Download or read book The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators written by William J. Bennett and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2011-08-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades Americans have turned to the Commerce Department's Index of Leading Economic Indicators to spot trends in the economy. The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators brings a similar kind of empirical analysis to the moral, social, and behavioral condition of American society from 1960 to the present--a vivid, clearly accessible portrait in numbers of who and where we are as a nation. First published in 1994 and now completely updated and considerably expanded, it draws from a wide array of government sources and academic studies to offer comprehensive chapters on crime, the family, youth behavior, education, popular culture, and religion, as well as new chapters on civic participation, international comparisons, and decade-by-decade comparisons. For each topic covered, there are statistical and numerical breakdowns; tables and graphs; ranking of states; and a "Factual Overview" interpreting the data. The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators should serve as the starting point of any discussion about America's moral and cultural condition. William J. Bennett's provocative introduction provides the essential context and perspective for the data he's collected, offering an assessment of the problems besetting modern America. Some have gotten better--most notably, crime and welfare rates--leading him to conclude that politics and public engagement in social issues can make more of a difference than he once thought. But there is much else of a worrying nature, and Bennett pulls no punches in identifying pathologies and laying out the challenges we face. No one who cares about American society and a whole range of social issues can afford to be without this essential volume--a statistical snapshot, an invaluable sourcebook, and a call to action.
Download or read book The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators written by William John Bennett and published by Touchstone. This book was released on 1994 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bennett's "report card" on America dramatically illustrates the factors and trends that have drastically affected America's moral, social, and behavioral conditions. The index provides statistical and numerical breakdowns, charts, tables, graphs, and a brief analysis of the data.
Download or read book 2009 written by 中国现代化战略研究课题组等 and published by BEIJING BOOK CO. INC.. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 本书系统分析了世界文化现代化三百年历史进程，介绍了文化现代化的相关研究和理论，完成了世界131个国家的文化生活现代化、文化竞争力和文化影响力评价，简要分析中国文化现代化的历史和现状。
Download or read book Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators written by George Barna and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 1996 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This statistical overview examines the trends and conditions related to American spirituality--beliefs, institutional connections, donations, corporate religious activity, and private spirituality. The index serves as a revealing portrait of the spiritual condition and direction of America for people of faith.
Download or read book The Metaphorical Society written by Daniel Rigney and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2001-03-21 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the novice reader to modern social theory through the creative exploration of eight major metaphors that have shaped Western understandings of human society. Rigney vividly yet concisely examines each major theoretical perspective in sociology, including functionalism, conflict theory, rational choice, and symbolic interactionism. He shows how each of these theories is rooted in a particular metaphorical tradition. Over decades and centuries, Rigney argues, social theorists have variously likened societies to organisms and living systems, to machines, battlefields, legal systems, marketplaces, games, theatrical productions, and discourses. Most interestingly, Rigney deftly shows how nearly all Western social theories fit with one or more of the metaphors. He emphasizes a humanistic understanding of society with an emphasis on the creative agency of social actors and communities. The book offers students a rich understanding of social theory, yet it is simultaneously concise and broad ranging, allowing instructors to further pursue detailed exploration of any perspectives they choose.
Download or read book Feeding the Monster written by Rick Tobin and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is divided into three parts. Using Mary Shelley's classic tale of horror, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, as a metaphor, I explain why too many Americans are turning into monsters. Too many Americans are becoming self-alienated and their children are not succeeding in our schools. I also explain what educators have mistakenly emphasized and tried in order to solve the problem. Part I: Making the Monster builds a definition of personal addiction. I argue that addicts teach addiction to others and that a vast population of Americans is deeply involved in an education in addiction. Part I deals with human needs, desires, and current cultural trends that give birth to addictive personality traits, the monster habits that I talk about when I show the Pet Monster to my pupils. These traits breed self-doubt and low self-esteem. They undermine our relationships and hinder our ability to love and care for ourselves and others. When we can't love ourselves, our children learn not to love themselves. They have difficulty adjusting to the demands and responsibilities they face in school. Addiction has become an entrenched cultural phenomenon. I argue that certain cultural trends are creating personal isolation, family dysfunction, and personal self-doubt. We are witnessing a withering of character and moral value. We are seeing a failure of commitment to personal growth. Part II: Feeding the Monster shows why more and more American families are becoming codependent to addictive cultural values and how this trend leads to the birth of the monster habits that keep our children from succeeding in school. I also discuss the ways our schools themselves support and nourish addictive tendencies in families and students. I look at the debate surrounding school reform and show how, although it is well intentioned, it is also misplaced. In Part II, we learn why we don't see our mistakes and why both parents and educators have developed blind spots in their vision of education. We're so accustomed to the supermonster of addiction that we just don't see it anymore. This is the true failure of education. We're not admitting that cultural codependency to addiction-to the monster-even exists. Part III: Taming the Monster explains what we can do to save ourselves from slipping farther into monsterhood. I suggest what schools, families, and communities must do to foster academic success and breathe value and character back into the lives of children and society. I also provide an outline for educational recovery. Only when we take steps to kill the supermonster and free ourselves from monstrous habits will we be able to stop the destruction that the monsters bring, the destruction that can end our world.
