Looking Back and Pressing Forward: Lessons for Today Found in the Story of Barbara Smith Conrad

Educatio

Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 3, no. 3

A publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography with U.S. offices located at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University. This issue focuses on: 1. Aberi K. Balya, Stefano Reuben Moshi, and John Mary Waliggo: Faithful African Christian Ancestors by Edison M. Kalengyo. Biographies by John Kateeba Tumwine and Louise Pirouet. 2. Wellington Mulwa and Harambee: Leading the Church in Partnership with Western Missionaries, a Biography by F. Lionel Young. 3. African Retrospect and Prospect: A Christian view from Kenya - Interview with Jesse Mugambi, with Jonathan Bonk, interviewer. 4. Recent Print and Digital Resources Related to Christianity in Africa

George Woods and the World Bank

PREFACE. George David Woods became the fourth president of the World Bank on January 1, 1963. John F. Kennedy, personally, urged Woods to accept. In August, 1962, Eugene Black invited Woods to the White House where Kennedy told Woods, in effect: Everything we in the United States have done since the end of the war, including the Marshall Plan, to try to build a peaceful and stable world is threatened by the growing gap between the poor and the rich countries. If that is not solved, it is going to cause the collapse of all our policies, including American foreign policy. We have to do something about this, and I think the World Bank, of the institutions available, is the most promising. This is our chosen instrument, and I want you, George Woods, to be the one to make the Bank a bridge between the poor and the rich countries. 1 Born in poverty, raised in Brooklyn by his adoring mother after the early death of his father, John Woods, and lacking a college education, George Woods, nonetheless, brought an impressive background to the task. At age 17, he became a messenger boy for Harris, Forbes and Company; at age 50, he was Chairman of the Board of the First Boston Corporation, an investment-banking firm which "was raising more money for more corporations than any other investment-banking house in the world. ,,2 As a young man in his twenties, accompanied by the young Arthur Dean who later served as chief negotiator to end the Korean War and, incidentally, was Woods's "best man", Woods won the account of the Nippon Light and Power Company. As a Broadway Angel, he made a small fortune in the theater by backing Sailor Beware, Dead End and Outward Bound. During the dark days of the depression, Woods successfully marketed the bonds of the Southern California Edison Company. He "saved" Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey and the New York Times. He had a distinguished career in Washington during World War II as a Colonel in the General Staff Corp under Generals Somervell and Clay. Through a merger with Mellon Securities Corporation after World War II, George Woods made First Boston, at that time, the largest publicly-owned investment banking firm in the United States. In 1952, First Boston, together with Morgan Stanley, began to manage the new World Bank bonds. That same year, Woods headed a World Bank mission to investigate the possibility of expanding and amalgamating two steel companies in India. Later, he helped to organize development banks in India, Pakistan and the Philippines. He played an important role in settling the compensation for the previous shareholders of the Suez Canal Company after its nationalization. Woods, in New York, was in almost daily contact with Black, in Washington. Woods knew more about the World Bank than anyone nominated to be president, with the possible exception of Eugene Black himself, who had already been the United States Executive Director for two years before becoming president. Woods was a banker. In the words of Woods's wife, Louise, "He never suffered fools gladly." He was very bright, however; his was probably the keenest intellect of any president of the World Bank, and he presided over a significant transition in the Bank's history: from Eugene Black, who firmly established the Bank and sold its bonds to the world, to Robert McNamara, who greatly expanded the Bank and increased its lending, perhaps excessively. 1. Robert W. Oliver, "A Conversation with Irving Friedman, I," Conversations About George Woods and the World Bank, Washington, D.C., March 1974, pp. 26-7. 2. "The Biggest Underwriter Finds the Big Money." Business Week, March 6,1971, p. 64. 2 Woods emphasized education and agriculture. He expanded the economics staff. He looked outward to the international organizations which could assist development. He took in the newly independent nations of Africa. He tried greatly to increase the lending of the International Development Association. In 1935, Woods married the vivacious Louise Teraldson. They were a marvelous team. Louise accompanied George as he flew hither and yon on missions for the World Bank. She didn't seek entry to Woods's world of finance, nor he to her world of assisting young people from the Institute for International Education or the World Bank's Young Professional's Program. They had no children, but they were together in the evening dining, more likely than not, at the Twenty One Club in New York or entertaining in Washington. This is the story of a remarkable man who rose from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to a position of preeminence in the investment banking business. From the pinnacle of that vantage point, he was able increasingly to turn his attention to public affairs until, in 1963, he became President of the World Bank. He succeeded because of hard work, a brilliant mind, and attention to detail. His path was not without pitfalls, but he persevered; he left the Bank with the dream of greatly increased economic assistance based on "a Grand Assize." He was the right man in the right place for his time

