education
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 4, Teaching
Friday, June 20th, 2008For background, I am describing some of my experiences from the US Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa. More information on this series is available in the introduction.
Although, I was one of only two Americans in a small rural school with one class per grade teaching in a foreign language, my experiences in the […]
True Progress is Looking for Writers
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008True-Progress.com is looking for writers to contribute to the mission of finding enduring solutions. If you or someone you know would like the opportunity to regularly publish articles on this site, please see the details here.
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 3, The Beginning
Friday, June 13th, 2008After completion of our training in Senegal, we traveled to Guinea to see our host country for the first time. As the rains had been late in Senegal, our time there was mostly marked by sand and heat and more of the same. The brilliant green lushness of coastal Guinea having already seen months of […]
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 2, Training
Friday, June 6th, 2008On Fridays over the next several weeks, I am describing experiences from my service in the U.S. Peace Corps.
An overnight flight from New York’s JFK airport on Air Afrique put us in Dakar, Senegal the next day. In June, when the rains had still not come, Senegal was a very dry and very hot and […]
Education in the Developing World
Monday, May 12th, 2008Increasing the quality and quantity of education in poor countries is critical and absolutely necessary to their development, but let’s not lose sight of how disruptive a free and generous education can be. Education changes cultures, economies, and governments, and for nations entering that transition period the way must be prepared.
Producing Enough Engineers in the United States
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008What is the state of the American university system? Does it produce the types of professionals needed to keep the American economy strong and innovative?
We often hear a lot about how our contemporary economy requires plenty of professionals skilled in science and technology to maintain a healthy rate of innovation. There are are many reasons […]
Root Cause Analysis and True Solutions
Saturday, April 12th, 2008In Search of The Best Answer, Not a Better Answer
Whenever there is a major man-made disaster or some kind of accident, responsible officials usually convene a team that conducts an investigation. The results of that investigation will usually identify a “root cause” and several “contributing causes”. If it was a plane crash, the team will […]
Review - Development As Freedom
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, provides a powerful argument that development and progress cannot be measured on the basis of economic output and consumption alone, that personal freedom is a very important and in some areas predominate variable in determining whether progress has been or will be […]
Week-Long Aid Missions, Charity, and Sustainability
Sunday, April 6th, 2008Is this for them or for us?
A couple years ago, I was advising a group of undergraduate engineering students from Rice University on a project they were pursuing for Engineers Without Borders. They were designing a rainwater catchment and drip irrigation system for a village in Mali, West Africa. Having heard about their project and […]