Americans were often treated as second-class citizens. Alumni want to ensure that the history of their schools is remembered for generations to come.
In 1881, a 25-year-old former slave from Virginia used a $2,000 gift to open a one-room teacher-training school in one of the poorest rural counties in the southern state of Alabama. This man and his school, that began in a church basement, would become American legends.
The man was Booker T. Washington, who at the turn of the 20th Century succeeded another former slave, the fiery orator Frederick Douglass, as the recognized voice of black America. The school, which at first had no money for land or buildings, grew into the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, a college for those whom no one else wanted to educate: African Americans in the backwoods of what was then the rigidly segregated South.
Proud history
Benjamin Payton is just the fifth president of what is now Tuskegee University. He says Washington was a great compromiser, which brought him scorn from confrontational black leaders but attracted moral and financial support from powerful whites.
He did it at a time when racial conflict was at its height, when terrorism was at its height, when blacks were routinely taken as objects of play and murder, Payton says. Washington took the position that no matter what other people think of you, the question is what you think of yourself and what youre going to do with the talents that have been embodied in you.
In his most famous speech, at a cotton exposition in 1895 in Atlanta, Washington implored the agrarian South, which was beginning to industrialize, to put Americas 4 million former slaves to work. Let down your buckets where you are, he said. Youll find fresh water...a major source of strength for the country.
Washington certainly put his Tuskegee students to work. They dug the clay, built the kilns, fired the bricks, and themselves constructed campus buildings - including Washingtons own stately home - that stand to this day.
And Washington hired away another onetime slave, a pioneer botanist and inventor working in the Midwest state of Iowa, who would join him in the pantheon of African-American giants. His name was George Washington Carver.
Peanut miracles
When he first came into the South, he noticed how the farmers crops were not producing a lot and that all the nutrients were sucked out of the soil, notes Shirley Baxter, a U.S. National Park Service ranger at the George Washington Carver National Historic site on the Tuskegee campus.
He knew that if they planted legumes, if they rotated their crops, that that was really going to help them as a people. And when they started growing peanuts, they asked him What do we do with them? And thats when he went into the lab.
There, Carver performed miracles with the humble peanut in particular. He showed poor, black sharecroppers how to make a decent living turning peanuts into more than 300 products, including peanut butter, shampoo, wood stains and glue.
In the 1940s, black polio sufferers flocked to Tuskegee from across the South to get Carvers free, personal massages using peanut oil, which he and they believed was a miracle curative
Come to find out, it wasnt the peanut oil, Ranger Baxter reports. It was the massages.
Carver, who had told Tuskegees President Washington that hed come for a couple of years in order to help fellow blacks, would stay at the institute for 47 years, right up to his death in 1943.
Carver, who became so immersed in his work that he routinely forgot to cash his modest paychecks, never married. The reason, he always said, was that he would get up at 4 oclock in the morning and go out on his daily hikes, Baxter says.
And he would come back with mud on his shoes, and he said, No woman would ever put up with that....He was probably right.
Together, George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington taught not just Tuskegee students, but also poor Alabama farmers who had no time, money or education to go to college. The two men took their books and plants and test tubes out into the country in a farm wagon, or what they called their movable school.
Tuskegee airmen
Tuskegee Institute would one day gain international fame for a training program on the campus airfield during World War II in the 1940s. Its graduates - black fighter pilots and gunners - served with distinction, escorting U.S. bombers over Europe and Africa.
Carla Graves, a park guide at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in the hangar at the airfield where they trained, says the U.S. presidents wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, visited and met the head flight trainer, Charles Chief Anderson.
Can Negroes really fly airplanes? she asked Anderson
Certainly we can, he replied, and Mrs. Roosevelt shocked her security detail by accepting a ride with him in his biplane.
Whatever she set out to do, she did it, Graves says.So she took that ride with Chief. And when they got back, she said, You can fly, all right. So this provided a great boost to African Americans in aviation.
