Dual Language Education And Education - 1247 Words

Even though Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation in schools unconstitutional, it exists in a different form today. While the most students in schools are in normal classes, English Language Learners are often separated from the rest of the student body. These students, mostly hispanic immigrants, are put in special classes separate from the main student body where they are given special English instruction. They rarely interact with the main student body, and it often seems that they go to a different school. Dual Language Education solves this problem. In Dual Language Education, all students are taught together. This benefits both the English Learners and the English speakers both academically and socially and better†¦show more content†¦The goal of Dual Language Education is that students not only become bilingual and have high reading and writing levels in both languages but also that they discover and appreciate other cultures. In almost all DLE programs, the partner language is the language of instruction for fifty to ninety percent of the time, depending on the program. As stated in the article, â€Å"The Balancing Act Of Bilingual Immersion† by Samina Hadi-Tabassum, there are three types of ways to divide instruction. The first most common way is division by time. In this method, students spend part of their time learning in one language and then switch over to the the other language. This is done by spending half the day in each language, alternating days, or alternating weeks. The second method used is division by content. In this method, the languages are divided based on subject, with each subject being taught in a specific language. For example, in the French American School in Providence RI, middle schoolers learn math English, science, and their elective in English and French, social studies, Spanish, art, music, physical education, and health in French (Murphy). Finally, the third m ethod is division by staff, in which one teacher teaches English and the other teaches the partner language. This method can be and often is combined with one of the first two methods. The International Charter School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, uses the first and third methods. Students rotate between

What Are The Best Policies The United States Should Implement

What are the best policies the United States should implement to solve the illegal immigration problem? Immigration is an important implication throughout the United States as a whole. This topic drafts many opinions, both positive and negative. The media uses propaganda to put blame on the immigrants for taking American jobs, or not being allowed to live in our country legally. Others give a more welcoming view to them, that they’re welcome to come to our country and they have a chance to restart their life. â€Å"An estimated 12 million-plus undocumented (illegal) immigrants currently reside in this country.† Those who desire hardline approach, want higher security and vetting off possible immigrants. The lot of immigrants that are legally†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"There are approximately 3.7 million unlawful immigrant households in the U.S. These households impose a net fiscal burden of around $54.5 billion per year.† The final disagreement exclaimed by many Americans, is the free education that illegal immigrants are getting for coming to the United States. Most schools will give millions of dollars of loans to illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court case Plyler vs Doe was held in June of 1982. This Court case was about public education for immigrant students. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Board could not deny the immigrants an education. Plylers â€Å"Equal access to education for children regardless of status.† Immigrants will take our jobs and lower our wages, and create less jobs for the working Americans. Immigrants are usually brought closer to regions that have a big supply and demand such as farms and factories in big agriculture countries. The south has a lot of farms for immigrants to get jobs on and supply for their families. These are jobs Americans in our society don’t like to do. On top of this, undocumented immigrants will accept a job for lower wages than the Americans and can be paid â€Å"under the table†. They will do the dirty jobs for less than minimum wage to support their families. Another argument is how immigrants overuse welfare in this country. All unauthorized immigrants don’t have legal access to the welfare reforms. But immigrants make a large contribution to Medicare and Social Security whenShow MoreRelatedEssay On Paper Reduction Policy842 Words   |  4 PagesPaper Reduction Policy As a current member of this organization over the past 18 years, coupled with a bachelor degree from Excelsior college, I have encountered an issue with current organizational policies that require the use of paper to be completed. 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Through our own policies, the policies of international organizations, and assorted agreements with numerous countries, our role in foreign aid has continued to change over the decades to meet the growing needs of the developing and developed worlds. While we try to aid the developing world to the extent of our capabilities, there are several elements to consider – some of which in the past have often been neglected. When providing aid to countries in needRead MoreSchool Uniform Policies Within School Systems Essay1474 Words   |  6 PagesOver the last decade, the debate over the implementation of school uniform policies in school systems has been seen widely across the United States The decision of uniforms being implanted in school systems is based off the state or the individu al schools policy. The school either can make uniforms mandatory or voluntary. Schools have policies that convey the expectation of acceptable appearance, such as going to school in a properly dressed manner. 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Boo.Com, the Failure Free Essays

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; Boo. com, Online Fashion Retailer, Goes Out of Business By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN Published: May 19, 2000 It was supposed to follow the dot-com fairy tale script. Two young entrepreneurs devise an idea for the next big e-commerce Web site, raise enormous sums of cash, spend lavishly on advertising, lose money on every sale, take the company public and make every employee a billionaire. We will write a custom essay sample on Boo.Com, the Failure or any similar topic only for you Order Now Today, Boo. com, a European fashion e-tailer backed by the French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, the Benetton family, Goldman, Sachs Company and J. P. Morgan, among others, is insolvent and has been forced to call the liquidators, six months after its Internet debut. The concept for Boo. com seemed plausible enough. Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander, two 29-year-old Swedes, founded Boo. com here in 1998, planning to create an online fashion retailer that would provide global service in seven languages and multiple currencies. And, of course, the site would use the most advanced technology. Boo. com bragged of its ability to let users view products in three dimensions from 360 degrees, giving them a true sense of how a garment looked. Investors were so taken with the idea and its two founders — Ms. Leander had been an Elite model and both had started an online bookstore called Bokus. com — that Boo. com was able raise $125 million almost immediately from an elite roster of the extremely wealthy. Before even starting Boo. com, the founders promoted the site in trade journals and glossy fashion magazines. But it was also clear that the founders were excessively ambitious. The company established its headquarters on swanky Carnaby Street in London, with satellite offices in New York, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Munich. The staff expanded from 40 initially to more than 400. Employees routinely flew first class and stayed in five-star hotels, according to a former staff member. Many were given laptops and Palm Pilots for home use, according to this person, and the company used Federal Express to send regular mail. †They had very little spending restraint, to put it mildly,† said Noah Yasskin, an analyst at the London office of Jupiter Communications, an Internet research firm. The site itself was also plagued by technical problems and delays, and took twice as long as anticipated to evelop. Once up and running, it became clear that users without fast connections to the Internet could not use the site, a point Boo. com boasted about. That e-snobbery alienated customers with more modest modem speeds, which happened to be most of Europe and the United States, Boo. com’s two most important markets. †Ninety-nine percent of European and 98 percent of U. S. homes lack the bandwidth needed to easily access such animation,† Therese Torris, an analyst at Forrester Research in Amsterdam, wrote in a report. And anyone with a Macintosh computer could not use the site. While Boo. com later adjusted itself to allow users with slower connections and Macs to gain access, the changes came too late. Sales for the first three months of the site’s operation were $680,000, while the company was blowing through more than $1 million a month. The end came as Boo. com’s founders, with only $500,000 left, struggled in vain to find backers to plow more money into the site. ‘We are deeply disappointed that it has been necessary to ask KPMG to become liquidators of the company,† the co-founders and investors said in a joint statement. †The senior management of Boo. com has made strenuous efforts over the last few weeks to raise the additional funds which would have allowed the company to go forward with a clear plan. † Over the last several weeks, Mr. Malmsten and Ms. Leander, who together own about 40 percent of the company, had been pleading with investors to ante up more. According to a spokesman for Mr. Arnault: †He didn’t want to take the risk. He would have been willing to stay involved if he could have had more control. † In fact, in an interview in Paris several weeks ago about his Internet holdings, Mr. Arnault refused to discuss Boo. com. Whether Boo. com’s failure presages further problems for clothing e-tailers is unclear. But some Internet analysts said Boo. com’s rise and fall reflect a problem that goes beyond just selling clothes. . †The market has woken up to the fact that the amount of business e-tailers like Boo. om generate is a lot lower than we anticipated,† said Tony Shiret, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in London. †A key turning point was what happened in the U. S. over Christmas,† he added, referring to many online retailers that reported missed sales projections. †It’s been disappointing. † On Wednesday, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report predicting that 25 percent of a ll Internet companies in Britain could exhaust their cash within six months. Still, the problems at Boo. com problems were somewhat self-inflicted, Mr. Yasskin said. †They tried to do too much,† he said. †Opening up in multiple countries simultaneously is impossible. † One major stumbling block for Boo. com may simply have been the type of merchandise it was trying to sell. †If you look at successful sites, they are driven by price,† Mr. Shiret said. †It is very hard to sell clothing at a cost base that makes sense without the scale. † Indeed, Boo. com never competed on price like most other retailers; it hoped to woo customers with its interactive services and convenience. Nonetheless, Boo. com might be worth something, even if it is only a fraction of the $400 million value its founders once ascribed to the company. KPMG, which is managing the liquidation process, said today that it had received more than 30 inquiries. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph earlier this month, Mr. Malmsten admitted he might have made missteps. †We have made some mistakes and we were late with our launch, yes,† he said. †But people are welcome to come ’round here into our offices and see what is going on now. † How to cite Boo.Com, the Failure, Essay examples

Data Security Technology Internet Of Things-Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Data Security Technology Internet Of Things? Answer: Introduction With the number of internet users is increasing rapidly today, the Internet has become an essential tool for communication across the globe. Various technological advancements are designed and developed so as to enhance the quality of communication. Internet of Things (IoT) is one such technical advancement where various devices are able to communicate with each other via the internet medium with the purpose of controlling and management. Anywhere, anytime communication applications for different domains is now possible via the Internet of Things. The IoT is a new technology and the traditional communication stack and standards cannot be applied directly to IoT applications. Thus, many IoT based applications pose serious security threats. It is thus needed to have a flexible security framework for IoT applications. This paper reviews the current state of IoT, examines security threats of IoT, and proposes a solution as a countermeasure to this security threat. Literature review Internet of Things emerged as a solution to create a smart city wherein the public resources are used in an optimized manner; quality services are provided to the users; and to have a decreased operational cost of these services. Thus, the main goal of Internet of Things is to create a technological based environment for humans so that they can communicate at anytime from anywhere and are supported with devices which can provide services as per the human nends. Internet of Things is thus a sort of global network which connects various devices and smart objects using the internet technology for communication, control, and management purposes. There are various definitions of Internet of Things. According to the Center for Data and Innovation, the Internet of Things is a platform for objects and smart devices to communicate via the internet with the world around them [3]. It is also defined as the things which have identities and virtual personality, and are capable of communication within the social, environmental, and user context via the internet and intelligent interfaces [4]. Internet of Things has emerged as one of the promising technologies of future due to its wide domain-based applications. According to the research, it is predicted that Internet of Things shall take nearly 5 to 10 years for market adoption and due to its wide domain applications, it shall be the most popular technology to be used by 2020 [7]. It provides applications for personal and home purposes like a washing machine, air conditioner controller, energy management solutions etc,. [8]. It provides enterprise solutions for health care services, emergency management services, water management services, and Mobile services like smart management for transportation and logistics systems. Internet of Things is used using the machine to machine communication for various applications like transportation management, logistics management in large warehouses using RFID, and Wireless Sensor Networks. These applications have proven to be utilizing technology resources in an optimal manner and pr ovide decreased cost solutions for monitoring and control [5]. Many healthcare institutions and emergency services are widely adopting this technology as these smart devices are capable to communicate within the small environment very easily and in a user-friendly manner. These devices are providing a fast communicating experience at cheaper costs. Thus, many health institutions have adopted these technologies for the patient monitoring system, for quick response emergency team communication, vital health status monitoring system, etc. [4]. Architecture Internet of Things is a combination of four major layers which perform a specific task. These layers are as follows: Perception layer: This layer is used to collect the input data with the help of sensors. It also helps in identifying the associated objects of the environment [1]. Network Layer: This layer is used to transfer the gathered information from the perception layer to other information processing applications or devices via communication networks like the Internet [12]. MiddleWare layer: In this layer actions are performed based on the processing outputs of the provided input data and the instructions stored in the databases. Thus, in this layer, an information processing system linked with databases is used to perform the desired action from the device [12]. Application Layer: This layer identifies various applications based on needs of users and industry standards [12]. The basic elements that make the Internet of Things possible are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) which is used to identify the object and provide sensors for gathering input data via object identification, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are used for creating a sensor network for remote sensing applications; Addressing Schemes are used to represent the uniquely identified objects in the databases; Data Storage and analytics provide capability for storing, and sharing data for monitoring and processing purposes; and Visualization element allows interaction of the user with the environment [10]. Security Issues The major security goal of Internet of Things applications is to ensure that the data is confidential, authentic, and available for communication. Thus, security triad CIA model is employed for providing information security in these applications. The IoT devices are generally wireless based objects and can be located in public places for applications ranging from personal control and monitoring to public utilities control and management. Thus, these applications are prone to security threats. Some of the major security threats in Internet of Things are as follows: Authentication issues: IoT makes use of technologies like RFID, WSN, etc. Due to open wireless signals, it is easy for an attacker to search for a particular ongoing communication, intercept it, monitor it and jam the communication signals [7]. Thus, with weak authentication, the attacker can perform attacks like denial of service attacks, replace the objects, and the data on tags of the RFID easily and create confusion [1]. Once the attacker is able to make a false authentication it is possible for attackers to change the data, duplicate the data, and thus have an effect on integrity and confidentiality of the data [2]. Privacy threats: The IoT based applications have with the large databases containing vital information like patient records and customer records for control and monitoring. The privacy of the data can be attacked using various kinds of attacks like virus-based attacks[5], Trojan Horses, phishing attacks, sniffing attacks, etc. [6]. Spam-based emails and messages can be delivered to the end devices for gaining credentials and then the data can be compromised using the phishing attacks [8]. Sleep Deprivation Attack: In this attack, the sensor nodes of the Wireless sensor networks are not allowed to sleep as per their sleep routines. This impacts their battery consumption and can stop the nodes to work after the discharge of the batteries. This attack can take place by breaching the trust of the communication channel and the network [9]. Countermeasures In order to ensure the Data privacy, it is essential to provide secure authentication mechanism, secure access control mechanism, and secure data confidentiality mechanism. The security measure for authentication based threats is a layered approach where different authentication controls are provided at different levels of the IoT structure. At the perception layer level for authentication, various cryptographic Hash algorithms can be used which can provide digital signatures for identification of the users [11]. These digital signatures can even provide private communication and thus can counter attacks like brute force attacks, collision attacks, etc. For authentication control at the network layer level, a point to point authentication mechanism can be used. This shall prevent the illegal access to the sensor nodes to spread fake information. For Middle layer level and at the application layer level, it is suggested to make use of cooperating services where any user can choose the associated information to be shared with the services. Thus, using a layered authentication mechanism, a strong authentication security can be provided to the IoT applications. Conclusion Internet of Things is a platform for objects and smart devices to communicate via the internet with the world around them. Internet of Things has emerged as one of the promising technologies of future due to its wide domain-based applications. Due to the Internet of Things various public resources are used in an optimized manner, quality services are provided to the users and to have a decreased operational cost of these services. As IoT provides connectivity between various things and makes use of wireless communication medium it is prone to various kinds of security threats that affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data. A layered authentication approach is suggested in this work as a countermeasure to the authentication threats in the Internet of Things applications. In the future, more validation, risk evaluation, and instruction detection methods are needed for securing these kinds of applications. References Singh, G. Tripathi, A.J. Jara, A survey of Internet-of-Things: Future Vision, Architecture, Challenges, and Services, in Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 2014 Roman, P. Najera and J. Lopez, "Securing the Internet of Things,", IEEE Computer, vol. 44, pp. 51-58, 2011. Yang, Z. Li, Z. Geng, H. Zhang, A Multilayer Security Model for Internet of Things, in Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2012, Volume 312, pp 388-393 Liu, Y. Zhang, J. Zeng, L. Peng, R. Chen, Research on Dynamical Security Risk Assessment for the Internet of Things inspired by immunology, in Eighth International Conference on Natural Computation (ICNC), 2012 Qiang, Guang-ri Quan, Bai Yu and Liu Yang, Research on Security Issues of the Internet of Things, in International Journal of Future Generation Communication and Networking, Volume 6, Number 6, 2013, pp. 1-10 MALEH and A. Ezzati, A Review of security attacks and Intrusion Detection Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks, in International Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks (IJWMN), Volume 5, Number 6, 2013 Zhao, Research on data security technology in the internet of things, in 2013 2nd International Conference on Mechatronics and Control Engineering, ICMCE 2013, Dalian, China, 2013, pp. 17521755. Kothmayr, C. Schmitt, W. Hu, M. Brunig and G. Carle, Dtls based security and two-way authentication for the internet of things, Ad Hoc Netw. 11 (8) (2013) 27102723 Cao, B. Carminati, E. Ferrari and K.L. Tan, CASTLE: continuously anonymizing data streams, IEEE Trans. Dependable Secure Comput. 8 (3) (2011) 337352. [10]. A. Zanella, N. Bui, A. P. Castellani, L. Vangelista, and M. Zorzi, Internet of Things for smart cities, IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 2232, Feb. 2014. [11]. A. Perera, A. Zaslavsky, P. Christen, and D. Georgakopoulos, Context-aware computing for the Internet of Things: a survey, IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials, submitted 2013. [12]. Y. Liu, Z. Chen, F. Xia, X. Lv, F. Bu, A trust model based on service classification in mobile services, in: Proceedings 2010 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Green Computing and Communications, GreenCom 2010, 2010 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing, CPSCom 2010, Hangzhou, China, 2010, pp. 572576

