There have been 417 gun violence in schools since Columbine. In these shootings, more than 383,000 students were killed. At the time of the event, most offenders of school mass shootings were targets of school bullying, experiencing a mental health crisis, and a history of depression. Effective interventions and support that could help prevent or reduce school bullying incidents require understanding the process of demoralization and empowering social change. This paper is part of an (...) original constructivist grounded theory study on democratic social change in America explored through a post hoc polytheoretical framework comprised of Foucauldian, Bourdieuan, and Marxist power. It aims to answer the question: In which areas would the democratic social change grounded theory resonate the most? Of significance was the finding of a novel framework from which to understand and assess how students unknowingly use power strategies that could lead to the demoralization of targets of bullying who lack adequate coping skills and meaningful support and an empowering social change process that could counter demoralization and lead to security. More research is needed on bully-involved demoralization and specific interventions that lead to positive and sustainable social change. (shrink)

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed fifteen people at their high school in Columbine, Colorado. National media dubbed the event a “school shooting.” The term grimly expanded over the next several years to include similar events at army bases, movie theaters, churches, and nightclubs. Today, we commonly use the categories “mass shooter” and “mass shooting” to organize and classify information about gun violence. I will argue that neither category is an (...) effective tool for reducing gun violence and use empirical data to show how these categories perpetuate a moral panic that harms already vulnerable demographics. I conclude that we should instead favor a narrower description of individuals and events, (e.g., “X shot Y people at Z”) because we can talk about all of the relevant cases without contributing the undue harms. (shrink)

Mass shootings constitute a recurrent and most violent phenomenon in the U.S. and elsewhere. This paper challenges the ready-made, solipsistically contained metanarratives on offer by mainstream media and formal institutions with regard to the psychological antecedents of the perpetrating social actors, while theorizing mass shootings as acts of violence that are systemically inscribed in the foundations of communities. These foundations abide by the logic of sacrifice which is propagated in instances of collective traumatism. It is argued (...) that the cultural trauma that emanates from events of mass shootings, inasmuch as the commemorative events that are performed on regular occasions, constitute re-enactments of the death drive that sustains communities. The cultural analytic deploys against a CDA reading of longitudinal studies on mass shootings, coupled with psychoanalytic discourse analysis, prior to submitting mass shootings to a deconstructive line of reasoning as systemically necessary transcendental violence. Ultimately, it is shown that the intertextual institutional chain that informs the mediatized representation of this social phenomenon merely attains to obliterate and, hence, to propagate cultural traumatism and the sacrificial logic that underpins it. The terms micrometanarrative, parafunction and expropriating ipseity are introduced and operationalized in this context. (shrink)

Drawing on Adorno and Horkheimer's oft-quoted 1944 essay, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Bernard Stiegler’s The Age of Disruption affirms that the Frankfurt School duo scrupulously envisaged a “new kind of barbarism,” or an inversion of modernity’s Enlightenment project illustrated by our contemporary political semblance. Surveying the critical social fissures that index contemporary Western civil society—from 9/11 to the 2002 Nanterre massacre and the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting—Stiegler diagnoses that our epoch is plagued by the “absence (...) of epoch,” whereby computational capitalism and algorithmic governmentality have extirpated the “transcendental imagination” underlying vital primordial narcissism. In short, these are symptoms a world increasingly “going mad,” in a thousand ways, possible because we are the bearers of “a negative protention of a becoming without future,” yet “we prefer not to say so: we do not want to know about it.”. (shrink)

Why did millions of people respond to the failures of neoliberal capitalism by voting in leaders that further undermine their existence? In this article, I combine the insights of the early Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Theodor W. Adorno) with the insights of psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud) to show how economic factors interact with psychological factors in the rise of the far-right today. The propaganda techniques used by far-right leaders create conditions in masses that are akin to hypnoses. Such techniques (...) induce regressions in far-right followers in which the unconscious predominates, and far-right leaders use to manipulate the masses. To further detail the theoretical framework, I analyze a Trump rally and an interview with a Trump follower. (shrink)

The extreme incidence and prevalence of rage-driven aggression and destructiveness in the United States is without parallel in any other industrialized country in the world. During 2022 alone, there were 647 mass shootings in the U.S. (in each, at least four victims were killed). Unfortunately these many killings comprise only one form of widespread rage in America. This paper seeks to answer why this is happening.

Reflections on digital mourning in the wake of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando 2016.

