The Magazine for African-American Home Educators

African Americans are the fastest growing demographic group of home schoolers in the United States. Because this is a new development in home schooling, there is a great deal of interest in the world of epidemiological research concerning the details of the African American home schooling experience. The focus, specifically, is on African American experience when newly home schooling, as well as the experience of African American parents of home school graduates.Resources for African American home schoolers are becoming more and more available. A group focused solely on African American families who home school is called African American Unschooling. It is a network with members throughout the country, all of whom are black families who home school.A magazine is also available for those who would like to know more about the experience of African American home schoolers and perhaps pick up a few tips. The magazine is called FUNgasa: Free Oneself! The Magazine for African-American Home Educators.Another resource in the making combines the efforts of African American Unschooling and FUNgasa. African American Rosetta Stone American English Unschooling steadily works to gather data from various African American home schooling families in the form of surveys. With the data they collect, the editors of FUNgasa will create a new series of guidebooks aimed specifically at African American home schooling parents.By finding out the issues of black home schoolers and their parents, these guidebooks will attempt to help families better handle the pitfalls with the information they need to make their experience run smoother. What will make these guidebooks different from the other home schooling guides currently on the shelves is their Afro-centric focus.African American culture is often one of the fundamental reasons that African American families choose to home school. By incorporating black culture into home school curricula, African American families have the opportunity to impart a rich history and proud tradition that gets lost in the predominantly white-favored public and private school systems.The opportunity to network with other black home schooling families and learn from articles written from an African American perspective, with the black American experience in mind, is a major victory in the world of home schooling. What heretofore has been a predominantly white movement is now opening up to embrace the cultural experience of all races and ethnicities, making the home schooling a truly inclusive one.

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Online Degrees Courses

Around your daily work schedule, which means it gives rise to a level of unmatched flexibility online degrees. It may also have a logo that looks like the logo of a legitimate accredit. It could also be that its website has too diminutive information and does not include names or contact in turn aside from a phone number and email address. This is one of the main reasons that there is a need for online degree courses and online programs that provide a great deal of expediency and flexibility in the quest for a degree that meets their educational aspirations and needs. People do not in truth have the energy or the inclination to spend too much time on anything, which means that it is a world which places a premium on instant gratification. Checking its accreditation could be the most important feature in your decision-making on which online high school to attend. While non-accredited schools should be in employ out of your list, not all accreditations are Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin) satisfactory. Given the kind of profitable challenges that face the globe, it only makes sense that people be interested in and view online middle schools, mba nursing online degree, online education, online training programs that allow them the alternative of completing their education while also doing jobs to increase their income. The accreditation should include administration and not just a license to do business. It is a process of assessing a school's program and policies to see if it meets the criteria set by an outside agency. If the school meets the bare minimum criteria, it is given the accreditation. There are some schools out there that go as far as making up their own fake authorization. In fact, accreditation from the erroneous source, such as an accreditation mill, is worse than no accreditation at all. A fake accredit or may have ambiguous names that imply that it is a national or regional accredit or when it is not. It may also have a logo that looks like the logo of a legitimate accredited Attending a fake school or a school that is not properly attributed may cost you jobs or opportunities to further your education. The accreditation is in fact a protection instrument to protect students, schools and employers. This assures you of an online academy's quality offer online high schools, online home schools online courses Ensure that other schools and employers will distinguish your diploma or the courses you have taken.

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Home Schooling Advantages to Consider