Ferdinand Tonnies Essay Example

Ferdinand Tonnies Paper Ferdinand Tonnies BY TCIutch A) Toennies is most famous for his analysis on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft which translate to community and society, preferring to focus on the bindings of social relationships of traditional society. His work reflects the division between folk society and urban society, which is like the intimate relationships of family, friends, and community versus the impersonal alliances of polity, economic exchange, and state power. The reason this is his most popular work is because these two worlds are still here with us and may never leave the human existence. So what Toennies studies re the relationships that people have with society, whether it is an intimate society or an impersonal society. Toennies believes that there are cases of a Gemeinschaft being able to turn into a Gesellschaft and a Gesellschaft turning into a Gemeinschaft. This transformation can only be made in two ways, the first being that people of a Gesellschaft really get along well and they like being with each other and are efficient when they work. When people begin to build a relationship with their team members they are able to make the transition from Gesellschaft to a pseudo-Gemeinschaft and eventually into a full-fledged Gemeinschaft. Over time this Gemeinschaft will fall apart because people will begin to start trying to get personal achievements as opposed to working for the groups benefit as a whole, this will turn the Gemeinschaft into a pseudo-Gesellschaft and back into a Gesellschaft completing the cycle. Toennies develops in his essay, Gemeinschaft is associated with common ways of life, Gesellschaft with dissimilar ways of life; Gemeinschaft with common beliefs, Gesellschaft with dissimilar beliefs; Gemeinschaft with concentrated ties and frequent interaction, Gesellschaft with isolated ties and uncommon interaction. We will write a custom essay sample on Ferdinand Tonnies specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Ferdinand Tonnies specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Ferdinand Tonnies specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Gemeinschaft with small numbers of people, Gesellschaft with large numbers of people; Gemeinschaft with distance from centers of power, Gesellschaft with proximity to centers of power; Gemeinschaft with familiarity, Gesellschaft with rules to overcome distrust; Gemeinschaft with continuity, Gesellschaft with temporary arrangements; Gemeinschaft with emotional bonds, Gesellschaft with regulated competition. Family life is the general basis of life in the Gemeinschaft. It exists in village and town life, the village community and the town themselves can be considered as large families, the various clans and houses representing the lementary organisms of its body; guilds, corporations, and offices, the tissues and organs of the town. Here original kinship and inherited status remain an essential, or at least the most important, condition of participating fully in common property and other rights. Strangers may be accepted and protected as serving-members or guests either temporarily or permanently. They can belong to the Gemeinschaft as objects, but not easily as agents and representatives of the Gemeinschaft. Children are, during minority, dependent members of the family, but according to Roman custom hey are called free because it is anticipated that under possible and normal conditions they will certainly be masters, their own heirs. This is true neither of guests nor of servants, either in the house or in the community. But honored guests can approach the position of children. If they are adopted or civic rights are approved for them, they fully acquire this position with the right to inherit. Servants can be esteemed or treated as guests or even, because of the value of their functions, take part as members in the activities of the group. It also happens sometimes that hey become natural or appointed heirs. In reality there are many gradations, lower or higher, which are not exactly met by legal formulas. All these relationships can, under special circumstances, be transformed into merely interested and dissolvable interchange between independent contracting parties. In the city such change, at least with regard to all relations of servitude, is only natural and becomes more and more widespread with its development. The difference between natives and strangers becomes irrelevant. Everyone is what he is, through his personal freedom, through his wealth and his contracts. He is a servant only in so far as he has granted certain services to someone else, master in so far as he receives such services. Wealth is, indeed, the only effective and original differentiating characteristic; where in Gemeinschaft property it is considered as participation in the common ownership and as a specific legal concept is entirely the consequence and result of freedom or ingenuity, either original or acquired. Wealth, to the extent that this is possible, corresponds to the degree of freedom possessed. In the city as well as in the capital, and especially in the metropolis family life is dying. The more and the longer their influence prevail the more the residuals of family life acquire a purely accidental character. For there are only few who will confine their energies within such a narrow circle; all are attracted outside by business, interests, and pleasures, and then separated from one another. The great and mighty, feeling free and independent, have always felt a strong inclination to break through the barriers of the folkways and mores. They know that they can do as they please. They have the power to bring about changes in their favor, and this is positive proof of individual arbitrary power. The mechanism of money, under usual conditions and if working under high pressure, is means to overcome all resistance, to obtain everything wanted and desired, to eliminate all dangers and to cure all evil. This does not hold always. Even if all controls of the Gemeinschaft are eliminated, there are nevertheless controls in the Gesellschaft to which the free and independent individuals are subject. For Gesellschaft (in the narrower sense), convention takes to a large degree the place of the folkways, mores, and religion. It forbids much as detrimental to the common nterest which the folkways, mores, and religion had condemned as evil in and of itself. Toennies, in explaining Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft talked about two types of human will, one that goes with each of the societies the concept of human will, the correct interpretation of which is essential to the subject of this treatise, implies a twofold meaning (Toennies 1957: 103) Toennies is explaining how both of the two types of human will are absolutely essential to his works and theories. l distinguish between the will which includes the thinking and the thinking which encompasses he will. Each represents an inherent whole which unites in itself a multiplicity of feelings, instincts, and desires (Toennies 1957: 103). All three if these inherent wholes link themselves to the most natural forms of human life, I say this because these are all things that are beyond our control as humans. We may to some degree be able to control our feelings, bu t that is only of our feelings arent that extreme. When our feelings are extreme we essentially lose control and our hormones take over and cause us to feel happy, sad, angry, or any other type of expression. Everyone as instincts, we see it more commonly in animals, like when dogs get to excited they have a tendency to bite, this is because of their natural instinct. Humans, as cultured as we are, also still have instincts that we act on. The most basic example I can give is the instinct to flinch to avoid being hit by something, we flinch because it is our natural will to avoid unwanted contact of any form. Toennies also mentions desires, every human on earth has certain desires, whether it be climbing up a corporate ladder (this would be an example of a Gesellschaft), maybe their desire is to marry nd have children (this would be like starting or adding to a personal Gemeinschaft). All of these three links that Toennies mention are things that are wired into our core beings as humans and nobody is an exception. The will of the human being in the first form I call Wesenwille (natural will) (Toennies 1957: 103) this accompanies Gemeinschaft; it is determined by simple face to face relations with other people. This allows people to interact how they would like to interact, in a natural spontaneous way from arising emotions so they can express how they feel to a ertain sentiment. The three forms of this natural will or essential will are pleasure, habit, and memory. When you look at your own personal Gemeinschaft you will notice that all three of these forms are woven in somewhere. You have to express some level of pleasure because if you didnt enjoy the company that was in the community then you would not work for the benefit of the group as a whole which would cause it to be something other than a Gemeinschaft. So you have to enjoy the time in a Gemeinschaft, you also have to have some habits, these can be anything rom waking up and drinking coffee to praying before you go to bed, any sort of routine. Memory is tied in with pleasure because if you have a bunch of good memories with someone then you may not want them to leave your Gemeinschaft. Memories trigger an emotional response and cause you to act spontaneously based off of the memory, an emotional act of spontaneity is based purely off of your natural will. Toennies likens the idea of natural will to being the psychological equivalent of the human body (Toennies 1957: 103) or the principle of the unity of life. This eans that natural will involves thinking in the same way as the organism contains those cells of the brain which, if stimulated, cause the psychological activities which are to be regarded as equivalent to thinking. Natural will, can also only be explained in terms of the past because the future evolves from the past. The problem of will as natural will, according to this view, is manifold, like the problem of organic life itself. Specific natural will is inborn in the human being in the same way as in any species a specific form of body and soul is natural (Toennies 1957: 105). What Toennies is saying here is that the body and the soul of a person grow together, as one matures so does the other, by a gradual growth developing from a small embryo into a fully functioning organism. This is a brilliant comparison because the body and soul go through the same struggles, meaning that because they are together they are forced to grow together and through the challenges and struggles that both encounter during the human life they are developed and shaped. The development of natural will is self-generative to the same extent as is the development of the rganism (Toennies 1957: 105) here is Toennies saying that as the body grows, so does the natural will. The second type of human will that Toennies talks about is rational will (or kurwille). Rational will is prior to the activity to which it refers and maintains its s eparate identity (Toennies 1957: 104) this means that rational will only has an imaginary existence, while the activity is its realization. So the proof that this imaginary rational will exists is in the activity that was done, you might not be able to see rational will with your own eyes, but you can see someone acting on their will. The ego of both forms of will sets the body (otherwise conceived as motionless) into action by external stimulus (Toennies 1957: 107), Toennies is saying while you cant see will on its own, you can see the actions that it causes so in turn you actually can see will. The actions that you would see with rational will are actions that would further a persons individual goals, so it is purposeful and future oriented, because of this, rational will (Kurwille) is accompanied by Gesellschaft. This rational self-interest and calculating conduct act to weaken the traditional bonds of kinship, family, and eligion that permeate the Gemeinschaffs structure. Tonnies says that it is the human l in so far as it is conceived as stripped of all other qualities and as essential thinking (Toennies 1957:104). When you think like this it means you are imagining the results of possible actions taken by one and measuring such actions by a final result. The idea of which is taken as a standard, then sorting out and displaying the actions for future understanding. The three forms of rational will are deliberation, arbitrary choice, and conceptual thought. Unlike the three forms of natural will these re based solely on the idea of getting oneself ahead of others, which explains why it works so well in a Gesellschaft setting. B) Ferdinand Toennies grew up on a farm in Germany; from the micro level of forces that were influencing his theories was his mothers family who were Lutheran. Growing up in a small community he developed his framework of human perception and experience from a specific stand point. Toennies was the result of a unique form of social life that left a permanent wisdom of integration on him. This integration allowed him to view nature, the interaction of eople, the ways of culture, and all social life in a very distinguished way. Toennies says, every such relationship represents unity in plurality or plurality in unity. It consists of assistance, relief, services, which are transmitted back and forth from one party to another and are considered as expressions of wills and their forces (Toennies 1957: 37) Here Toennies is drawing off of his relationships that he had while growing up in a tight knit community to build assimilation to a Gemeinschaft. He later adds, the relationship itself, and also the resulting association, is conceived of either as real nd organic life- this is the essential characteristics of the Gemeinschaft (communityb- or as imaginary and mechanical structure- this is the concept of Gesellschaft (society) (Toennies 1957: 37) More concretely, Gemeinschaft is the strongest in the small scale and largely static rural milieu, whereas Gesellschaft is typical of the urban environment. Accordingly, Gemeinschaft (community) should be understood as a living organism, Gesellschaft (society) as a mechanical aggregate and artifact (Toennies 1957: 39), or put another way, Toennies is identifying a milieu of ife and locating it in the ostensibly genuine rural world and using it as the counterpoint and critique of the false, and therefore in some way inadequate or unsatisfactory, dwelling of the metropolis. The city is typical of Gesellschaft in general Thoughts spread and change with astonishing rapidity. Speeches and books through mass distribution become stimuli of far-reaching importance (Toennies 1957:266) From the macro level there were a few other things that came into play. At this time in Germany the population was rapidly growing and the German colonial empire was xpanding largely in part to its army and naw becoming among the strongest in the world. Toennies was seeing that the German empire was trying to unify the country through physicality and fear as well as industrialization, and population growth while expanding their empire. Living in Germany in a time like this is bound to have an impact on anyones life and it most certainly made an impression on Toennies. C) Toennies can help us better understand the scope of Hobbess intentions, and perhaps can give us some insight into why we are still wrestling with Hobbess political ideas. Toennies was interested in reviving Hobbess work because he thought it clearly exemplified his own belief that every political and social order is based in a particular understanding of human nature that is tied to an account of how human beings form associations. This insight, Toennies believed, had been lost in the course of the German political theory of the 19th century. Toennies emphasized Hobbess importance to political theory in order to prompt a rediscovery of political anthropology and a reevaluation of the links between the political order and the understandings and wills of its members. But Toennies did not think Hobbess account of human nature was complete, and he wanted to bring the incomplete quality of that account to the attention of his contemporaries. Toennies thought that Hobbes described a certain aspect of human nature as if it were the whole truth about human life in an effort to urge people to adapt themselves to a particular form of political association. The character of Hobbess work had been lost in the intervening centuries, Toennies believed, and people had begun to accept a Hobbesian-type account of human beings as absolutely true; they assumed that uman beings naturally thought of themselves as individuals without fundamental ties to others and were endlessly recalculating the means to their desired ends. Instead of rising to give a thorough and radical treatment of political problems, Toennies wrote, scholars were stuck within the Hobbesian universe without knowing it, chipping away at the model of man as an independent and rational actor without realizing its shortcomings or its ties to particularly modern forms of political and social life. While Toennies points†that every political order is based on an account f human nature, and that those accounts of human nature are usually partial (as is the description of man as an independent and rational actor)†have been picked up by other thinkers in the 20th century, they may continue to be useful reminders to political scientists today. One aspect of Toennies work is the report of a man living inside of Hobbesian society: feedback on which aspects of human life are fostered, and which are inhibited, by a system that is based on the understanding of human life that Hobbes offered. It turns out that Toennies work on Hobbes became central o a revival of German interest in Hobbes, and indeed sparked a series of studies that drove several innovations in German political thought. This fruitful recovery of Hobbes was possible because, according to Toenniess account, Hobbes had fallen into disregard in the 19th century in all of the major European countries. By the 19th century, according to Toennies, Hobbess work was beginning to suffer a worse fate: people were no longer trying to shout down his ideas in order to prevent them from taking root, but to shun them for allegedly having proven dangerous. One indication f the lack of scholarly interest in Hobbes at that time is the simple fact that Toennies was quickly able to discover several manuscripts that could substantially correct published versions of Hobbess works, including Elements of Law and Behemoth, which had only been published in a very corrupt version (even the title was mistaken). Toennies discovered and published the Short Tract on First Principles and a series of letters that were significant to understanding Hobbess philosophical work. All this was found in the British Library and at Oxford, where it had been lying ignored by scholars for centuries. Toennies was therefore central to the revived interest in Hobbes both for his arguments for Hobbess relevance and for his efforts to provide more materials for those curious to study Hobbess philosophy. Toennies, who had written Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in 1887 at the age of 32, despised the use to which his book was put after World War l. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is an attempt to look critically at the realities of life in the modern state. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is also directly related to Toenniess studies of Hobbes; indeed, it is an effort to critique and correct Hobbess political anthropology. Toennies is a critic of modernity, but one who neither wants to turn back the clock, nor believes it can be turned back, and one who deeply appreciates the contributions that founders of modernity like Hobbes made to the understanding of politics. First, I want to explain Toenniess critique of Hobbess political anthropology; next I will explain how Toennies felt his work was indebted to Hobbes and in what respect he thought other political theorists could learn from Hobbes. The most interesting contribution that Toennies made to the understanding of Hobbess account of human ature is his contention that Hobbess account is not a description of how men are but how they must become if they are to form lasting commonwealths. Toennies urges his readers to recognize that political forms have their root in human will and understanding. He argued passionately against contemporaries who described Gemeinschaft literally as organisms because he thought that it was mistaken to look for the existence of a community outside of the minds of its members. According to him, politics is rooted in the way we think about ourselves and the way that we choose to relate to others based on this understanding. This was the most important lesson that Toennies learned from his attempt to think through the development of Hobbess thought. The same insight also convinced Toennies of the need for a discipline like sociology, one that would recognize that political forms are appropriately considered as ideal types because they exist primarily in the minds of the members. I have found that reading Toennies can helpfully remind one that there is a more fundamental task than working out the details by which the Hobbesian contract is sealed. After we comb through Hobbess theory, we should take ime to think about, first, whether the political forms modeled on Hobbess theory have fostered a certain view of human nature in modern citizens, and, second, how we modern citizens should evaluate that inheritance D) The shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft may be compared with Emile Durkheims conception of society undergoing a transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. What Toennies described as societal will is similar to what Durkheim described as collective consciousness, a collective soul or conscience that guides the behavior of the individuals. Both Toennies and Durkheim tied social change to ncreasing specializations in the division of labor and differentiation in the body social. They recognized the fading of primary bonds of kinship, ritual, and community life, suspended by the growth of secondary bonds of association linked with occupation, law, and politics with the expansion of capitalism and urbanization. T? ¶nniess breakthrough was to detach himself from the constant debates concerning the superiority of village and urban ways of life; to detach these ways of life abstractly from their familiar backgrounds; and to attempt to identify the dominant features and qualities of each way of life. Durkheims work represents the most important alternative to Toennies typological approach. Like Toennies, Durkheim was impressed by the importance of community relations for equipping human beings with social support and moral sentiments. Durkheims conceptual breakthrough was to see community not as a social structure or physical entity but as a set of variable properties of human interaction that could be found not only among tradition-bound peasants of small villages but also among the most sophisticated residents of modern cities. The two most famous examples of Durkheims disaggregating pproach are found insuicide ([1897] 1951) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life ([1911] 1965): first in the ties that stand as a protection against the dangers of egoism in Suicide and then in the ritual experiences that knit together those with common definitions of the sacred in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In both cases, Durkheim extracts an element or process associated with communal relations and shows its influence on behavior and consciousness. Toennies has traditionally been viewed as having a romantic view of the loss of Gemeinschaft but in fact he saw Gesellschaft as rational and necessary vehicle for uiding a more specialized and diverse society. The transition of village to city could be related to the shift from a simple to complex organism, from infancy to maturity. Toennies outlook on an urban society of rational specialization and interdependency is a contrast from Marxs view that class conflict and worker revolt would arise with the growth of capitalism. Toennies concern was that Gesellschaft not be sabotaged or kidnapped by corrupt or totalitarian political interests such as fascism. Durkheim, in contrast, was more concerned with moral consequences of the rise of a Gesellschaft ociety. Like Durkheim, Toennies examined social phenomena with regard to their functioning producing or facilitating social cohesion. An example of this would be choosing a political party; this simple act is stating your opinion, which in turn damages social cohesion. This is true because there is always going to be someone that disagrees with you so there will be a wall between you two and true social cohesion could never be fully achieved because of this wall. Nonetheless the important role played by the ideological elements encompassed in natural will and ational will, Toennies, like Marx, was addicted to the economic interpretation of history. Toennies believed that with the development of trade, the modern state, science, the natural will and Gemeinschaft-like characteristics of social entities, norms, and values gave way to rational will and Gesellschaft like characteristics. Unlike Marx, who believed technical conditions and progress to be the prime mover in change, Toennies ascribed this role to a large scale trade involving the desire for the profitable use of money, which led to the development of capitalism. According to Toennies the introduction of this type of trade into the integrated communities of agrarian and town societies liquidated the old ideologies and brought about the capitalistic age with its rationalistic intellectual attitude. In this interpretation, Toennies was influenced by 17th and 18th century social science of England and France, as well as by Marx. Toennies talked about his affinity for Marx in several passages throughout his writings, but in the process of incorporating Marxian notions into his pure as well as his applied sociology and combining them with ther elements in his total system of thought, he has transformed them drastically. While Toennies admired Marx he did not fail to criticize him where he felt it was needed. Both agree that commerce and commercial capital are older than the capitalistic mode of production and that profit is created in circulation, not only in production, but Toennies misses in Marx the clear recognition that productive, or industrial, capital is not different Just more effective then lending capital. Toennies went on further than Marx and determined that labor and commerce are opposed et complementary functions of social life, representing concrete and equal value versus abstract and surplus value. This is similar to spontaneous (natural) will and Gemeinschaft versus calculating rational will and Gesellschaft. This idea is brought into light by explaining that the worker and the artist are men of Gemeinschaft while the merchant as a trader or production manager is a man of Gesellschaft. Ferdinand Toennies determined the future course of German sociology with his Marxist analysis of capitalist society in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. He published a biographical ntroduction to Marx in 1920 and produced ideas influenced by Marxism throughout his life. Notwithstanding his admiration for Marx and his interest in fixing biases in distribution, he differs with Marx inter alia over the contribution of production factors to wealth, the qualification of the proletariat to rule and the place for ethics in analysis. Toennies, whose cautious nature kept him clear of revolutionary movements in Germany and abroad, supported Ethical Culture and the cooperative movement, the criticism of commercialism by Marx and Toennies and the teleology of Toennies and Marx are compared and contrasted. Toennies pessimistic narrative of rationalization and alienation, based upon nineteenth-century assumptions related to the human sciences vocation to project societal developments, may today appear more founded than Marxist conjectures as to a socialist future. Toennies and Weber are both typologists, even if their conceptualizations of ideal-typical procedure are not identical. Both were strong proponents of sociological research, they both partook in important empirical investigations, especially regarding the conditions of working class, and they advocated the establishment of institutions in support of such nvestigations. Toennies and Weber felt that social sciences, like all sciences, need to be value free and must not have any biases. Toennies in the preface to Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft says that ones conception of what ought to be determines ones recognition of what has been, and even ones expectation of the future, he insists that the deliberate avoidance of this ever present danger is the very essence of scientific attitude (Toennies: X) . Weber would have agreed with this idea of keeping political or moral Judgments separated from scholarly evaluation and analysis. E) The concepts for which he is best known in English are of course community and society Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. ) These are differentiated partly by their mode of communication traditional handed-down beliefs verse public opinion that is more rationally and scientifically based and grows out of reflection and discussion. He used the central concept of public opinion and related forms to generate a way of thinking about societies and social change that is still useful. Unlike most contemporary scholars, he Joined intellectual and moral questions and believed that normative ideals could be found within the empirical. He was hopeful that under the right conditions (that is as practiced by the well-educated and divorced from one- sided and self-interested media accounts), public opinion would serve as a guide for social betterment. He appreciated the intimate and intricate link between public opinion and democracy. In Toennies usage an opinion expressed in public is not public opinion. Nor are opinion polls which reveal many publics with diverse opinions the same thing as general public opinion. The latter is defined by its consensual nature. It may be strong or weak. A firm public opinion is more haracteristic of values and broad principles than of current events. Firm opinion has a normative quality and exerts social pressure. Toennies writing of the dispersed audience and the large public consisting of spiritually, rather than spatially, connected individuals reminds us that many of the themes now associated with cyberspace have origins in the emergence of national mass societies and earlier technologies such as the printing press, telephone and film which link scattered individuals. He noted the potential of the modern press system to eviscerate national borders and create a world culture and single market. Current national states were but a temporary phenomenon in light of a truly international Gesellschaft. Toennies was alert to the factors that effected audience reception of a message including the sound of words as well as content and anticipating the concept of reference group, he wrote of the opinion circles of recipients. He identified an embryonic concept of opinion leader and he also noted the strong impact the personality of the message deliverer could have. His analysis of propaganda stressing slogans, the sharpening of contrasts and the importance of repetition anticipates work that was to ome several decades later. His work is an early example and implicit call for critical studies of the media. He directs attention to the role of opinion leaders in helping to inform and thus form public attitudes. He saw the pernicious effects unrestrained advertising and profit-seeking could have on media. He foresaw the growth of the public relations field and alienated Journalists in observing that some paid writers follow, like all mercenaries, the flag whose bearer feeds him and promises booty. He notes that the offer and sale of ones own opinion, while a form of personal reedom for the seller, converts the opinion directly into impersonal merchandise. He discusses some of the means by which inauthentic opinions may be elicited (e. g. , persuasion, flattery, future rewards, threats, and orders). He argues that the unreliability of the media of his day was not because of direct lies, but rather (in offering what could be a Job description for a contemporary spin master) because of their tendency to, inaccuracy, distortion, and conjecture as reality or high probability, addition or exaggeration. He also rallied against deception in ommunication in the form of hidden advertisements in which a brand name is unobtrusively slipped into an unrelated feature story. Here shamelessness grows with the completeness of the disguise. With todays visual media this has been taken to a new level with product placement (e. g. , slipping brand name consumer items into film and television dramas) and there are continual efforts to improve various forms of subliminal communication. His consideration of opinions as commodities and of deception leads to the observation that expressed opinions are not necessarily reflective of inner convictions. As with celebrities who endorse products, the publicly expressed attitude, becomes marketable regardless of whether this or an opposite opinion is really harbored or adopted. Implicit here, although not developed, is the idea that would gain important currency from later research regarding the importance of context and the degree of independence between attitudes and behavior. In noting that the person behaving in ways inconsistent with inner beliefs may come to adjust beliefs to behavior, he hints at the idea of cognitive dissonance and reverses the popularly assumed direction of the causal relationship (e. g. he suggests that behavior can cause attitudes rather than the reverse). This was an absolute Joy for me to write about as it is combining both of my majors, communication (specifically advertising) and sociology. F) Modern theorist Mathieu Deflem has incorporated Ferdinand Toennies work into his ideas on crime and society. He offers a discussion of the criminological sociology of Ferdinand T? ¶nnies (1855-1936). While T? ¶nnies is generally well known for his theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, his elaborate contributions to the sociological study of crime have been almost entirely neglected in the history of sociology. Situated within Toennies general theoretical perspective, he presents the central themes of Toennies study of crime and discusses its conceptual and methodological characteristics as a distinct approach in criminological sociology. He also centers on the importance of Toennies criminological work for the reception and status of his sociological theory. He argues that the neglect of Toennies crime studies has led to overlook Toennies aspiration to integrate sociological theory and empirical inquiry, which has contributed to misconstrue his unique conception of social order. While criminology isnt what Toennies is generally known for, Deflem is able to incorporate his ideas and put them to work in new ways because Toennies theories covered such a broad range of aspects. Another way that Toennies works are being used by modern theorist Niall Bond is in the area of law. We are convinced not Just that the founding work of German sociology, Ferdinand Toennies Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft can only be understood against the backdrop of preceding legal theory and the debates on methodology, land reform and distinctions between family and contract law from hich that theory emerged; we are further convinced that legal philosophy and theory may draw benefits from the logical and philosophical considerations to be found in that work. Toennies advances a debate of legal theory of his day. He rejects strict utilitarian ideas and the assumption that human action can be fully explained through purposive rationality. He argues that Gesellschaft can be described through analogy to a mechanism and Gemeinschaft through analogy to an organism. The fact that humans act neither as a mechanical unit nor as an organism, may explain why

