Culture
National scandal – and emergency
‘We cannot go on like this. Every year since 2014, steep annual increases in drug-related deaths have been met with promises to look into causes and propose solutions. Meanwhile, people continue to die, as evidence-based…
Aspects of Edinburgh (and Dundee)
‘Makar: Stewart Conn prefers “that term’s more egalitarian ring than ‘laureate’, with its whiff of Parnassus.” Down on the ground, a poet among people not stuck up, high on the Mountain of Muses.’
It was like the Titanic – or was it?
Media coverage of ‘risky’ events can be out of all proportion to real danger – but some risks, like Grenfell, tragically slip under the radar. Dominic Duckett examines the impact of amplified risk.
Are we rearing children fit for the future?
\For the under-sevens, everyday opportunities to develop meta-skills are far more important than an unnecessarily early start on the three Rs’: Sue Palmer of Upstart continues our series on educational reform
Once more with feeling: rediscovering local history ‘from the ground up’
Change is a constant fact of city life but Fay Young finds a sense of place endures in a digital archive of local history, told by local people. ‘These Leithers – born or made -…
City or Symbol? Dundee and perils of regeneration
‘Today, amid the new neatness required by capital as it turns dirty old cities into presentable products and symbols, Dundee may find it lonely, and eerily quiet, at the top’.
Music education is learning for life: Part Four
Teenagers who are absorbed in healthy “passions” tend not to be causing trouble. Abi Rooley-Towle concludes her series on music education as a skill that extends far beyond academic box-ticking
Songs of Freedom: Music education 3
Part 3 of Abi’s series on music education: ‘If the early years are the roots of the ‘musical learning tree’, then this next stage develops the all important stem, where unconscious and conscious intellectual learning…
Teaching music to young children with body and soul: Part 2
We all have a voice, Abi Rooley Towle describes how children’s education can benefit by introducing song from the earliest years.
Radically rethinking music education for the 21st Century
Music education is in trouble in Scotland, music teacher Abi Rooley-Towle proposes radical rethinking to create a music curriculum fit for the 21st century
What are we stumbling into?
The Far Right made some big gains in the euro elections as angry voters backed anti-EU/nativist parties. Back to the 1930s? Amsterdam holds lessons
Walking with poems
The Corbenic Community in Perthshire, home to people with learning difficulties, is a special place too for poets, sculptors – and the rest of us