Homeschooling has been going on since the beginning of time. There are many homeschooling advantages when you really think about it. Let us state the obvious ones first, homeschooling allows for a flexible schedule. Your child does not have to be at school at a certain time you can start whatever hour of the day is convenient for you. You do not have to worry about missing the bus. You can teach subjects that may not be offered in a traditional school setting. Individual attention is another important part of homeschooling. Homeschooling gives your child all the individualized attention they need. If your child is weak in one area, you can devote more time to it. Traditional schools do not offer this.Homeschooling can become a family activity, for example field trips or science experiments. The child receives more quality time with a parent and siblings, if they too are homeschooled. Another great aspect of home schooling is that there is no peer pressure.Religious learning is another aspect that can be covered in homeschooling that is not covered in traditional school. Parents can guide their children much more closely with homeschooling when it comes to morals and religious practices and theories. You can also incorporate the things your child is interested in into the schoolwork. You can also teach "life" skills like balancing a budget, and planning a shopping list.It is also a proven fact that a large Rosetta Stone French portion of the day in school is spent waiting by your child. They wait for others to finish one thing before moving on to the next, they wait for lunch, they wait for the school bus, and they wait for the teacher to move on to the next subject, or while they change classes. When being homeschooled all this waiting is gone and your child can get his work done in a shorter amount of time. It's been documented that one on one instruction facilitates learning at a much greater pace than can be done in a one to many environment. The homeschooling parent has the flexibility to adjust the schedule as learning dictates. You'll find that because this teaching model is so much more efficient than classroom learning, that you'll be able to dig deeper and stay longer within subjects and still have plenty of time on your homeschool yearly calendar.Preparation is always a good thing and with today's technologies it's much easier. Get out there and read books, find some good online homeschooling forums that you like and jump in. You'll soon get a feel for how those ahead of you on the path have approached the very same questions that you have. Be prepared for some sanding and buffing of your schedule and your plans until you find what works best for you, your child(ren) and your family. Do you have educational training and pedigrees that schoolteachers have? Probably not; but as you now know, in the case of homeschooling you don't need many of them. So, homeschooling... can you really do this? I think you'll find that with the availability of so many resources today, combined with your enthusiasm for your child's success and the love of being their parent that... yes you can do this.

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ALPINE Genre Glacial electronic pop

He's particularly serious about his country audience. Not only is he heading to Nashville in June to work with some sizeable names for his second album, due in July, he has already found a great collaborator closer to home. ''I just finished a writin' session yesterday with Bill Chambers and we're really excited about what we came out with,'' Dickens says. ''He was that happy with the song, he kind of mentioned to me that it's one of the greatest things he's been involved with. ''But who knows, mate? There could be 10 better ones on the way, too.'' ALPINE Genre Glacial electronic pop.From Melbourne. Label Ivy League.Coming gigs April 1, 7pm, Metro Theatre, 9550 3666, $28.70 (supporting Sparkadia and Operator Please). They started out under the name Swiss, changed their name to Alpine (to avoid confusion with ace Adelaide troupe the Swiss) and have named their debut EP ''Zrich'' (umlaut and all). It is, at first glance, an odd fixation for a bunch of friends who met each other either through school or university in Melbourne. ''Those names, they definitely kind of tie in with the feel of the sound we want from our music,'' explains Phoebe Baker, one of the six-piece's two chanteuses. ''Alpine seemed to fit in with that whole kind of - I don't know, you think of going skiing and being up in the Alps. It's so beautiful and fresh and simple.'' From the crisp, driving beats of the EP's lead track, Heartlove, to the atmospheric, dare we say chilled, vibe of Too Safe and Villages, Alpine achieve the desired effect. Also, to Baker's delight, her band have been likened to everyone from Mercury Prize winners the xx to pop ice queen Goldfrapp. In fact, the hardest thing for the band might be their having to evoke the album's wintry vibe in packed, hot Australian venues. ''We've got a whole bunch of cases of fans and fake snow,'' Baker jokes. Rosetta Stone Software ELECTRIC EMPIRE Genre Old-school soul/RB.From One lives in Sydney, two in Melbourne. ''The best of both worlds,'' Dennis Dowlut says with a laugh. Label Their own, Electric Empire Music.Coming gigs March 18, 8pm, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst, 1300 438 849, $23. Riding high on the success of their electronic funk project Disco Montego, Dowlut and his younger brother, Darren, had a plan to infiltrate the US market in 2005. ''The Electric Empire band is something that Darren and I wanted to create when we were going to the States,'' Dowlut says. ''We were gonna take our material and then, instead of being an electronic outfit and producers, we were just gonna put together this incredible band with everyone with the ability to sing and play and do harmonies and write and produce.'' In the cruellest twist of fate, just before the brothers were to leave, Darren, at 26, died of cancer, having been diagnosed less than two months before. After taking a break and eventually reuniting with long-time friends and collaborators Aaron Mendoza and Jason Heerah, Dowlut put together the band he and Darren had dreamt of. These three members of Electric Empire not only each have the various aforementioned talents (they even share lead-vocal duties), they make the kind of exquisite, authentic soul you rarely hear these days - you can hear the influence of artists as magnificent as Al Green and Earth, Wind Fire on last year's self-titled debut album. It's a sound the Dowlut brothers tried before with their early-2000s incarnation, Kaylan. This time, Dowlut believes, Australia is ready for it.

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I learnt a lot from them and felt attached to them

There was so much about protecting kids from emotions and keeping things censored. We had nothing.'' When J.K.Rowling sat down to write in a flat in Edinburgh as a depressed single mother on welfare, she tapped into the global mindset of a voiceless generation and sang it back to them in a language they understood. Harry may be a wizard but he is also an endearingly normal hero, enduring the same romantic insecurities, friendship pressures and anger issues that any child or adolescent would. At the core of his being is the loneliness of being orphaned at such a young age, of being abused by the sadistic Dursleys and of being misunderstood by all but a handful of folk, most of whom seem to die. ''It is definitely a book about death,'' says Shelley. Rowling, who, like the Bronte sisters, once lived next door to a graveyard, began writing six months before her own mother died of multiple sclerosis. ''Everything deepened and darkened,'' she said in James Runcie's TV documentary, J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life. ''It seeped into every part of the book.'' She went on to describe her father, from whom she is estranged, as ''frightening''. In Harry Potter, there is no shortage of father figures: Dumbledore, Sirius, Hagrid surround the boy wizard with idealised versions of what he never had. But they weren't just there for Harry: ''Dumbledore was a big role model in my life,'' says Shelley, whose own parents are divorced. ''In a way he was a perfect dad and a mentor. I was actually going through my books the other day and I could still see the little tear marks on the page when he died. It was very hard Rosetta Stone because here was this great father figure and then suddenly he was gone. You don't expect that to happen. It was like losing the figure that you aspired to be, and it was like, 'What do I do now?''' Crombie, who runs the fan group Melbourne Muggles, went into a ''deep grief'' when Dumbledore died in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. ''He was like a god, he gave advice and moral lessons and life lessons and he is the person in the book you look up to, and to have him die was so tragic. ''I went to school on Monday after reading it [the book] all weekend and I was five minutes late for class and the teacher said, 'You're late Erica', and I burst into tears and she said, 'Oh, you've been reading Harry Potter'. I cried for so long. They [the characters] felt very real. I learnt a lot from them and felt attached to them. They did have a parental role and they'd teach you a lot of things. You don't just take your moral lessons from your parents; you take them from a lot of adult people in your life.'' While death stalks the pages, love underpins the whole story; namely, how a dead mother's love offers protection against the most evil of evils. The ultimate fantasy of maternal love sustains Harry time and again when he is caught in the grip of Lord Voldemort and his ilk, and that love sees him through to the bitter end. Absent or dead parents are a remarkable feature of children's literature. The Famous Five would surely not have had so many adventures if there had been more parental involvement in their lives, other than mad Uncle Quentin and ineffectual Aunt Fanny. Roald Dahl also liked to kill off the parents or make them truly awful, like the Dursleys. For Shelley, Croft and Vanheusden, the books took off for them when they were on the brink of adolescence; at an age when they were starting to form their own opinions and imagining life outside the family. And they felt the pain of Harry's abandonment, even if they weren't orphans.

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This section has two levels

There is another wellsignposted recreation area on the eastern side of Lookout Rd. This section has two levels. There is a picnic area just off Lookout Rd which is the starting point for the Lookout Walk (20 minutes), supposedly offering spectacular views, though sometimes the dense tree growth obscures the vista. A subsidiary road leads down to the Main Ridge Picnic Area from whence signposted walking trails head off into the very attractive and quite dense bushland, ranging in length from the very pleasant Senses Track (150 m) through the Rainforest Walk (1.5 km) to the Main Ridge Walk. For further information ring (02) 4952 1449. Shortland Wetlands Centre The Wetlands Centre is a 45hectare area on the edge of Hexham Swamp which has been returned to its natural state after spells as a rubbish dump and a football club in the days when marshland was regarded as waste ground. There are walking trails, ranging from 300 m to 1.6 km, interpretation trails with help stations, a bicycle trail (3 km also suitable for walking) which takes in an old Aboriginal stone manufactory site, a canoe trail along Ironbark Creek and its tributaries, bicycle and canoe hire (or bring your own), picnic and barbecue facilities, ands a visitors' centre where there is a theatrette, a classroom/laboratory (the centre caters for schools and research groups), a cafe and souvenirs for sale. There are around 170 species of birds on the grounds, including about 30 which breed onsite. Some, such as the freckled duck and magpie geese are rare or endangered. Other species include black swans, ibis, superb blue wrens, nankeen night herons, brown honey sparrows, little grebes, yellowfaced honeyeaters, dusky moorhens, redrumped parrots, willy wagtails, swamp hens and egrets. The latter nest in paperbark trees in summer and can be viewed from a special viewing tower (bring your binoculars). There are also reptiles, amphibians, mammals, insects, fish and other pond life. To get there turn south off the highway at Sandgate along Wallsend Rd which becomes Sandgate Rd, then turn right at the roundabout. For furter information contact the Centre on (02) 4951 6466 or . They are open seven days from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Mt Sugarloaf Lookout Main Rd, which heads west Rosetta Stone German off Lookout Rd adjacent Blackbutt Reserve, becomes George Booth Drive near West Wallsend and continues on beyond Seahampton, at the outskirts of Newcastle, towards Kurri Kurri. Just beyond Seahampton is a signposted turnoff to the left into Mt Sugarloaf Rd which takes you to the top of Mt Sugarloaf itself where, at 412 m above sealevel, there are picnic and barbecue areas, several walking tracks (ranging from 275 m to 1.6 km) and some magnificent views of Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the Lower Hunter Valley. The two large steel structures at the top are TV transmitters. The view from the top carpark is eastwards. In the foreground is West Wallsend with the industry about the Hunter estuary in the distance and, beyond that, the ocean. The large inland body of water to the south is Lake Macquarie with Cockle Creek wending westwards and, at dusk, the bright lights of Cardiff are plainly visible at the northern end of the lake. The bitumen walkway which heads off from the carpark winds its way up and around the summit and leads to The Pinnacle from whence the views are outstanding. To the southeast it is possible to see a great deal of the Central Coast and its hinterland dominated by the lake system.

