Afterschool Education

A ballet student from Kibera’s Project Elimu poses before a public performance. Project Elimu, a community-driven non-profit, offers art and sports education for children during the school holidays. Kibera is the largest slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Gordwin Odhiambo/AFP/Getty Images.

Random Words

Despite the war, and despite being defunded by state and federal governments, even this year the Total Dictation program, which was inaugurated at Novosibirsk State University in 2004 with the aim to promote literacy worldwide, succeeded in seeing the light of day today, Saturday, April 9, 2022. The Director of the Total Dictation Foundation, Olga Alexandrovna Rebkovets, must content herself with having involved 500 cities in Russia and 40 countries in the world — nothing comparable to the 6 continents and 76 countries that participated in 2019, before the pandemic. Yet, curiously enough, FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich also took part in the 2019 edition, and some still recall him breaking into a fresh laugh over the fact that the reader in charge of dictation is called “the dictator”.
As for this year’s edition, Marina Lvovna Stepnova was the featured writer and, reportedly, the dictation was about a nineteenth-century teenage boy waiting for his first love.

Vincent van Gogh, Letter From Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh with sketch of Woman Reading a Novel (verso), ca. November 12, 1888. Courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Tough Fronts

Students study on the street in Turin, Italy due to school closures imposed by the government as a response to a surge in COVID-19 cases. Photo: Alessandro Di Marco/EPA.

Penny Lane

A teacher holds her lesson on public steps to help social distance her students in Naples, Italy, after the region of Campania closed schools due to pandemic concerns. A writing on the wall (right, bottom) says: “Autism isn’t contagious — ignorance is”. Photo: Ciro de Luca/Reuters.

Classroom management

Female students attend class after schools reopened in Herāt, Afghanistan in a trial following months of closure due to COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: Jalil Rezayee/EPA.

Hair in the Way

Haircut in the time of pandemic. Drawing by 钟军勇 (Zhōng Jūnyǒng), teacher from 漕河 (Cáohé), 蕲春县 (Qíchūn County), graduated from 湖北美术学院 (Húběi Institute of Fine Arts), and member of 湖北省美术家协会 (Húběi Artists Association).

Wind chimes

Children, who have missed their online classes due to a lack of Internet facilities, maintain a safe distance as they listen to pre-recorded lessons over loudspeakers after schools were closed following the coronavirus outbreak, in Dandwal village in the western state of Maharashtra, India. Photo: Prashant Waydande/Reuters.

To be, or not to be

UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, warned on Tuesday that the COVID-2019 pandemic caused the worst crisis of education in history and said that getting students safely back to the classroom must be “a top priority”. Over 160 countries have closed schools, pushing more than 1 billion students out of the classroom, while at least 40 million children have missed out on pre-school. “Even before the pandemic, the world was facing a learning crisis”, Guterres said, but “Now we face a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities”.

Visions of Reality

Berlin, Germany: Secondary school pupils sit on desks spaced apart ready to take an examination. Photo: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images.

The Importance of Not Being Arcovazzi

“Sanitation is more important than independence” Sanitation has a strong connection not only with personal hygiene but also with human dignity and well-being, public health, nutrition and even education. There must be total sanitation for all. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“Everyone must be his own scavenger” – Mahatma Gandhi. Photo courtesy of mkgandhi.org.

Beyond the Dreams There’s Infinite Doubt

Isabella Ceccatelli, virtuoso dancer of Associazione Culturale “Il Delta della Luna”, showing herself in two different moments of her working as a volunteer in the summer camps of Libera (Associazioni, nomi e numeri contro le mafie). As Ernesto said, “One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness”. Photos courtesy of her herself.

Isabella poses with a young guest of the community. On the stone is written, “Al di là dei sogni... c’è una realtà sognata”. I am not a poet, and I know it. So I’d translate it with “A dreamed reality beyond dreams”. Hopefully so! Photo courtesy of Isabella Ceccatelli.

Here is where last year Isabella & Ester walked their one hundred steps, and the news is that this year Ester didn’t come, but we won't say that she didn’t come because she walked back to the start. Photo courtesy of Isabella Ceccatelli.

The Importance of Not Being Arcovazzi

Syangja, Nepal: 68-year-old student Durga Kami, who is studying in the 10th grade at Shree Kala Bhairab Higher Secondary School. Photo: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters.