Use this ABC News program to explore links between a wide range of educational issues: school safety, overcrowding, privatization, and poor academic performance. The video takes viewers inside Chester High, a Pennsylvania school racked with security, staffing, and financial problems; in fact, Chester's difficulties are so great that the company hired to run the school has pulled out. With commentary from many sectors of the community-including students,...

Why don't we get the best out of people? Author/educator Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers instead of creative thinkers. In this TEDTalk, Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that cultivates creativity and acknowledges multiple types of intelligence. An excellent discussion-starter in the areas of teacher education, sociology, public policy, and...

Diane Sawyer returns to Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion High, once considered one of the most dangerous schools in the country. Viewer donations have made a difference at the school but violence and under-staffing are still a problem. Principal Linda Cliatt-Wayman continues to fight for her students.

This multi-section program examines the relationships between established sociological perspectives-structural functionalism, Marxist theory, and early feminist theory-and the family; investigates how over several decades the decline in marriage, an increase in cohabitation and divorce, and the lowering fertility rate in the U.K. have affected the British nuclear family; and juxtaposes the old sociology of families and the new, with its emphasis on...

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was an outstanding scientist, Nobel laureate, and legendary teacher. A graduate of M.I.T. with a doctorate from Princeton University, Dr. Feynman soon acquired a reputation as a theoretical physicist and sought-after lecturer in leading universities. During World War II he worked on the development of the atomic bomb and became head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos. In this program, he talks about his lifelong...

Originally titled The Battle of City Springs, this fascinating case study profiles City Springs Elementary-a Baltimore school nearly closed by the State of Maryland until it implemented a rigorous teaching method known as Direct Instruction. Filmed over an entire year, the film documents the progress made by City Springs students as they struggle to build reading and math skills-and their teachers struggle to make D.I. more than a theoretical concept....

When Indian researcher Sugata Mitra embedded a touch-screen computer in a wall separating his IT firm's New Delhi offices from an adjacent slum, he discovered that street children quickly taught themselves how to surf the net, read the news, and download games in what he calls "a spiral of self-instruction." What's more, when one child stumbled upon a shortcut or a new function, he quickly taught it to several other children. In this inspiring program,...

Produced by the Academic Skills Center at Dartmouth College, this concise video helps students realize the importance of sleep in staying healthy, alert, and involved. It also offers practical perspectives on structuring activities and budgeting time so that sleep can be fully integrated into college life. Dr. Michael J. Sateia, a Dartmouth professor of psychiatry and a pioneer in the field of sleep medicine, explains that sleep influences both short-term...

Despite its horrific destruction, Hurricane Katrina gave New Orleans educators the opportunity to reinvent a school system that wasn't working. This program chronicles the first official year of public school in New Orleans after the storm and the transition to the widespread use of charter schools in the city. Focusing on predominantly African-American schools, the film examines the situation from the perspective of several different teachers and...

The 2009 installment in Wide Angle's Time for School series reenters the lives of seven students in seven different countries, offering a glimpse of the worldwide battle to get what most American children take for granted: a basic education. These riveting case studies in India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Benin, Brazil, Japan, and Romania feature young teenagers embracing academic challenges that will, with luck and hard work, prepare them for high school....