Biography of John Calico Jack Rackham, Famed Pirate

Biography of John 'Calico Jack' Rackham, Famed Pirate John Calico Jack Rackham (Dec. 26, 1682–Nov. 18, 1720) was a pirate who sailed in the Caribbean and off the Southeastern coast of the United States during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1725). Rackham was not one of the more successful pirates, and most of his victims were fishermen and lightly armed traders. Nevertheless, he is remembered by history, mostly because two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, served under his command. He was captured, tried, and hanged in 1720. Little is known about his life before he became a pirate, but it is certain that he was English. Fast Facts: John Rackham Known For: Famed British pirate who sailed in the Caribbean and the southeastern coast of the United StatesAlso Known As: Calico Jack, John Rackam, John RackumBorn: Dec. 26, 1682 in EnglandDied: Nov. 18, 1720 Port Royal,  JamaicaNotable Quote: I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you neednt be hanged like a dog.  (Anne Bonny to Rackham, who was in prison after he had decided to surrender to pirate hunters instead of fighting.) Early Life John Rackham, who earned the nickname Calico Jack because of his taste for clothes made of brightly colored Indian Calico cloth, was an up-and-coming pirate during the years when piracy was rampant in the Caribbean and Nassau was the capital of a pirate kingdom of sorts. He had been serving under renowned pirate Charles Vane in the early part of 1718 and rose to the rank of quartermaster. When Gov. Woodes Rogers arrived in July 1718 and offered royal pardons to pirates, Rackham refused and joined the die-hard pirates led by Vane. He shipped out with Vane and led a life of piracy in spite of the increasing pressure put on them by the new governor. Gets First Command In November 1718, Rackham and about 90 other pirates were sailing with Vane when they engaged a French warship. The warship was heavily armed, and Vane decided to run for it in spite of the fact that most of the pirates, led by Rackham, were in favor of fighting. Vane, as captain, had the final say in battle, but the men removed him from command shortly thereafter. A vote was taken and Rackham was made the new captain. Vane was marooned with some 15 other pirates who had supported his decision to run. Captures the Kingston In December, he captured the merchant ship Kingston. The Kingston was carrying valuable cargo and Rackham and his men would have had a big payday. However, they seized the ship just off of Port Royal, and the merchants impacted by the theft hired bounty hunters to pursue Rackham and his crew. The bounty hunters found the pirates in February  1719 at Isla de los Pinos, now called Isla de la Juventud, situated just south of Cubas western end. Most of the pirates, including Rackham himself, were ashore when the bounty hunters discovered their ship. They took refuge in the woods as the bounty hunters left with their ship and its treasure. Steals a Sloop In his 1722 classic a General History of the Pyrates, Capt. Charles Johnson tells the exciting story of how Rackham stole a sloop. Rackham and his men were at a town in Cuba, refitting their small sloop, when a Spanish warship charged with patrolling the Cuban coast entered the harbor, along with a small English sloop they had captured. The Spanish warship saw the pirates but could not get at them at low tide, so they parked in the harbor entrance to wait for morning. That night, Rackham and his men rowed over to the captured English sloop and overpowered the Spanish guards there. As dawn broke, the warship began blasting Rackhams old ship, now empty, as Rackham and his men silently sailed past in their new prize. Return to Nassau Rackham and his men made their way back to Nassau, where they appeared before Governor Rogers and asked to accept the royal pardon, claiming that Vane had forced them to become pirates. Rogers, who hated Vane, believed them and allowed them to accept the pardon and stay. Their time as honest men would not last long. Rackham and Anne Bonny It was about this time that Rackham met Anne Bonny, the wife of John Bonny, a petty pirate who had switched sides and now made a meager living informing the governor on his former mates. Anne and Jack hit it off, and before long they were petitioning the governor for an annulment of her marriage, which was not granted. Anne became pregnant and went to Cuba to have her and Jack’s child. She returned afterward. Meanwhile, Anne met Mary Read, a cross-dressing Englishwoman who had also spent time as a pirate. Returns to Piracy Soon, Rackham got bored of life on shore and decided to return to piracy. In August of 1720, Rackham, Bonny, Read, and a handful of other disgruntled ex-pirates stole a ship and slipped out of Nassau’s harbor late at night. For about three months, the new crew attacked fishermen and poorly armed merchants, mostly in the waters off Jamaica. The crew swiftly earned a reputation for ruthlessness, particularly the two women, who dressed, fought, and swore just as well as their male companions. Dorothy Thomas, a fisherwoman whose boat was captured by Rackham’s crew, testified at their trial that Bonny and Read had demanded the crew murder her (Thomas) so that she would not testify against them. Thomas further said that if it were not for their large breasts, she would not have known that Bonny and Read were women. Capture and Death Capt. Jonathan Barnet had been hunting Rackham and his crew and he cornered them in late October 1720. After an exchange of cannon fire, Rackham’s ship was disabled. According to legend, the men hid below deck while Bonny and Read stayed above and fought. Rackham and his whole crew were captured and sent to Spanish Town, Jamaica, for trial. Rackham and the men were swiftly tried and found guilty: they were hanged in Port Royal on Nov. 18, 1720. Rackham was just 37 years old. Bonny was reportedly allowed to see Rackham one last time, and she said to him Im sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you need not have hanged like a dog. Bonny and Read were spared the noose because they were both pregnant: Read died in prison shortly thereafter, but the eventual fate of Bonny is unclear. Rackhams body was put in a gibbet and hung on a small island in the harbor still known as Rackhams Cay. Legacy Rackham wasnt a great pirate. His brief tenures as captain were marked more by daring and bravery than pirating skill. His best prize, the Kingston, was only in his possession for a few days, and he never had the impact on the Caribbean and transatlantic commerce that others like Blackbeard, Edward Low, Black Bart Roberts, or even his one-time mentor Vane did. Rackham is primarily remembered today for his association with Read and Bonny, two fascinating historical figures. It is safe to say that if it were not for them, Rackham would be but a footnote in pirate lore. Rackham did leave one other legacy, however: his flag. Pirates at the time made their own flags, usually black or red with white or red symbols on them. Rackhams flag was black with a white skull over two crossed swords: this banner has gained worldwide popularity as the pirate flag. Sources Cawthorne, Nigel. A History of Pirates: Blood and Thunder on the High Seas. Edison: Chartwell Books, 2005.Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates. Edited by Manuel Schonhorn. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1972/1999.â€Å"Famous Pirate: Calico Rackham Jack.†Ã‚  Calico Rackham Jack - Famous Pirate - The Way of the Pirates.Konstam, Angus. The World Atlas of Pirates. Guilford: the Lyons Press, 2009Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Mariner Books, 2008.

