What do you know about Mardi Gras and how it is celebrated in New Orleans? How do you imagine the pandemic has affected it this year?
If you aren’t familiar with Mardi Gras, here is a description:
Since the first Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1857, elaborate floats have paraded through the city on the last Tuesday before Lent. Thousands of people fill the streets, and marching bands and dance teams come from all over to perform, their horns and drums echoing off buildings. Social clubs and groups of artists and organizers — that go by names like the Krewe of Orpheus and Krewe of Muses — spend practically every month of the year preparing floats and celebrations.
What celebrations, holidays or festivals is your area known for? What traditions, rituals, costumes, or special food and drink mark the occasion? Did the pandemic affect it this year? If so, how did locals reinvent the celebration?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
LinkedIn Learning continues to be a platform that garners a lot of attention, from the LL content, to the solution itself. Bounce around on some LinkedIn profiles and you will see folks mentioning the certificates they have received from LinkedIn Learning. Learning System vendors who have partnership agreements with LinkedIn Learning for its content, often see high usage (depending on the system, but, talk to vendors who do not have a LL partnership, and you will find the majority wanting one).
LinkedIn Learning is somewhat of an oddity, it is not an LXP (although some folks might say so, I initally thought this as well, but that ended quickly), nor is it a talent development platform, nor a upskilling platform (which they could pitch), nor an LMS, rather it is a digital learning platform – which means that the majority of the content is in a video format. Other content is there too, but “course” and “video” are one in the same.
I have spent the last few months, going in and out of LinkedIn Learning, exploring the content, taking parts of the content, bouncing thru the administration side, to such an extent that I could do an in-depth product analysis in my sleep (with ESP of course).
There are folks who are devotees to LinkedIn Learning. Anything you say in an honest but negative connotation will unleash them onto you (via LinkedIn), with this and that. If you love LinkedIn Learning, this product review will not change your feelings.
This review will consist of three parts (seen throughout)
a. Video reviews – yep, I went thru the system, selected a few areas and recorded with a V/O (me) of what you are seeing and my take
b. Screenshots – To aid in the writing, including screenshots of e-mails LL sends you for your top X Skills (the number is dependent on the number of skills you want to learn).
You can share them via e-mail, downloads and much more. You can also view them under certain sections in the post below.
Key Takeaways
LinkedIn Learning has some weird attributes to it, weird perhaps isn’t the right word, wonky is better suited.
If the content is video or listed as a course, which uh means a video, two items will irk you right away.
Auto-play – It is nauseating. I personally am not a fan of auto-play which means the moment you see the video it starts to play. You see this on some sites such as CNN and CBS Sports (which makes the site unusable). I’ve never met anyone who likes auto-play.
Auto-play defeats the purpose of WBT (i.e. e-learning), because it automatically assumes you want to start with the very first chapter of whatever subject, when you may want to jump to chapter four, page five or bounce here or there. You can do this in the courses/videos I tested, because they all have a Table of Contents (a plus, because there is a lot of content, by 3rd party providers who never have a TOC – and should receive an “S” for shame).
Big Win
The big win with the video/course (did I mention they are the same thing, just different presentation), is if you go to “transcript” which you will see under the video, next to items such as “Overview”. Click Transcript, and here you see a transcript of the audio. Now, click on any of the text, let’s say the person is talking about income tax, but you see in the transcript, income tax on domestic goods. When you click that specific phrase, the video will jump right to that point.
This feature does exist in some other learning systems, but since this is a review of LL, it is worth mentioning. And why they do not tell folks – especially those learners who are jumping into the platform thru other sources, and not as part of their organization is beyond me.
Anyway it is a huge win.
LinkedIn Learning’s home page
When a learner logins into LinkedIn Learning and arrives on the home page they will see the following
Please note that they will not see “Go to Admin” if they are not the administrator. For example – without the administrator icon
With the administrator icon – this means the end-user is also an administrator
Browse – Which enables you to browse the various topics available on the platform
A Search function – Which should be amazing, but uh, I found some issues with it
Home – The home, i.e. what you are looking at now
My Learning – This is where you as the learner go to see what’s in progress, saved, my collections, my organization (which means content that your organization finds beneficial to you, can include the organization’s content too, but it does not mean only your organization’s content), Learning History and Skills
Me – Your Profile – including links to your LinkedIn profile
Language
Company logo
And if you are an administrator – Go to the Admin page (this won’t appear if you are not an admin)
Immediately below you will always see
The banner shows various courses/content and there isn’t a clear understanding of what is being “promoted” on the top. Some say “popular”, but I found some of the most popluar (based on people taking the course – which just means they clicked to go into the course, and not that did anything more than that), is not the most widely used, updated, new, etc.
