EDUCATION: No Colonial Hangups as Malays Rush to Learn English

It is three o'clock in the afternoon on a normal weekday in this small town, about 110 kms south of the national capital, and Hafsiah, 9, and her brother Badrul, 12, are tearing up the stairs of a three-storey shop house to enter a room full of students eager to learn English.

PAKISTAN: Need for Girls’ Education Felt but Schools are Missing

Ghazala Bibi, 21, considers herself privileged to be studying for a bachelors degree even though she has to do it privately and from her home, a two-hour drive into the hills north-east of the national capital.

POLITICS: At Forty, Singapore Craves More of the Same

At forty, like a successful man approaching a mid-life crisis, what this nation of four million people yearns for is more of the same.

RIGHTS: The Miseducation of Canada’s First Nations

In the small island community of Alert Bay near northern Vancouver Island, hundreds of survivors of St. Michael's Residential School stood on the idyllic shoreline near the U'mista Cultural Centre around ten in the morning. It was misty as the fog rolled in and perched on the calm water.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Don’s Sacking Fuels Charges of Racism in Academia

It took the intervention of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi before Universiti Malaya approved leave for a prominent academic to take up a prestigious United Nations assignment.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY: New Universities for a Multicultural Mexico

Seven intercultural universities in Mexico are going a long way towards preserving the historical and cultural roots of the country's indigenous community, which comprises more than 10 percent of the country's 106 million people.

POLITICS-US: Congress Balks at Bush’s Weird Science

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush's endorsement of the teaching of "intelligent design" as a theory of how the universe began, coupled with Sen. Bill Frist's backing of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, points to an almost certain trainwreck between Congress and the White House - as well as open warfare between the scientific community and members of the conservative religious right.

MIDEAST-NORTH AFRICA: Women Entrepreneurs the ‘Motor for Development’

Give Arab women the chance to become entrepreneurs by facilitating access to education, professional training and financial resources, and you will start the motor of economic development and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa region.

G8 SUMMIT: Debt Cancellation No Panacea for Benin – Analysts

Some may see it as a just reward for years of fiscal discipline. For others, it is a gesture that will ultimately do little to address poverty in Benin. What there is no disputing, is that the debt relief given to Benin last month by the Group of Eight (G8) is as much a source of controversy as satisfaction.

RIGHTS-US: The New McCarthyism

A spectre is again haunting U.S. colleges and universities.

TECHNOLOGY-KENYA: On the Way to Getting Wired

In 1961, there was just one to be had. By 1985, that figure had increased to 1,800 - and at the beginning of last year, it stood at about 520,000, according to government figures.

REFUGEES: After the Struggle to Arrive in South Africa, a Struggle for Education

The effort to combine work and studies is taking its toll on Desiré Rwamagana, a Rwandan refugee who lives in South Africa’s commercial hub – Johannesburg.

AUSTRALIA: Foreign Dollars Entice ‘Bush’ Campus to the City

The Central Queensland city of Rockhampton is over 1,000 kms from Sydney, but its university, set up over a decade ago to bring tertiary education to outback Queensland, runs a campus in a leased multi-storey building in Sydney today that has more students than its parent.

POLITICS: White House Seeks Softer, Gentler Liaison to Arab World

If enthusiastic White House and Congressional support could solve Washington's public diplomacy problems, Dina Habib Powell would be well on her way to becoming a national heroine.

RIGHTS-EGYPT: Censorship Chills University Life, Report Charges

Academic freedom in Egypt is being constantly undermined by both the government and private groups through censorship, intimidation of students and professors, and even threats and physical violence, according to a report by a leading human rights organisation released Thursday.

HAITI: A Hill Impossible to Climb

Whereas the ''favelas'' in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro are set high up in the hills ringing the city, the hilltops around the Haitian capital are home to palatial mansions, and the housing becomes poorer and more and more precarious as the slopes flatten into the sea.

PAKISTAN: Citizens’ Schools Show the Way

Some nine years ago a cattle pen stood where now rises a pink school building, one of the original five schools established by The Citizen's Foundation (TCF), an experiment by five affluent Karachi businessmen that has taken the form of a movement across Pakistan.

RIGHTS: U.S. Struggle that United White, Black Schools Marks an Anniversary

Fifty-one years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that would forever change life in America. The Court ruled that ''separate but equal'' schools for white and black children were inherently unequal.

ARGENTINA: Educational System on Verge of Collapse

Teachers and students throughout Argentina took part in a nationwide strike and a massive demonstration in Buenos Aires on Friday to protest against the dismal state of the public schools and demand a new educational funding law.

EDUCATION-CAMEROON: Teachers Give School System a Failing Grade

In the run-up to examinations, students frequently complain that teachers pile too much work on them. In Cameroon, however, the opposite is true.

EDUCATION-U.S.: Hearings on Evolution Evoke Famed ‘Monkey Trial’

In the early 1920s, with many in the United States worried about losing traditional values to the secular modernism of jazz, the silver-tongued William Jennings Bryan - three-time Democratic candidate for president - led a fundamentalist crusade to banish Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution from U.S. classrooms.