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of (...) propaganda. Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right. (shrink)

The challenges and opportunities associated with the education of immigrants predate modern school systems, though it certainly can be said that support for public schooling grew—for example, in Canada and the United States—as dominant (read White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) groups came to see the importance of integrating masses of disparate origin. Educational responses to the children of immigrants over time have been varied, and many responses are indistinguishable from efforts to address other minority groups. In North America, the rapid expansion (...) of immigration encompassing immigrant and refugee populations from around the world, particularly since the 1960s, has led to a number of structural and curricular changes in schools, only some of which were explicitly aimed at immigrants. One example of a policy aimed at the children of immigrants was bilingual education, and as this increasingly fell out of favor, ESL (English as a second language) classrooms became more common. However, with few exceptions, neither has been a very effective instrument for addressing the interests or concerns of immigrants themselves. Nevertheless, most parents strongly prefer that their children learn to master the dominant language, as a means of getting ahead. (shrink)

The classical model of democracy that Schumpeter criticizes is manufactured out of a variety of earlier ideas, not those of any one thinker or even one school of thought. His critique of the central ideals by which he defines the model--those of the common will and the common good--remains persuasive. People's preferences are too messy and too manipulable to allow us to think that mass democracy can promote those ideals, as he defines them. Should we endorse his purely (...) electoral model of democracy then, and accept that people do not exercise any control over government? Not necessarily. We can expand democracy to include the constitutional and contestatory constraints that people impose on their rulers. We may hope that people can rely on such democratic controls to ensure that government operates by community standards. (shrink)

Education – typically and rightly held to be an incontrovertible good – has for some time now been dominated by mass formal schooling systems. These systems routinely harm and oppress many students. I argue that they do so impermissibly, and I call this stance “educational pacifism”. I propose that Maria Montessori’s views on mass formal schooling systems broadly align with educational pacifism and that, therefore, she can be considered an educational pacifist. Finally, I claim that contemporary Montessorians ought (...) to be educational pacifists, firstly because educational pacifism makes a compelling moral argument and secondly because Montessori herself agrees with it. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the rights violations caused by mass formal schooling systems and explores what students may do about them. Students have rights not to be harmed and rights to liberty (not to be oppressed), as well as attendant rights to (proportionately) defend their rights if necessary. For some time now, education has been dominated by mass formal schooling systems that harm and oppress many students. Such harm and oppression violate those students’ rights not to be harmed or (...) oppressed, which may justify student nonviolent defensive (or rights-protecting) action. (shrink)

This essay seeks to acknowledge the unsettling reality of children being intentionally maimed towards disability and disfigurement as economic commodity. The issue is easily invisibilized in modern education, and understandably so: the trauma triggered by these bloody realities can automatically disqualify the content for formal in school education as a form of “unwelcome truth”. Freire and Fanon, however, did not shy away from the horrific state of life for the oppressed and the wretched in their consideration of pedagogy. The (...) lived experience of maimed children is tragic, but it is lived experience nonetheless – acknowledged by hooks as “a way of knowing that coexists in a non-hierarchical way with other ways of knowing” (2014). In other words, this knowledge exists but is arguably not mobilized by society towards action. Critical consciousness, upheld by Freire as the key to seeing inequality to act upon it, is a goal beyond reach for the maimed children themselves. Here, we consider the extension proposed by Nicholls (2011), who discusses pedagogy of the privileged as an equally important parallel towards collaborative action against long-standing inequalities. In the context of these children having minimal access to education, we contend that privileged students must be the ones to carry forth the knowledge towards their own critical consciousness. Specifically, we explore what acknowledging children who are maimed could offer towards pedagogy, in relation to helping students to 1) minimize the act of “othering” in a global community; 2) reconsider the role of mass-media and media literacy in their critical consciousness; and 3) move away from surface-level, performative charity against societal inequalities. (shrink)

In the study of education, as in many more travelled regions of Classical scholarship, democratic Athens is something of a special case. The cautions formulation is appropriate: in the case of education, surprisingly few studies have sought to establish quite how special Athens was, and those which have, have often raised more questions than they answered. The subject itself is partly to blame. The history of education invites comparison with the present day, while those planning the future of education rarely (...) fail to invoke the past. The place of Classical Athens in European culture has ensured a place for Athenian education in almost every debate from the relation between education and democracy to the value of educationversustraining, and as the original champion of causes as varied as mass education, co-education, and the national curriculum. Desirable as it is to be in demand, such treatment is not calculated to produce the most circumspect account of the subject. The study of education is further hampered by the fact that our knowledge of Athenian culture is so vibrant and diverse in some ways and so partial in others. Plato and Aristophanes present a vivid fictional picture of education in the late fifth century. If we add a few passages from Xenophon and Aristotle, a large number of vases depicting men, women, and children reading, playing the lyre, and doing athletics, and one or two archaeological finds of an educational appearance, it is tempting to take the result as a clear portrait of a society at school. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest (...) class='Hi'>school, between Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity. (shrink)

Learning a second language is always a difficult task and so, children is given the task to do it in the elementary stage. It depends on various factors and combining that factors the result comes on. A favorable outcome results in when the teachers devote themselves to teach the younger the Achilles task as soon as possible. Sometimes the result become satisfactory but most of the time it doesn’t happen. And because of this reason, technological use on this teaching should (...) be performed after actually realizing in which pattern it will be most effective. The research on this matter should be applied to singular aged number of people. So, this research paper is based on Elementary level entered students’ characteristic of accepting vastly used English as a second language. The specific arena here selected is Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a developing country and recently, it has promoted to low profit country than under-developed country. Thus, it is very much in need to determine which technologies are of most value when it is applied to the system getting English learned by the elementary levelled entering students. Search the number learners of English are in the increasing percentage, mass of the newly developed tools are implemented on this English learning teaching system. (shrink)