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There's a touch of the Porsche Cayenne around the Cpillar

The Tucson is built on the Elantra platform, a monocoque that has been modified for 4WD duties, with independent suspension all round. It may be a compact 4WD but there's a substantial weight penalty to its equation. The Tucson tips the scale at a hefty 1678kg for the V6, 1648kg for the fourcylinder about 300kg heavier than some of its competitors. That affects performance, fuel consumption and driving dynamics. Size wise, the car fits pretty much between the RAV4 and the larger CRV. It doesn't look that much smaller than a Santa Fe, either. It has a longer wheelbase, at 2630mm, versus the Santa Fe's 2620mm, but is shorter overall by 175mm, because of reduced front and rear overhangs. The similarity poses another problem for Hyundai, which admits it now has to push the Santa Fe higher up the food chain so its sales aren't cannibalised by the Tucson. To be beaten by a competitor is unfortunate; to be gazumped by one's own begins to look clumsy. Supervising designer YoungIl Kim said he wanted the Tucson to retain a familiarity with the Santa Fe but without its shoulder and hip bulges, to achieve a more modern, streamlined look. "Since we're having a small success with the Santa Fe, especially in the States, I have tried to put a similar styling language onto Tucson," he said. "But I have asked my people to get rid of that (bulge) on the sides of the body. Clean, but similar. "For the future products that we are going to develop, we're going to have a similar image." The excesses of early Tucson conceptual sketches, which featured horizontal ribs running along the flanks of the doors and more pronounced front bumperbar bolsters, have been pared back. There's a touch of the Porsche Cayenne around the Cpillar. The result is a taut shape, devoid of the ostentatiousness that can afflict Korean car design. The Tucson's fresh style, however, highlights the Santa Fe's ageing looks. Step inside the Tucson and there's an immediate sense of spaciousness. There's decent head, shoulder and footwell space, and an important factor for people Rosetta Stone Portuguese who have a growing family or travel with plenty of friends there's more rear kneeroom than expected, thanks to the car's longer wheelbase. But the short rear overhang compromises cargo space; a couple of suitcases and you've just about filled the 325litre space. This could prove a significant shortcoming for this sort of recreational vehicle. At least the rear seats fold flat, in a 60/40 split, creating a useful 805litre cargo bay. From the driver's seat, the interior looks agreeable enough: clear dials with a crescentshaped tacho hugging the circular speedo, a centre console trimmed in faux aluminium, a more modern appearance to the overused fake wood, which, thankfully, stays behind for the Korean domestic model. On the Koreanspec cars examined, there was the usual roundup of powered steering, windows, mirrors, central locking and airconditioning. The CD audio system can play MP3recorded CDs, giving about 10 hours of music from a single disc. The seats were leather upholstered but Australian trim levels are still being discussed, Hyundai's Richard Power says, with items such as heated seats making way for a sunroof, for example. Driverassist technologies in the Korean cars variously included either traction control or a moresophisticated electronic stability program, cruise control, antilock brakes, plus six airbags, including side curtain bags. The Tucson certainly appears to crash well, at least in controlled frontal impact tests. Hyundai demonstrated the car's crashworthiness at its Namyang research centre by conducting a USspecification test hurtling a Tucson, two $200,000 dummies and a load of sensors into a concrete wall at 56kmh.

