There is a phenomenon taking hold of Dutch schools that hearkens back to the bad old days of apartheid South Africa. Although it is not legally stipulated, there is a distinct trend of native white Dutch students steering clear of schools dominated by students with their origins in countries like Suriname, Morocco, Turkey or Somalia. […]
Johnson Kinyago, a sun-dried Masai herder, has two sons. “One is a genius – he can identify every animal and find water anywhere. So he’s with the goats,” he says proudly. “The other is stupid, and maybe not mine. He’s in school.” At Dol Dol cattle market in Laikipia, northern Kenya, a group of blanket-wrapped […]
Once upon a time there was an old mill by a stream. Built 1870-ish. It is now in need of restoration. The stream is the Ouseburn, which meets the river Tyne as it flows through Newcastle to the North Sea. And once upon another time, three children fled from a care home on a rickety […]
Joan Gerntholtz is passionate about sounds – and we’re not talking about kwaito or rhythm and blues. Her obsession is the perfection of phonics, the crucial building blocks that started us all on the road to reading bliss. Most of us can recall slowly stumbling through endless repetitions of b-a-t, c-a-t and m-a-t, but pay […]
The Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Oracle are helping disadvantaged learners solve for ‘x†in their newly established mathematics school. Three hundred and sixty youngsters from grades 9 to 11 no longer wander the streets on Saturday mornings, and RAU tutors are getting down to the business of science, mathematics and technology with them. The […]
What does a lexicographer do? I write dictionaries. I’ve been doing this for the past 20 years or so and written six or seven of them. What does this involve? There are two approaches. The one is to take work that’s already been written and work it into a new dictionary. But what we do […]
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) has come and gone and a draft global plan meant to bring about a better planet was adopted by world leaders. But experts warned that new trade and environmental agreements alone won’t provide the solution. In the view of Vinayagum Chinapah, a representative of Unesco, one of the […]
Hands shoot up enthusiastically around the small class of nine-year-olds. They seem to have got the hang of the Roman numerals their teacher is chalking on the blackboard. The children could be nine-year-olds anywhere if it weren’t for their red scarves, but their teacher looks young, even for a trainee. Giraldo Del Pino, it turns […]
As one of their first acts, the Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro made education their priority. Faced with an illiteracy rate of more than 20% when they overthrew the Batista regime in 1959, the members of the new government set about trying to eradicate it altogether. On September 26 1960, Castro declared in the United […]
Traditional funeral rites in Angola are putting the families of Marburg victims at risk of contracting the killer virus. For most Angolan families, preparing the body and kissing and embracing the deceased are integral to bidding a final farewell. But the secretions from a body increase after death, making such practices highly dangerous in the case of a Marburg-related death.