Weekly Goal is where you can set a timer. i.e. this week, I will spend 15 minutes learning. You can select other minute numbers. I selected 15 minutes.
If you are in the midst or taking content whether thru a learning path, learning collection (a series of content), or from your org, you will see them here – but only a few, not the entire list (unless your list consists of two).
Followed below this is a series of playlists, which you can easily assume is tied directly to your organization (employees, which it is not) or tied directly to the skills you are interested in learning – which would slide under “Top Picks”.
In this playlist, I found it to sometimes work and other times not. In my first test, I selected the skills, “Grant Writing” and “Analytics”.
What my Top Picks showed included courses in
How to plan for retirement
Something on being a rock star for a conference
In fact, there wasn’t one piece of content tied around the specific skill of Grant Writing, but if I was interested in CSS, well there was one for that. Analytics, showed a few, but again, not all.
Then you get to the playlists they show themselves, and I found this not to be consistent. While, “Top Picks” always appears at the top, followed by “Trending Now”, playllists such as “Most Popular” can appear third in line, or down at the bottom or elsewhere. “New Releases” the same thing. At one point, I had a playlist for content that can be learned in 30 minutes or less (based on who decided that, is unknown, since uh, if I am taking only a chapter or bouncing around, how do they know how it takes me?). That playlist though doesn’t appear every time on the home page.
Other times there are playlists tied directly to what you are interested in, but again, not all the content is representative, and these playlists do not always appear.
In my skill choices of Grant Writing and Analytics, I did not see a playlist saying “Because you are interested in Grant Writing” nor one for “Because you are interested in Analytics”. However, when I switched skills to “E-Commerce” and “Accounting”, then I did see the following playlists
You may noticed “Holding your Team accountable” and say to yourself, that has nothing to do with “accounting” which I think everyone on the planet would know means the financial side. This is another issue with LL. It does this often whereas depending on what skill or what you search for, sometimes it hits 100%, other times it takes just part of the word (in this case account) and ignores the rest, and you see a result like this.
As for e-commerce, I was hoping to see specifics on e-commerce, not items such as Shopify Essential Training and Learning Shopify. Great, if I am using the platform, Shopify, not great, if I am not.
Other Playlists include
New Releases – Which I found to be pretty consistent on dates, say within a week
Trending Now – Where it clearly isn’t based on a factor of number of learners taking it or using it, in fact I found content saying “Most Popular” with numbers that were low, compared to other content which had a higher number of learners, but wasn’t listed as “Most Popular”. If LL uses an algorithim, they need to fix it.
Popular – This would be easy to assume that it is based on the number of learners taking it or completed the whole thing, but nope, I found content not in “Most Popular” that had higher numbers of both, compared with some in “Most Popular”
Most Liked – This is based sort of on a premise, that if I like it, and others do as well, it must be mean it is outstanding in design or delivery or information or usefulness. This of course is subjective, because just like a “Yelp” 52 five star steakhouse gets you there, you may end up with a steak that tastes like a shoe. Anyway, I found this to be inconsistent too, with content on the list, that was not the most liked compared to some other content that wasn’t on the list. If I see most liked, by darn it, it should be the highest number than anything else. – I found in my latest test, this playlist did not appear (which you will see in a video shortly), however here is proof that it appeared just yesterday.
One challenge I have with the playlists in general is that the whole push these days is about “skill development”, “upskilling” and skills, but with the playlists, “Trending” for example, has nothing to do directly with my skills I want to acquire or interested in. And the same applies to all other playlists (excluding Top Picks, which has its own issues).
One note of wonkiness, is that if you change your skills and go back to your home page, the update is not reflected. You will still see the Top Picks and Because you liked X (the former skill, you had) being shown. In order to see the latest skills you have added or changed to, you need to hit your refresh button on your browser.
I would think that a company such as LinkedIn would already have solved this challenge, especially since I haven’t run into this issue with other learning systems where you can change your skills.
And there are consistency problems. When you hover over the content on the playlists some show the number of learners (taking it, which only means they clicked into that piece of content, and not how long they spent on it, or where they went), and yet other content on that same playlist, does not show it. If you have it, then show it across all pieces of the content.
Lastly, it is hard to recall your skills, and in order to remind you, you have to go either to “My Learning” or check under your profile to see “Skills”, which you click and it takes you to the my learning page. It would seem to me that if you list “Skills” next to the area for “in progress”, “saved”, “from my organization” that would be an added bonus.
When you click “Show all” it takes you to your My Learning page.