Over the last three years I have been fortunate to teach an unusual class, one that provides an academic background in ethical and social and political theory using the medium of comedy. I have taught the class at two schools, a private liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania and a public regional state university in southern Georgia. While the schools vary widely in a number of ways, there are characteristics that the students share: the school in Pennsylvania had a (...) large population of students raised in a middle class industrial context, and the school in Georgia had a majority of students from middle-to-lower class agricultural backgrounds. Because of recent collapses in the economy of the tool and dye industry in the Great Lakes region, and the ongoing concerns for development in rural and urban areas of the southeastern United States, both groups of students were in similarly dire economic and working conditions. All faced the distinct possibility that they would not do as well in life as their parents. Most of the students grew up with television and film and had a love of comedy when they arrived at college. -/- Entertainment and mass media contributed to the students' mindset and the lens through which they viewed and interpreted their lived experience. Comedic mass media in the form of television sitcoms and films were common choices for inexpensive entertainment, in their childhood, in their past, in their homes, and now in their college dorms and apartments. In asking students to connect their own history with cultural trends depicted in comedy in film and television, even through the history of television, gave the students a familiar venue to critically consider their own intellectual growth and development and that of American society as a whole. -/- Many of them were familiar with the internet, and enjoyed the internet as a source of information about celebrities as well as the history and episodes of their favorite television shows and films. Students are rediscovering and discovering television programs that their professors may have watched as children, with the availability of a wide range of comedy television programs available on cable, especially TVLand, Comedy Central and Nick-at-Night. -/- In this article I will elaborate on the value of comedy as a teaching tool for philosophers and professors. I will provide a number of examples, showing how comedy can provide fertile examples of ethical theory at work, and I will show how comedy can be used to clarify cultural norms and values. Finally, I will discuss the political activism and student empowerment involved in teaching Philosophy, Comedy and Film in southern Georgia. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of the intellectual and political origins of modern law in the nineteenth century and its consequences for contemporary legal thought. Social theoretical analyses of law and legal thought tend to emphasize rupture and change. Histories of legal thought tend to draw a picture of strife between different schools of jurisprudence. Such analyses and histories fail to account for the extent to which present legal thought is the continuation of a jurisprudential settlement that occurred in the (...) nineteenth century. That settlement tamed the will of the masses under the influence of authoritative legal thought, conceptions of political morality, and a general sense of social evolution. The principal mechanism of the settlement was a compact between legal rationalism and historicism to which popular will acceded. After a period of polarization around the time of the American and French revolutions, nineteenth century legal rationalism came to see historical events as the outcome of the cunning operation of reason in the world, and legal historicism came to appeal to the rationalizations of legal reason in order to endow historical matter with both conceptual stability and intellectual authority. Popular will bought into both. Modern law and the main schools of legal thought have remained, ever since, bound to this convergence of reason and history in the face of will. Modern law is therefore as much about continuity as it is about rupture; as much about unity as it is about strife. (shrink)

During the last two years, senior high school teachers struggled with course contents in a neoliberal education. While the Mass Training of Teachers (MTOT) focuses on pedagogical knowledge, their concern is to deepen their content knowledge. As a result, they face difficulty in teaching the subjects, one of which is Marxism under Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences (DISS). Enriching this paper, the query turns to the key participants of the sector and seek their insights. Then, critical (...) analysis applies what the literature says about the way Marxism is taught. (shrink)

The research on social science eventually comes through any meaning about the human and society. Its message is directed to the society and the principal object of research would be its components, generally research participants or samples in terms of research method. As for nature, it is per se obvious that humans or populace act on various factors to influence their decision. This complex nature of human strands generally prevail that the multivariate analysis is an usual challenge for the social (...) science researchers. For example, the researchers may like to know the relationship of special training on math and achievement of math score. He or she may apply a multivariate analysis from several variables, in which one may be controlled and pretest or post test will be administered. So he groups two classes in test and for a longitudinal study over one semester between the specially trained students and normal class. Then he adds one other variable of family income level that he supposes one important factor to affect the achievement of student in math subject. This would be quantitatively answered by applying a multivariate test, called specifically as factoral ANOVA. The simple ANOVA test may be dosed in several times to understand more a complex interaction or control among the variables. Nevertheless, it has the weakness that unnecessary time and effort would be consumed. Additionally, MANOVA or other multivariate analysis of data would lead us to the more intense and precise result when the variables in consideration all interact to affect the outcome variables. It can be made distinct from mere aggregation of each result from one way ANOVA or univariate and bivariate analysis. Like these, in various ways. the quantitative studies are used to find the scientific truth. Through the Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis (QRA), we could achieve much progress which would be helpful to accelerate the interest and skills in the empirical studies. Most of all, the studies in concern of quantitative method might be a leapfrog for one, who fears of the difficult quantitative skills of analysis. Many of researchers may be fragile since the math courses in the high school and one pass in the college days are all we may have experienced. It is challenging also because the days might be far gone of middle age. For this reason, it never is a puffery that we would fear of quantitative skills. I hope that this paper could be a small help to adapt with the quantitative paradigm. Additionally, it would be great to realize that the quantitative reasoning is fairly powerful and very persuasive to frame a scientific message not only for the peer professionals, but also for lay world. We don’t have to cite the belief of empiricists and its modern evolution backed up by the mathematicians and statisticians. The benefit from this research method is obvious from many realities. The SPSS program facilitates to save from the difficult hand-on works in the earlier quantitative research. The empirical studies, particularly in the sphere of quantitative studies, typically are related with a mass of survey experiment which flavors the kind of political engraft with the research circle. (shrink)

