TYO Recommends: Friday, June 8, 2012

Splish splash! TYO dives into summer with the latest on the ongoing battle of the book against illiteracy, monetizing the value of an investment in education, setting back the clock for high school teens, and just what makes camp counselors so darn cool. A Book A Day Keeps Illiteracy Away! In spite of rising literacy rates around the world, researchers doubt many countries will meet the Education for All goal of halving world illiteracy by 2015. The culprit? A lack of political commitment fueled by the view of adult LITERACY as unfeasible and unaffordable. With demonstrable advantages to reducing poverty and improving lives, adult literacy should be seen as a vehicle for advancing countries out of poverty, however at present world governments seem all too eager to turn a blind eye on roughly 775 million adults worldwide. #EducationforAll Global Monitoring Report asks why.

Wakey, Wakey! Eggs and…Camp Counselors! Ever wonder why your kids adore those twenty-somethings leading them across ziplines and monkey bars each SUMMER? Ever fret to think you must be doing something wrong when Johnny and Susie throw tantrums for you yet come back from camp attentive, eager to please, and dare I say… more mature? The NY Times gets to the bottom of just how and why those Barbie and Ken look-alikes work Hogwarts magic on your little ones each summer.

The Power is Yours. Now it’s not just Captain Planet telling young people that power is in their HANDS. Recently UNRWA experimented with “Citizenship Project” in which young refugees are given the tools and opportunity to affect change in their communities. From ideas to implementation, youth identify community areas in need of development, research and devise an approach, and secure funding to affect change in their communities. As one student put it: “Our goals should be collective in order to be achieved, because one hand cannot clap.” Sounds a lot like TYO’s YALLA and YLC groups!

Looking Back, Leaping Forward. It's Friday, June 8th, 2012. Where does our world stand?

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Cashing in on Education. Can the value of learning be monetized? Does education carry financial weight and not of the loan-induced variety? Education for All examines "A Report Card on Adolescents" valuing the potential of education for saving lives and creating substantial returns on INVESTMENTS in youth. In the same vein, directors of the #EducationforAll Global Monitoring Report tackle what makes learning valuable for youth and in what ways they can be encouraged to partake in the education system. Thus, through education, countries around the world can begin to confront poverty one PUPIL at a time.

Snoozing on Schooling. Parents know all too well that familiar sound, something akin to the low buzz and grumble of a lawn mower in the distance—the inconsolable, unrelenting, resentful whine of a teenager forced to “Rise and Shine!” on a SCHOOL day morning. Progressive educators and researchers have gathered to discuss the benefits of observing and incorporating age-specific norms of the sleep cycle into the school day, starting the day slightly later for each age group. In a conglomerate of top posts on the issue, the Scientific American takes on the sleep cycle and sleep deprivation in the American school system.

A Woman’s World. With the euro in freefall and riots sparking in economically strained nations around the world, this snazzy INFOGRAPHIC takes a look at the strides business women have made in the United States over a fifty year period from 1969 to 2009, including comprising 70% of small business start-ups in the last 15 years, bringing in 55% of household incomes, owning over ten million firms, and 93% having a high school diploma or higher education.