HR practices and policies with the organizations culture or business Assignment

HR practices and policies with the organizations culture or business objectives - Assignment Example 6). Another part of its culture is the radical drama that imbues every consumer wherein the aroma of the Starbucks coffee products would seem to hallucinate the consumer’s minds to be stimulated with its fragrance. The drama of the coffee is not a drama at all; it is for real that it makes the consumers taste the coffee as satisfying that could make the consumers gratified for it with the transparent service of Starbuck crews. This would go along to how Colquitt, LePine, and Wesson (2012) described the workers as the one who are responsible to actively answer and take the concerns of the customers with energy, enthusiasm, and zest. Starbucks place is well-soothing and environmental friendly as it seems that it dwells in every heart of consumers who find their service amazing (Batchelor & Krister, 2012). Michelli (2007) has been great in explaining that Starbucks has continued to become â€Å"extraordinary† in which the culture has been shaped with its own perspective an d principle that includes the unique concepts that the company engages, how every little thing matters to the company (the suggestions and opinions of others that could make the company more improved), how the customers would be enlightened, and how the company would switch on the attention of its flaws in order to minimize and diminish the factors that could hamper to its own success. In a specific manner, Starbucks induces the privilege of making their strategic business centralized unto the satisfaction of what the customers truly need. The objective of the Starbucks company is to make their company attractive to the perceptions of the people (Tu, Wang, & Chang, 2012). This could mean that Starbucks wanted to make their brand of names to be lucid enough that could build a lasting rapport to its customers. With this, one could merely say that the company truly upholds the juncture of aiming to be globally known specifically in some parts of Asia, such as

