Lacan at the scene

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James T. Kinard, Sr., Alex Kozulin

This book demonstrates how rigorous mathematical thinking can be fostered through the development of students’ cognitive tools and operations. Though this approach can be applied in any classroom, it seems to be particularly effective with socially disadvantaged and culturally different students. The authors argue that children’s cognitive functions cannot be viewed as following a natural maturational path: They should be actively constructed during the educational process. The Rigorous Mathematical Thinking (RMT) model is based on two major theoretical approaches that allow such an active construction of cognitive functions: Vygotsky’s theory of psychological tools and Feuerstein’s concept of mediated learning experience. The book starts with general cognitive tools that are essential for all types of problem solving and then moves to mathematically specific cognitive tools and methods for utilizing these tools for mathematical conceptual formation. The application of the RMT model in various urban classrooms demonstrates how mathematics education standards can be reached even by students with a history of educational failure who were considered hopeless underachievers. James T. Kinard, Sr., earned his Ph.D. in electroanalytical chemistry from Howard University and is president of Innovations for the Development of Cognitive Literacy, Inc., Chicago, Illinois. He developed and implemented the Rigorous Mathematical Thinking program and is a certified trainer of the Feuerstein cognitive development program, Instrumental Enrichment. He lectures at international cognitive enrichment workshops in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, and India. Alex Kozulin is research director of the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential in Jerusalem, Israel, and teaches at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University. He held an academic appointment at Boston University, was a visiting professor at the University of Exeter and at the University of Witwatersrand, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Dr.Kozulin is author of Vygotsky’s Psychology: A Biography of Ideas (1990) and Psychological Tools: A Sociocultural Approach to Education (1998).

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Wolfgang Schivelbusch

"History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his new book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of defeat - the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I - Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural responses of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.". "Drawing on reaction from every level of society, Schivelbusch investigates the sixty-year period in which the world moved from regional to global conflagration, and from gentlemanly conduct of war to total mutual destruction. He shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the collapse of the Confederacy, the new cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France, the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance-madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures."--BOOK JACKET.

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Thomas W. Britt and Amy B. Adler

In this volume, a multinational team of scientists catalogues the stressors and benefits for combat-trained soldiers deployed on missions where they are told to hold their fire and assume the role of peacekeeper. Theory and direct research with peacekeepers is incorporated. Missions covered include, but are not limited to, peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Lebanon. The terminology of peacekeeping and military operations is listed. The stressors, threats, dangers, frustrations, and benefits of the peacekeeper role are described in dramatic detail, with additional attention to the Peacekeeper Stress Syndrome.

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P. Huerre, M. Pagan-Reymond, J.M. Reymond

L'enfance, l'âge adulte, la vieillesse existent assurément. Mais l'adolescence? S'agit-il d'un passage obligé, fatal, ou bien, au contraire, d'un phénomène socio-culturel qui reflète tous les signes du malaise de plus en plus visible d'un monde en mutation? L'adolescence est, en effet, un concept récent dans l'histoire des hommes. Les sociétés primitives ne le connaissent pas et des sociétés très évoluées -la Grèce, Rome, la France du Moyen Age et des Temps modernes- l'ont ignoré. Mettant en évidence le caractère relatif et artificiel de cet entre-deux-âges par l'observation de ses manifestations et de ses avatars au fil des temps, depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'à nos jours, cet essai montre que l'on assiste à une mise en scène de l'adolescence où ce sont tour à tour (ou simultanément) la nature, l'Etat, la famille, la religion, l'économie, la démographie, les concepts éducatifs ... qui lui décrivent son rôle.