Originality of thought and method in West African Islamic teaching: a Fulfulde example

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 3

The effect of ability-grouping techniques on students' perceptions of speaking tasks

Tesis (Profesor de Inglés para la Enseñanza Básica y Media, Licenciado en Educación)Un problema crítico en la enseñanza del Inglés como Lengua Extranjera en Chile es que la mayoría de los profesores no pueden interactuar con sus alumnos del colegio usando el lengua meta. Lo anterior corresponde a una falta de oportunidades de los estudiantes para practicar la habilidad de hablar a través de conversaciones y trabajo colaborativo. De acuerdo a esto, agrupar a los alumnos precisamente en clases ha demostrado incentivar dichas oportunidades. Por lo tanto, ya que el consenso en técnicas de agrupación es controversial, el presente estudio apunta a contrastar las percepciones de los alumnos de acuerdo a agrupaciones de habilidades homogéneas y heterogéneas comparando dos segundos medios en un colegio chileno subvencionado. Por una parte el Grupo A fue organizado homogéneamente de acuerdo a sus competencias en el idioma mediante una prueba de diagnóstico para que los estudiantes con nivel similar estuvieran juntos. Por otra parte, el Grupo B fue organizado heterogéneamente para que los estudiantes con diferentes niveles estuvieran juntos. Este experimento siguió un diseño de comparación y fue utilizado un instrumento correspondiente a un cuestionario con una escala Likert para medir las percepciones de los estudiantes de acuerdo a las técnicas de agrupación. La aplicación consistió en seis clases para ambos grupos en tratamiento, las cuales incluyeron los seis tipos de actividades colaborativas de tres tipos diferentes de tarea. Las actividades y sus respectivos tipo de actividades son, de la primera a la última: “Juego de Roles” y “Entrevista” (Tarea Interpersonal), “Quién soy yo” y “Debate” (Tarea Transaccional), “Contar una Historia” y “Presentación de Afiche” (Tarea Extensiva). Consecuentemente, el principal hallazgo del estudio muestra que todos los estudiantes (ambos grupos, A y B) percibieron las técnicas de agrupación positivamente. Finalmente, contrastando ambas técnicas de agrupación, los estudiantes del Grupo B (heterogéneo) percibieron la mayor parte de las actividades más positivamente que el Grupo A (homogéneo)One critical problem in Chilean EFL teaching is that most teachers cannot interact with school learners using the target language. The latter corresponds to a shortage of opportunities for learners to practice the speaking skill through conversation and collaboration. Accordingly, grouping learners accurately in classes have proved to encourage the referred opportunities. Therefore, since consensus on grouping techniques is controversial, the current study aimed to contrast learners‟ perceptions on Homogeneous and Heterogeneous ability-grouping by comparing two tenth grade courses in a Chilean subsidized school. On the one hand, Group A was arranged homogeneously in compliance with learners‟ low, middle, or high ability level diagnosed in an oral pretest, so learners with similar level were together. On the other hand, Group B was arranged heterogeneously so learners with different levels were gathered. This experiment followed a comparison-group design and used as an instrument a questionnaire with a Likert scale to measure learners‟ perceptions on grouping techniques. The application consisted on six lessons for both treatment groups, which featured six different collaborative activities taken from three different types of tasks. The activities and their respective type of task are, from first to last: Role Play and Interview (Interpersonal tasks), Who am I and Debate (Transactional tasks), Story Telling and Poster Presentation (Extensive tasks). Consequently, the main finding of the study shows that all learners (from both, Groups A and B) perceived grouping techniques positively. Finally, when contrasting both grouping techniques, learners from Group B (Heterogeneous) perceived most of the activities more positively than Group A (Homogeneous)