The Origin of Our Solar System

The Origin of Our Solar System One of the most-asked questions of astronomers is: how did our Sun and planets get here? Its a good question and one that researchers are answering as they explore the solar system. There has been no shortage of theories about the birth of the planets over the years. This is not surprising considering that for centuries the Earth was believed to be the center of the entire universe, not to mention our solar system. Naturally, this led to a misevaluation of our origins. Some early theories suggested that the planets were spat out of the Sun and solidified. Others, less scientific, suggested that some deity simply created the solar system out of nothing in just a few days.  The truth, however, is far more exciting and is still a story being filled out with observational data.   As our understanding of our place in the galaxy has grown, we have re-evaluated the question of our beginnings. But in order to identify the true origin of the solar system, we must first identify the conditions that such a theory would have to meet. Properties of Our Solar System Any convincing theory of the origins of our solar system should be able to adequately explain the various properties therein. The primary conditions that must be explained include: The placement of the Sun at the center of the solar system.The procession of the planets around the Sun in a counterclockwise direction (as viewed from above the north pole of Earth).The placement of the small rocky worlds (the terrestrial planets) nearest to the Sun, with the large gas giants (the Jovian planets) further out.The fact that all the planets appear to have formed around the same time as the Sun.The chemical composition of the Sun and planets.The existence of comets and asteroids. Identifying a Theory The only theory to date that meets all of the requirements stated above is known as the solar nebula theory. This suggests that the solar system arrived at its current form after collapsing from a molecular gas cloud some 4.568 billion years ago. In essence, a large molecular gas cloud, several light-years in diameter, was disturbed by a nearby event: either a supernova explosion or a passing star creating a gravitational disturbance. This event caused regions of the cloud to begin clumping together, with the center part of the nebula, being the densest, collapsing into a singular object. Containing more than 99.9% of the mass, this object began its journey to star-hood by first becoming a protostar. Specifically, it is believed that it belonged to a class of stars known as T Tauri stars. These pre-stars are characterized by surrounding gas clouds containing pre-planetary matter with most of the mass contained in the star itself. The rest of the matter out in the surrounding disk supplied the fundamental building blocks for the planets, asteroids, and comets that would eventually form. About 50 million years after the initial shock wave instigated the collapse, the core of the central star became hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion. The fusion supplied enough heat and pressure that it balanced out the mass and gravity of the outer layers. At that point, the infant star was in  hydrostatic equilibrium, and the object was officially a star, our Sun. In the region surrounding the newborn star, small, hot globs of material collided together to form larger and larger worldlets called planetesimals. Eventually, they became large enough and had enough self-gravity to assume spherical shapes.   As they grew larger and larger, these planetesimals formed planets. The inner worlds remained rocky as the strong solar wind from the new star swept much of the nebular gas out to colder regions, where it was captured by the emerging Jovian planets. Today, some remnants of those planetesimals remain, some as Trojan asteroids that orbit along the same path of a planet or moon. Eventually, this accretion of matter through collisions slowed down. The newly formed collection of planets assumed stable orbits, and some of them migrated out toward the outer solar system.   Does the Solar Nebula Theory Apply to Other Systems? Planetary scientists have spent years developing a theory that matched the observational data for our solar system. The balance of temperature and mass in the inner solar system explains the arrangement of worlds that we see. The action of planet formation also affects how planets settle into their final orbits, and how worlds are built and then modified by ongoing collisions and bombardment. However, as we observe other solar systems, we find that their structures vary wildly. The presence of large gas giants near their central star doesnt agree with the solar nebula theory. It probably means that there are some more dynamical actions scientists havent accounted for in the theory.   Some think that the structure of our solar system is the one that is unique, containing a much more rigid structure than others. Ultimately this means that perhaps the evolution of solar systems is not as strictly defined as we once believed.