Attacks on migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and their properties by South African rivals and ordinary citizens have become a common phenomenon throughout the country, including the city of Cape Town. Business robberies often result in deaths or serious injuries. The Somali Community Board has noted that over 400 Somali refugees, many of them informal traders, were murdered in South Africa between early 2002 and mid-2010. The police are frequently accused by migrants of fomenting or turning a blind eye to xenophobic (...) attacks on their businesses. Meanwhile, the government refuses to acknowledge the existence of xenophobia or the xenophobic rhetoric in many of these attacks, claiming instead that they are simply the actions of criminal elements. Photographs published in the media of the looting of migrant stores do not tend to feature hardened criminals, but ordinary citizens including children in school uniform. -/- Migrant businesses are portrayed by officials, citizens and the media as having a negative impact on the South African economy and undermining the livelihoods of South Africans. The prevalence of such perceptions helps to explain growing xenophobic sentiment against migrants and refugees. Contrary to these popular perceptions, an emerging literature on migrant entrepreneurship is beginning to demonstrate the positive economic contributions of migrants and refugees to the country. This report examines the nature of informal migrant and refugee entrepreneurship in Cape Town and whether or not the negative stereotypes have any validity. It also seeks to examine what economic contributions migrants and refugees make to the local economy. -/- The report is based on the research conducted by the Growing Informal Cities project, a partnership between SAMP/IMRC, the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) and Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 518 migrant owners of microenterprises, which had to meet three basic criteria for inclusion: (a) owned by a non-South African; (b) in operation for at least two years; and (c) unregistered with the South African Revenue Services (SARS). Although migrant entrepreneurs are located in most areas of the city, certain areas have particular concentrations of migrant-owned businesses. "e questionnaires were administered in four such areas: Imizamo Yethu, Philippi, Bellville, and Cape Town CBD. Thirty in-depth interviews were also conducted with selected owners of informal micro-enterprises. Two focus group discussions were held in the Cape Town CBD and Philippi respectively. Fifteen key informant interviews were held with various stakeholders in Cape Town to understand the operation and constraints faced by migrants operating in the city’s informal economy. -/- The major findings of the personal profile of the migrant and refugee entrepreneurs were as follows: -/- • The entrepreneurs came from over 20 different countries of which Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia and Cameroon were the most prominent. Just over a third were from other countries in the SADC. The prominence of Zimbabwean entrepreneurs in the Cape Town informal economy is not surprising, given the events in that country over the past decade and a half and resultant mass migration to South Africa. A total of 57% of the entrepreneurs were from other African countries, especially the DRC, Somalia, Nigeria and Ethiopia. "e majority of migrants from these countries (except Nigeria) came to South Africa as refugees. -/- • A third of the entrepreneurs had refugee permits. Of these, nearly 60% came from only three countries: the DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. A further 31% held asylum-seeker permits. Of these, 32% were Zimbabwean while another 30% came from DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. Nearly 12% had permanent residence permits while 8% were holders of work permits. Only 7% of the respondents indicated that they did not have official documentation to stay in South Africa. Thus, the majority of migrant entrepreneurs have forced migrants who are entitled to human rights protection under international and South African refugee law. • Very few of the entrepreneurs entered South Africa before 1994. Only 8% arrived in the immediate post-apartheid years. While another 20% came in the period 2000to 2004, the vast majority (70%) came during the last decade. As many as 44% arrived between 2005 and 2009 and a further 27% thereafter. Migration from Zimbabwe, in particular, escalated between 2005 and 2009 as the country plunged deeper into crisis. • Despite the perception that unemployment at home is a driver of migration to South Africa, only 14% of the entrepreneurs were unemployed immediately before leaving for South Africa. Another 19% were students. Twenty-six percent were working in the informal economy in their home countries. -/- .......INCOMPLETE..... (shrink)