Of the 450 Tuskegee Airmen who fought abroad, 66 died in combat, and 33 crashed and were captured. Half a century later, in 2007, U.S. President George Bush presented survivors - and other Tuskegee Airmen posthumously - with a Congressional Gold Medal for their service.
By that time, Tuskegee University had burst beyond its historic role as a rural school for teachers, veterinarians, agronomists, and business executives. Within its sprawling campus today, one finds the nations only aerospace-science program at a historically black college, as well as a renowned center for bioethics in research and health.
The latter was established following the discovery of a 40-year-long study by the U.S. Public Health Service in which 399 mostly illiterate black men in the county that includes Tuskegee, infected with the venereal disease syphilis, were not told about it or treated with penicillin.
Modern times
University president Payton says the shock that many people display when they come to the modern Tuskegee campus amuses him.
Im not sure what they expected to find, he says. Chicken coops and pigpens tended by folk with baggy trousers and suspenders?
Clearly they do not come here with the expectation that they will find programs reaching 50 or more sciences and the liberal arts and engineering, biomedicine, veterinary medicine, nursing - the cutting-edge disciplines that relate to research on human beings and the new challenges those very successes present.
Asked to assess the state of black America as he prepares to retire after 29 years on the job, Payton says he rejoices that ever-increasing numbers of African Americans go to, and thrive in, college. But he says this achievement is more than offset by a high-school drop-out rate among African Americans of more than 50 percent.
We need to produce young men and women who care about themselves - the kind of persons who have some sense of what it means to be an individual with dignity, who respect others, who know that just as you want to be respected, we treat other people as we want to be treated, Payton says. We made so much progress through the advancement of science and technology. But ethically and morally, we are in a bad way.
Outside Paytons window stands a statue of his famous predecessor, Booker T. Washington, pulling a shroud from the face of a former slave kneeling next to him. He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people, an inscription reads, and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.
This is the 10th time Lisa Delpy Neirotti has accompanied college students to an Olympic Games. Neirotti is a professor for Sports Management at the George Washington University, and 28 students from the Business School are with her in Vancouver studying the management and marketing of the Olympic Games.
Through the years she has built up relationships with people connected to the Olympics to make these educational visits successful.
Were meeting with people from IOC members all the way down to volunteers, including USOC, VANOC, sponsors from the top level to the national level, to suppliers, Neirotti said.
Professor Neirotti told VOA she meets with the students well in advance and warns them that the Olympic trips are not about fun and games.
This is a rigorous course, she said. The students are just dead tired. I mean we go from 8[am] to 5 or 6[pm], and then theyre expected to go out and collect surveys. They collect a minimum of 50 surveys each of spectators.
And the students do that after their class time and their behind-the-scenes meetings and tours.
Neirotti says she also expects the students to attend sporting events, and they must purchase their own tickets.
The students are on their own to find tickets, but I help them, she said. I have some connections with all the different ticket agencies, not just from the United States but from all different countries. So at least I can point them in the right direction.
For obvious reasons its an expensive college course to be enrolled in, says Neirotti. Students must not only pay the normal university course tuition, but they must cover the cost for airfare, local transportation, housing, food, tickets and, of course, souvenirs.
Professor Neirotti was able to find a youth hostel so the students pay a modest $40 a night compared to other lodging options. She said they dont spend much time there, so they dont need anything better.
I actually have them sign a form saying you will be running, you will skip meals, you will not get [much] sleep, Neirotti said. And, you know, they think Im kind of joking when I have them sign this form. But when were here its in preparation for if they work a Games. I mean I know the staff of VANOC [Vancouver organizers] and media; they dont get much sleep when theyre here because theyre working.
Student Morgan Goerke confirms her professors claims.
Shes not lying. I think Ive eaten lunch once in the past week, and we literally run from one event to another, across traffic and through crowds and crowds, but its very important that we make a good impression so we try to get there on time, and that sometimes involves running, she said.