In this area, you can share the content, or collection or learning path if you so desire. The “More” if you are an administrator allows you to add the “content” to a collection or a learning path, and you can edit or delete it. Otherwise the options are “save” which then goes to your “saved” section (if you are a learner).
Collections
Catalog
LinkedIn Learning catalog UI is very slick, but I found the “Popular” category/tag if you will, to once again not be consistent in terms of numbers of learners accessing.
I am a big fan of filters, but one that I feel would be very relevant is “Skills”, whereas I could select a filter based specifically on my “Skills” that I selected. Currently, that is missing in the filter options.
Admin Header
Under People
Users
Curators
Administrator(s)
Groups
Overall I found this pretty simple to figure out and use. I did like the two help sections that appear in “Users” and “Curators”. However the first one, I strongly debate on how it truly boosts activation, since it is only helping craft an e-mail you send out. SMS? Not possible.
For Curators though, the information is very helpful
The “Add” button on the top of the header
Add Learners
Create Learning Path
Create Collection
Add Custom Content
Diving in the Administration Side
This video covers the home dashboard for the administrator, from the data captured – which some makes sense others do not, and some items are clearly missing, to the reporting and “skills insight”. One of the biggest misses is while the system constantly pushes “collections”, there isn’t a report nor data telling you how many learners in your organization, selected these collections or created these collections. Nor does it show you what skills are the most popular – i.e. that people created – selected as a skill.
The skill insights identifies what skills people clicked on – content wise, but that doesn’t really help. I mean, I may be curious to what “Adobe Photoshop” is, and clicked on it, because it was on my playlist, but it doesn’t mean I am interested in that skill. Nor does it mean, I went thru this chapter and that chapter.
Segmentation of data does not exist. Another miss. The system tells me how many hours but doesn’t show directly the minutes, rather it is says avg minutes. Yet another chart pushes hours and I can’t click to see what learner (noted as “Viewer”) went into what content, and drill down that way.
In the Reports there is something called Learner Management Details, but the information presented (required to DL BTW), is worthless.
What do you get?
Name
E-Mail
Unique User ID
Business Title
Invitation Date (includes the time)
Activation Date (includes the time)
Last Login (date and time)
License Assigned
License Status
Connected Profile Status (i.e. tied to their LinkedIn profile)
Total Sessions
Hours viewed
Hours viewed per unique login
Groups
That’s it. That’s the details you get in this report. Please show or tell me, how I can really understand what my learners are taking related to specific skills, and additional analysis of skill gaps, identifying strengths and weaknesses?
Settings
Bottom Line
LinkedIn Learning receives a lot of interest, but for those who see the name “LinkedIn” and automatically assume the LL platform will meet the expectations or exceed them compared to the LinkedIn social media platform, they will be disappointed.
The strength of LL is the LinkedIn Learning content, but even there, missteps exist. Popular tags are inconsistent with the number of learners, Trend Now Playlists are not clearly identified as if it is “now” or last week, and trending changes depending on the skills you select, but usually those skills are not even in the “trend now”.
Some playlists appear, sometimes they don’t. And the learner is none the wiser.
The biggest dud of the whole system, is in order for you to see your skills tied to “Top Picks” you need to select skills that has content (more than a few) tied to it. Otherwise, a skill such as “Grant Writing” will show maybe one or two in your Top Picks, and then other content that has nothing to do with “Grant Writing” makes an apperance.
And the biggest fail is that in order to see your latest skills, assuming you update them from the previous skills, is that if you do so, after seeing the playlists for the initial skills and then change, and hit home, the playlists do not update.
Morehouse College launches sports activism course taught by NBA All-Star Chris Webber
By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera
I’m excited to announce our partnership with Morehouse College as we continue to expand our engagement with leading institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. Morehouse College, a leading producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholars, is launching its first course today on Coursera — Activism in Sports and Culture.
Since 1867, Morehouse College has prepared change agents to transform the world through ethical and effective leadership, including prominent leaders such as Nobel Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, and Academy Award-winner Spike Lee. Morehouse ranks among the top 50 most innovative U.S. schools and is committed to helping the nation address inequities by problem-solving through discourse and collaboration on the most relevant issues of our time.
“The division in our country can only be healed if we have the courage to have honest conversations about inequity in our society and the responsibility we each have to understand its roots and find solutions,” said Dr. David A. Thomas, president of Morehouse. “Sports has often been among the earliest and most visible arenas in which to raise awareness about racial challenges. This moment calls for us to hear each other, learn from each other, and uncover the truths which will allow for us to move forward as an informed society. Morehouse is uniquely positioned to serve as the locus for one of the most consequential conversations of our time.”
