War Footage in the Classroom: What’s Appropriate?; Soaring Gas Prices: Is There Any Relief in Sight?; Falling Birthrates and World Prosperity
War Footage in the Classroom: What’s Appropriate?
A Villa Park High School teacher was placed on leave after allegedly having allowed his students to watch the online video of the gruesome beheading of Nicholas Berg. Two teachers in San Diego were placed on paid leave for similar reasons; one for showing pictures and playing an audiotape of the beheading, and the other for not stopping kids from watching the video in class. Is the classroom the appropriate place for high school students to view traumatic scenes of terrorist assassinations? What about district policy regarding the viewing of this kind of material in the classroom? And what about younger students? Should teachers discuss gruesome acts of war with students and at what age? Larry Mantle discusses these questions with Ted Feinberg, Assistant Executive Director of the National Association of School Psychologists and George McKenna, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools, Pasadena Unified School District, and takes listener calls as well.
Soaring Gas Prices: Is There Any Relief in Sight?
Larry Mantle talks with A.F. Alhajji, Associate Professor of Economics at Ohio Northern University. Professor Alhajji is a Contributing Editor of World Oil magazine and Associate Editor of Oil, Gas, and Energy Law. Larry also speaks with Richard Gilbert, Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, about why the price of gas is still so high and when consumer might see some relief.
Falling Birthrates and World Prosperity
In his new book, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity, and What to Do About It (Basic Books), author and demographer Philipp Longman argues that population rates in industrialized nations and elsewhere are slowing to a grinding halt. The result of this worldwide population decline, Longman contends, is a series of economic hardships brought on by a declining labor force and an aging population. He calls for governments to rethink traditional views on population growth and to adopt incentive programs to promote childbirth.