Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Education

  • How Government Creates Shortages of Doctors

    Westmaas Netherlands doctors office
    Patients wait to see a general practitioner in Westmaas, the Netherlands (LHV)

    Rural France is running out of doctors. Politico Europe reports that 7 out of 68 million French citizens don’t have a referring general practitioner. 30 percent live in a region where access to physicians is poor.

    France is not alone. Small towns in the Netherlands and the United States are also medically underserved.

    Partly the shortage is due to young doctors and nurses preferring to live and work in cities, much like young professionals in general.

    Higher-than-usual burnout rates during the pandemic exacerbated the shortage.

    But government policy also plays a role. All three countries for years kept the supply of doctors low while demand for health care, as a result of longevity and advances in medicine, went up. (more…)

  • Chile’s Bachelet Pushes Ambitious Social Reform Agenda

    Since her inauguration ceremony last month, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, has announced a series of policies aimed at proving to the public her desire for change.

    Bachelet’s election campaign was based on an ambitious social reform agenda, focused on issues such as gender inequality and social welfare, as well as tax, education and constitutional reform. Her aims are similar to those of her first term in office, between 2006 and 2010, although she acknowledges that her previous government failed to bring about the change it sought. This was particularly the case for education and poverty, issues that led to mass protests and the eventually the downfall of the previous conservative government.

    Bachelet’s first major step on taking office was to announce her “fifty measures in one hundred days,” an impressive list of commitments on issues ranging from education and health care to women’s rights and the environment. Legislation implementing these changes has already swept through Congress, the first bill signed into law creating new March and winter bonuses, aimed at assisting Chile’s poorest families during the toughest periods of Chile’s financial year. (more…)

  • The Roller Coaster Decade

    When historians begin to look back at the first pivotal decade of the twenty-first century, what will they see? What types of words will they use to describe the 2000-2010 years, and how will those words hold up to other decades in terms of prosperity, popular culture, and innovation?

    These questions seem out of the blue, given our ever changing environment. But these queries need to be answered, or at least pondered to some degree. Every single decade of the twentieth century has been labeled to some degree or another, usually with unique events in mind.  The 1920s came to known as the “Roaring Twenties,” the 1930s saw the “Great Depression,” and the 1980s were considered to be the time of “the me generation” (whatever that means). Of course, the 1960s and 70s were both regarded as decades of immense cultural ferment in the United States, as social and political issues previously hidden or suppressed demanded their rightful place on the public agenda.

    The verdict for the 2000-2010 period is still up in the air, and not without good reason; it takes generations before scholars can accurately analyze a time period in its full dimension. After all, it has only been seven months since the decade came to a close. But it’s interesting to start speculating, both because we have all experienced the tumult of those years and because the world changed drastically in a number of areas.

    On its merits, the first decade of this century doesn’t appear to have been a particularly happy time for mankind. In the United States, it started with a terrible financial scandal at a huge corporation (Enron), where thousands of employees lost their hard earned livelihoods as a consequence of corrupt business executives. Of course, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 killed some 3,000 innocent civilians and gave birth a dark cloud that continues to hover over us up to this day. Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami, the Haitian earthquake, and the SARS outbreak in China all demonstrated that humans are still unable to control everything, despite their technology and brainpower. Fighting erupted around the globe, from Afghanistan to Iraq, and from the Sudan to the Caucasus.

    Despite all of these disasters and catastrophes, there were also tremendous achievements throughout the last ten years. According to Charles Kenny of the New America Foundation, literacy rates across the world rose to 80 percent of the human population. In Africa, the most destitute continent, two-thirds of people can now read and write, perhaps paving the way for a new era in African development. People are being paid more, with an average global annual income of over $10,000. Agricultural yields have increased in the developing world, and the low price of grains over the last decade enabled more families to afford food and provide for their children. The number of children that have died from measles (a preventable disease) has dropped by 60 percent due to the widening availability of immunizations. And child mortality has declined by 17 percent, which could potentially help poor countries beef up their economic productivity.

    From where we stand now, the last ten years seem like a mixed bag. Terrorism and violence crept into areas that were previously quiet, but intelligence services have responded with improvement. The global economy is still struggling to get out of the hole, but families are bringing more money into the household. In other words, the decade has witnessed a lot of balance, with pros butting heads against cons and solutions creating even more problems. One year, you’re at the top of the game, and the next, you’re at the bottom of the pile.

    How about “the roller coaster decade?”

  • Freedom of the Press, Speech and Liberty

    Independence Day, for me, is symbolic of the ability to freely express opinions; the hallmark of a free society. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, in 1791, that, “Government being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.”

    In the United States, it is commonplace to hear partisans and pundits on both sides of the political spectrum accuse one another of intellectual laziness and moral laxity. I maintain that it is impossible to prove such charges because they are dependent upon the perception and cultural lens of the individual leveling the charge.

    The issues raised by the debates over the intrinsic value of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Twilight, and the Golden Compass series provide examples of this tendency. The current legal challenges have expressed a wide array of viewpoints that represent the opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum and the many shades of grey in between. These debates have resulted in many intensely heated exchanges and debates between conservatives and liberals.

    Social conservatives argue that these series promote religious systems and beliefs that are contrary to the religious traditions of the United States by advocating intellectual principles that denigrate traditional forms of education. They favor school libraries limiting access or completely barring students from accessing the aforementioned series by either restricting the ability of students to checkout their books, or by banning them from collections outright.

    Conversely, social liberals maintain that interest in these series encourages students to read and serve to develop literacy skills and provide opportunities to nurture critical thinking. Liberals assert that by limiting the right of students to read series in the vein of The Lord of the Rings promotes a culture which embraces censorship and inhibits the intellectual development of students. Being too restrictive in allowing students access to this literature would be inimical to the freedoms of press and speech as enshrined in the First Amendment.

    Despite their differences, there exists at least one point upon which both parties can agree as a matter of principle. Any attempt to mandate or make compulsory a single opinion is anathema to each. Every conservative, liberal, moderate or independent regardless of social, economic or political leanings would concur with Voltaire’s long-held maxim — “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

    The fact that a dispute over a series of books that began its life as an issue at school board meeting has evolved into a court case and made its way into a legal setting is deeply disturbing.

    It seems to me the continued endurance and health of the republic requires that individuals take great care and remain wary of utilizing the legal system to impose through force of law an individual viewpoint as Robert Jackson eloquently pointed out in 1943.

    Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

    Officials face the dilemma of censorship on a daily basis and must tread carefully because the freedoms of speech and the press are among the most treasured by Americans. Yet of all the rights endowed to the American people, the freedoms of speech and press are the most difficult to wield. The power to use speech freely grants to an individual the ability to influence others as President Woodrow Wilson once pointed out.

    I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement.

    Considering the current social, political, and economic ongoing within the nation we as Americans possess a duty to exert the rights, privileges, and duties under the Constitution of the United States and to maintain the vitality of our republic. The continued freedom of the nation lies within their respect for the liberties of the individual as Learned Hand asserted in 1944.

    What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near 2,000 years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

    It is only with the preservation of liberties that justice and freedom can endure, continue to grow and flourish in the face of all challenges.