After Adele’s tearful reunion with a former teacher, four readers recall their own school memories
“So bloody cool, so engaging.” That’s how Adele described her English teacher at Chestnut Grove school in Balham, south-west London, Ms McDonald, when asked who had inspired her.
Answering a question from the actor Emma Thompson during ITV’s An Audience With Adele on Sunday, Adele said: “She really made us care, and we knew that she cared about us and stuff like that.”
Continue reading...The linguist and computer scientist discusses her optimistic assessment of a misunderstood generation – and delves into the nuanced ways to text ‘OK’
Dr Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer and computer scientist at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, who works at the intersection of technology and the humanities. With Roberta Katz, Jane Shaw and Linda Woodhead, she is the author of Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age, which paints an optimistic portrait of a much misunderstood generation that has never known a world without the internet.
Define Gen Zers.
They are people born from the mid-1990s to around 2010. They’re followed by Generation Alpha, who are aged 10 and under, though there’s a bit of an overlap.
Plundered items likely to be returned to Nigeria include plaques, bronze figures and musical instruments
The University of Oxford is holding 145 objects looted by British troops during an assault on the city of Benin in 1897 that are likely to be repatriated to Nigeria, a report has said.
More than two-thirds of the plundered items are owned by the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum, and 45 are on loan. They include brass plaques, bronze figures, carved ivory tusks, musical instruments, weaving equipment, jewellery, and ceramic and coral objects dating to the 13th century.
Continue reading...Eton and Harrow among those whose ‘character-building’ qualities were admired by German educators in 1930s and 1940s
Nazi Germany’s elite schools, which were set up to train future leaders of the Third Reich, used British private schools such as Eton and Harrow as their models, a new book reveals.
The historian Helen Roche has written the first comprehensive history of Nazi elite schools, known as Napolas. Drawing on research undertaken in 80 archives in six countries as well as testimonies from more than 100 former pupils, Roche discovered just how keen the Nazis were to learn from the “character-forming” example of the British system.
Continue reading...More than 90% also say they would test if they had symptoms, but poll finds mental health has deteriorated
Far from being irresponsible Covid spreaders, the vast majority of students at English universities have been vaccinated at least once and would request a test if they had symptoms, according to a survey.
Students’ wellbeing has suffered this autumn, however, with a third of those surveyed reporting that their mental health had deteriorated since the start of term, the report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says.
Continue reading...Children ate less healthily, took less exercise and had more emotional problems, say researchers
Children in the UK ate fewer vegetables, took less exercise and experienced worsening emotional difficulties following the Covid outbreak, according to a research study.
A biennial survey conducted by investigators at Cardiff University found that primary school-age children reported a sharp increase in “elevated or clinically significant emotional difficulties” in early 2021, compared with the same survey conducted in 2019.
Continue reading...The Prison Arts Collective brings art, and renowned artists, to incarcerated people as a form of therapy and escape
The American prison has a long cultural history, depicted in movies from The Shawshank Redemption to The Green Mile. They are generally portrayed as harsh, dehumanising places populated by hardened criminals and vicious guards.
Who better, then, to demystify prisons and those who live in them than artists themselves? “We’ve had this glorified TV version of what a prison is in America and sure, it’s not a cakewalk, but it’s also humans in there – our fellow humans,” says Brian Roettinger, a graphic designer based in Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Researchers fear Horizon Europe programme is collateral damage in UK-EU political dispute
More than 1,000 universities and 50 academies of science across Europe have called on the EU to “immediately” finalise the UK’s membership of its flagship £80bn research programme and end the 10-month delay to the ratification process.
In a letter to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, they say the lengthy delay is “endangering current and future plans for collaboration” and any further delay will “result in a major weakening of our collective research strength”.
Continue reading...Linacre College to rename itself Thao College after funding offer from Vietnam’s richest woman
A University of Oxford college is to change its name to honour Vietnam’s richest woman after she offered it a £155m donation.
Linacre College says it will ask the privy council for permission to change its name to Thao College after signing a memorandum of understanding over the money with Sovico Group – represented by its chair, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao.
Continue reading...After months of home schooling, more and more children are ditching their tech and heading outdoors
After more than a year of lockdowns, with limited access to nature, Magdalena Begh was delighted when her six-year-old daughter came home from forest school and informed her she had found three rat skeletons. One of them, Alia told her, was “pretty fresh”. “These little observations are very crucial to their learning – it’s amazing,” says Begh.
Since Alia and her sister Hana, nine, started going to the Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature after-school club in north London in June, they have used clay, learned about insects and made campfires, marmalade and bows and arrows.
Continue reading...Xavier Bettel admits dissertation ‘should have been done differently’ after investigation uncovers plagiarism
Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has admitted his university thesis “should have been done differently” after a media investigation concluded that only two of the work’s 56 pages had not been plagiarised.
