The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about the Finnish education system, which can boast of posting the highest overall scores in science, math and reading in a recent international comparison. (The U.S. scored just below average among 57 countries.) This is despite the fact that they eschew much of what we demand in our schools:

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.

What's more, there's  no marching band, no prom, so sports. Just school. Notably, Finnish teachers are paid the rough equivalent of U.S. teacher salaries. How can this be?

I know we've discussed the Mrs. vs. Ms. debate before. Here is an interesting twist from the Wall St. Journal's Wall St. Journal's Style and Substance Blog:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to be Mrs. Merkel in second references in our pages, at her request, as an alternative to Chancellor Merkel. We had been using Ms.

Her staff indicated that she was following the model of Mrs. Clinton in choosing Mrs. over Ms. or Miss. Unlike Mrs. Clinton’s, however, her surname is that of a previous husband; her current husband has the surname Sauer. Of course, she is also Chancellor Merkel.

The Germans themselves don’t have a problem in deciding between or among honorifics for a woman nowadays because they have generally adopted the use of Frau for all women.

Take a look at Hu Qianci, the Chinese girl who is being called the world’s youngest political prisoner.

From Global Voices Online (some odd grammar--maybe from translation?)

Hu Jia’s family become human ‘state secrets’

And likely very skinny ones at this point, having been locked away from journalists and lawyers and bringers of milk formula for over a month now.

Since AIDS activist-turned house arrested blogger Hu Jia's arrest, he's been described as a one-man human rights organization, that bloggers like him are the kind The Party fears most, and that for every Hu Jia silenced, ten more bloggers like him will pop up to take his place; shame, say some, and smooth move others. With Hu's wife Zeng Jinyan and their 2-month-old daughter Hu Qianci having been under house arrest for over a month now and in effect having been made state secrets of themselves, even more are saying now is the crucial time to be blogging about them.

I got this letter in the mail yesterday. It is from my 'sister' in Afghanistan. I sponsor her through Women for Women International. WFWI focuses on women who are coping with life in and after wartime.  They provide job skills and basic human rights education, as well as a monthly stipend...so crucial for these impoverished women. Another goal of the program is to encourage education for children. My sister has known nothing but war and repression in her 40 years. She is widowed, illiterate (having grown up under Taliban rule), lives without electricity or running water, and has five children.