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Keep stimulus but spend wisely

The Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens's, statement that the risk of a serious contraction in the Australian economy has now passed is a welcome one. Emergency averted, everyone. And so interest rates must rise from emergency lows. But this is not the time for the Federal Government to start cutting back its planned stimulus, as the Opposition argues it should. First, the stimulus is already scheduled to wind down over time. The biggest stimulus is already behind us with spending worth 1.5 per cent of the entire economy in the first six months of this year. This will wind down to stimulus of 0.5 per cent of GDP in the second half of next year. These figures are no secret to the Reserve Bank, which will take them into account when raising rates in months to come. Australians are fortunate to be served by two economic policy masters, wielding two very different macroeconomic policy tools: the Reserve Bank with interest rates and the Federal Government with spending and taxing decisions. These two tools have different features that make them better suited to different tasks. Advertisement: Story continues below The interest rate policy lever changes the incentives for individuals and businesses to spend now or save for later. But though interest rates change quickly, people take time to respond to the changed incentives, so that monetary policy works with a lag of between six and nine months. The advantage is that it is very easy for the Reserve board to adjust interest rates regularly at its monthly meetings. So it is right, and normal, for the Reserve Bank to take early policy action and in increments. The fiscal policy lever is generally a lot slower. Cash handouts, as we saw this year, are like a sugar hit to the economy they work immediately. However, spending on infrastructure takes much longer. Decisionmaking on Rosetta Stone French V3 fiscal policy is also less timely, usually occurring only once a year with the budget. Rather than cancelling remaining stimulus projects in schools and public housing, as the Opposition would argue, it would be more prudent to simply slow the pace of implementation. It is hard to argue that schools and public housing do not need the money. But the Government now has more time to ensure the spending is not wasteful, as has been in some cases where schools have been given a duplicate hall or unnecessary classrooms. Deadlines for worthy applications should be waived. The urgency to get money out the door has passed, so there is no excuse for reckless spending now. Let more light into planning FRANK SARTOR is right. The former planning minister ejected by Nathan Rees from his ministry and now an observer and possible aspirant for the leadership has told the Herald that senior planning bureaucrats, and specifically the head of the Planning Department, Sam Haddad, should not be meeting lobbyists working on behalf of developers. Lobbyists should advise clients on the best approach to government to gain approval for a project; they should not be the point of contact between businesses and politicians or the bureaucracy. Sartor was commenting, of course, on some of the revelations that have followed the murder of Michael McGurk. Since McGurk's death there has been a lot of publicity concerning the links between McGurk, his business contacts, the Labor Government and the NSW planning bureaucracy. For example, it has emerged that the former Labor politician Graham Richardson has lobbied Haddad, personally on four separate occasions over various projects, apparently without the knowledge of the Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally. It took a parliamentary inquiry to elicit this information. Haddad, when asked initially by the Herald if Richardson had lobbied him, appeared to have forgotten what had happened five days earlier. Some, notably Keneally, appear to believe that the whole business is a dreadful beatup designed by Labor's enemies to smear the party and discredit the Government in the eye of the public. Keneally likes to spell things out. Lobbying, she told The Australian Financial Review, is legal. That is true, and no one is denying it.

