Author: Nola Jones

When a child stops talking, a certain kind of silence descends upon a Lagos classroom. It’s not the fidgety, restless silence of boredom, but a heavier withdrawal that seasoned educators are aware of but seldom know how to describe. Years ago, Dr. Amara Osei observed it while traveling between early childhood centers in Lagos’ expansive outer districts, where school compounds serve as after-hours gathering places for the community and corrugated rooftops trap the afternoon heat. She would later contend in her award-winning research that this silence is the result of unresolved childhood trauma, which has been mistakenly interpreted for far…

There’s a classroom somewhere in Washington, D.C. — small chairs, finger-painted artwork taped to walls, the faint smell of crayons — where something quietly remarkable has been happening for years. Mothers in that neighborhood are working at rates ten percentage points higher than before the city launched its universal preschool program. Not as a result of a large-scale ideological experiment. Simply because someone decided to watch the kids. That detail, small and almost domestic, sits at the center of what has become one of the more serious economic debates in American policy circles. The economic case for universal preschool isn’t…

When you care about something that no one else seems to care about enough, you get a certain kind of tiredness. Early childhood receives very little attention in rooms where development economists quarrel over GDP projections and education ministers debate budgets. However, a quiet but determined movement has been emerging throughout Africa somewhere in that ongoing gap between what is discussed and what is actually done. At the center of this movement is a woman whose work through OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, is starting to change the way the continent views its youngest citizens. When observing…

Last week, Connecticut did something truly out of the ordinary. The Early Childhood Education Endowment will receive an additional $320 million from a state budget signed by Governor Ned Lamont, bringing the total to $620 million in less than a year. That’s an incredible sprint for a program that didn’t exist prior to 2025. You could practically feel the collective sigh of child care advocates who have spent years advocating for this kind of commitment as you stood outside Hartford’s Capitol building. However, many of those same advocates are already cautiously and quietly questioning whether this is sufficient. A genuine…

Early childhood education is undergoing a quiet revolution that has nothing to do with touchscreens. Neither a monthly subscription nor a Wi-Fi password are necessary. It is made of cardboard and is located on a table in a Michigan preschool classroom. Since Professor Krystyna Nowak-Fabrykowski of Central Michigan University traveled to Bologna, Italy, to present her findings at the World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s international conference in 2025, Super Me!, a matching card game created to teach empathy and emotional intelligence to children as young as three, has drawn attention in the research community. The study was small in…

Even with half-finished crayon drawings and an abandoned puzzle by the reading nook, a Tuesday morning in almost any preschool classroom still gives the impression that childhood is going according to plan. However, a different picture begins to emerge when you take the time to speak with the educators, the pediatricians, and the weary parents who are waiting for someone to explain why their four-year-old has had his third meltdown before nine in the morning. Young children’s coping mechanisms have changed, and the clinical community is just now starting to catch up. By all standards, the United States’ preschool expulsion…

There is something almost unremarkable about the scene — a parent, a child, a book, a lamp casting warm light across the bedroom. It happens in millions of homes every night, tucked between dinner and sleep, squeezed into the narrow margin of a busy evening. Easy to rush. Easy to skip. But neuroscientists who have spent years studying what actually happens inside a child’s brain during those quiet minutes are increasingly convinced that skipping it carries a cost most parents would not expect. The research coming out of brain imaging labs over the past decade paints a picture that goes…

Entering a brand-new school building that exudes possibility and fresh paint has a subtle yet striking quality. Although the Hamilton Early Childhood Center in Kentwood, Michigan doesn’t make a big deal out of it, it’s difficult to ignore the significance of what it stands for. This is more than a preschool. It is the result of years of preparation, community trust, and a school district placing a significant wager on the notion that a child’s formative years are unquestionably the most important. The Hamilton Early Childhood Center, Kentwood Public Schools’ second significant early childhood facility in as many years, opened…

Candace Owens’s pursuit of journalism has a subtle irony. She enrolled at the University of Rhode Island with the kind of ambition that low-income, small-town children typically carry with them—not making an announcement, just making progress. Of all things, journalism. Asking questions, confirming statements, and holding influential people responsible are the cornerstones of this field. Looking back, it’s difficult to ignore how that chapter ended so differently than it must have started. Born in White Plains, New York, Owens was raised mostly by her grandparents in Stamford, Connecticut, following her parents’ divorce when she was about eleven years old. According…

In one version of the story, David Corenswet remains at the University of Pennsylvania, completes his psychology degree, and perhaps becomes a lawyer like both of his parents. No one outside of Philadelphia ever finds out his name. That was not the case. However, it nearly did, and in 2025, Superman’s appearance was altered by that tiny fork in the road and the quiet choice to move to Juilliard in New York City. Growing up in Philadelphia, Corenswet attended the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which is a private preparatory school with high academic standards. It’s easy to picture…