Five-time NBA All-Star and guest lecturer Chris Webber teaches Morehouse’s new course, Activism in Sports and Culture. The course covers how protests by notable athletes, coaches, and media personalities have shifted public opinion on inequality and furthered civil rights.
“Morehouse has been a pillar in our society, the Black community, and social justice movements. There is no better partner to launch this course and no better time than Black History Month. Launching on Coursera allows millions of learners from all walks of life to take this course,” said Webber. “I want those who enroll to be inspired and informed after hearing from the people who have made the greatest sacrifices to influence public conversations.”
Education is at the heart of human progress and greater understanding. Together, with partners like Morehouse, we’re honored to expand our social justice content catalog and tackle racial injustice through learning.
As simple as it is, adding labels to Blogger posts can help you organize your blog and clean it up. It lets you sort out your content and make all the post topics easy to access for your readers. In this short guide, I will teach you how to add labels to Blogger Posts.
How to Add Labels to Blogger Posts
Follow this quick, three-step guide to have your post sorted out.
#1 Create a new post or edit an already published one
Either compose a new post or click on an already published post to edit it. On the right-hand side, there is a menu called Post Settings. Click on the first option at the to called Labels.
#2 Adding Labels to Blogger Posts
Type in all of the labels that you would like to categorize your post by. Make sure a comma and space separate each label. Try to keep it simple. I usually add around 1-3 labels unless I really need to add more.
If you already added some labels in the past, Blogger will suggest them when you start typing.
Once you will add your label, publish your post.
#3 Check your post
When you view your published post, you will see your labels appear at the bottom of your post.
Keep in mind that not all Blogger template displays label.
Did you know that you can display all labels as a sidebar widget? There is a built-in gadget with many options to list your labels on your sidebar for easy reference.
If you would like to add one, log in to your Blogger Dashboard and navigate to the Layout tab on the left. Once there, add a label gadget to the sidebar of your choice. On the image below, I’m adding this widget to the right sidebar.
Getting a link to your label
Let’s say you want all of your posts that have the label Food to automatically appear under your navigation bar’s corresponding category. To do so, you will need to have a link to your label page.
The easiest way of getting one is by visiting a post assigned to your chosen category and clicking the label name at the bottom of it. You can also click it in the sidebar widget if you are using one.
Each label page will usually have a grey bar above the post informing you and your readers where they are.
Copy the link from the top of your browser and use it wherever you need.
I hope that with this guide, you learned that adding labels to Blogger posts is really easy. If you have any questions, make sure to let us know in the comments below.
: a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person’s given name)
_________
The word sobriquet has appeared in 18 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Oct. 19 in “Hockey Broadcaster Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick Retires” by Kevin Draper and Andrew Knoll:
When the N.H.L. begins its next season, absent for the first time in four decades will be the man perhaps more associated with the league than any player, coach or official: the broadcaster Mike Emrick — known universally by his nickname, Doc.
… Emrick ascended to the top of his profession, jockeying with Canadian-born greats like Bob Cole and Dan Kelly in the pantheon of hockey’s play-by-play announcers. He worked in print media covering the Pittsburgh Penguins, earned his doctorate in broadcast communications from Bowling Green State University (hence the “Doc” sobriquet) and transitioned to television from radio in a way that was at once seamless and iconic.
In the United States, the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, is often performed before sporting events, school functions and other important events. Think about the last time you attended or watched an event on TV where the anthem was played. How did you feel hearing the song? Were you moved by the performance and the lyrics? Did you stand or remove your hat? Or did you feel uncomfortable or unaffected by the song?
If you live in another country, when is your national anthem usually played? How do you feel when you hear it?
Recently, after the Dallas Mavericks had stopped playing it through their first 13 preseason and regular-season home games, the N.B.A. began requiring teams to play the national anthem before games. It was an abrupt reversal of an earlier hands-off approach. In “N.B.A. Says Teams Must Play the National Anthem,” Marc Stein explains:
Cuban told The New York Times on Wednesday that the Mavericks would follow the policy immediately and play the anthem before that night’s nationally televised home game against the Atlanta Hawks at American Airlines Center.
“We are good with it,” Cuban said.
Most players and coaches regularly knelt during the national anthem to protest social injustice while the league played out the last three months of the 2019-20 season at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., last summer. Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, said in December that the league did not intend to enforce its rule that players stand for the national anthem. The league’s 29 teams apart from Dallas had mostly played recorded versions of the anthem before games.
“I recognize that this is a very emotional issue on both sides of the equation in America right now, and I think it calls for real engagement rather than rule enforcement,” Silver said in December.
In a statement released through the Mavericks, Cuban said: “We respect and always have respected the passion people have for the anthem and our country. But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been.