A local news outlet, reporter.lu, said on Wednesday that Bettel had lifted three-quarters of the text, describing it as “an impressive hodgepodge of copied passages that does not meet the customary requirements of academia”.
Continue reading...Despite government narrative of a return to normality, schools in areas with high Covid rates lack support
Schools in England hit by high numbers of Covid-19 cases among staff and pupils have been forced to reinstate mask wearing, send whole year groups home to study online and in some cases close early for half-term as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in education.
Despite the government narrative of a return to normality in classrooms, schools in areas with high coronavirus rates say they have struggled to function, with many staff off sick and problems securing supply teachers because of high demand.
Continue reading...With schools struggling to vaccinate before winter arrives, ministers are urged to allow children to receive vaccines at different venues
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Ministers are facing demands to allow younger teenagers to attend Covid vaccination centres, amid concerns that jab rates among this age group are three times lower in England than Scotland.
The vaccination rate among 12- to 15-year-olds in England currently stands at just 14.2% according to official data, compared with 44.3% in Scotland. The huge disparity has led to complaints that England has been held back by administering vaccinations solely through schools.
Continue reading...If you have a vulva between your legs, could you identify the seven separate structures in a mirror? If your partner has a vulva, can you identify theirs?
For over half the population, the vulva is a significant part of their body; an exit and an entrance, a site of pleasure and, often, pain, that speaks to core human function and need. In 2021, it can feel as if we’re on the cliff-edge of emancipation from the history of oppression and ick surrounding female genitalia. The booming sex toy market, a growing awareness of hormonal cycles and the messy reality of periods, a sharper focus on female pleasure and evolving conversations about menopause all point to real progress. Yet there remains a well of misunderstanding in society about what’s down there (clitoris, labia majora, labia minora, urethral opening, vaginal opening, perineum and anus, by the way), with tangible consequences.
Continue reading...A gift of a camera inspired Belmaya Nepali to rise above poverty and abuse to make documentaries
Belmaya Nepali’s life changed for ever when, at 14, she was given a camera.
The British film-maker Sue Carpenter had come to Pokhara, a tourist city in central Nepal, to run a photography project with disadvantaged girls living in an institution. One of those girls was Belmaya.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UK institution was in line for huge donation but has paused talks due to concerns Gulf state used hacking software
The University of Cambridge has broken off talks with the United Arab Emirates over a record £400m collaboration after claims about the Gulf state’s use of controversial Pegasus hacking software, the university’s vice-chancellor has said.
The proposed deal, hailed by the university in July as a “potential strategic partnership … helping to solve some of the greatest challenges facing our planet” – would have included the largest donation of its kind in the university’s history, spanning a decade and involving direct investment from the UAE of more than £310m.
Continue reading...Exclusive: ‘like’, ‘bare’, ‘that’s long’ and ‘cut eyes at me’ among terms showing up in pupils’ work now vetoed in classroom
A London secondary school is trying to stop its pupils from using “basically” at the beginning of sentences and deploying phrases such as “oh my days” in a crackdown on “fillers” and “slang” in the classroom.
Ark All Saints academy has produced lists of “banned” language which includes “he cut his eyes at me”, which the Collins dictionary says originates in the Caribbean and means to look rudely at a person and then turn away sharply while closing one’s eyes dismissively.
Ermmm …
Because …
No …
Like …
Say …
You see …
You know …
Basically …
He cut his eyes at me (he shot me a withering sidelong glance)
Oh my days (my goodness)
Oh my God
That’s a neck (you need a slap for that)
Wow
That’s long (that’s boring, tough or tedious)
Bare (very, extremely)
Cuss (swear or abuse)
Continue reading...Many private schools may not reopen after staff laid off during lockdown say they will not return to the profession
The last message Mary Namitala received from the private school in which she taught was in March last year, the day all schools in Uganda were ordered close due to Covid-19. The message read: “No more payments until when schools open.”
“My husband and I decided to leave our rented house in town and shifted to the village, to our unfinished house. We could not afford to continue paying rent,” says Namitala, from her home in Bombo in central Uganda, about 20 miles north of the capital Kampala.
Continue reading...Discovery of DNA modifications raises hope of treatment for disorders that particularly afflict twins
The medical mystery of what causes some twins to be born identical may have been solved by scientists in the Netherlands, raising hopes for treatment of congenital disorders that disproportionately afflict them.
Identical twins form after a fertilised egg, called a zygote, splits into two embryos sharing exactly the same genes. The reason for the split is unknown.
Continue reading...Seven years after fleeing army clashes with militants, 100 families eking out an existence on a hillside near the Afghan border are unable to return home
“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”
Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home.
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