Building construction for the fire service Research Paper

Building construction for the fire service - Research Paper Example Some of the concerns raised by the people directly charged with the management of the fires included the charge that priorities of costs over safety and suitability increased the level of vulnerability of risk. Such approaches also lowered the level of efficiencies in interventions in cases of fire accidents. Building code language remains a key challenge that affects the development of the most appropriate strategies of combating fires and other kinds of strategies designed to counter the challenges of safety (Karter, 2001). This problem arises out of the challenge that many of the professionals involved in the strategies lack a common platform on which they can articulate their levels of expertise in reference to particular technical aspects of building code language. Recent developments in the industry have seen bold attempts across the various relevant departments to build the most appropriate strategies for harmonizing the operations within the system. The design and structure of buildings remains a significant contributing factor to the level of challenges encountered by fire fighters. For instance, construction analysts blame the weaknesses in the support beams in the Twin Towers as one of the factors that contributed to the extensive scale of damage that was witnessed after the terrorist attack. Besides the inclusion of special features for limiting the spread of fires, there have been suggestions to include special bridges between skyscrapers in order to provide increased room for evacuation in the event of the outbreak of fires. Suggestions continue to emerge including the suitable size of buildings with some analysts arguing the case for the reduction and the strengthening of beams in order to absorb the shock of accidents, impacts, or explosions. The course of development of the building code and standards has featured

