Author: Nola Jones

Women still arrive in blue burqas at a hospital in Kabul, which is the only maternity facility of its kind in the nation, and wait for hours outside its gates. Now, some people cover their faces in silence, almost as a tiny act of defiance. Some people don’t. Because the women who used to staff the wards are gradually leaving the workforce and no new ones are coming to take their place, female doctors and nurses move between wards that are getting thinner every year. This is the gradual phase of a crisis that appears abrupt on paper. If the…

The same scene can be seen if you stroll past any neighborhood pool in the late afternoon. A parent is shouting something about kicking harder from the shallow end as a child stands at the edge, half-confident, half-anxious. The child leaps. splashes. sinks a bit. Coughing comes up. Everyone chuckles. The lesson is over. And somewhere in that brief, everyday moment, a question is subtly omitted: did the child learn to swim, or did they just learn to stay afloat for thirty seconds? There is a propensity to treat swimming and floating as the same accomplishment, particularly among hurried parents.…

The particular annoyance of a clue that seems simple but isn’t is familiar to anyone who has spent a Sunday morning bent over a crossword grid, pencil hovering, coffee cooling. “Small monkey” is among them. Three phrases. Deceptively easy. Nevertheless, it has plagued puzzle solvers for years, primarily because the solution is solely dependent on the number of squares you must fill. For at least 20 years, and occasionally longer, the clue has appeared in popular American crosswords. It has been logged more than twenty times by Crossword Tracker, one of those unobtrusive online resources that puzzle enthusiasts rely on.…

A recent chapter by Kate Bailey of the Cambridge Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring contains a minor, nearly unremarkable fact that should worry more people than it does. According to her, a child’s progress during their first year of school doesn’t diminish. They remain. Exams and the long, awkward years of adolescence continue to leave their mark until the age of sixteen. It’s the kind of conclusion that sounds almost too neat, but the evidence supporting it is stubborn and has been accumulating for decades. Bailey’s work in The First Year at School: An International Perspective is intriguing for reasons…

Observing a crossword clue resist you can be enjoyable. You glance away after reading it once or twice. Six letters: “Rich, naturally fermented soy sauce.” The pencil lingers. This small obstacle will seem familiar to anyone who has spent a peaceful afternoon leafing through the back pages of a newspaper. It appears to be fairly straightforward, almost generous in its description. However, the solution doesn’t always appear right away. Most of the time, TAMARI is the word the puzzle seeks. The most dependable solution for that exact phrase, according to the majority of solving databases, is six letters that naturally…

These days, the word appears in strange places. a TikTok response. A casual remark in a group chat. When choosing a restaurant, someone shrugs and types “brow.” No follow-up, no punctuation. A little flat, a little final, it sits there. If you’re over thirty, you most likely read it twice and thought your friend was referring to their eyebrows. It’s not unusual to be confused. The dictionary still defines “brow” as the forehead, the ridge above the eye, or occasionally the steep edge of a hill for the majority of recorded English. Collins enumerates six different versions. Merriam-Webster keeps everything…

The word “tinsel” has a subtle allure. The word itself has a nearly six-century history, but most people only give it a thought once a year, usually while untangling a knotted strand from last December’s box. Its Old French origin, estincele, which means sparkle, still seems appropriate. Fundamentally, the word “tinsel” refers to eye-catching light. These days, the term “tinsel” mostly describes those long, glossy strips that are draped over mantelpieces or wrapped around Christmas trees. It is described in dictionaries as thin, glittering strands of material, typically made of plastic or metal, that mimic the appearance of ice or…

When you first see one, you don’t really recognize it as a monkey. It resembles a tiny ginger cat that chose to stay after wandering too far up a tree. The telltale mane, a thick orange ruff that frames a small black face, is the reason why naturalists continued to draw parallels with cats centuries ago. They were once described by Antonio Pigafetta, who was sailing with Magellan, as lovely little cats that resembled tiny lions. In spirit, if not in taxonomy, the description remained relevant. The lion-maned monkey is a family of four animals that live in the diminishing…

For many years, the discussion surrounding early childhood education in Nigeria sounded like it does in most places with limited resources and conflicting priorities. The language of childhood, nurturing, and moral obligation surrounded it. Everyone agreed that it was necessary, but for some reason, roads, electricity, security, and oil always came in second. Before deciding to completely alter the course of events, the OMEP Nigeria chapter observed this for a considerable amount of time. The cause was not what changed. The vocabulary was the problem. At some point, the advocates of the chapter began using the language of economists instead…

The problem with awards in the early years sector is that, historically, very few people outside the sector have ever heard of them. A brief ceremony, a few well-dressed teachers, courteous applause, and a printed certificate that would eventually be displayed above a coffee maker in a staff room in Drogheda or Limerick. For years, that was the beat. Silent, kind, and mostly undetectable. The ripple hasn’t really stopped since OMEP Ireland took a slightly different action. It started, as these initiatives frequently do, with a single national award honoring an early childhood educator whose work had, by all accounts,…