Android operation Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Android operation - Research Paper Example Technology is associated with lower production costs, better quality products and ability to develop new products through inventive and innovative ideas (Watsa, 5). It also facilitates easy flow of information that generally improves on the quality of human life. One area of technology that has recorded significant development is information and communication technology. A computer is in any device that can be programmed to ‘store, retrieve, and process data’ and the computing idea can be traced back to the thirteenth century (Golden Ink, para.1). Various developments are witnessed throughout the millennium like development of mechanical calculators in the seventeenth century up to the development of the first digital computers in the 1930s (Golden Ink, para.2-10). Further developments have been recorded from these early (primitive) forms of computer to the modern Third Generation computers. Developments have been recorded in terms of both software and hardware. Users are often attracted to systems that are user-friendly (very interactive) and have several applications incorporated into a single suite. Software developments have been mainly in the operating systems; the programs that tell the computer what to do by defining the machine-user interface. Several operating systems have been developed by different professionals working in different institutions. Most of the present operating systems are developments of earlier operating systems. The type of the programming language used in developing different applications also explains the different types of operating systems that are available. This paper focuses on the development of Android, an operating system that is mainly used in the mobile devices. Some of the desirable characteristics of the operating system are examined. It has been stated that significant developments have

The Right job for me Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Right job for me - Essay Example From their appearance to the content of the lecture, everything makes a lot of difference and is very important. As teachers deliver lectures on daily basis, they develop a lot of confidence and high self-esteem. This enables them to easily address large audiences at any platform. Teaching instills confidence in an individual. Another very important benefit of being a teacher is that an individual happens to constantly increase his/her knowledge. While teaching, an individual happens to strengthen his/her own concepts. Questions raised by the students help a teacher realize even those aspects of the subject matter that he/she might not have understood on his/her own. Discussion with the students helps the teacher discover new aspects and understand the topic in detail. Teachers develop a very special bond and rapport with the students. Teachers love and care for their students like their own children. Taking all these factors into consideration, teaching can be considered as a profes sion that is emotionally rewarding, psychologically satisfying, and financially rewarding. According to Crawford, â€Å"a good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this" (Crawford cited in Bruner) I agree to this perception because academic credentials do not necessarily provide an accurate description of an individual’s skills, competencies, and capabilities. Academic credentials are just as reliable as the educational system. In-depth analysis of the educational systems of a vast majority of the countries in the world suggests that there are many flaws in the educational system. Students’ skills and knowledge is assessed by means of assignments, projects, quizzes, class tests, and exams. While in many cases, students that work hard manage to score more marks in

Discuss the Influence of Modern Media Sources On Terrorism In a Essay

Discuss the Influence of Modern Media Sources On Terrorism In a Globalised World With Many Cultural Differences - Essay Example The paper will first discuss the impact of modern media on world cultures where it will be argued that the media has become a tool for globalising culture and therefore dissolving the independence of national cultures. The debate as to whether the media and terrorism form a symbiotic relationship will also be analysed. There will then be particular emphasis on the internet to see how it is becoming a new form of violent radical milieu for terrorism. Finally, the role of modern media in advancing counterterrorism will also be investigated. This essay makes a conclusion that advancement in technologies has been an avenue by which terror groups have used of modern media as a powerful tool in advancing their course. With the line of analysis however, it will not be accurate to conclude that the media has done this as a deliberate agenda. Rather, its role in terrorism which is more of a symbiotic relation has been created against its own will. This is because through modern technologies, even small terror groups have had the means of making their actions and programmes hyped on the internet, thereby creating news for themselves. Meanwhile the media is there to report the news, forcing the media to give more attention to terror groups. Again, the internet, which is a key component of modern media, has become an avenue by which news is self-generated. Indeed through the internet, terror groups do not even require the attention of popular international media houses to get attention for themselves.