Download or read book Hard Time Blues written by Sasha Abramsky and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In September 1996, fifty-three year old heroin addict Billy Ochoa was sentenced to 326 years in prison. His crime: committing $2100 worth of welfare fraud. Ochoa was sent to New Folsom supermax prison, joining thousands of other men who will spend the rest of their lives in California's teeming correctional facilities as a result of that state's tough Three Strikes law. His incarceration will cost over $20,000 a year until he dies. Hard Time Blues weaves together the story of the growth of the American prison system over the past quarter century primarily through the story of Ochoa, a career criminal who grew up in the barrios of post-World War II L.A. Ochoa, who had a long history of non-violent crimes committed to fund his drug habit, who cycled in and out of prison since the late 1960's, is a perfect example of how perennial misfits, rather than blood-soaked violent criminals, make up the majority of America's prisoners. This is also the story of the burgeoning careers of politicians such as former California Governor Pete Wilson, who rose to power on the "crime issue." Wilson, whose grandfather was a cop murdered by drug-runners in early twentieth century Chicago, scored a stunning come-from-behind re-election victory in 1994. In so doing, he came to epitomize the 1990s tough-on-crime politician. Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky uses immersion reportage to bring alive the political forces that have led America's prison and jail population to increase more than four fold in the past twenty years. Through the stories of Ochoa, Wilson, and others, he explores in devastating detail how the public has been manipulated into supporting mass incarceration during a period when crime rates have been steadily falling. Hard Time Blues deftly explores the War on Drugs, the Rockefeller Laws, the growth of the SuperMax Prisons, the climate of fear that led to laws such as Truth-in-Sentencing, and how the stunning repercussions of imprisoning two million citizens affect all of America. In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and Melissa Fay Greene's The Temple Bombing, Abramsky explores this new and dangerous fault-line in American society in a dramatic and compelling manner. From the opening courtroom scene through the final images behind the electrified fences of the nation's toughest, meanest prisons, Abramsky paints a grimly intimate portrait of the players and personalities behind this societal earthquake. Hard Time Blues combines a sense of history with a powerful narrative, to tell a story about issues and people that leads us to understand how The Land of the Free has become the world's largest prison nation.
Download or read book Civics framework for the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP Civics Consensus Project written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Taking It Big written by Steven P. Dandaneau and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001-01-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For use as a primary or supplemental text for Introductory Sociology, Social Theory, and senior "capstone" courses. An unabashedly "critical" text for those who want to connect their students′ personal experiences with what is happening at the societal, global level today. The emphasis is on teaching "the sociological imagination" (i.e., to instill in students a unique and radical form of consciousness that will allow them to conceptualize today′s chief global and individual problems and the relations between them). Dandaneau adopts a perspective like that of C. Wright Mills and argues that the sociological imagination is the "most needed" type of consciousness in the world today. The author encourages students to think through a wide variety of topics - from ecological crises to panic disorder, from hyperreality to the sociology of disability, from Generation X to Generation Next. As Dandaneau says, "The point ... is not so much to learn the truth, but to learn how to think about essential issues and troubles as sociologists themselves try to do, to become a participant with others in facing down the challenges of our present epoch." "It is an elegant and profound meditation on thinking sociologically. Written with a rare panache one seldom finds in sociology... it′s the product of a view of contemporary social life that is profoundly troubling... What this adds up to is a distinctive sociological and moral voice." - Peter Kivisto, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois
Download or read book Philanthropy Hidden Strategy and Collective Resistance written by Kathleen deMarrais and published by Myers Education Press. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2020 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner A 2019 AESA Critic's Choice Award Winner Conservative ideologues have sought to shift the focus from the collective good to the individual good and to redirect the purposes and aims of education away from public benefit and in favor of private enterprise. As such, market-oriented, privatized, and standardized approaches to education reform have worked toward achieving that goal. This book is a primer on how the political right is utilizing various aspects of philanthropy and the political process to influence educational policymaking. In 1971, corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a detailed memo that galvanized a small group of conservative philanthropists to create an organizational structure and fifty-year plan to alter the political landscape of the United States. Funded with significant “dark money,” the fruits of their labor are evident today in the current political context and sharp cultural divisions in society. Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance examines the ideologies behind the philanthropic efforts in education from the 1970s until today. Authors examine specific strategies philanthropists have used to impact both educational policy and practice in the U.S. as well as the legal and policy context in which these initiatives have thrived. The book, aimed for a broad audience of educators, provides a depth of knowledge of philanthropic funding as well as specific strategies to incite collective resistance to the current context of hyperaccountability, privatization of schooling at all levels, and attempts to move the U.S. further away from a commitment to the collective good. Perfect for courses such as: Critical and Contemporary Issues in Education, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis, Social Foundations of Education, Philanthropy, Public Policy & Community Change, Philanthropic Studies, Sociology of Education, Politics of Education, Current Issues in Education, Government and the Mass Media, Polarization of American Politics.