Environmental historian Kevin Armitage’s new book offers welcome relief to readers grown weary of anthropocentrism versus nonanthropecentrism debates and Muir-Pinchot-Leopold “third way” arguments. It will also find a receptive audience among those who have maintained all along that education is the key to addressing our environmental woes. In the United States, environmental education has a vibrant history. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a critical mass of policy makers, educators, scientists, and philosophers shared the belief that a (...) curriculum based on the careful observation and study of nature should be taught in primary and secondary school classrooms. The “nature study movement,” as it was called, advanced an ambitious agenda for education reform based on a simple theory: children who develop a deep and abiding interest in the natural world mature into environmentally conscious adults and good citizens. Organized thematically, Armitage’s book lays out the meaning of nature study as well as its scientific and sentimental interpretations (introduction and chap. 1), the influence of progressive education on nature study (chap. 2), the connection between recapitulation theory and nature study (chap. 3), nature study and bird conservation (chap. 4), school gardening as an extension of nature study (chap. 5), the growth of nature photography in tandem with nature study (chap. 6), and finally nature study’s role in promoting agricultural reform (chap. 7). In case the significance of this progressive-era movement is still in doubt, the movement’s legacy can still be felt, Armitage contends, in the ideas of perhaps two of the most influential environmental thinkers of the past century: Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson (conclusion). (shrink)

This article investigates how different philosophical traditions and schools of thought have understood the practice and the discipline of archery. Whereas the scholarly literature on the history, the techniques and the uses of bows and arrows is diverse and extensive, my aim is to contribute to the less developed research on the relationship between philosophy and archery. Specifically, I will explore in what terms philosophers have employed the bow as a metaphor for both their standpoints and, more generally, significant aspects (...) of everyday life. (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research (...) on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing). (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect (...) to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns.The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns. (shrink)

The way, in which quantum information can unify quantum mechanics (and therefore the standard model) and general relativity, is investigated. Quantum information is defined as the generalization of the concept of information as to the choice among infinite sets of alternatives. Relevantly, the axiom of choice is necessary in general. The unit of quantum information, a qubit is interpreted as a relevant elementary choice among an infinite set of alternatives generalizing that of a bit. The invariance to the axiom of (...) choice shared by quantum mechanics is introduced: It constitutes quantum information as the relation of any state unorderable in principle (e.g. any coherent quantum state before measurement) and the same state already well-ordered (e.g. the well-ordered statistical ensemble of the measurement of the quantum system at issue). This allows of equating the classical and quantum time correspondingly as the well-ordering of any physical quantity or quantities and their coherent superposition. That equating is interpretable as the isomorphism of Minkowski space and Hilbert space. Quantum information is the structure interpretable in both ways and thus underlying their unification. Its deformation is representable correspondingly as gravitation in the deformed pseudo-Riemannian space of general relativity and the entanglement of two or more quantum systems. The standard model studies a single quantum system and thus privileges a single reference frame turning out to be inertial for the generalized symmetry [U(1)]X[SU(2)]X[SU(3)] “gauging” the standard model. As the standard model refers to a single quantum system, it is necessarily linear and thus the corresponding privileged reference frame is necessary inertial. The Higgs mechanism U(1) → [U(1)]X[SU(2)] confirmed enough already experimentally describes exactly the choice of the initial position of a privileged reference frame as the corresponding breaking of the symmetry. The standard model defines ‘mass at rest’ linearly and absolutely, but general relativity non-linearly and relatively. The “Big Bang” hypothesis is additional interpreting that position as that of the “Big Bang”. It serves also in order to reconcile the linear standard model in the singularity of the “Big Bang” with the observed nonlinearity of the further expansion of the universe described very well by general relativity. Quantum information links the standard model and general relativity in another way by mediation of entanglement. The linearity and absoluteness of the former and the nonlinearity and relativeness of the latter can be considered as the relation of a whole and the same whole divided into parts entangled in general. (shrink)

Background: Food insecurity condition challenges the availability of food, access to food, food supply stability, and food utilization. Food banks play a major role in the food aid sector by distributing donated and purchased groceries directly to food-insecure families, thus significantly impacting food insecurity. On the other hand, school meal programs are implemented in many countries to combat food insecurity among school-aged children. The synergy between school meal programs and food banks has a great potency to combat (...) food insecurity among children effectively. Aim: This study aims to examine the association between experts’ involvement—such as nutritionists, farmers, and private sectors—and community engagement, including parents and others, with the linkage between food banks and school meal programs among implementing countries. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge Theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that the involvement of nutritionists and the private sector was positively associated with the linkage between food banks and school meal programs, while farmers’ involvement showed an ambiguous association. The engagement of parents and others also showed an ambiguous relationship with this linkage. Conclusions: Findings underscore the strong need to formulate strategies for increasing the involvement of nutritionists and the private sector to successfully link the food banks with school meal programs in implementing countries, which is crucial for effectively combating food insecurity among school-aged children. (shrink)

I argue that mass produced artifacts are ontologically distinctive. If we think of the making of an artifact as the imposition of a creative intention on to some matter, usually through intentional manipulation of the matter, then in the case of mass production, one could say that there is not enough mind to go around! Batches of mass produced objects will have a distinctive essence, lying in the creative act by which they are made, but within a (...) batch, the objects will be distinct from each other, but not essentially distinct. (shrink)

The problems divulged, analyzed and allegedly solved in Science, Order & Creativity are not scientific problems. They attest to a fundamental failure of science but not to scientific failure per se. Bohm and Peat's meta-scientific undertaking cannot afford, therefore, to remain negative. However, neither science itself nor current professional philosophy are capable of the radical positive rethinking required, in their view, in order to restore and ensure scientific creativity.