Healthcare Reforms in England Issues of Efficiency

Healthcare Reforms in England Issues of Efficiency The healthcare service in England attempts to improve the overall healthcare service have been ongoing through some of the most radical reforms since its inception as a comprehensive public service since 1948. The noticeable need of a free healthcare service was essential after the state of the country due to the world war. Once the NHS was established it saw many reforms led by diverse types of governments at different times. Despite the scale of the reforms they have preserved their core principle of A free service at the point of delivery 1 till this very day. Even though they have adopted the core principle they still face huge challenges; as demands and costs are still rising, the entirety of the service is increasingly being looked at. This paper looks at the reforms the NHS has been through and analyses each reform in the light of Efficiency: the capability of the NHS, whether the reform made the NHS more competent, Equity: bringing fairness and equal right for the patients as well as the staff, Quality: whether adapting the reforms improved the patients ability to acquire different types of healthcare services without any predicament and obtain high-quality healthcare services. Methodology This paper was conjured up by the use of reports published by NHS Publications website. Journals and studies on NHS reform via the scientific database PubMed were also utilized. To gain info on the theories the NHS was formed on, management theory books by Max Weber, Henri Fayol and Frederic Winslow Taylor were used. Results/Discussion Each reform improvised the NHS in many ways, in relation to Efficiency the NHS since its inception has seen major investments and new hospitals built, employment of up to date technology allowing more patients to be seen within an applicable time and budgets been controlled efficiently with the aim to reduce costs each year allowing the NHS to run efficiently. In terms of Equity after the publication of the Black report, the NHS has improved on giving equal opportunities to its minor ethnic groups of staff. Also the equal treatment of patients regardless of their social class has been improved since the Blair era. The NHS in terms of quality has become one of the world leading healthcare providers. Measuring their services against standards set by the NHS ensured that they are meeting the set standards. The major investment in staff in 2000 saw a number of lives saved in the past 10 years. The NHS has met quality standards that are accepted by its patients and valued as a first class service. Conclusion Overall the NHS has seen many reforms which have lead to the NHS becoming a world class service. Since the reforms in the 1960s to the latest plans of the new coalition government the NHS has improved immensely in terms of efficiency, equity and quality and the future also looks bright for the NHS. Introduction: Healthcare service in England was launched in 1948 with an aim to provide universal healthcare to its citizens which is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay 1. The NHS was established after World War II where the country needed a stable healthcare service 2. The initial idea was that no-one should be deterred from seeking health services by a lack of resources and the founder Aneurin Bevan: Minster of Health stated A free service at the point of delivery 3. Till this day they have been providing free healthcare service to the citizens of England. In 1948 Sir William Beveridge, a British Economist and a Social Reformer conferred details of his radical plans for economic and social reform in post-war Britain. Sir William proposed major healthcare service changes on the basis that the country needed the abolition of want before the enjoyment of comfort and suggested a scheme where every kind of medical treatment would be available for everybody. 1,3 Pre NHS There has been some form of state-funded provision of health and social care in England prior to the NHS for 400 years.4 Prior to a health system being formed, attaining healthcare service in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s was difficult. Life expectancy was very low and thousands of people died of infectious diseases like pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and polio each year.4 The poor never had access to medical treatment and they relied instead on dubious and sometimes dangerous home remedies. Either that or they relied on doctors who gave their services free to the poor patients. The Hospitals charged for treatment and although the poor were reimbursed and before they received treatment they had to pay.4 Figure 1 shows the life expectancy that has changed since the NHS was introduced. Figure 1.Life expectancy changes since 1840 5 The need for free healthcare was widely recognised, but it was impossible to achieve without the support or resources of the government. A study showed that experts believed and have written extensively on the reasons of why a health service was needed.6 These included: The appearance of a view that health care was essential, not something just imparted erratically by charity The drastic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of the healthcare service being provided, rather than just an incremental alteration As younger members of the country were becoming increasingly educated in the medical profession they had a view of things could be handle in a more efficient way. The hospitals having financial problems, funds not sufficing.6 Having looked at the reasons to why a health service was needed the government made plans and core principles were established: 6 Regardless of persons status they were eligible for health care, even people temporarily residing or visiting the country.ÂÂ   People could be referred to any hospital. The healthcare service was financed almost 100% from central taxationÂÂ   Care was entirely free at the point of use6 The main achievement was that the poor who in the past went without medical treatment now had access to free healthcare.6 NHS today and NHS employment NHS is one of the largest organisations in the world with an annual budget of around ÂÂ £80 billion employing more than 1.7 million people and treating over one million people every 36 hours.7 In general, healthcare service being provided within England to every single citizen is a difficult commission to undertake and consequently the system needs efficient health personnels to help run the system economically. Today the view of the healthcare service in England is that the NHS is a world leader and provides first class service that other countries envy. Countries all over the world seek to learn from the comprehensive system of general practice, and its role as the medical home for patients, providing continuity of care and coordination.8 Other countries look at English NHS system and use them as a guideline to run their healthcare system. NHS Structure The healthcare service in England has been run in a structural way with the Secretary of state and Department of Health controlling the overall NHS in England. The secretary of state for health has the responsibility of reporting to the prime minister. There are10 Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) in England which are controlled by the Department of Health, they oversee all the activities within the NHS and the SHAs supervise all the NHS trusts in its area. Primary care plays a major role in community healthcare and is central to the NHS. Services under NHS trust (Secondary Care) include Hospitals, Mental Health services, Learning disability services and Ambulances. The overall structure of the NHS is shown below in Figure 2. 9 Although this is the current NHS structure with the new government in power, changes are to follow. Figure.2 overall structure of the Healthcare system in England 5 NHS Reforms Since its inception in 1948 the NHS has seen many reforms in terms of managing the way they provide healthcare service. The DoH has a lot of control and influence the major decisions taken in the reforms. The overall expectations of Healthcare service in England are of a high calibre, which requisites high-quality management capacity.10 In the 1980s and early 1990s prominence was on recuperating management. The recent focal point has been on development of leadership within NHS. With the new government, new ideas and plans will be imposed to see improvements in quality of healthcare being provided, cut down on costs making it more efficient and in terms of equity provide equal service to everyone. Table 1 briefly enlists the reforms that have taken place since its inception in 1948. Table.1 Reforms in the NHS: 1948-2010 Period the reforms were in place Reform and theory of Management 1948- 1960 Managers as diplomats 1960s Scientific Management and the Salmon report 1970s Classical Management, Systems Approaches and the 1974 Reorganization 1980s The Griffiths report and Managerialism 1990s Working for Patients and the Internal Market 2000 The NHS Plan (DOH 2000) and the Third Way. 2010 NHS White Paper 2010: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS Healthcare service and Reforms in other Developed Countries Healthcare reforms within developed countries can be analyzed in order to compare whether the healthcare services in England have been successful in its bid to ensure efficiency, equity and quality. Attempts to handle reforms of the healthcare system in the European countries have been an ongoing process for 30 years. Although the reforms have taken throughout the 30 years in different ways, their main emphasis has been on improving the cost-effectiveness of the healthcare service. In the early 1980s the EU countries were looking at cost containment. The feature in the 1990s was to endorse efficiency in terms of introducing competition and markets in the healthcare system. Since 2000 the focus has switched to effectiveness; promoting various notions of healthcare in terms of quality.11 Over the course of the 20th century the countries of Europe have established significant success in improving the healthcare service for their citizens. However they still face challenges in the form of restraining costs, improving quality and providing universal healthcare access, these have put the European healthcare services under immense pressure.11 Looking at another OECD: USA, A report on A review of health care reform in the United States assessed whether the USA have been successful in providing healthcare. The findings showed that United States spent more per capita on health care than any other OECD country, yet its health outcomes lagged behind other countries.12 This shows they are struggling with efficiency issues and are still countering challenges in providing quality healthcare service that is expected from the citizens of the USA. Especially in the last few years Healthcare reform has been a major activity of the federal government, in order to revolutionize and develop the service overall. The 3 goals of optimizing cost, access and quality still remain a challenge within the healthcare society in the U.S.12 They concluded that USA still faced many challenges in running the national healthcare service, a key challenge they face is the utter complexity of the system, with its numerous public and private providers.12 Another OECD country reviewed in terms of healthcare service being provided and the reforms that have taken place is China. A report from on From a national, centrally planned health system to a system based on the market: lessons from China concluded: China is the country that has undergone the highest number of health care reforms. Since 1978, China saw many reforms and they also followed the way as the EU countries, with the healthcare system starting from governmental, centrally planned and a collective system to ending up as a heavily market influenced system. Now, thirty years later, the Chinese government openly concede that the reforms were unsuccessful and seek innovative and fresh directions.13 This illustrates that China is also in a healthcare crisis and looking to implement different strategies in order to gain control of Chinas Healthcare system. Having reviewed the healthcare service being endowed in these developed countries, it demonstrates that they are all on an identical level as the healthcare service being provided in England and all face similar challenges. All these developed countries are looking to develop the countries overall healthcare service in terms of efficiency, equity and quality. NHS Plan 2000 and the future of NHS Since the last reform: The NHS plan 2000 14, a lot has transformed in terms of funding and operating the healthcare system in England. Especially with the new coalition governments idea of cutting budgets it is a difficult time the NHS is going through and will necessitate a lot of expertise and world class management to get through todays financial and economical predicament. An additional indication that will be taken into deliberation is the election of the new plans set out in the NHS White Paper 2010. As the new coalition government has come into authority there have been huge changes to overall budgets for the public services and this possibly will have a consequence on the way the NHS operates in England. 15 The reforms have encompassed a significant impact on the organisation and deliverance of health care service in England. Wide array of transformations have been pioneered in an attempt to ensure the NHS is managed more resourcefully and effectively. This report will examine whether these reforms have on the whole improved the healthcare system in England in terms of efficiency, equity and quality and if the publics requirements have been convened. Aims: To examine the healthcare reforms in England since its inception and to assess whether these reforms have improved factors of efficiency, equity and quality in providing healthcare. Objectives: To review the reforms in the NHS since its inception in 1948 To examine whether these reforms improved efficiency, equity and quality of healthcare To assess the key features of healthcare reforms proposed by the current government and their implications on the NHS To put forward plans for the future of the NHS Methodology: A number of sources were consulted to conjure up this paper and examine the healthcare reforms in the NHS. Scientific search engines and databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar and Science Direct (Date accessed 20/10/10) were used to gain literature reviews but results from Google Scholar and Science Direct were dismissed as they were too vague and irrelevant to this topic. With PubMed following keywords were inserted Healthcare, Reforms and England. The data was also set from 1948 to 2010 when searching for reports as this would set the inclusion criteria. The reports and journals since 1948, when the NHS was established were used. Even though history before 1948 was looked at for study purposes, reports before NHS establishment; these were regarded as the exclusion criteria as reports werent looked at prior to 1948. Healthcare service within Britain was looked at in general but for the results of this report, the inclusion criteria was healthcare service in England as it just look ed at the healthcare service being provided within England. The exclusion criterion was healthcare service in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For the first part of the report, the introduction: where the report looked at the history of the NHS. The resources used included looking at general management books looking at management theories. The classical theories of Max Weber, Frederic Taylor and Henri Fayol were the backbone of the NHS and that is why these were used. Another source to produce this paper was the Department of health (http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/index.htm) where the publications and reports about the NHS in general were looked at. This paper used a lot of publications produced by the Department of health and the NHS publications as these sources are reliable; these were seen as good foundation to work from. One of the main publications used was The NHS white paper: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health, this was a key entity in writing up this paper. As the paper didnt contract with experiments and clinical trials, it didnt look at a lot of statistics; the majority of its content was obtained from qualitative data. Results/ Discussion Having carried out the required literature searches and reading journals, reports and Department of Health Publications, results were gathered and have been shown below with the discussion of the key topics. The results look at each reform taken place in the NHS and then goes onto analyse the plans set by the new government. Having looked at the reforms and the new plans the paper than talks about efficiency, equity and quality related to each reform. Reforms in the healthcare service in England The healthcare service in the UK has undergone a number of reforms since its inception in 1948. Prior to 1948, healthcare service was provided in England but due to the increasing pressures for efficiency and quality in health services it lead to these developments and reforms in healthcare being provided. A more overtly management-oriented approach to the healthcare service delivery was adopted based on classical management theories to gain more control of the healthcare service in England. 16,17 Classical theories and Scientific Management: 1960s The NHS was based on the classical theories of Frederic Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol and Max Weber. 16-19 Table 1: Frederic Winslow Taylors four main scientific management principles. Replacing rule-of-work thumb methods with methods based on a scientific of the tasks Scientifically train each individual rather than leave them to train themselves Cooperate with each worker to ensure that the scientific method is being followed Divide workload equally between managers and staff Table 2: Henri Fayols Modern Operational Management approach. Division of work- Specialization for efficiency Authority Responsibility- Both are related, the latter arising from the former. Discipline-Requires good superiors at all levels Unity of Command- Employee should receive orders from one superior only Unity of Direction- Each group of activities with the same objective must have one head and one plan Subordination of individual to general interest- When the two are found to differ, management must reconcile them Remuneration-Should be fair and satisfactory Centralization-Extent to which authority is concentrated or dispersed Scalar chain/line of authority-Needs to be sensible, clear and understood Order : Right thing/person in the right place Equity- Equal opportunity for everyone Stability of tenure- Unnecessary turnover is both the cause and effect of bad management Initiative- Thinking out and execution of a plan Thinking out and execution of a plan Table 3. Max Webers Bureaucratic approach. Power-Ability to get things done, often by the use of threats or sanctions Authority- Ability to get things done because of the position that justified someone in terms of legitimacy Formal approach Hierarchical authority Extensive roles and procedures- Uniformity of decisions and actions Job description- Clear-cut division of labour and High level of specialization Discipline These classical theories contributed a lot to the healthcare service in England and still do to this day.16-19 The classical writers thought of the NHS in terms of purpose and formal structure. They created a formal structure on which the NHS could run on. They also looked at job design, scientific selection and development of workers. The classical theories generally serve as a backbone to the present day NHS management. Although the classical theories made a big contribution to the healthcare service in England it had its limitations and wasnt the most effective way. One drawback was that it wasnt evidence based; it didnt look at the way staff did their tasks and didnt look at the well being of staff, the human and social aspects of work. It just treated them like machines. The theories didnt look at motivating the staff and developing them in their own interests, had they done this staffs work quality wouldve enhanced thus providing an efficient service to patients and overall improve the quality of healthcare service in England. Overall the classical theories were too concrete and fully based on rules and procedures. In terms of efficiency the theories bought a set way of running the healthcare service in England. Once the NHS was established it introduced equity as well as healthcare service was now available to anyone. The NHS was just established and with these set in place in the 1960s the qua lity of service would improve from now with further reforms to come. Salmon Report: 1960s One of the first reforms took place since the NHS was established was in the 1960s. The Salmon Report bought findings and changes which included that workload should be equally distributed between managers and practitioners.20 The NHS would also get rid of matrons and replace them with a hierarchy of nurse managers. The introduction of several additional layers to the management hierarchy; in order to improve efficiency in operating the NHS. This lead to responsibility being equally distributed and the service met its aims and objectives more efficiently. Another change was that nurse managers would contribute to the overall management of the service through the medium of consensus management teams and thus improve efficiency and quality within the NHS. Having nurse managers lead to them taking control of set responsibilities and helped in general running of tasks at ward level leading to an improvement in general quality in the healthcare service being provided. 