Download or read book Global Innovation Index 2020 written by Cornell University and published by WIPO. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Global Innovation Index 2020 provides detailed metrics about the innovation performance of 131 countries and economies around the world. Its 80 indicators explore a broad vision of innovation, including political environment, education, infrastructure and business sophistication. The 2020 edition sheds light on the state of innovation financing by investigating the evolution of financing mechanisms for entrepreneurs and other innovators, and by pointing to progress and remaining challenges – including in the context of the economic slowdown induced by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis.
Download or read book Why America Needs Religion written by Guenter Lewy and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. What is wrong with America? It has often called itself a Christian nation, yet its social and moral problems are legion. The increasing rates of crime, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, sexual promiscuity, and divorce are frequently linked to the declining importance of religious belief. But is there more than a presumed link between the strength of personal religiousness and moral behavior? Yes, says Guenter Lewy, and the large quantity of empirical data in existence which establishes that link ought to move people -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- to sit up and take note. In this trenchant analysis of the moral decline of modern America, Lewy describes the moral crisis caused by secular modernity and points to the role of religiousness -- especially Christian religiousness -- as a necessary bulwark against today's social ills. This work is all the more intriguing in that Lewy is an agnostic who has nonetheless concluded that a society that cuts itself off from the religious roots of its moral heritage is doomed to decline. Lewy traces the rise of secularism in Western society, focusing particularly on the cult of individualism, and describes the social consequences of the weakened role of religion. He demonstrates that the crisis of the family and the rise of the underclass in our inner cities are linked to the decline of traditional values and shows, on the basis of surveys and other empirical data, that genuine religiousness can ward off some of the corrosive effects of modernity. Lewy concludes by calling on Christians, adherents of other faiths, and true humanists to join forces in the struggle to reverse the current ethos of radical individualism that threatens the moral integrity of our society.
Download or read book The America That Reagan Built written by J. David Woodard Ph.D. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-06-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a whistle-stop survey of American politics from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, with visits to poll results, biennial elections, political crises, and policy questions of the past twenty-five years. It touches on numerous aspects of American political life as well as economics, art, literature, science, society, fads, and customs that changed with the culture of the country. The story is told in terms of the presidents who shaped and led the nation, the elections that brought and kept them in power, and the dozens of people who collectively played a part in helping mold the national experience from 1980 to 2005.
Download or read book Urban Nightmares written by Steve Macek and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Measure of America written by Sarah Burd-Sharps and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Measure of America is the first-ever human development report for a wealthy, developed nation. It introduces the American Human Development Index, which provides a single measure of well-being for all Americans, disaggregated by state and congressional district, as well as by gender, race, and ethnicity. The Index rankings of the 50 states and 436 congressional districts reveal huge disparities in the health, education, and living standards of different groups. Clear, precise, objective, and authoritative, this report will become the basis for all serious discussions concerning the realization of a fair, just, and globally competitive American society.
Download or read book Governing States and Localities written by Kevin B. Smith and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The trusted and proven Governing States and Localities guides you through the contentious environment of state and local politics and focuses on the role that economic and budget pressures play on issues facing state and local governments. With their engaging journalistic writing and crisp storytelling, Kevin B. Smith and Alan Greenblatt employ a comparative approach to explain how and why states and localities are both similar and different. The Seventh Edition is thoroughly updated to account for such major developments as state vs. federal conflicts over immigration reform, school shootings, and gun control; the impact of the Donald Trump presidency on intergovernmental relations and issues of central interest to states and localities; and the lingering effects of the Great Recession.
Download or read book Raising Your Kids Right written by Michelle Ann Abate and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-14 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Seuss's classic character the Lorax has delighted children for decades while passing along a powerful message about environmental responsibility. The book's young readers, and their parents, would likely be surprised by the emergence of a new character, Truax, a kindly logger created by a longtime employee of the wood products industry, who, not surprisingly, has a far different viewpoint to share. Yet the Truax character, and the book of the same name, is just one example of a growing genre of conservative-themed narratives for young readers spawned by the continuing strength of the American political right. Highlighting the works of William Bennett, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, and others, Michelle Ann Abate brings together such diverse fields as cultural studies, literary criticism, political science, childhood studies, brand marketing, and the cult of celebrity. Raising Your Kids Right dispels lingering societal attitudes that narratives for young readers are unworthy of serious political study by examining a variety of texts that offer information, ideology, and even instructions on how to raise kids right, not just figuratively but politically.
