This book is a story about promoting systemic change of SEL in the mindset and capabilities of staff, in the structure of the district, and in the vision, mission, and policies that guide the district.

Describes 100 real-life ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators.

Book reviewed in this article: Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–1945 and the American Cover‐Up. By Sheldon H. Harris.

By focusing on Chinese cultural formations and critical discourses of the last decade of the century, the author dissects the intellectual, economic, and political contradictions of a turbulent era. This wide-ranging, deeply interdisciplinary work demarcates the cultural terrain by examining diverse media: film, television, avant-garde art, and literature, as well as critical theory and intellectual history.

The 1990s “Decade of the Brain” stimulated research on many fronts and resulted in considerable advancement in neuroscience. Unfortunately, we have been slow to develop a policy dialogue to anticipate and deal with vast implications. Simply put, our political and social institutions have not kept pace with these advances. At the base, policy issues center on how we interpret the implications of these developments, especially given the complexity of the subject and the speculative nature of much of the evidence to (...) date. The issues discussed here go to the heart of the major problems facing the world today and challenge basic assumptions on both the right and the left of the political/ideological spectrum as well as the standard social science model of behavior. As a result, the findings of neuroscience are open to ideological maneuvering designed to put the most expedient spin on their meaning. (shrink)

Rapid advances in biomedicine, accompanied by changing social values, are thrusting bioethical decision making into the political spectrum. This article examines the forces which are politicizing bioethical decisions and demonstrates the challenges they raise. It also presents an overview of the current political context and concludes that American political institutions and processes are not well-suited for dealing with these intense, sensitive bioethical issues. Although the article reflects skepticism concerning the ability of the political system to fulfill the expansive demands confronting (...) it, it ends by suggesting several potential adaptations which should make the process more responsive and the institution's actions more effectual. (shrink)

Even more so than in other areas of medicine, issues at the end of life elucidate the importance of religion and culture, as well as the role of the family and other social structures, in how these issues are framed. This article presents an overview of the variation in end-of-life treatment issues across 12 highly disparate countries. It finds that many assumptions held in the western bioethics literature are not easily transferred to other cultural settings.

As is evident from the other articles in this special issue, end-of-life treatment has engendered a vigorous dialogue in the United States over the past few decades because decision making at the end of life raises broad and difficult ethical issues that touch on health professionals, patients, and their families. This concern is exacerbated by the high cost related to the end of life in the U.S. Moreover, in light of demographic patterns, progressively scarce health care resources, and an expanding (...) array of life-saving technologies, decisions at the end of life are becoming problematic matters of public and, thus, scholarly concern in most countries. Issues at the end of life are central not only to bioethics but also raise important ancillary policy dimensions. (shrink)

The paper outlines the policy context and summarizes the numerous policy issues that AD raises from the more generic to the unique. It posits that strong public fears of AD and its future prevalence projections and costs, raise increasingly difficult policy dilemmas. After reviewing the costs in human lives and money and discussing the latest U.S. policy initiatives, the paper presents two policy areas as examples the demanding policy decisions we face. The first focuses on the basic regulatory function of (...) protecting the public from those who would exploit these fears. The second centers on the well-debated issues of advance directives and euthanasia that surround AD. Although more dialogue, education and research funding are needed to best serve the interests of AD patients and families as well as society at large, this will be challenging because of the strong feelings and divisions AD engenders. (shrink)

The social exchange theory of reasoning, which is championed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, falls under the general rubric “evolutionary psychology” and asserts that human reasoning is governed by content-dependent, domain-specific, evolutionarily-derived algorithms. According to Cosmides and Tooby, the presumptive existence of what they call “cheater-detection” algorithms disconfirms the claim that we reason via general-purpose mechanisms or via inductively acquired principles. We contend that the Cosmides/Tooby arguments in favor of domain-specific algorithms or evolutionarily-derived mechanisms fail and that the notion (...) of a social exchange rule, which is central to their theory, is not correctly characterized. As a consequence, whether or not their conclusion is true cannot be established on the basis of the arguments they have presented. (shrink)