The students are getting some journalistic experience as well, as they are writing an Internet blog at sportsfanlive.com.
Professor Neirotti says its been well received.
Thousands of people have come to the site to see the unique experiences that our students are experiencing here, she said.
Just like athletes and spectators have their special moments at an Olympics, Neirotti beamed when she told about her special moment in Vancouver.
I was at the USA House the other day talking to somebody about our student group, and I went on after our discussion, and then he came back and he came over and shook my hand and said how impressed he was with what we were doing, she said. And when he shook my hand, inside was $400, and he said I want you to take the students out for a good meal.
As for sightseeing, theres little time for that during their studies at the Olympics, but the students are welcome to stay for a bit on their own afterwards - if, of course, they are not worn out.
Call it the Olympics of the Mind
Earlier this month, the worlds brainiest people were in Harbin, China, for the 34th annual Battle of the Brains, the oldest, most prestigious computer programming contest in the world
Seated at individual tables in a large meeting hall, the three-member teams - from 103 universities in 88 countries - each huddled around a single computer, spending five hours trying to solve as many complex, real-world problems as they could.
Complex problems
One of the programming problems was try to figure out how to break an arbitrary chocolate bar into a certain number of pieces of a certain number of sizes and to do it as quickly as possible, says Jerry Cain, coach of the Stanford University team. Thats probably the simplest of all of them.
Other problems involved paperweights, robots and castles. Cain says the students were challenged to write a program to determine how many lakes would form in an area after a heavy rain, and to identify the most efficient route for an irrigation channel through a field.
Stanfords team solved five of 11 problems, finishing in 14th place, along with 21 other teams.One other problem posed a scenario where you had to sail from the westernmost of several islands to the easternmost of several islands and back, and to visit all the islands in the area in the process, says Cain. Students had to deal with issues of fuel and efficiency as well.
Solving the problems requires creativity, knowledge and teamwork. The first step, Cain says, is to rank the problems by difficulty. Then the three teammates must figure out the requirements of each problem, design ways to test their approach to the solution, and write software systems to accomplish it. Even the winning teams - Shanghai Jiaotong University and second place Moscow State University - were not able to solve all 11 problems in the given time
Stanfords team solved five of the problems, finishing with 21 other teams in 14th place, just behind the medalists. Coach Cain sees the competition as a real-world lesson and opportunity for his students.
Real-world lesson
I think Stanford students and probably a lot of students at top schools can be lulled into thinking they are at the top of their game, he says. The fact that they come in 14th illustrates to them there are lots of other people around the world who are also very good at programming. Its actually very nice for them to meet all these people. They are making friends with people from China, from Egypt, from Europe.
The competition is a lot of fun, says Jeffrey Wang, a member of Stanfords team. It really appeals to people like me, who love to solve problems.
During their one-week stay in China for the Battle of the Brains, Wang says the students enjoyed a different sort of contest at Harbins International Snow and Ice Sculpting Festival.
We had an ice sculpture contest where we worked with one of the Russian teams to build this really awesome ice sculpture, he recalls. It was really a good bonding experience, two teams who are separated by thousands of miles across the world and yet, have this common interest, this passion for computer science.
Stanford was one of 21 U.S universities participating in the contest this year. IBMs Doug Heintzman, the contest spokesman, says Asian and European countries also sent many teams.
Global challenge
China is close behind with about 20 teams and certainly Russia, Poland and many of the eastern European countries are very well represented, as is Canada, he says. As the competition has become more global and as the world has become a much smaller place, its really amazing to see just extraordinarily bright people show up in all corners of the planet.
What began in 1970 as a computer programming competition at one Texas university has gained popularity and participants, and grown into a prestigious international event.