“Going forward, our hope is that people will take the same passion they have for this issue and apply the same amount of energy to listen to those who feel differently from them.”
Why do some feel that “The Star-Spangled Banner” does not represent them? In “African-Americans and the Strains of the National Anthem,” an Opinion essay from 2018 written in response to the N.F.L. player Colin Kaepernick’s original anthem protest, Brent Staples writes:
African-American anthem dissidents are heirs to a venerable tradition of critical patriotism that dates to what W.E.B. Du Bois termed “double consciousness” — the feeling of being part of the American polity yet not fully of it. This insider-outsider status has driven a longstanding struggle among black Americans to find room in a civic and political system that was built to deny them full citizenship.
The “Star-Spangled Banner” itself has been a subject of that struggle since shortly after Francis Scott Key, a slave-owning Washington lawyer, wrote it to commemorate an American victory over the British during the War of 1812. The song would no doubt have been lost to obscurity had the United States military not appropriated it for flag ceremonies beginning in the late 19th century.
This history seems innocuous enough until one considers that the song tightened its grip on the country during the height of the lynching era in the South and became popular at baseball games at a time when African-Americans were barred from white baseball.
This connection was not lost on the great newspapers of the Negro press, in whose pages the song was referred to as “the Caucasian national anthem.” Black columnists discredited the song by unearthing a long suppressed third stanza (“No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”) that can be read as reflecting the composer’s embrace of slavery and the anger felt toward British officers who used the promise of emancipation to recruit enslaved African-Americans.
By the early 20th century, African-Americans were already turning their backs on the “Star-Spangled Banner” in favor of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — known as the Negro national anthem — written by James Weldon Johnson and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson. Passages like “We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered” acknowledge the place of lynching and slavery in the national history.
Students, read both articles, and then tell us:
What do you think about Mr. Cuban’s decision to stop playing the national anthem before games? What do you think about the N.B.A.’s ruling that the song must be played before all games? Who do you think should get to decide whether the anthem is played? Why?
What are your own feelings about “The Star-Spangled Banner” or your own country’s national anthem? Does it reflect what you believe about your country? Do you feel that it represents you and is inclusive of your experiences? Have you ever decided to leave the room, remain seated or kneel during the national anthem as a form of protest? How did it feel to take that action? How did others react to your choice?
Did Mr. Staples’s essay about Black Americans’ experiences of the national anthem resonate with you or change your mind about the song? Why or why not? Whose perspectives and experiences do you believe are left out of your national anthem?
Some critics of America’s national anthem take issue with the song’s author, Francis Scott Key, who, in the 1800s, enslaved people and spoke publicly of African Americans as “a distinct and inferior race of people.” How much does a writer’s background matter? Should Mr. Key’s actions and beliefs affect whether we use “The Star-Spangled Banner” as our national anthem?
How would you change your national anthem? In December of 2020, the Australian government changed a line in the country’s national anthem from “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free” to “we are one and free,” acknowledging the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have lived on the continent for more than 60,000 years. Look at the full lyrics of your national anthem. Are there any words or lines that you would change to make it better reflect your beliefs about your country? If you wouldn’t change anything, tell us why.
Is there another song from the past or present that you think would be more appropriate as your country’s anthem? For example, in the United States, Black Americans have adopted “Lift Every Voice and Sing”; some sports teams regularly start their games with “God Bless America”; and Jennifer Lopez sang “This Land Is Your Land” at President Biden’s inauguration (a song that some Native Americans say perpetuates the erasure of Indigenous experiences). What song do you think would be most inclusive, meaningful and reflective of your country and why?
Read this excerpt that details the pandemic routine of one of those mothers, Dekeda Brown, 41, who lives in Olney, Md., and is married with two daughters, 11 and 15:
Dekeda was sitting at her dining room table — her “war room,” as she calls it — with two laptops open, typing like a court stenographer. In her left ear, she was listening in on a conference call for work; in her right was the voice of her 15-year-old daughter’s special education teacher, giving a math lesson. Leilani, who has severe nonvocal autism and sensory processing disorder — meaning, she cannot speak words, needs help with most daily tasks and finds everyday stimuli excruciating — communicates with the teacher by touch-screen.
It was late afternoon, and Dekeda’s husband, Derrick, 46, had just walked in the door from work. He is a building engineer at a medical office. He waved hello, called up the stairs to London, 11, and made his usual beeline to the fridge.
Dekeda opened her mouth to remind him to wash his hands, but he began motioning toward the computer. “The teacher called on Leilani!” he said.