How do plurals and mass nouns refer? What kind of logic should be used in order to account for the truth-conditions of the sentences they appear in? For linguists, first-order predicate logic is adequate, provided it is supplemented by a notion of mereological sum for plurals and for mass nouns. On the contrary, according to some philosophers, new logics must be used, plural logic for plurals and mass logic for mass nouns. We survey these debates in (...) this entry. (shrink)

Climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the existence of humanity. The youth have the potential and capability to play a pivotal role in tackling these challenges. Therefore, the current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to take action, and pro-environmental behaviors among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilized on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school students. The (...) analysis results suggest that school and family environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental actions. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness than school education. Students with higher levels of environmental knowledge are more likely to conduct pro-environmental behaviors only when they are willing to take environmental actions. If students are unwilling to act, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with the likelihood of pro-environmental behavior. Following these findings, we call for coordinated education efforts of schools and families to cultivate students’ eco-surplus culture. The education efforts should be implemented along with exposing students to environmental settings and encouraging them to read environmental books. (shrink)

Increasing parts of the world population have rudimentary reading and writing skills but limited command of grammar, syntax and spelling. This functional illiteracy has detrimental effects on labor market participation, population health and political stability. Geographies of illiteracy also include affluent societies like the Netherlands, a country that is not only illustrative of a widespread phenomenon, but arguably also a bellwether of things to come elsewhere in the world if these developments are not reversed. This exploratory paper focuses on two (...) institutional spaces where the literacy crisis is conventionally addressed: schools and public libraries. We argue that while each has a contribution to make, neither institution is currently able to curtail the trend, partially because preferred literacy promotion methods are incongruent with rapidly evolving changes in the literacy landscape, especially regarding youth communication. We consider three possible responses to our current literacy crisis and conclude that efforts to curb functional illiteracy require a pragmatic and multi-pronged approach, and perhaps even some counterintuitive strategies. (shrink)

For more than a decade, activists, scholars, journalists, and politicians of various stripes have been discussing and decrying mass incarceration. This collection of voices has mostly focused on contingent features of the phenomenon. Critics mention racial disparities, poor prison conditions, and spiraling costs. Some critics have alleged broader problems: they have called for an end to all incarceration, even all punishment. Lost in this conversation is a focus on what is inherently wrong with mass incarceration specifically. This essay (...) fills that void and supplies an answer, drawing on the early modern English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. On the Hobbesian account developed here, mass incarceration is always wrong because it is always inconsistent with having a free society. (shrink)

Over the past 45 years there has been increasing vocal opposition to religious schools, particularly in Western Europe. Only some of this opposition is related to the perception that some religious schools might be excluding the less fortunate. Much of the opposition rests on the conviction that it is no longer tenable to fund and support so many religious schools when the number of persons professing religious belief has sharply declined. This argument, buttressed by the belief that Europe has undergone (...) a profound “secularization,” maintains that religious schools are but an obsolete cultural relic to be discarded in favor of nondenominational alternatives. Relatedly, religious schools are believed to contribute to segregation and “divisiveness”: Rather than maintain a system in which persons are drawn to schools that reflect their own cultural or religious background, children ought to attend the same schools, learning from – and not only about – each other through substantive interaction. Underneath this argument lies a concern with fostering the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship. It remains unclear, however, whether religious schools are more guilty of segregation than nonreligious schools. Nor is it clear why attending a religious school would make one less capable of cultivating the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship than nonreligious alternatives. (shrink)

Background: Food fortification refers to the process of adding nutrients to foods during their production. It is a cost-effective strategy with well-documented health, economic, and social benefits. Food fortification practices in school meal programs need guidance and legal support from various national policies. Aim: This study aims to analyze how various national policies—such as those related to school feeding, nutrition, health, food safety, agriculture, and the private sector—associate with the implementation of in-school food fortification among countries with (...) school meals programs. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge Theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that food safety policy and agriculture policy were positively and significantly associated with the in-school food fortification practices, while school feeding policy and private sector policy had ambiguous relationships with these practices. Nutrition policy and health policy had a significant negative association with food fortification practices among countries implementing school meal programs. Conclusions: Findings underscore the strong position of food safety policy and agriculture policy in guiding food fortification practices in school meal programs. There is a need to re-assess the implemented nutrition policy and health policy due to their significant negative associations with these practices. Enhancing and strengthening the school feeding policy and private sector policy may increase their potencies in giving positive impacts on in-school food fortification practices. (shrink)