There was a Chinese team last year that solved 3,500 problems in training for the competition, he says. The Russian president met the Russian team that won last year from St. Petersburg at the airport and congratulated them and had a reception for them and appeared on TV and newspapers with them proudly holding up their team banner. So this is a huge, huge deal for an awful lot of these schools and students around the world.
The World Champions, Heintzman says, return home with trophies, other prizes and scholarships. More importantly, he adds, they are guaranteed an offer of employment or internship from IBM.
Weve had past world champions that IBM employed in our Zurich research lab, [who] are now working on some of the leading-edge materials science and physics, he says. We have a world finalist from China whos been working on the Watson Supercomputer that in the near future will be playing Jeopardy against the best Jeopardy players in the world. So this competition is an opportunity to be recognized and to be recruited by some of the top technology and research firms around the world.
Contest spokesman Doug Heintzman notes that the world faces many complex problems, and bright and innovative young people everywhere can help create solutions. The Battle of the Brains, he says, is just one vehicle to identify these problem solvers and give them the chance to shape the future.
As Kenya becomes increasingly wired to the Internet, problems are cropping up regarding security and safety. Of particular concern are dangers about exploitation and harassment of children. To that end, a childrens organization, the Kenyan government and Microsoft East Africa Ltd. have launched a program to warn parents about Internet hazards.
What pops up on computer screens in Kenya has many educators and parents worried.
They say the Internet has the potential to exploit Kenyas young people if not properly managed.
Alarm bells went off for high school principal Joan Muoti shortly after her daughter signed up for the popular social networking site Facebook.
Somebody invited her in the Facebook. They kept on chatting, chatting. One time he says, I will be coming to Kenya and I would like to meet you, High School Principal Joan Muoti says she felt uncomfortable about a stranger wanting to meet her child
Other parents have similar worries, and children in Africa may be particularly at risk
Mark Matunga is the education and citizenship program manager with Microsoft East Africa Limited
Because of the level of poverty, and being told that, Hey, you know what, I can send you a few dollars, I can come and visit you, I can buy you a ticket, you come to my country. Those are some very inviting conversations that an African child can begin to have with somebody in the West, unsuspecting that this person in the West could just basically be preying on them, Matunga explained.
Matunga says what also makes African children vulnerable is that their parents and teachers typically are not knowledgeable about Internet technology
And there are other possible dangers, such as cyber-bullying and pornography.
So Microsoft East Africa Limited., the Kenyan government and the advocacy group The Cradle Childrens Foundation have teamed up to inform parents and protect children against Internet abuse.
The Internet is taking over shaping the character of our children. That is the basis of this project: we want to just raise awareness so as parents to be able to understand the dangers children are actually going through, Brian Weke, foundations program manager said. Then they can actually guide the children in relation to accessing the net.
The program consists of establishing parameters that parents can use to block certain Websites, computer games and search terms.
Organizers also conduct information sessions to teach parents about how to use the Internet safely.
Anything you put online is permanent on some of these social networks, Matunga stated. Somebody can easily take that photo of your child and manipulate it in whatever way that they want.
Matunga says Microsoft, the childrens foundation and the Kenyan government are working hard to educate parents, teachers and businesses on how best to protect Kenyas young from Internet abuse.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has met with members of Hollywoods creative community, to enlist their help in promoting the objectives of the international body. Mr. Ban later spoke with students at the University of California, Los Angeles, on how they can pursue such goals as global development and environmental protection.
The secretary-general met with the Hollywood movers and shakers on Monday, including studio executives and stars like Michael Douglas. He told them the work of the UN is sometimes more dramatic than Hollywood movies.
Speaking Tuesday at UCLA, the United Nations official said he hoped to promote such global goals as peace and stability, balanced development and the rights of women.
… promote gender empowerment, protect women and girls from sexual abuse, sexual exploitation - those are very serious issues and message which I really wanted to use Hollywood technologies and their capabilities and their reach, said Ban Ki-moon. And I got very positive responses from them.
