The modern classroom is no longer a battleground for attention — it’s a battleground between the demands of cognitive development and the allure of pocket-sized digital worlds. But what is this really doing to learning? And what, exactly, is it doing to the brain?

One hundred years ago, a 24-year-old biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, walked into a courtroom; and at the same time, into the history books. As we revisit this story, we get a glimpse of a drama that in many ways has never quite left the classroom.

On this day in 1853, Georges-Eugène Haussmann was appointed Prefect of the Seine. This was the beginning of a project to use the environment to teach citizens implicitly how to engage socially.

Before our classrooms became populated by screens, endless streams of worksheets, or the humble textbook, there was another tool for learning: the object.

Across the ‘green desert’ of the Mongolian steppe, nearly 30% of the population live a nomadic or semi-nomadic life. In a world of standardised education, Mongolia provides a novel approach to rooting education in culture.

Recently, I came across an interesting term: ‘Geneva babies’. It’s not an official label, but a shorthand used among some UN staff. What can it tell us about the surprising ways inequality persists?

Two weeks ago, whilst at breakfast, on my daily morning doom-scroll through social media, I came across a video which struck me as unusual as it did oddly terrifying.

I used to say teaching felt like putting on a performance. The analogy made sense at the time. But looking back now, I wonder: ‘should I have been the one who was performing at all?’

In a world where teachers are scarce and class sizes are ballooning, an old abandoned educational method may offer surprisingly modern solutions.