1974 Reorganization: 1970s The aim of this reform was to attain greater integration of the healthcare service in order to provide more stability and increase efficiency. The reorganisation also introduced more central control in order to: 21 ensure policies were implemented improve accountability encourage delegation develop democratic decision-making process These changes lead to a more structured way for managers to follow and enhance the quality of the healthcare service. By the mid 1970s quality was improving but there were still concerns of equity in the NHS. There were still clear differences of health sufferers in terms of social class; figures showed that people in lower social classes more likely suffered from diseases. There were several possible explanations for these inequalities. Natural and social selection. This would depend on the view that people who are fittest are most likely to succeed in society, and classes reflect this degree of selection. Poverty leads to ill health, through nutrition, housing and environment. Cultural and behavioural explanations. There are differences in the diet and fitness of different social classes, and in certain habits like smoking. 22,23 Overall in the 1970s the quality of healthcare service was still improving, equity issues were still a concern and in terms of efficiency they were recuperating the NHS. The Griffiths Report: 1980s This reform was a major point in NHS history, the Griffiths Report identified problems such as the healthcare service was institutionally inactive and that the local health authorities were filled with directives without being given any clear procedures to follow.24 The Griffiths report stated that changes were difficult to achieve but gave recommendations to improve the NHS. It introduced a more formal and modern way of management. It gave increased participation for managers in setting and controlling budgets. The report also gave greater emphasis on cost awareness in order to improve efficiency. A Clear and quick decision-making process was introduced to improve quality of service provided to patients. The managers in local authorities were given a more clearly defined direction and the overall staffs were better informed.24 The Internal Market Working For Patients: 1990s Another reform in the 1990s took place, this bought a new dimension to the NHS; large publicly-owned hospitals could opt to become self-managed trusts. This meant that health services could be bought by private investors i.e. patients themselves thus allowing them to take control of the way they want the service. Even large GPs could become fund holders and be both purchasers and providers of care.25 This reform lead to introduction of greater flexibility thus allowing more effective matching of patients needs and care. Money followed the patients through the system of purchasing and providing of healthcare service, this led to equity being improved as patients had more selection of services. This reform led to higher competition in providing quality healthcare service, the costs decreased and the general quality increased. The NHS Plan 2000 The NHS Plan 2000 made key findings : the NHS is a 1940s system operating in the 21st century and that it lacked of national standards. It also said that there were barriers between staff and providing services. There were a lack of clear guidelines and the NHS structure has over-centralization.14 Plans to diminish problems and propose new plans such as introducing Modern Matrons to improve the management of services, a strong leader with clinical experience and with clear authority at ward level, improve efficiency by setting standards and controlling resources these were there aims.14,26 The figure below shows the comparison of the 1948 and the new NHS model outlining the key differences. Figure.4 the key difference between the 1948 model and The NHS Plan 2000 model 14 The NHS Plan 2000: Achievements This reform set out specific targets which were achieved in order to improve efficiency, equity and quality of healthcare service in England: Over 100 new hospitals by 2010 and 500 new one-stop primary care centres Clean wards and better hospital food 7,000 extra beds in hospitals Over 3,000 GP premises modernized Modern IT systems in every hospital and GP surgery 7,500 more consultants and 2,000 more GPs 20,000 extra nurses and 6,500 extra therapists Childcare support for NHS staff with 100 on-site nurseries.26 These targets were achieved in 2008 and it led to the improvement of efficiency as the number of GPs and consultants employed were increased. The modernisation of technology and IT systems led to quality of service being improved as high investment in high quality equipment made the NHS one of the worlds top quality service. Since 2000 NHS has improved the overall service and met its objectives. NHS Implications: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS With the new coalition government coming into election another set of reforms have been proposed as they hope to improve the overall healthcare service in England. The main aims and objectives to improve the healthcare service are varied and very detailed but to summarise it these are the points covered:15 Increase health spending in real terms in each year of this Parliament 15and also that there goal is an NHS which achieves results that are amongst the best in the world 15. However the government will uphold the foundation that the NHS was formed on; a comprehensive service, available to all, free at the point of use and based on clinical need, not the ability to pay 15. The government than goes into detail of what they arrange to initiate to make an efficient healthcare service: acknowledge the fact that patients come first and therefore will give them greater choice and control. An example of this is that a patient will be able to choose any GP practice, consultant, and choice of treatment consequently improving equity of the service. The government endeavours to develop the healthcare outcomes: set objectives such as reduce mortality and morbidity, increase safety, and improve patient experience and outcomes for all 15. By doing this they are ensuring they are driving efficiency and improving the service. In order to achieve the objectives that the government sets, the ability for service providers to have more autonomy, responsibility and accountability will be a means to achieving efficient results. A big change will be the establishment of a NHS Commissioning Board. The board will be accountable for making sure health outcomes are achieved, allocate resources and have the lead on quality improvement and to tackle inequalities that exist in the NHS. Overall the reforms in the NHS Paper 2010 will provide the NHS with greater incentives to increase efficiency, equity and quality. Efficiency The healthcare system in England has on the whole perceived a huge improvement in terms of efficiency since its inception in 1948. A system has been established where it endows with one of the best services in the world but there are still room for improvements. An analysis of the services gives evidence such as the NHS building 100 new hospitals since 2000, therefore improving the efficiency and allowing better access for patients. 27 Even though there continue to be a lack of quality and accessibility to services across the country. The patients havent been able to impose enough pressure to force improvements. The NHS need to give patients more control over the health services they have access to improve efficiency. In 2008 investment in the NHS as a whole rose from ÂÂ £43.9bn per year in 2000, when the NHS Plan was launched, to ÂÂ £92.6bn. another measurement of efficiency is looking at numbers of early deaths from cancer, coronary heart disease and suicide; they continue to fall as services improve; over 98% of patients at Accident and Emergency (AE) Departments are seen within 4 hours; and hospital waiting lists are lower than ever, with half a million fewer patients waiting since lists were at their peak.28 One key way to achieve the set objectives is to cut down NHS managements costs by 45% over the next four years enabling them to free up investment for further improvements.28 Much has been achieved during the last five years of investment and reforms. For example, the significant investment in NHS staff, along with more flexible working, is facilitating healthcare professionals to take advantage of the freedom thus improving their commitment to the NHS. NHS staff working flexibly and using improved technology are better able to respond to patients needs and changing expectations and are achieving improvements in quality and productivity across the system.27 Since 1948, the NHS budget on average has risen over 4% in real terms each year; this is something they hope to resolve as the NHS will face a sustained and substantial financial constraint if it continues. They hope to avoid the financial crisis that happened in the NHS in the 1970s. The NHS hopes to release up to ÂÂ £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2014, which will be reinvested to suppor Healthcare Reforms in England Issues of Efficiency Healthcare Reforms in England Issues of Efficiency The healthcare service in England attempts to improve the overall healthcare service have been ongoing through some of the most radical reforms since its inception as a comprehensive public service since 1948. The noticeable need of a free healthcare service was essential after the state of the country due to the world war. Once the NHS was established it saw many reforms led by diverse types of governments at different times. Despite the scale of the reforms they have preserved their core principle of A free service at the point of delivery 1 till this very day. Even though they have adopted the core principle they still face huge challenges; as demands and costs are still rising, the entirety of the service is increasingly being looked at. This paper looks at the reforms the NHS has been through and analyses each reform in the light of Efficiency: the capability of the NHS, whether the reform made the NHS more competent, Equity: bringing fairness and equal right for the patients as well as the staff, Quality: whether adapting the reforms improved the patients ability to acquire different types of healthcare services without any predicament and obtain high-quality healthcare services. Methodology This paper was conjured up by the use of reports published by NHS Publications website. Journals and studies on NHS reform via the scientific database PubMed were also utilized. To gain info on the theories the NHS was formed on, management theory books by Max Weber, Henri Fayol and Frederic Winslow Taylor were used. Results/Discussion Each reform improvised the NHS in many ways, in relation to Efficiency the NHS since its inception has seen major investments and new hospitals built, employment of up to date technology allowing more patients to be seen within an applicable time and budgets been controlled efficiently with the aim to reduce costs each year allowing the NHS to run efficiently. In terms of Equity after the publication of the Black report, the NHS has improved on giving equal opportunities to its minor ethnic groups of staff. Also the equal treatment of patients regardless of their social class has been improved since the Blair era. The NHS in terms of quality has become one of the world leading healthcare providers. Measuring their services against standards set by the NHS ensured that they are meeting the set standards. The major investment in staff in 2000 saw a number of lives saved in the past 10 years. The NHS has met quality standards that are accepted by its patients and valued as a first class service. Conclusion Overall the NHS has seen many reforms which have lead to the NHS becoming a world class service. Since the reforms in the 1960s to the latest plans of the new coalition government the NHS has improved immensely in terms of efficiency, equity and quality and the future also looks bright for the NHS. Introduction: Healthcare service in England was launched in 1948 with an aim to provide universal healthcare to its citizens which is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay 1. The NHS was established after World War II where the country needed a stable healthcare service 2. The initial idea was that no-one should be deterred from seeking health services by a lack of resources and the founder Aneurin Bevan: Minster of Health stated A free service at the point of delivery 3. Till this day they have been providing free healthcare service to the citizens of England. In 1948 Sir William Beveridge, a British Economist and a Social Reformer conferred details of his radical plans for economic and social reform in post-war Britain. Sir William proposed major healthcare service changes on the basis that the country needed the abolition of want before the enjoyment of comfort and suggested a scheme where every kind of medical treatment would be available for everybody. 1,3 Pre NHS There has been some form of state-funded provision of health and social care in England prior to the NHS for 400 years.4 Prior to a health system being formed, attaining healthcare service in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s was difficult. Life expectancy was very low and thousands of people died of infectious diseases like pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and polio each year.4 The poor never had access to medical treatment and they relied instead on dubious and sometimes dangerous home remedies. Either that or they relied on doctors who gave their services free to the poor patients. The Hospitals charged for treatment and although the poor were reimbursed and before they received treatment they had to pay.4 Figure 1 shows the life expectancy that has changed since the NHS was introduced. Figure 1.Life expectancy changes since 1840 5 The need for free healthcare was widely recognised, but it was impossible to achieve without the support or resources of the government. A study showed that experts believed and have written extensively on the reasons of why a health service was needed.6 These included: The appearance of a view that health care was essential, not something just imparted erratically by charity The drastic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of the healthcare service being provided, rather than just an incremental alteration As younger members of the country were becoming increasingly educated in the medical profession they had a view of things could be handle in a more efficient way. The hospitals having financial problems, funds not sufficing.6 Having looked at the reasons to why a health service was needed the government made plans and core principles were established: 6 Regardless of persons status they were eligible for health care, even people temporarily residing or visiting the country.ÂÂ   People could be referred to any hospital. The healthcare service was financed almost 100% from central taxationÂÂ   Care was entirely free at the point of use6 The main achievement was that the poor who in the past went without medical treatment now had access to free healthcare.6 NHS today and NHS employment NHS is one of the largest organisations in the world with an annual budget of around ÂÂ £80 billion employing more than 1.7 million people and treating over one million people every 36 hours.7 In general, healthcare service being provided within England to every single citizen is a difficult commission to undertake and consequently the system needs efficient health personnels to help run the system economically. Today the view of the healthcare service in England is that the NHS is a world leader and provides first class service that other countries envy. Countries all over the world seek to learn from the comprehensive system of general practice, and its role as the medical home for patients, providing continuity of care and coordination.8 Other countries look at English NHS system and use them as a guideline to run their healthcare system. NHS Structure The healthcare service in England has been run in a structural way with the Secretary of state and Department of Health controlling the overall NHS in England. The secretary of state for health has the responsibility of reporting to the prime minister. There are10 Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) in England which are controlled by the Department of Health, they oversee all the activities within the NHS and the SHAs supervise all the NHS trusts in its area. Primary care plays a major role in community healthcare and is central to the NHS. Services under NHS trust (Secondary Care) include Hospitals, Mental Health services, Learning disability services and Ambulances. The overall structure of the NHS is shown below in Figure 2. 