Quickly, Dekeda unmuted the computer and apologized, then helped her daughter type her answer into the screen. Moments later, she heard a pause in her other ear. It was from her boss. “What do you think, Dekeda?”
“This went on for an hour,” Dekeda said, of the toggling back and forth, trying not to mix up the mute buttons, apologizing to each party. “At the end, I retreated to my bedroom and cried.”
How does this in-depth profile of Dekeda’s life add to your understanding, or change your perspective gained from the rest of the series? Which lines, moments or quotes stand out, are most affecting or memorable? What connections can you make between Dekeda’s current life and the issues working mothers are facing around the country?
If you have time, you can read the entire article before responding to the questions above about any of the women profiled.
Option 2: Explore possible solutions.
In “Working Moms Are Struggling. Here’s What Would Help.,” another piece in the series, Claire Cain Miller writes that mothers need support now more than ever — in the form of government policies, employer assistance or partners who share in more of the work. Here are a few excerpts:
How employers could help
Offer part-time schedules or unpaid leaves. In the United States, it’s unusual for white-collar employers to offer part-time schedules — and they pay disproportionately less when they do. But European countries with laws requiring that workers be able to go part time have been better able to keep women in the work force.
Pay for child care. At this point in the pandemic, mothers don’t just need time; they need money. They could use it in the way that best suits their family — for child care, tutoring or to support themselves during an unpaid leave. But few companies have paid for child care.
How government could help
The United States is the only rich country without paid family leave, and one of few without subsidized child care. If it had those policies in place pre-pandemic, parents’ lives during lockdown would have been much easier.
In Sweden, for example, new parents get 16 months of paid leave to use until their child is 8, so some have been drawing on it during the pandemic. Parents also have four months of paid leave to take care of sick children up to age 12, which the government allowed people to use when schools were closed during the pandemic. In many European countries, child care centers are publicly funded, so there was no doubt they would still be available when it was safe to reopen.
How individuals could help
Men, do your part. While mothers and fathers have both increased the amount of time they spend on child care during the pandemic, the share they each do hasn’t changed all that much. There are concrete ways men could do more: Work in the common area of the home and give the separate home office, if you have one, to the woman. Take over an entire child-related task, like coordinating pediatric care, communicating with the school or planning a virtual birthday party. Get the children out of the house.
Ms. Goldstein’s advice for women: “Whatever the biggest gendered problem is in your life, make it a man’s problem. When men start to feel these disruptions and stressors the same way women do, that’s when we’ll start seeing real systemic change for the better.”
Read the entire article, then tell us what you think: What is your opinion of these solutions? Which do you think are most pressing or practical? What other ideas do you have to address the current crisis?
Imagine you have been hired to create a new article for this series. Who would you profile and why? What questions would you ask? How can you help peers and the public understand and appreciate the lives, hardships and resiliency of mothers navigating the daily grind during the pandemic?
Using text, audio, photos and/or video, tell the story of a mother navigating the coronavirus pandemic. You can choose to spotlight your own mother, someone in your extended family or another mother in your school or community. Remember to ask permission if you plan to record or share the person’s name publicly or with your class.
First, brainstorm in advance a list of questions you could ask in order to learn about their experiences, like: What was your life like before the pandemic? What is your daily life like now? What are the particular challenges of being a mom at this time? How has the pandemic affected your mental, physical and emotional health? What would you like others to know about being a mom during the pandemic? How could others — employers, the government and fathers — help mothers during this crisis?
Although I understand why the board of education would want to rename schools named after figures tied to racism, sexism, and slavery, I agree with Yukina Grady in that they should be more focused on other problems that are much more important. There is still a lot of work to be done on bringing students safely back into a classroom setting, and I believe that spending time arguing on if a school should be renamed is both a waste of time and resources.
How Far Is Too Far When We Judge History by Modern Norms and Standards?
I think that renaming schools named for historical figures is a movement that is highly damaging to our American identity and history. Though I obviously disagree with naming schools after people who are solely famous due to their ties to slavery and racism, people need to weigh the good that people like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington did with the bad. The past was a different time, where people held different beliefs to our own, and to judge past figures with our modern moral standards is ridiculous. In addition to this, nearly any past figure likely had beliefs that many would consider homophobic, racist, sexist, or immoral. For example, MLK was extremely homophobic, and Abraham Lincoln was racist towards African Americans. However, while these shortcomings shouldn’t be ignored, the good both people did for our country far outweighed the bad, so they should by no means be disgraced for their shortcomings, which are small in comparison to the good they did.