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Read all about it

Photo: Rob Banks OPPOSITE the State Library of Victoria is one of the city's 10newsstands. Its big doors, opened wide to passersby, busilydisplay scores of magazines and newspapers. It's a visual overloadbut, once examined, these publications speak of the diverse specialinterests we humans enjoy. We are, they quickly reveal, a verypeculiar lot. There are scandalrags, acres of goss and gloss, anddesignsavvy lifestyle mags bloated with pretty pictures butdecidedly light on text. There are gruff magazines about cars,trucks and motorcycles. Or dip into a miasma of puzzle andcrossword compendiums, sleek computer periodicals, sciencejournals, sports and newsfeature weeklies or scaryladmags with muscles, bosomy girls and recycled sex tips. And, ofcourse, there are good oldfashioned newspapers. Periodically, for almost 40 years, library staff have beenswooping on this newsstand (or others) to collect on anallotted day an example of every single item for sale. Advertisement: Story continues below It is a snapshot of a particular moment in time, of what we arereading and thinking (or not thinking) about. It captures a sliceof contemporary culture that now, as the 21st century hits itsstride, is becoming ever more difficult to define, explain andpredict. As librarians study these inkonpaper publications examininghow and why our reading habits have changed since the 1970s,complex questions are provoked. What do the things we read sayabout us, individually and as a society? What do we hope for whenwe read, what pleasures does it afford us? How do we readshort bursts or longer stretches? Will our living librariesone day become museums, full of curios indeed, what is thefuture of the printed word and should we resist change thatthreatens to make the modern printing press, and the way we Rosetta Stone consumeinformation, obsolete? Will it all be twittered away into abbreviation? Humans have been making and consuming written texts in one formor another since the Sumerian and Egyptian empires more than 3000years ago. Their clay tablets and papyrus scrolls faithfullyrecorded information, turning thoughts, ideas and events into asymbolic language. As a consequence, we began to outsource ourmemory functions from the mind's interior realm to the physicalworld tablets and scrolls were but a prototype for today'sUSB data sticks and digital storage. Eventually, slowly, over centuries, those ancient forms ofstoring and distributing information gave way to the pages boundtogether in the formats we know today newspapers,magazines, journals, books. Just as those ancient scroll makers andtablet carvers had to change format, generations of publishers and printers have watched their techniques and forms be obliterated bya succession of new technologies. But these mutations happened over long periods, quite unlike themassive and lightningfast changes our contemporary reading habitsand cultures have undergone since the arrival of the internet,cyberspace and increasingly sophisticated computerbased and mobiletechnologies. Now, books, magazines and newspapers are said(usually by those with vested internet interests) to be starting togive off the dusty aroma of ancient artefacts. Here at the library, the collections manager, Des Cowley,unloads some cardboard boxes off a trolley.

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Travels with my mother

New Caledonia has a fond place in Liza Power's family folklore. Now she writes the next chapter. It's a pilgrimage of sorts, this journey along the spine of New Caledonia's Grande Terre. Thirty years ago, soon after they were married, my parents hireda Peugeot, armed themselves with a dogeared map and a tattered French dictionary, and traced their way from Noumea, the island of New Caledonia's capital, to Pouebo, the last village on the northcoast. At a time when few tourists strayed from the glitteringharbours, swanky resorts and palmfringed shores of Noumea, it wasan ambitious trip. The story of their adventure following dirtroads riddled with potholes, battling punctures, chancing on aresort owned by a famous French tennis player, being rescued by apuzzled farmer aboard a tractor after becoming bogged is familyfolklore. So here we are, my mother and me, she again with map and dictionary in hand, leaving the pretty sprawl of Noumea for thevelvetgreen mountains, mudbrick huts and soaring cliffs of Province Nord. Advertisement: Story continues below This is not my first visit to New Caledonia. That was when I was just 15, studying French at the Creipac language school at Nouville. It was an impressionable age, and I was quickly seducedby delicious poire belle Helene, the heavy scent of frangipani andthe postcard looks of Baie des Citrons. Housed in what was once acolonial prison New Caledonia was founded as a penal colony bythe French in 1864 the schoolroom faced the ocean on a wind sweptpeninsula just outside the capital. For a week I chantedcon jugations of etre, avoir, faire and parler Rosetta Stone Outlet to the sound of wavespounding the sand outside the classroom door. Each morning I jogged the Route de la Baie des Citrons, apalmbordered promenade that chases the shoreline from Hotel Ibisto An se Vata beach, and climbed the forestcloaked summit of Ouen Toro, for sunrise over the water. On that trip, my mother introduced me to the French bus inesslunch, and rewards for lessons learnt in class came in the form of extravagant menu du jours taken in every restaurant from the Latin Quarter to the Place de Cocotiers. My job was to translate the specials board mother's job was to decide between vin blanc orvin rouge. Afternoons then were devoted to bus rides, from the chaotic citybus station to the outer suburbs of Vallee des Colons, Trianon,Magenta, Montravel and Nouville. Leaving the leafy streets of the capital, with their colonial mansions, pavement cafes and glamorous Metros recent immigrants from France we reached the toweringtenement buildings, graffiticovered bus stops and dim, barredgrocery shops of the indigenous Kanak suburbs to find the otherside of paradise. Now, behind the wheel of another Peugeot, we're escaping the city limits bound for Caldoche country. Descendants of the original French convicts, the Caldoche represent the third tier of New Caledonian society. Considered rather rough and unsophisticated by Noumea's Metros, the Caldoche are largely cattle farmers living inthe island's rural belt. On vast properties dotted by horses and herds, many Caldochelive in magnificent, rambling colonial chateaus that date to the1800s. As we drive, these mansions appear intermittently by theroadside, some like perfectly preserved museum pieces, othersnearderelict, wearing wild, flaming skirts of bougainvillea andhibiscus. Henri, from Noumea's tourist bureau, has advised us on a route,taking the Col des Rousssettes, which links Bourail on the westcoast to Houailou in the east, through Grande Terre's ruggedinterior and returning along La Transver sale, which snakes throughthe mountains between Touho and Kone. They're all sealed roads, he assures us, much to my mother's relief her desire to repeat the journey does not extend torepairing punctures or pursuing farmers with tractors.