Four Views of Hell Essay Example for Free

Four Views of Hell Essay These four professors argue the following views of hell: literal, metaphorical, purgatorial and conditional interpretations. This book peers inside the different theories of hell, each of their relation to the Bible and the evolution throughout time. Each chapter begins with that particular scholar’s view, followed by the rebuttal by his colleagues. Brief Summary The first chapter is written by, John Walvoord, and he begins by providing the foundation for the literal view of hell. The author expends the greater part of this section of the book describing these fundamental principles. He argues that hell is a position of perpetual punishment for those who are sinners in the Earth. He derives this view from native translations of the Bible using both the Old and New Testaments. Walvoord exactly takes the words from the Bible’s predictions and the absolute inerrancy of the Bible to suggest that this is the only way to view hell and eternal punishment. The chapter concludes with the author using the literal view to encourage the reader to help people avoid hell and the painfulness, by preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The second chapter is written by William V. Crockett and he has taken the metaphorical view of hell, as read in the Bible and studied by scholars. His view of hell is comparable to the preceding author’s view; it only differs in how the punishment will be administered to the lost. The author has strong Calvinsitic ties, in that he believes that the fortellings of the punishment of hell is not to be taken literally, but as a metaphor. Crockett further states that the reality of hell is indescribable with words and the words that are contained in the Bible are only a breakdown that the human mind can absorb. The chapter concludes with the author stating his disdain for the conditional view. In the third chapter, Zachary J. Hayes takes on the subject of purgatory in the hell discussion. Purgatory in this book is a place where the dead will go, when they don’t quite make it to heaven, but are not bad enough for hell. Notably the author cannot find any Biblical references for purgatory, however he does state that the idea of purgatory evolved from a personal tradition that the Catholic Church adopted. Hayes does also note that he agrees with the metaphorical view of hell. In fourth chapter of the book is written by Dr. Clark Pinnock on the conditional view of hell. The conditional view is also referred to as annihilation, which means that hell will be a punishment of fire and lead to utter destruction of sinners. The actual destruction is the punishment, not the fire itself. Pinnock, uses diverse scriptures that support his claim of everlasting death and God’s moral values. Critical interaction with the author’s work The authors’ goal of this book is to give an educated as well as Biblical look at the different versions of hell. Although the word is talked about many times, but the authors’ aim is to give people all the information available on the subject. After which the reader can make personal decision about their own personal truth. The authors do achieve his goal of factually representing the literal, metaphorical, purgatorial and conditional interpretations of hell. Each author has not imposed his personal opinion or view of hell, but however stated the facts from Biblical and theological sources. Also, having each author evaluate the other authors’ arguments shows potential fallacies in each and gives the reader information to further reflect, evaluate and draw personal conclusions. The strengths of this book would be first, the book was written by students of the word who supported the majority of their arguments with scripture first and with theology second. In the literal view of hell the author comes directly from scriptures and uses those scriptures to plainly paint a picture that we have already been taught since childhood. In the metaphorical argument of hell the author uses scriptures that show support the claim that the descriptions of hell are only be used as metaphors and not to be interpreted literally. The chapter on the conditional view of hell is well written and covers the punishment and destruction parts of hell thoroughly. The first weakness that we encounter in this book is the fact that in the literal view of hell the author does not address the issue of why the scriptures must be taken literally, instead of figuratively. In the metaphorical view of hell the author never addresses the issue of what will actually be, nor does he attempt to answer questions that seem to violate the traits of God. The author in the conditional view of hell uses much of his writing to appeal to the human senses and not to justify those emotions or feelings with scriptures. In the view on purgatory the author spends very little to no time talking about hell, but the time that is between heaven and hell. Although purgatory is the median between heaven and hell the author seems to focus on how the soul can make it to heaven and not the latter. In my opinion I feel that this book would not be suitable for all lay persons to read. I feel that this book would be of best use in the hands of all persons who teach in the church. This book would not only give them basis for what they believe in, but it would also give them the opportunity to understand the contradictions in various beliefs. I feel that this book could be a useful tool to teach about sin. Although the authors have different views on what hell will actually be like, but it does hold one idea in agreement. Hell is a real place it, and sinners will be there. After some research there seem to be many other books that are written about hell. Those other books, after reading summaries, take a similar approach and try to inform the reader what hell is going to be like and what it is not going to be. Many of those books not only deal with hell, but they also address heaven as well with the same level of concern. Conclusion In conclusion the book â€Å"The four views of hell,† the author does achieve his goal. However I feel that the chapter on purgatory did not fit in the book, because the argument was not supported by scriptures and does not necessary classify itself as hell. The book does make thing a little bit about heaven, but more about sin. This book points the finger back to the place where we need not only teach about heaven, but teach also about hell. Many people get lost in the mind frame that there is only heaven or life on earth.

TERRORISM AND IMMIGRATION Essay -- essays research papers

Terrorism in the United States   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The terrifying event that occurred on September 11, 2001 is an example of what the world had been warned about many times, â€Å"TERRORISM†. In 1998, for example, the U.S. government told American citizens that they were potential targets for a terrorist group joined by the now infamous Osama bin Laden (Eland, 1998). However, many did not think any terrorist would be capable of the tragedy that leveled the World Trade Center and took many thousands of human lives. Americans thought they could not be touched, especially on their own turf.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  While it may be that organizations involved with Bin Laden that are in the United States, and have been for years, there are other groups that U.S. citizens may not be aware of. Many have probably forgotten The Order of the Rising Sun. Members of this group, in 1972, possessed thirty to forty kilograms of bacteria that they planned to put into the American water supply (Yonah, 1999). The nation is a main target for both national and international terrorists. There are numerous foreign groups and governments that target U.S. For example, Libya, Iraq and Iran in addition to groups from Germany and Palestine(Yonah, 1999). While most of the damage done by such organizations has been overseas, their presence is felt in the United States. Almost all foreign terrorist organizations have caused a problem in the United States, in which the primary threats come from Middle East terrorist organizations (Emerson, 2000). The concept that the Middle East groups are more dangerous to the U.S., is not thought of as a prejudice comment. It is a concept that has been realized by both the FBI and CIA(Emerson,2000). The Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorist groups that have members in the United States include the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian group, the Egyptian group, Al Gamat Al Islamiya, the PKK, the Islamic party, and Al- Qaeda, which belongs to Osama bin Laden (Emerson,2000).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Al-Qaeda is the most dangerous in respect to U.S. interests. The group was formed by Osama bin Laden during the 1980s. In 1989, the organization stated it was their duty, and the duty of all Muslims, to kill U.S. citizens and all U.S. allies (2001). Like other groups, some of their plans were stopped such as the 199... ...ble to freely move about the United States, whether they entered legally or illegally, supporting activities such as bombings, assassinations and other methods of destruction aimed at the Western world. The future likely holds a less trustworthy planet and one would guess that questionable people with questionable passports would be denied entry when they get to U.S. borders throughout the twenty-first century. Still, the fact that terrorists have been able to live in the United States unencumbered during the past decade or so is rather chilling. References Alexander, Y. (1999). Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century: Threats and Responses. The World & I, 14, 80. Eland, I. (1998, September 25). The U.S. Government Is Endangering American Citizens. The Cato Institute. [Online]. Available: http://www.cato.org/dailys/9-25-98.html Emerson, S. (2000). INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM AND IMMIGRATION POLICY:STEVEN EMERSON. Congressional Testimony, PG (Reprinted in http://www.elibrary.com. Original publisher not listed). Terrorist Group Profiles. (2000). Dudley Knox Library: Naval Postgraduate School. [Online]. Available: http://web.nps.navy.mil/~library/tgp/tgp2.htm

Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

I had a teacher once who called his students â€Å"idiots† when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, â€Å"Who eez deaf in first violins!? † He made us rehearse until our fingers almost bled. He corrected our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil. Today, he'd be fired.But when he died a few years ago, he was celebrated: Forty years' worth of ormer students and colleagues flew back to my New Jersey hometown from every corner of the country, old instruments in tow, to play a concert in his memory. I was among them, toting my long-neglected viola. When the curtain rose on our concert that day, we had formed a symphony orchestra the size of the New York Philharmonic. I was stunned by the outpouring for the gruff old teacher we knew as Mr. K. But I was equally struck by the success of his former students.Some were musici ans, but most had distinguished themselves in other fields, like law, academia and medicine. Research tells us that there is a positive correlation between music education and academic achievement. But that alone didn't explain the belated surge of gratitude for a teacher who basically tortured us through adolescence. We're in the midst of a national wave of self-recrimination over the U. S. education system. Every day there is hand-wringing over our students falling behind the rest of the world. Fifteen-year-olds in the U. S. rail students in 12 other nations in science and 17 in math, bested by their counterparts not Just in Asia but in Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands, too. An entire industry of books and consultants has grown up that capitalizes on our collective fear that American education is inadequate and asks what American educators are doing wrong. I would ask a different question. What did Mr. K do right? What can we learn from a teacher whose methods fly in the face of everything we think we know about education today, but who was undeniably effective? As it turns out, quite a lot.Comparing Mr. K's methods with the latest findings in fields from music to math to medicine leads to a single, startling conclusion: It's time to revive old-fashioned education. Not Just traditional but old-fashioned in the sense that so many of us knew as kids, with strict discipline and unyielding demands. complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores.All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease nowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization†derided as â€Å"drill and kill†Ã¢â‚¬ are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.And the following eight principles†a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research†explain why. 1. A little pain is good for you. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson gained fame for his research showing that true xpertise requires about 10,000 hours of practice, a notion popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book â€Å"Outliers. † But an often-overlooked finding from the same study is equally important: True expertise requires teachers who give â€Å"constructive, even painful, feedback,† as Dr.Ericsson put it in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. He assessed research on top performers in fields ranging from violin performance to surgery to compute r programming to chess. And he found that all of them â€Å"deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance. † 2. Drill, baby, drill. Rote learning, long discredited, is now recognized as one reason that children whose families come from India (where memorization is still prized) are creaming their peers in the National Spelling Bee Championship.This cultural difference also helps to explain why students in China (and Chinese families in the U. S. ) are better at math. Meanwhile, American students struggle with complex math problems because, as research makes abundantly clear, they lack fluency in basic addition and subtraction†and few of them were made to memorize their times tables. William Klemm of Texas A;M University argues that the U. S. needs to reverse the bias gainst memorization. Even the U. S.Department of Education raised alarm bells, chastising American schools in a 2008 report that bemoaned the lack of math fluency (a notion it mentioned no fewer than 17 times). It concluded that schools need to embrace the dreaded â€Å"drill and practice. † 3. Failure is an option. Kids who understand that failure is a necessary aspect of learning actually perform better. In a 2012 study, 111 French sixth-graders were given anagram problems that were too difficult for them to solve. One group was then told that failure and trying again are part of the learning process.On subsequent tests, those children onsistently outperformed their peers. The fear, of course is that failure will Bowling Green State University graduate student followed 31 Ohio band students who were required to audition for placement and found that even students who placed lowest â€Å"did not decrease in their motivation and self-esteem in the long term. † The study concluded that educators need â€Å"not be as concerned about the negative effects† of picking winners and losers. 4. Strict is be tter than nice. What makes a teacher successful?To find out, starting in 2005 a team of researchers led by Claremont Graduate University education professor Mary Poplin spent five ears observing 31 of the most highly effective teachers (measured by student test scores) in the worst schools of Los Angeles, in neighborhoods like South Central and Watts. Their No. 1 finding: â€Å"They were strict,† she says. â€Å"None of us expected that. † The researchers had assumed that the most effective teachers would lead students to knowledge through collaborative learning and discussion. Instead, they found disciplinarians who relied on traditional methods of explicit instruction, like lectures. The core belief of these teachers was, ‘Every student in my room is underperforming ased on their potential, and it's my Job to do something about it†and I can do something about it,'† says Prof. Poplin. She reported her findings in a lengthy academic paper.But she says that a fourth-grader summarized her conclusions much more succinctly this way: â€Å"When I was in first grade and second grade and third grade, when I cried my teachers coddled me. When I got to Mrs. T's room, she told me to suck it up and get to work. I think she's right. I need to work harder. 