The United Nations has long employed celebrities to convey its message. The actress Angelina Jolie, as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency, has travelled to Africa, Asia and Haiti.
Mr. Ban has worked to expand the UNs Hollywood ties through an effort called the Creative Community Outreach Initiative. Last year, the television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit filmed scenes at the UNs New York headquarters for an episode that told of conflict in Africa, child soldiers and sex slaves. And a UN-backed campaign to raise awareness of malaria was featured on the comedy Ugly Betty.
The diplomat told students and faculty members at UCLA that the world financial crisis shows how quickly problems spread from one place to another.
Climate change, a global food crisis, global terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, he said. Never have the fates of the worlds people been so closely linked.
Mr. Ban recalled his own experience as a high school student in 1962, when he won an essay contest sponsored by the Red Cross and got the chance to meet US President John F. Kennedy. He also stayed with a family near San Francisco as an exchange student, and says the experience opened his eyes to the world outside his native South Korea.
He assured UCLA students that they can play a role in addressing the worlds problems, from climate change to discrimination and violence against women.
You can ask your teachers, your professors, you can ask your business community leaders, you can ask NGO leaders, said Mr. Ban. And you can write to your congressman and senators that they must move. This is the role which you can play, and thats why Im standing before you.
He also assured a questioner that he is serious about institutional reform at the U.N., and says he has expanded rules of financial transparency and imposed clear standards of performance on senior advisors.
Investigations are continuing into the alleged theft of more than $1 million from a government program that funds Kenyas Free Primary Education initiative. As a result of the scandal surrounding the case, both the British and American governments have suspended funding for the program. And that raises fears that primary schools will go without essential materials and services in the near future
Two of six Education Ministry officials facing charges in connection to the alleged theft of $1.3 million from the Kenya Education Sector Support Program appeared in court in early February. They are among some 40 officials that the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating
Suspects basically forged receipts. They took imprest [government application forms for funds], Nicholas Simani, the commissions public relations officer said. When they were supposed to surrender (receipts), they forged those items. There was fraudulent acquisition of funds.
Those funds help to support primary and secondary education in Kenya. And because of the alleged fraud, in late January, the U.S. government suspended $7 million from the Education Sector Support Program. That followed the British governments withdrawal of $16.1 million.
We want to see a full and transparent audit, something that could be published and shared with the Kenyan people, Michael Ranneberger, U.S. ambassador to Kenya said. We want to see the people who are identified as responsible - again, whatever the level, from the very top down - fully investigated and prosecuted.
Kenya won world-wide praise when the newly-elected Kibaki administration created the Free Primary Education initiative in 2003. The initiative was designed to remove school fees and other barriers that kept primary children out of school.
As a result, primary school attendance in Kenya increased by more than one million children and secondary school attendance jumped 10 percent
The initiative assists more than eight million children, and includes giving them greater access to textbooks and equipment. But those gains may be at risk if donors continue to freeze funding.
George Wesonga is the national chairman of the Kenya National Union of Teachers. Unless money comes in from somewhere, the situation will be bad, he said. Because the supply of things will not be there, things like electricity, books, equipment, and therefore education is going to be affected seriously.
Wesonga says his group suspected that money was being misappropriated more than a year ago. As a union we have been smelling a rat, because if this money was from the donor community, we knew that the money was coming in good time. But we started to realize that money was not going to the schools in good time, and when we were asking for reasons, they would not give the reasons, he stated. They would say, We shall be wiring money to these schools in a months time, in a weeks time, and the days would go by.
The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission estimates that at least 100-thousand children may not be able to continue their education because of the suspension of donor funds.
Ministry of Education officials declined to be interviewed by VOA TV.
In press reports, ministry officials have maintained that the Free Primary Education initiative will continue, and that they are doing what they can to investigate the situation.
A foster home for HIV/AIDS orphans in Ghana has launched a school and other business ventures to support its work, thanks to a partnership with an American university.