This systematic literature review offers valuable perspectives on the challenges faced by educational administrators amidst COVID-19, shedding light on key themes and concerns that arose during this unprecedented period. By focusing on emerging trends in school leaders' experiences, this study not only informs future research but also provides guidance for academic and educational practices. Drawing upon an analysis of 16 articles from peerreviewed publications spanning the period from 2010 to 2021, this review provides a comprehensive overview of research themes, (...) approaches, settings, and school management systems related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Notably, most of the articles were published in the Journal of School Administration Research and Development, reflecting a significant scholarly interest in this topic. Additionally, almost half of the studies were conducted in the United States, indicating a geographical concentration of research efforts in this area. The analysis reveals that the primary focus of the literature centers around technological support and the professional development of teachers, highlighting the critical role of these factors in navigating the challenges posed by the pandemic. Moreover, the predominant use of phenomenological design and structured interviews among principals and school administrators underscores the qualitative nature of much of the research in this field. While this review offers valuable insights, it is essential to acknowledge its limitations, including potential biases in the selection of articles and the evolving nature of the Covid19 pandemic. Future research endeavors could consider longitudinal studies to track the long-term impacts of the pandemic on educational leadership and to identify strategies for resilience and adaptation in the face of ongoing challenges. This research contributes significantly to our understanding of the difficulties encountered by school leaders throughout the COVID-19 crisis and provides valuable insights that can inform future educational practices and policies. (shrink)

From time involved in pair production process, in the photon-photon collision, we consider energy and then mass uncertainty. Taking the latter as the mass of a particle, we repeat pair production process obtaining another mass uncertainty, then another particle mass, and so on. Starting with the heaviest charged elementary particle that is possible using Planck length for electromagnetic mass, we obtain a mass value close to electron mass. It is supposed exactly electron (...) class='Hi'>mass, considering the presence of uncertainties in the process. Then plausible neutrino mass and other particles masses are obtained. (shrink)

An increasing vaccine hesitancy among parents, which has resulted in insufficient rates of immunization, provides reason to reconsider childhood vaccination practices. Studies suggest that parents' decision-making process concerning whether to vaccinate their child is highly influenced by cognitive biases. These biases can be utilized to increase vaccination uptake via changes in the choice context. This article considers childhood vaccination programmes, which involve children being vaccinated in school or daycare unless their parents actively ‘opt out’. We suggest that such programmes (...) reconcile parents' decisional authority and vaccination duties. First, opt-out childhood vaccination based in schools or daycare centres are not disrespectful of parental authority. Second, the programme aligns the default setting with a moral obligation to vaccinate one's child that most parents have. (shrink)

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique (...) of surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere. (shrink)

Along with many other languages, English has a relatively straightforward grammatical distinction between mass-occurrences of nouns and their countoccurrences. As the mass-count distinction, in my view, is best drawn between occurrences of expressions, rather than expressions themselves, it becomes important that there be some rule-governed way of classifying a given noun-occurrence into mass or count. The project of classifying noun-occurrences is the topic of Section II of this paper. Section III, the remainder of the paper, concerns the (...) semantic differences between nouns in their mass-occurrences and those in their count-occurrences. As both the name view and the mixed view are, in my opinion, subject to serious difficulties discussed in Section III.1,I defend a version of the predicate view. Traditionally, nouns in their singular count-occurrences are also analyzed as playing the semantic role of a predicate. How, then, does the predicate view preserve the intuitive difference between nouns in their mass- and those in their count-occurrences? I suggest, in Section III.2, that there are different kinds of predicates: mass-predicates, e.g. ‘is hair’, singular count-predicates, e.g. ‘is a hair’, and plural count-predicates, e.g. ‘are hairs’. Mass-predicates and count-predicates, in my view, are not reducible to each other. The remainder of Section III takes a closer look at the differences and interrelations between these different kinds of predicates. Mass-predicates and count-predicates differ from each other truth-conditionally, and these truth-conditional differences turn out to have interesting implications, in particular concerning the part-whole relation and our practices of counting. But mass- and count-predicates are also related to each other through systematic entailment relations; these entailment relations are examined in Section III.4. (shrink)

Background: School meal programs are not only government initiatives but also community-driven efforts. Aiming to combat food insecurity among school-aged children effectively, these programs are executed in conjunction with food bank initiatives. Various community groups play a crucial role in the success of both food security initiatives. There is a need to improve community engagement to successfully link school meal programs with food banks to build program synergy, combating food insecurity through a two-sided approach. Aim: This study (...) aims to examine community engagement in school meals program by analyzing its purposeful focus on creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for different community groups, i.e., youths, women, and others. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that the school meals program’s purposeful focus on creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for women in the community was positively associated with community engagement, thereby supporting the linkage between the programs and food banks. In contrast, providing jobs and income-generating opportunities for youths and other community groups had an ambiguous association with community engagement in school meal programs. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for women to improve community engagement in school meal programs. Formulating strategies that empower woman’s entrepreneurship may foster their involvement and engagement in school meal programs, promising to successfully link these programs with food bank initiatives among implementing countries. (shrink)

Confidence is vital to athletic performance. But can a basketball player 'choose to believe' that his/her next shot is going in? Doxastic involuntarism is defended in this article; so the answer to this question is 'no'. However, by charting the reasons why a player may lose confidence, we find that there are corresponding strategies that offer hope for rebuilding a player's confidence--even though there can be no guarantee of these strategies' success.