9 Although this is the current NHS structure with the new government in power, changes are to follow. Figure.2 overall structure of the Healthcare system in England 5 NHS Reforms Since its inception in 1948 the NHS has seen many reforms in terms of managing the way they provide healthcare service. The DoH has a lot of control and influence the major decisions taken in the reforms. The overall expectations of Healthcare service in England are of a high calibre, which requisites high-quality management capacity.10 In the 1980s and early 1990s prominence was on recuperating management. The recent focal point has been on development of leadership within NHS. With the new government, new ideas and plans will be imposed to see improvements in quality of healthcare being provided, cut down on costs making it more efficient and in terms of equity provide equal service to everyone. Table 1 briefly enlists the reforms that have taken place since its inception in 1948. Table.1 Reforms in the NHS: 1948-2010 Period the reforms were in place Reform and theory of Management 1948- 1960 Managers as diplomats 1960s Scientific Management and the Salmon report 1970s Classical Management, Systems Approaches and the 1974 Reorganization 1980s The Griffiths report and Managerialism 1990s Working for Patients and the Internal Market 2000 The NHS Plan (DOH 2000) and the Third Way. 2010 NHS White Paper 2010: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS Healthcare service and Reforms in other Developed Countries Healthcare reforms within developed countries can be analyzed in order to compare whether the healthcare services in England have been successful in its bid to ensure efficiency, equity and quality. Attempts to handle reforms of the healthcare system in the European countries have been an ongoing process for 30 years. Although the reforms have taken throughout the 30 years in different ways, their main emphasis has been on improving the cost-effectiveness of the healthcare service. In the early 1980s the EU countries were looking at cost containment. The feature in the 1990s was to endorse efficiency in terms of introducing competition and markets in the healthcare system. Since 2000 the focus has switched to effectiveness; promoting various notions of healthcare in terms of quality.11 Over the course of the 20th century the countries of Europe have established significant success in improving the healthcare service for their citizens. However they still face challenges in the form of restraining costs, improving quality and providing universal healthcare access, these have put the European healthcare services under immense pressure.11 Looking at another OECD: USA, A report on A review of health care reform in the United States assessed whether the USA have been successful in providing healthcare. The findings showed that United States spent more per capita on health care than any other OECD country, yet its health outcomes lagged behind other countries.12 This shows they are struggling with efficiency issues and are still countering challenges in providing quality healthcare service that is expected from the citizens of the USA. Especially in the last few years Healthcare reform has been a major activity of the federal government, in order to revolutionize and develop the service overall. The 3 goals of optimizing cost, access and quality still remain a challenge within the healthcare society in the U.S.12 They concluded that USA still faced many challenges in running the national healthcare service, a key challenge they face is the utter complexity of the system, with its numerous public and private providers.12 Another OECD country reviewed in terms of healthcare service being provided and the reforms that have taken place is China. A report from on From a national, centrally planned health system to a system based on the market: lessons from China concluded: China is the country that has undergone the highest number of health care reforms. Since 1978, China saw many reforms and they also followed the way as the EU countries, with the healthcare system starting from governmental, centrally planned and a collective system to ending up as a heavily market influenced system. Now, thirty years later, the Chinese government openly concede that the reforms were unsuccessful and seek innovative and fresh directions.13 This illustrates that China is also in a healthcare crisis and looking to implement different strategies in order to gain control of Chinas Healthcare system. Having reviewed the healthcare service being endowed in these developed countries, it demonstrates that they are all on an identical level as the healthcare service being provided in England and all face similar challenges. All these developed countries are looking to develop the countries overall healthcare service in terms of efficiency, equity and quality. NHS Plan 2000 and the future of NHS Since the last reform: The NHS plan 2000 14, a lot has transformed in terms of funding and operating the healthcare system in England. Especially with the new coalition governments idea of cutting budgets it is a difficult time the NHS is going through and will necessitate a lot of expertise and world class management to get through todays financial and economical predicament. An additional indication that will be taken into deliberation is the election of the new plans set out in the NHS White Paper 2010. As the new coalition government has come into authority there have been huge changes to overall budgets for the public services and this possibly will have a consequence on the way the NHS operates in England. 15 The reforms have encompassed a significant impact on the organisation and deliverance of health care service in England. Wide array of transformations have been pioneered in an attempt to ensure the NHS is managed more resourcefully and effectively. This report will examine whether these reforms have on the whole improved the healthcare system in England in terms of efficiency, equity and quality and if the publics requirements have been convened. Aims: To examine the healthcare reforms in England since its inception and to assess whether these reforms have improved factors of efficiency, equity and quality in providing healthcare. Objectives: To review the reforms in the NHS since its inception in 1948 To examine whether these reforms improved efficiency, equity and quality of healthcare To assess the key features of healthcare reforms proposed by the current government and their implications on the NHS To put forward plans for the future of the NHS Methodology: A number of sources were consulted to conjure up this paper and examine the healthcare reforms in the NHS. Scientific search engines and databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar and Science Direct (Date accessed 20/10/10) were used to gain literature reviews but results from Google Scholar and Science Direct were dismissed as they were too vague and irrelevant to this topic. With PubMed following keywords were inserted Healthcare, Reforms and England. The data was also set from 1948 to 2010 when searching for reports as this would set the inclusion criteria. The reports and journals since 1948, when the NHS was established were used. Even though history before 1948 was looked at for study purposes, reports before NHS establishment; these were regarded as the exclusion criteria as reports werent looked at prior to 1948. Healthcare service within Britain was looked at in general but for the results of this report, the inclusion criteria was healthcare service in England as it just look ed at the healthcare service being provided within England. The exclusion criterion was healthcare service in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For the first part of the report, the introduction: where the report looked at the history of the NHS. The resources used included looking at general management books looking at management theories. The classical theories of Max Weber, Frederic Taylor and Henri Fayol were the backbone of the NHS and that is why these were used. Another source to produce this paper was the Department of health (http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/index.htm) where the publications and reports about the NHS in general were looked at. This paper used a lot of publications produced by the Department of health and the NHS publications as these sources are reliable; these were seen as good foundation to work from. One of the main publications used was The NHS white paper: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health, this was a key entity in writing up this paper. As the paper didnt contract with experiments and clinical trials, it didnt look at a lot of statistics; the majority of its content was obtained from qualitative data. Results/ Discussion Having carried out the required literature searches and reading journals, reports and Department of Health Publications, results were gathered and have been shown below with the discussion of the key topics. The results look at each reform taken place in the NHS and then goes onto analyse the plans set by the new government. Having looked at the reforms and the new plans the paper than talks about efficiency, equity and quality related to each reform. Reforms in the healthcare service in England The healthcare service in the UK has undergone a number of reforms since its inception in 1948. Prior to 1948, healthcare service was provided in England but due to the increasing pressures for efficiency and quality in health services it lead to these developments and reforms in healthcare being provided. A more overtly management-oriented approach to the healthcare service delivery was adopted based on classical management theories to gain more control of the healthcare service in England. 16,17 Classical theories and Scientific Management: 1960s The NHS was based on the classical theories of Frederic Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol and Max Weber. 16-19 Table 1: Frederic Winslow Taylors four main scientific management principles. Replacing rule-of-work thumb methods with methods based on a scientific of the tasks Scientifically train each individual rather than leave them to train themselves Cooperate with each worker to ensure that the scientific method is being followed Divide workload equally between managers and staff Table 2: Henri Fayols Modern Operational Management approach. Division of work- Specialization for efficiency Authority Responsibility- Both are related, the latter arising from the former. Discipline-Requires good superiors at all levels Unity of Command- Employee should receive orders from one superior only Unity of Direction- Each group of activities with the same objective must have one head and one plan Subordination of individual to general interest- When the two are found to differ, management must reconcile them Remuneration-Should be fair and satisfactory Centralization-Extent to which authority is concentrated or dispersed Scalar chain/line of authority-Needs to be sensible, clear and understood Order : Right thing/person in the right place Equity- Equal opportunity for everyone Stability of tenure- Unnecessary turnover is both the cause and effect of bad management Initiative- Thinking out and execution of a plan Thinking out and execution of a plan Table 3. Max Webers Bureaucratic approach. Power-Ability to get things done, often by the use of threats or sanctions Authority- Ability to get things done because of the position that justified someone in terms of legitimacy Formal approach Hierarchical authority Extensive roles and procedures- Uniformity of decisions and actions Job description- Clear-cut division of labour and High level of specialization Discipline These classical theories contributed a lot to the healthcare service in England and still do to this day.16-19 The classical writers thought of the NHS in terms of purpose and formal structure. They created a formal structure on which the NHS could run on. They also looked at job design, scientific selection and development of workers. The classical theories generally serve as a backbone to the present day NHS management. Although the classical theories made a big contribution to the healthcare service in England it had its limitations and wasnt the most effective way. One drawback was that it wasnt evidence based; it didnt look at the way staff did their tasks and didnt look at the well being of staff, the human and social aspects of work. It just treated them like machines. The theories didnt look at motivating the staff and developing them in their own interests, had they done this staffs work quality wouldve enhanced thus providing an efficient service to patients and overall improve the quality of healthcare service in England. Overall the classical theories were too concrete and fully based on rules and procedures. In terms of efficiency the theories bought a set way of running the healthcare service in England. Once the NHS was established it introduced equity as well as healthcare service was now available to anyone. The NHS was just established and with these set in place in the 1960s the qua lity of service would improve from now with further reforms to come. Salmon Report: 1960s One of the first reforms took place since the NHS was established was in the 1960s. The Salmon Report bought findings and changes which included that workload should be equally distributed between managers and practitioners.20 The NHS would also get rid of matrons and replace them with a hierarchy of nurse managers. The introduction of several additional layers to the management hierarchy; in order to improve efficiency in operating the NHS. This lead to responsibility being equally distributed and the service met its aims and objectives more efficiently. Another change was that nurse managers would contribute to the overall management of the service through the medium of consensus management teams and thus improve efficiency and quality within the NHS. Having nurse managers lead to them taking control of set responsibilities and helped in general running of tasks at ward level leading to an improvement in general quality in the healthcare service being provided. 1974 Reorganization: 1970s The aim of this reform was to attain greater integration of the healthcare service in order to provide more stability and increase efficiency. The reorganisation also introduced more central control in order to: 21 ensure policies were implemented improve accountability encourage delegation develop democratic decision-making process These changes lead to a more structured way for managers to follow and enhance the quality of the healthcare service. By the mid 1970s quality was improving but there were still concerns of equity in the NHS. There were still clear differences of health sufferers in terms of social class; figures showed that people in lower social classes more likely suffered from diseases. There were several possible explanations for these inequalities. Natural and social selection. This would depend on the view that people who are fittest are most likely to succeed in society, and classes reflect this degree of selection. Poverty leads to ill health, through nutrition, housing and environment. Cultural and behavioural explanations. There are differences in the diet and fitness of different social classes, and in certain habits like smoking. 22,23 Overall in the 1970s the quality of healthcare service was still improving, equity issues were still a concern and in terms of efficiency they were recuperating the NHS. The Griffiths Report: 1980s This reform was a major point in NHS history, the Griffiths Report identified problems such as the healthcare service was institutionally inactive and that the local health authorities were filled with directives without being given any clear procedures to follow.24 The Griffiths report stated that changes were difficult to achieve but gave recommendations to improve the NHS. It introduced a more formal and modern way of management. It gave increased participation for managers in setting and controlling budgets. The report also gave greater emphasis on cost awareness in order to improve efficiency. A Clear and quick decision-making process was introduced to improve quality of service provided to patients. The managers in local authorities were given a more clearly defined direction and the overall staffs were better informed.24 The Internal Market Working For Patients: 1990s Another reform in the 1990s took place, this bought a new dimension to the NHS; large publicly-owned hospitals could opt to become self-managed trusts. This meant that health services could be bought by private investors i.e. patients themselves thus allowing them to take control of the way they want the service. Even large GPs could become fund holders and be both purchasers and providers of care.25 This reform lead to introduction of greater flexibility thus allowing more effective matching of patients needs and care. Money followed the patients through the system of purchasing and providing of healthcare service, this led to equity being improved as patients had more selection of services. This reform led to higher competition in providing quality healthcare service, the costs decreased and the general quality increased. The NHS Plan 2000 The NHS Plan 2000 made key findings : the NHS is a 1940s system operating in the 21st century and that it lacked of national standards. It also said that there were barriers between staff and providing services. There were a lack of clear guidelines and the NHS structure has over-centralization.14 Plans to diminish problems and propose new plans such as introducing Modern Matrons to improve the management of services, a strong leader with clinical experience and with clear authority at ward level, improve efficiency by setting standards and controlling resources these were there aims.14,26 The figure below shows the comparison of the 1948 and the new NHS model outlining the key differences. Figure.4 the key difference between the 1948 model and The NHS Plan 2000 model 14 The NHS Plan 2000: Achievements This reform set out specific targets which were achieved in order to improve efficiency, equity and quality of healthcare service in England: Over 100 new hospitals by 2010 and 500 new one-stop primary care centres Clean wards and better hospital food 7,000 extra beds in hospitals Over 3,000 GP premises modernized Modern IT systems in every hospital and GP surgery 7,500 more consultants and 2,000 more GPs 20,000 extra nurses and 6,500 extra therapists Childcare support for NHS staff with 100 on-site nurseries.26 These targets were achieved in 2008 and it led to the improvement of efficiency as the number of GPs and consultants employed were increased. The modernisation of technology and IT systems led to quality of service being improved as high investment in high quality equipment made the NHS one of the worlds top quality service. Since 2000 NHS has improved the overall service and met its objectives. NHS Implications: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS With the new coalition government coming into election another set of reforms have been proposed as they hope to improve the overall healthcare service in England. The main aims and objectives to improve the healthcare service are varied and very detailed but to summarise it these are the points covered:15 Increase health spending in real terms in each year of this Parliament 15and also that there goal is an NHS which achieves results that are amongst the best in the world 15. However the government will uphold the foundation that the NHS was formed on; a comprehensive service, available to all, free at the point of use and based on clinical need, not the ability to pay 15. The government than goes into detail of what they arrange to initiate to make an efficient healthcare service: acknowledge the fact that patients come first and therefore will give them greater choice and control. An example of this is that a patient will be able to choose any GP practice, consultant, and choice of treatment consequently improving equity of the service. The government endeavours to develop the healthcare outcomes: set objectives such as reduce mortality and morbidity, increase safety, and improve patient experience and outcomes for all 15. By doing this they are ensuring they are driving efficiency and improving the service. In order to achieve the objectives that the government sets, the ability for service providers to have more autonomy, responsibility and accountability will be a means to achieving efficient results. A big change will be the establishment of a NHS Commissioning Board. The board will be accountable for making sure health outcomes are achieved, allocate resources and have the lead on quality improvement and to tackle inequalities that exist in the NHS. Overall the reforms in the NHS Paper 2010 will provide the NHS with greater incentives to increase efficiency, equity and quality. Efficiency The healthcare system in England has on the whole perceived a huge improvement in terms of efficiency since its inception in 1948. A system has been established where it endows with one of the best services in the world but there are still room for improvements. An analysis of the services gives evidence such as the NHS building 100 new hospitals since 2000, therefore improving the efficiency and allowing better access for patients. 27 Even though there continue to be a lack of quality and accessibility to services across the country. The patients havent been able to impose enough pressure to force improvements. The NHS need to give patients more control over the health services they have access to improve efficiency. In 2008 investment in the NHS as a whole rose from ÂÂ £43.9bn per year in 2000, when the NHS Plan was launched, to ÂÂ £92.6bn. another measurement of efficiency is looking at numbers of early deaths from cancer, coronary heart disease and suicide; they continue to fall as services improve; over 98% of patients at Accident and Emergency (AE) Departments are seen within 4 hours; and hospital waiting lists are lower than ever, with half a million fewer patients waiting since lists were at their peak.28 One key way to achieve the set objectives is to cut down NHS managements costs by 45% over the next four years enabling them to free up investment for further improvements.28 Much has been achieved during the last five years of investment and reforms. For example, the significant investment in NHS staff, along with more flexible working, is facilitating healthcare professionals to take advantage of the freedom thus improving their commitment to the NHS. NHS staff working flexibly and using improved technology are better able to respond to patients needs and changing expectations and are achieving improvements in quality and productivity across the system.27 Since 1948, the NHS budget on average has risen over 4% in real terms each year; this is something they hope to resolve as the NHS will face a sustained and substantial financial constraint if it continues. They hope to avoid the financial crisis that happened in the NHS in the 1970s. The NHS hopes to release up to ÂÂ £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2014, which will be reinvested to suppor