We cannot judge the past by today’s standards. It is one thing if the person the school is named after has no historical significance except for being racist, but to my knowledge I do not believe that is the case in most situations. The renaming of Abraham Lincoln High School is utterly ludicrous. He was the leader of the North in the Civil War and he signed the Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves. I am not saying we should look past people’s faults, but that we should try to view these things in the perspective of the majority of people that were alive at the time. In the next century, people will look at us and say our standards were horrible.
I think it’s important in this situation to understand why the names of those on public buildings were chosen. Were they chosen maliciously because of an express support of slavery and the like, or is it chosen because we as a community consider those people to be an embodiment of our highest ideals. I choose to believe the latter, and think that renaming schools half hazardously is an ill thought out idea. The people of the past had flaws of course, as all humans do, and some of the flaws were of highest magnitude, such as slavery. However, I think we in the modern era too easily disparage the names of the past for their bad actions, and sweep past their numerous accomplishments.
Can we find in human history a leader or hero who is flawless and has always made the correct decision not only in their time, but ours as well. Society’s morals are constantly evolving and changing over time and no person can always be one hundred percent good throughout all periods of time. However, men like Washington and Lincoln did perform acts that had lasting impacts on the country and benefited it greatly. Renaming is not only rescinding the negative aspects of these people, but also in some way the positive ones too. We go to school in the nation Washington founded and Lincoln preserved, but can’t look past the fact that they were still a product of their time. This is not to refute the idea that nothing can be renamed, but when renaming a broader context should be taken into account.
Is Renaming the Most Effective Way to Educate About the Past?
Although I believe people who have committed terrible offenses or participated in institutions that have dehumanized and disadvantaged people are not deserving of the honor of having schools named after them, I do not believe renaming schools is an effective way of educating people on the problems of the past. First and foremost, it is impossible to change what has already happened. We must learn from the heinous actions of our ancestors to build a better society. Renaming a school doesn’t do this; it simply erases a name. A more effective way of making the point that a person’s actions have problems is teaching objectively the hardships people endured due to the decisions of prominent historical figures in schools.
All of these things, although sometimes terrible, are nevertheless, part of our countries history. I see places like Wilmington’s own, “Hugh McCray Park” being re-named, and forgotten by future generations. These places are our past, and like it or not, our past, our nation’s history, was not the prettiest by a long shot. This is why I vote no, we should not rename Schools or public buildings with ties to unjust history. Look at it this way: Each year, students all over the earth learn about the horrors of the Holocaust, World War I, The Civil War, and so many more brutally unjust forces of human nature. Now, although this history, the history of our world, may be broken, sad, and not something you may want to remember, it is, nevertheless, the history of our existence. That is not something we ought to simply cast away, or paint over.
In one hand Manuel Reyes Estrada carried a form and a pencil, in the other a bucket filled with small fish and a plastic Bucanero beer cup. “It is like this,” he said. “We, the health brigade employees, are only allowed to write with pencils.” His superiors, he explained, use pens. In the afternoon, the superiors visit the houses where the health brigade employees have worked earlier in the day — “to check if we have done our work well.”
Manuel stopped for a second on the unpaved road in the Cuban city of Holguín to fill in the house numbers on his otherwise empty form. He swept the sweat away from his face.
Every day in towns across Cuba, a vast array of workers — from inspectors and fumigators to truck drivers and pipe layers — takes to the streets in a coordinated effort to provide clean water to their fellow citizens.
Among other responsibilities, the health workers conduct exhaustive inspections of rooftop water tanks, ensuring that the water is clean and free of mosquito larvae, thereby helping to prevent the transmission of tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
A significant portion of Cuba’s available drinking water is lost through its leaky and antiquated pipelines — more than 50 percent, by some estimates.
In recent years, infrastructure problems have been compounded by droughts and rising temperatures. For much of the population, running water is available only sporadically — in some cases, for one or two hours a day, every few days. While it flows, residents store the available water in cisterns or tanks, which then serve as potential breeding environments for mosquitoes.
Manuel ignored the barking dog as he entered the house. A woman wearing curlers in her hair showed him the spiral staircase that leads to the roof. After locating the building’s water tank, he used a small mirror to illuminate its shadowy interior.
Using the plastic beer cup, Manuel scooped five little fish from his bucket into the water tank. “Normally we use Abate,” he said, referring to a larvicide, also known as temefos, used to treat water. But the chemical wasn’t available, he explained, and so the fish, which eat the larvae, are employed as a natural — if complicated — alternative.
With a background in anthropology, I have long been interested in how people live and manage their everyday challenges.
During previous visits to Cuba, I noticed the daily struggles for fresh water: people hassling with water pumps, the streets soaked because of faulty pipelines, water trucks continuously plying the roads. Born and raised in the rainy Netherlands, where clean drinking water is taken for granted, I hadn’t expected water to be a scarcity on a tropical island.