Vitamin D deficiency is a common health problem among Libyan women. Age, gender, inadequate exposure to sunlight, and obesity are common risk factors for this issue. In this study, we randomly examined 40 Libyan women (age: 17.58±10.45, mean±SD, range: 15 years to 65 years). Blood samples were taken from each participant and directly centrifuged and processed on Cobas 411 Automatic Electrochemil-uminescence Immunoassay Analyzer. Vitamin D levels were measured in ng/ml and the mean serum value was calculated for the total. Body (...) weight and height for each participant were taken to calculate the body mass index. The findings revealed that all participants are suffering from vitamin D deficiency with less than 30 ng/ml serum levels. Female participants aged between 55 and 65 years tend to have a less degree of vitamin D deficiency as compared to the other age subgroups with a mean level of 27 ng/ml of vitamin D. This study revealed the association between vitamin D levels and obesity as measured by body mass index, in contrast, it found that overweight participants have higher vitamin D levels as compared to other groups of body mass index. (shrink)

This study assessed school-community relationship and school system effectiveness in secondary schools in Cross River State. Four null hypotheses were formulated accordingly as guide to the study. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. A total of 1,480 academic staff which comprised 271 principals, and 396 vice principals selected through census technique, and 813 teachers selected using simple random sampling technique, were used to elicit data for the study. “School-Community Relationship and Secondary School System Effectiveness Questionnaire (...) (SCRSSSEQ)” was used as instrument for data collection. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while the null hypotheses were all tested at .05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation with the aid of SPSS version 21. Findings from the study revealed that: parent-teachers’ relationship, school- community use of resources, school-community communication and school-community collaboration are significantly related to secondary school system effectiveness respectively, in Calabar Municipal Area of Cross River State. It was concluded that generally that school community relationship has significant relationship with school system effectiveness respectively. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that; principals should setup active parents’ teachers’ associations in their schools with leaders of the association comprising of community members and staff of the school. This will serve as a link that binds the school to the community and will create a platform for discussing and settling disputes. (shrink)

Since there is no really elaborated theory of the dialectic of nature, it is not only desirable but necessary to take a look at some of Hegel's original intuitions, which in many cases lost their distinctness in his later works, or fell victim to the exigencies of his system. Philosophy makes use not only of reasoning but also of intuition. In respect of the mass which offers persistent resistance to a notional solution, it is important to find a suitable (...) image for developing a first approximation to the understanding of the question. According to Hegel, the metaphors of circular and gyratory motion are well-suited for this. Here it is essential to clarify what we can gain by a structural interpretation of such ideas. I think that an attempt has to be made to bring out the contemporary relevance of the topic. Doing so is always a delicate matter, but it is a must if undertakings of the present kind are to be anything more than philological expositions of Hegel's philosophy, if they are to make a real contribution to reflection on the foundations of physics. I shall first give a brief review of the arguments put forward in the Encyclopedia; then I shall analyse Hegel's interpretation of circular and gyratory motion and discuss the possibility of bringing out the relevance of his ideas; finally, I shall draw certain conclusions in respect of the principles involved in comprehending the divisibility of matter, and in putting forward a philosophical interpretation of the theory of relativity. (shrink)

Primitive awareness leading to consciousness can be explained as a manifestation of internal forces between charge and mass. These internal forces, related to the weak and strong forces, balance the external forces of gravity-inertia and electricity-magnetism and thereby accommodate outside influences by adjusting the internal structure of material from which we are composed. Such accommodation is the physical implementation of a model of the external physical world and qualifies as Vitiello's double held inside ourselves. We experience this accommodation as (...) the conscious experience in front of our noses. Neural pulse traffic is interpreted as unconscious signal processing activity happening between this internal accommodation and our external interface of sensors and actuators. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Survey of issues pertaining to the semantics of mass and plural nouns.

In this article, I show that the semantics one adopts for mass terms constrains the metaphysical claims one can make about mixtures. I first expose why mixtures challenge a singularist approach based on mereological sums. After discussing an alternative, non-singularist approach, I take chemistry into account and explain how it changes our perspective on these issues.

In this article, I examine a case involving an equity-minded parent caught in a quandary about which school to select for her child, knowing that her decision may have consequences for others. To do so, I heuristically construct a fictional portrait and explore the deliberative process a parent might have through a dialogue taking place among ‘friends’, where each friend personifies a different set of ethical considerations. I then briefly consider two competing philosophical assessments but argue that neither position (...) helpfully assists in resolving the quandary. To conclude, I ask the provocative question whether parental motives – but also their school choices – actually matter if the inequitable outcomes seem to remain unchanged. (shrink)