Bringing Insight to a coffee table near you…

was the norm, I can (safely…) say that I wouldn’t repeat the exercise nowadays: with a jeep stuck on rocks at a crossing on the Mara river in Kenya, and a mix of Latin American and Japanese foundation students attempting to push it clear, I noticed others tracking three or four hippos upstream with their cameras (no mobiles) held high, rapidly shouting ‘Hippo, photo, photo, hippo, photo, PHOTO!’. I urgently questioned our local guide on whether the hippos presented an immediate threat and he answered very calmly, ‘No. But the spitting cobras do…’

I doubt that teachers in Ukraine have been filling in forms over the last year. The risks they face are very different from ours. Svitlana Popova is a mathematics teacher in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, and her school was seized by attacking military forces and heavily damaged last March. After Svitlana was forced to switch to online teaching, tanks fired on her house and burned it down. Svitlana continued to lead virtual delivery from a parasol-covered table in a courtyard. In a motivational New Year’s address to the nation, President Zelensky outlined what he considered to be the essential tools for victory in the coming months, and after listing military hardware and surgical equipment he finished with ‘the teacher’s pointer.’ For teachers in Ukraine attempting to supply uninterrupted education to over eight million learners, the risk to the country of not doing so weighs heavy on the soul.

Tim Fish Editor-in-chief