5. Creativity can be learned. The rap on traditional education is that it kills children's' creativity. But Temple University psychology professor Robert W. Weisberg's research suggests Just the opposite. Prof. Weisberg has studied creative geniuses including Thomas Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso†and has concluded that there is no such thing as a born genius. Most creative giants work ferociously hard and, through a series of incremental steps, achieve things that appear (to the outside world) like epiphanies and breakthroughs. Prof.Weisberg analyzed Picasso's 1937 masterpiece Guernica, for instance, which was painted after the Spanish city was bombed by the Germans. The pai nting is considered a fresh and original concept, but Prof. Weisberg found instead hat it was closely related to several of Picasso's earlier works and drew upon his study of paintings by Goya and then-prevalent Communist Party imagery. The bottom line, Prof. Weisberg told me, is that creativity goes back in many ways to the basics. â€Å"You have to immerse yourself in a discipline before you create in that discipline.It is built on a foundation of learning the discipline, which is what your music teacher was requiring of you. † 6. Grit trumps talent. In recent years, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth has studied spelling bee champs, IVO' League undergrads and cadets at the U. S. Military Academy in West Point, N. Y. †all together, over 2,800 subjects. In all of them, she found that grit†defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals†is the correlated with talent. Close Arthur Montzka Tough on the podium, Mr. Kwas alw ays appreciative when he sat in the audience.Above, applauding his students in the mid-1970s. Prof. Duckworth, who started her career as a public school math teacher and Just won a 2013 MacArthur â€Å"genius grant,† developed a â€Å"Grit Scale† that asks people to rate themselves on a dozen statements, like â€Å"l finish whatever I begin† and â€Å"l become interested in new pursuits very few months. † When she applied the scale to incoming West Point cadets, she found that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as â€Å"Beast Barracks. West Point's own measure†an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and physical aptitude†wasn't able to predict retention. Prof. Duckworth believes that grit can be taught. One surprisingly simple factor, she says, is optimism†the belief among both teachers and students that they have the ability to change and thus to improve. In a 009 study of newly minted teachers, she rated each for optimism (as measured by a questionnaire) before the school year began. At the end of the year, the students whose teachers were optimists had made greater academic gains. 7.Praise makes you weak†¦ My old teacher Mr. K seldom praised us. His highest compliment was â€Å"not bad. † It turns out he was onto something. Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck has found that 10-year-olds praised for being â€Å"smart† became less confident. But kids told that they were â€Å"hard workers† became more confident and better performers. The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and motivation, but both were gone in a flash,† wrote Prof. Dweck in a 2007 article in the Journal Educational Leadership. â€Å"If success meant they were smart, then struggling meant they were not. 8†¦. while stress makes you strong. A 2011 University at Buffalo study found that a mode rate amount of stress in childhood promotes resilience. Psychology professor Mark D. Seery gave healthy undergraduates a stress assessment based on their exposure to 37 different kinds of significant negative events, such as death or illness of a family member. Then he plunged their hands into ice water.The students who had experienced a moderate number of stressful events actually felt less pain than those who had experienced no stress at all. Having this history of dealing with these negative things leads people to be more likely to have a propensity for general resilience,† Prof. Seery told me. â€Å"They are better equipped to deal with even mundane, everyday stressors. † Prof. Seery's findings build on research by University of Nebraska psychologist Richard Dienstbier, who pioneered the concept of â€Å"toughness†Ã¢â‚¬ the idea that dealing with even routine hings, like having a hardass kind of teacher,† Prof. Seery says. My tough old teacher Mr. K co uld have written the book on any one of these principles.Admittedly, individually, these are forbidding precepts: cold, unyielding, and kind of scary. But collectively, they convey something very different: confidence. At their core is the belief, the faith really, in students' ability to do better. There is something to be said about a teacher who is demanding and tough not because he thinks students will never learn but because he is so absolutely certain that they will. Decades later, Mr. K's former students finally figured it out, too. â€Å"He taught us discipline,† explained a violinist who went on to become an League-trained doctor. Self-motivation,† added a tech executive who once played the cello. â€Å"Resilience,† said a professional cellist. â€Å"He taught us how to fail†and how to pick ourselves up again. † Clearly, Mr. K's methods aren't for everyone. But you can't argue with his results. And that's a lesson we can all learn from. Ms. Lipman is co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of â€Å"Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations,† to be published by Hyperion on Oct. 1. She is a former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and former editor-in-chief of Cond © Nast Portfolio.A version of this article appeared September 28, 2013, on page Cl in the U. S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Tough Teachers Get Results. Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact.