Organic social change

The distinctness of each person’s life and experience is an important consideration in dominant accounts of how democratic institutions should distribute basic rights and liberties. Drawing on recent social movements, philosophers like Iris Marion Young, Miranda Fricker, and Axel Honneth have nonetheless drawn attention to the distinctive claims and challenges that plurality and difference entrain in democratic societies by analysing how the dominant discourses on rights and justice tend to elide, obscure, or reify the lived experiences of individuals belonging to disadvantaged and oppressed groups. In this essay, I offer an independent justification for why we should take such lived experiences seriously. I show how the lived experiences of disadvantaged and oppressed individuals can be a resource for deep and meaningful social change. I propose a distinctive kind of social change in which the disadvantaged and oppressed themselves drive the process of transformation whereby they change the oppressive frames of difference relating to their race, class, sex, or ability. I call this kind ‘organic social change’. I also show that organic social change is distinctively important in that the disadvantaged and oppressed get to enact an empowering mode of cooperation that harnesses their singularities when they are the ones driving the process of their own and one another’s transformations

STORIES FROM THE OLD WEST END OF BOSTON: AN ANALYSIS OF EVALUATIVE DEVICES IN ORAL NARRATIVE

The following presents an overview of various evaluative devices found in a series of oral narratives from former residents of the West End of Boston, Massachusetts. In working with an archivist at the West End Museum, I was able to read through interviews, each conducted with residents that were displaced from the West End after the urban renewal project of the late 1950s. These interviews were recorded for the purpose of collecting each resident’s experience growing up in the neighborhood. After reading through each interview I found several instances of narrative speech. I conducted a narrative analysis, based on Labov and Waletsky (1967) method to explore the linguistic devices that narrators used to evaluate their experiences. Each device was defined linguistically and analyzed to determine its implications for the narrator. An overarching theme was discovered such that narrators use these devices to cast themselves in a protagonist role in an idealized community. The narrators’ use of language perpetuates this transformation of experience and their nostalgia of the West End

The education of Walter Kohn and the creation of density functional theory

The theoretical solid-state physicist Walter Kohn was awarded one-half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his mid-1960's creation of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory (DFT). In its exact form, DFT establishes that the total charge density of any system of electrons and nuclei provides all the information needed for a complete description of that system. This was a breakthrough for the study of atoms, molecules, gases, liquids, and solids. Before DFT, it was thought that only the vastly more complicated many-electron wave function was needed for a complete description of such systems. Today, fifty years after its introduction, DFT (in one of its approximate forms) is the method of choice used by most scientists to calculate the physical properties of materials of all kinds. In this paper, I present a biographical essay of Kohn's educational experiences and professional career up to and including the creation of DFT

Improvement of oral reports through the students' use of audio-visual aids

Author misnumbered thesis. Please note that there are TWO page 108s, but the continuity is the same. Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

A history of violence: The shooting in Jerusalem of British Assistant Police Superintendent Alan Sigrist, 12 June 1936

Copyright @ 2010 The Author. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.This article provides a narrative of the shooting in Jerusalem by two Palestinian gunmen — Bahjat Abu Gharbiyah and Sami al-Ansari — in June 1936 during the Arab revolt in Palestine of a British police officer, Alan Edward Sigrist. Abu Gharbiyah and al-Ansari specifically targeted Sigrist because of his violence towards Palestinians — an issue that has not been discussed fully in the literature. This study measures, against the contemporary record, Abu Gharbiyah’s account of why he shot Sigrist, using the shooting as a case study to open up debates on the British use of official and unofficial violence to maintain colonial rule, alongside one on the response of local people to such violence. While recognizing the partisan nature of Abu Gharbiyah’s memory of events in Palestine, the article gives voice to the Palestinians, explaining how and why rebels fighting British rule and Jewish immigration to Palestine used violence. Following the analysis of the shooting of Sigrist, the article details more general torture by British forces as recalled by Abu Gharbiyah, setting this against the extant evidence to test the traditional notion that Britain used ‘minimum force’ in countering colonial disturbances, tying Sigrist’s behaviour to that of British troops and police in Palestine more generally. Thus, while the article is narrow in its focus it has broader implications for contemporary imperial and military history.Marine Corps University Foundation and Mr and Mrs Thomas A. Saunders