Mmofra Trom, which means childrens garden in the native Dangbe language, is more than a school. It is home to 22 orphans in eastern Ghana, allowing them to live near their original homes and maintain ties with their villages and remaining relatives
Though the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Ghana is relatively low at about two percent, the country is struggling to deal with more than 150,000 children who have been orphaned by the disease.
The orphanages director, Olan Adjetey, said aside from individual contributions, the home did not have the support of any major donors, so they turned to Bentley University, an American business school in Massachusetts, in the hopes of making the orphanage financially self-sufficient
We realized that there would be the need to find other alternatives to sustain the project. For that matter, we got into partnership with Bentley University in the United States. We drew up strategies, business plans and out of that we came up with certain ventures that would help us make some money, Adjetey said.
The first step was to open an elementary and middle school in 2006. Named after the Mmofra Troms founder, Carol Grey, the school is open to disadvantaged children as well as those from paying families. The majority of its 200 students pay tuition, and those funds help support the educations of those who can not afford it.
But the projects program director at Bentley University, Diane Kellogg, said Mmofra Trom soon realized it needed additional business ventures to make the orphanage and educational center truly self-sustaining.
We recognized we needed more business than just the school or we were going to be overcharging the parents in the school. And so [we started] a mango plantation, corn, a bank of grasscutters, which are an excellent source of protein, a tilapia pond which has been successful and will continue to be successful providing protein for the children. It is an educational center where the children are learning traditional skills which gives them pride in their Ghanaian heritage, she said.
Thanks to continued cooperation with the university, the Mmofra Trom Foundation runs a school, mango orchard, chicken coop, vegetable garden and a sports academy among other projects on its 38-acre plot in eastern Ghana. The educational center provides job skills and computer training, as well as bead-making and weaving facilities.
Kellogg said non-profit organizations dependent on donations can overlook the potential to earn money from services they may already be providing or could provide.
In just four years, Kellogg said Mmofra Trom center has become financially self-sufficient. It is a success she says that does not need to stop there, and the university plans to collaborate with other organizations in the region.
The real judges of success, though, are the children themselves.
I am 12 years old. I am one of the orphans here, and I have been in this school for five years. I am feeling good here and I like the people who take of us. They are kind, said Naomi Coffie, an orphan living at Mmofra Trom
Adjetey said they hope to one day offer free education to hundreds of other under-privileged children in the community.
Ruby Amable contributed reporting from Accra, Ghana
The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan said the Obama administration saved hundreds of thousands of teacher jobs this past year by providing anti-recession funding. But, he added, the country has a tremendously long way to go, beginning with early childhood education
The President has drawn a line in the sand. He said by 2020 we have to lead the world in the percent of college graduates. Lots of folks think we still lead the world and its fascinating. Two and a half decades ago, we did. But we have flat-lined. We havent moved. Other countries have passed us by and we are absolutely paying the price for that economically. So we have to be pushing very, very hard there, he said
Duncan, the former head of the Chicago public school system, spoke in New York to an annual conference of more than 8,000 teachers, school supervisors and administrators. He said Americans who do not graduate from secondary school are basically condemned to poverty and social failure. The goal, he said, should be some form of higher education for all secondary school graduates
I am just absolutely convinced that this is the civil rights issue of our generation. The dividing line in our country is less around race and class and socio-economic status than it is around education opportunity. And you can give me a poor child from a single-parent home, in a tough community and put them in a great, great school and I am absolutely optimistic about what they are going to do, he said
The top federal education official urged the elimination of government bank subsidies for student loans, with the funds transferred them to programs such as assistance to low income students and early childhood education programs. This is a fascinating moment for our country. As much as $87 billion could come into education without going to taxpayers for a dime. How is that possible? It is possible if we simply remove the subsidies to banks that were doing on loans at the higher education level, he said
Legislation to end the $9 billion a year bank subsidies and transfer was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last September. It now awaits consideration by the Senate.