The Effects Of Conafe On Educational Outcomes Of Children

The Effect of CONAFE on Educational Outcomes of Children in Mexico Introduction Education is seen as the gateway to economic well being, making the quality of the education provided a more important issue in need of attention in both developed and developing countries. Economic growth and poverty reduction cannot prevail without an educated and skilled workforce. In developing countries, one additional year of education adds approximately 10 percent to a person’s earnings (A Global Impact on Learning 2011). Thus it is imperative that developing countries invest in the education of its people so that its entire country can prosper. There is an abundance of literature on analyzing the effects of demand-side inputs on education and the†¦show more content†¦The National Council for Educational Development (CONAFE) is a decentralized body of the Mexican federal government instituted by President Luis Echeverria Alvarez on September 11, 1971 (CONAFE, 2009). CONAFE aims to provide every Mexican with a basic education so that its society ca n gain the education and skills needed to promote economic growth. As demand-side polices continue to show the potential to increase human capital investment, it is of interest to policy makers to find out whether supply-side policies, which aim at increasing the quality of institutions and policies, are effective alongside large demand-side programs. According to the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) CONAFE currently serves 320,000 children who fall under high levels of marginalization. It was created in an effort to address Mexico’s homogenous and rigid educational structure that used to cater to its incredibly diverse population. Despite its good intentions CONAFE has failed to address the issue of providing quality schooling to Mexico’s most impoverished children. As enrollment rates rise in Mexico due to the efforts of Prospera, schools are finding it