In February 2019, Cubans voted to approve a new constitution, which, among many other provisions, established the right to clean water. I decided to make this constitutional right a starting point for a project on Cuba’s underreported water crisis.
I traveled to Cuba for six weeks in April and May 2019, and for four more weeks in January 2020. On the first trip I learned how different areas experience different problems — and find solutions. I also discovered how many professions were involved in providing water to residents.
By shadowing different workers who were involved in guaranteeing water access on various parts of the island, I began to see a cross-section of contemporary Cuba.
In the town of Trinidad, for example, I met Alexis Alonso Mendoza, who described himself as “the most popular man in town.”
Trinidad is divided into several districts, each of which usually has running water for two hours every five days. As the “water-key man,” Alexis is responsible for turning the underground sluices that change the direction of the water within the town.
Using an off-line map, I located the small clinics, called policlínicas, where, at 8 a.m., the inspectors and fumigators of the health brigade gather before dispersing into the streets.
I climbed aboard several water trucks, called pipas, which supply water in the event of a broken pipeline or insufficient pressure — or when functioning plumbing simply doesn’t exist.
Many of the drivers were kind enough to let me observe how they fill their trucks and distribute the water. I witnessed firsthand the bureaucracy involved — and the seemingly endless amounts of time the drivers spent waiting to fill their tanks.
I also hopped on the horse-drawn carriages that carry the water throughout the city, and observed how Cubans — with an ingeniousness and thoroughness — tried to fix their water hoses and pumps with whatever materials were available to them.
It’s difficult to know the full effects of the pandemic on Cuba’s water crisis. For much of 2020, the country largely controlled the virus, but a dearth of tourists led to one of the worst food shortages in nearly 25 years. Infections increased dramatically after lockdowns were lifted and the country’s borders were opened in November. Since then, additional stresses to the public health system may have exacerbated inspection, fumigation and delivery.
While walking back to the policlínica at the end of one of his shifts, Manuel, who has worked for the health brigade for 13 years, reflected on his work. He was pleased, he said, to be “contributing to the health of my compatriots.” But he also enjoys the interactions — visiting people, having a chat. “Often they invite me for coffee,” he said.
A man on a bicycle greeted him as he rode past. “Manuel, can you bring me some fish tomorrow? I will get you some cigars in return.”
Later, Manuel passed his supervisor. “You know the green house at the corner, where the older lady lives alone?” he said. “I found mosquito larvae in the lower tank on the patio.”
“OK,” his supervisor responded. “I’ll send the fumigators to smoke them out. See you tomorrow, mi vida.”
Alison is delighted to announce that it has been awarded the Civil Solidarity Prize by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) for the publication of the free course . The course was published in February last year to help the world combat the Covid-19 pandemic by informing people about the virus and teaching them how to best protect themselves. The award recognises Alison’s not-for-profit initiative which has succeeded in making accurate and life-saving information about the virus available to as many people around the globe as possible.
In order to achieve the ambitious goal of making this vital information accessible to absolutely everyone, Alison coordinated a global translation project by calling on the goodwill and talent of our community of Learners worldwide. Thousands of Learners from every corner of the world responded to the call for translators and volunteered their time to translate the course. To date, the course has been translated into over 70 languages, including more than 20 European languages. (The full list of languages in which Coronavirus: What You Need To Know is available can be found .)
Alison Emery, who coordinated the project, was blown away by the enthusiasm, the dedication and the sheer volume of the volunteers. “In times of crisis, it is heartwarming to see and feel the solidarity and effort of people willing to give their time and eagerness to help a cause,” said Alison. “I was amazed at everyone’s contribution and zeal towards this common goal.”
The Civil Solidarity Prize also acknowledges Alison’s , an initiative launched in September 2020 to celebrate, honour and thank the volunteers who took part in the project.
A year since its launch, the course has been completed by more than 350,000 people. In order to encourage people to take the course and learn how to protect themselves and their families, Alison made the PDF Certification available free of charge worldwide. The software behind the course was also designed to be as reactive as possible, allowing the content to be updated as the crisis evolves.
“Being awarded the Civil Society Prize is a great honour for Alison. During the ebola crisis in West Africa, feedback on the ebola course made it clear that many felt that Alison was the one source of trusted information that they had access to,” says Alison CEO, Mike Feerick. “Alison is one of the largest learning platforms in the world and, conscious of a duty to our users, we undertook to translate the coronavirus course into as many languages as possible to make sure that no one was denied access to accurate and safe information. This award belongs to the hardworking Alison team members and the more than 5,000 translation volunteers.”
