Has School Become Optional?
In the past few years, chronic absenteeism has nearly doubled. The fight to get students back in classrooms has only just begun.
Absenteeism underlies much of what has beset young people, including falling school achievement, deteriorating mental health, and elevated youth violence.
What Frantz Fanon and Ian Fleming Agreed On
From opposite directions, the revolutionary intellectual and the creator of James Bond saw violence as essential—psychologically and strategically—to solving the crisis of colonialism.
More than fifty years later, Zohra Drif could still picture the Milk Bar in Algiers on September 30, 1956. It was white and shining, she recalled, awash in laughter, young voices, “summer colors, the smell of pastries, and even the distant twittering of birds.” Drif, a well-coiffed law student in a stylish lavender dress, ordered a peach-Melba ice cream and wedged her beach bag against the counter. She paid, tipped, and left without her bag. The bomb inside it exploded soon afterward.
It’s too soon to know what downtown cities will look like after the coronavirus pandemic. What we do know is that no business will be spared. Both small mom and pops and big retailers will have to shut their doors and move away from dense city centers. That could mean landowners, consumers and retailers will have to work together to imagine the new iteration of the American city.
Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done, but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send children back to school soon. 
It is impossible to ignore the ongoing impact the Covid-19 pandemic is having on our lives. This month our infographic shows how some aspects of daily life have changed as a result. The widespread closure of schools, for example, is thought to have affected up to 1.38 billion learners as of late March. Meanwhile, the sudden shift to remote working is one such change expected to have long-lasting effects. Following the pandemic, 68% of Germans have stated they would like to work remotely more often.
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