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Japan launches English NHK World TV

NHK World TV went on air Monday as the latest Englishlanguage international news network as Japan joined the race to boost clout overseas by reaching out to viewers. Broadcast 24 hours a day, the channel is accessible on five continents via satellite, cable, or on highspeed Internet connections. Japan becomes the latest nation to launch an international network. France 24 and AlJazeera have both launched Englishlanguage channels to challenge the supremacy of CNN and the BBC. Advertisement: Story continues below China, which Japan often sees as a rival for influence, is also expanding overseas television channels and newspapers. NHK World TV, which is revamped from an earlier more modest NHK English service, carries half an hour of news every hour on weekdays 10 minutes at weekends with the rest devoted to features on culture, science and economics. Much of the coverage will focus on Japan but there will also be material on other parts of Asia. "By showing various aspects of Japanese public opinion and trends, we can promote a better understanding of Japan around the world," said Hatsuhisa Takashima, head of Japan International Broadcasting, which runs the network. Takashima, a former NHK journalist who later served as a foreign ministry spokesman, said Japan did not enjoy the level of media coverage befitting the world's second largest economy a void the channel Canada Goose Chilliwack Bomber hopes to fill. NHK World TV will reach 80 million households on their television sets, a figure it hopes will grow to 150 million within five years. While initially only in English, the network eventually plans to broadcast on the Internet in Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish. Only part of the broadcasts will be available on the Internet and they will not be aired inside Japan. Japanese leaders have often complained that the country does not get enough attention internationally particularly as media coverage grows of emerging economies such as China. "Japan's television diplomacy is weak compared with that of other countries," Prime Minister Taro Aso said in 2006 when he was foreign minister. The conservative leader called for the country to start an Englishlanguage international network and to be "more active in the promotion of Japanese culture overseas." Takashima insisted that the network was not mere propaganda. "We try to show Japan as it is. If there are controversial issues within Japan, we will try to show the pros and cons, every aspect of the public opinion, as much as possible," he said. Japan International Broadcasting belongs 60 percent to NHK, which is financed by mandatory fees paid by households in Japan but does not receive direct state support. Another 40 percent stake is held by 15 private companies, including four Japanese television groups. NHK will provide most of the news coverage, with the network arranging original features. Englishspeaking Japanese public figures will be invited to participate on news shows. Takashima said that the participation of so many Japanese companies was necessary to make the network competitive with CNN International or BBC World. He also said that the television commercials helping finance the network would show aspects of Japan to the world.

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If they are, the selection process has failed

My younger son has to cover more subjects to a much higher level. The number of students doing four-unit maths in year 12 grows every year. Most will never need this level of maths to do medicine, law or other subjects that require a 99-plus ranking. Nor, sadly, will they become the maths teachers we need. Where will it stop? Rosemary Embery Haberfield This is not what the schools were designed to do Once again the debate about selective schools is getting dragged off course. Selective public schools exist to provide an environment in which gifted and talented children may learn together. They were not, to my knowledge, set up so that children who worked hard to pass a particular test could learn together. Their purpose is to level the playing field for children whose parents cannot or will not pay for private schooling. The main (unstated) conclusion to be drawn from your story is that Asian students are over-represented because they have been trained to take the admission tests, and therefore outperform other students (''Top school's secret weapon: 95% of students of migrant heritage'', September 13). The issue is not, then, whether the parents of Asian students push their children too hard, or whether non-Asian students are being excluded. It is whether selective schools provide the social good they are designed to, given they do not select the truly gifted and talented (due to training for admission tests) or mitigate the disadvantage of students whose parents are not motivated to train their children for the tests. The ambitions of parents should not be the deciding factor for admission to selective schools. If they are, the selection process has failed. David Rowe Bondi Beach I have never said we should shrink our population (''How Sydney can get its groove back'', September 14). What I have said is we need a plan before we continue our world-leading population growth. Maxine McKew says Asians will laugh at us if we seek to manage the growth of our cities within environmental constraints. Then why are so many queuing up to Rosetta Stone come here? And why does the most respected measure of ''best cities'' - the Mercer guide - rank Sydney behind nine cities, all with a smaller population? She repeats the myth that New York City (ranked 40 places below Sydney) is an environmental paradise. Obviously she hasn't spent too much time in the sprawling boroughs beyond expensive Manhattan. Less than 1 per cent of the city's energy is produced by anything other than fossil fuels. Little wonder that it doesn't feature in the top 50 eco-city rankings. I agree with Ms McKew that we need smarter, better planned cities and less sloganeering - such as the ''shrink Australia crowd'' tag she dismisses me with. But I don't see how increasing our population at unsustainable rates will help us achieve any of that. Dick Smith Terrey Hills It looks as though Maxine McKew, having blown her chance at a second term, has started a new gig as a big business and developer lobbyist. Her failure to address any larger practical concern of creating a ''big Sydney'' is breathtaking. South-east Queensland, including Brisbane, is a world recognised disaster area of global drying, using water far faster than it can ever be replaced. New Yorkers individually average lower consumption, but the city's footprint is hugely destructive outside its boundaries. Manila, Shanghai and Jakarta are home to some of the most irresponsible and rapacious corporations on the planet. Co-operative planning based on something other than greedy self-interest would be a novelty in Sydney as well. I can't see it happening soon. Is Ms McKew moving into one of those massive, shiny, soulless new tenements lining the airport highways in one of these model cities sometime soon?

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Ukraine hopefuls in final push for embittered voters

Ukraine's presidential election candidates Friday made a final effort to appeal to voters deeply disillusioned with the Orange Revolution on the last day of campaigning. Opinion polls show pro-Russian opposition politician Viktor Yanukovich -- the defeated candidate in 2004 when the Orange Revolution street protests forced a re-run of rigged polls -- well ahead in first place. Yanukovich, a dour ex-mechanic once jailed for theft, hopes to win Sunday's election outright but it is almost certain that he will fail to win a majority and that the poll will go to a second round on February 7. Advertisement: Story continues below He is expected to be joined in a run-off by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, famed for her traditional golden hair braid, whom analysts believe still has time to make up the difference over the next three weeks. President Viktor Yushchenko, the figurehead of the Orange Revolution who championed EU and NATO membership for Ukraine, is expected to be punished for the Revolution's failures and be eliminated in the first round. "I think that the intrigue is not yet over," Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta centre for political studies in Kiev, told . "I think Tymoshenko has chances to win if she succeeds in mobilizing post-Orange voters wanting European integration and wins voters from the defeated candidates." Yanukovich is to hold a rally billed as a "celebration gala concert" in central Kiev at 1700 GMT with Ukrainian glamour pop singers Taisia Povaliy and Svetlana Loboda, before a ban on campaigning enters into force on Saturday. Tymoshenko meanwhile will want to ensure Rosetta Stone Korean her second-place standing is not endangered by a late surge from a third-place candidate, businessman Sergiy Tigipko, who appears to have made gains over the last weeks. The election race between a total of 18 candidates is overshadowed by huge public disappointment with the Orange Revolution, which despite ousting the old elite failed to bring about major reform or end corruption. Yushchenko fell out spectacularly with his former Orange ally Tymoshenko and has spent most of campaign seeking to destroy her character, to the delight of Yanukovich strategists. The president, criticised for concentrating on grandiose historical issues rather than reform, spent the last campaign day presenting a book entitled "To the Nation" which compiled the main speeches of his term. During the book presentation he took a parting shot at Tymoshenko, accusing her of destroying the country, and declared: "I am not a politician. I would prefer to be called a statesman." Yanukovich meanwhile denied in a late night television appearance that he had ever been given orders by the Kremlin. But he also said any provocative moves in relations with Moscow must be avoided. "This is not a joke, or a toy. These are two enormous countries who are hugely dependent on each other in many aspects," he said. Yanukovich draws his strongest support in the industrial and largely Russian speaking east of Ukraine, whereas Tymoshenko's heartland is the more agricultural west where the Ukrainian language predominates. As a final card, Tymoshenko could raise Yanukovich's convictions and jail sentences in 1967 and 1970 for theft and assault, which were both erased by the courts in December 1978. One of the stranger contenders is Vasyl Gumeniuk, a local politician from western Ukraine who registered his candidacy after changing his surname to Protyvsikh -- or "Against All" in Ukrainian.

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