Education

At the age of nine, the young Dante Alighieri fell hopelessly in love with Beatrice Portinari, a young woman of about the same age, whose image would haunt him for the rest of his life and inspire one of the most famous female characters in universal literature.

Most of us want to trust. We assume that others possess our own level of honesty and goodwill. Sadly, this is neither a sensible nor a safe attitude anymore.

"Millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world's richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterises our time." (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970)

Did you wrestle with your decision to have children? Or did you know motherhood was for you from a long time back? More than six years ago, I found myself wondering about children. I couldn’t really find a “point” to having children. “Underpinning all of these [ideas] was the knowledge that the world is overpopulated and under-resourced,” I had written.

Children who fall prey to bullying cannot save themselves, just as the children who have become accustomed to bullying others will not give up this behaviour without outside intervention. As the phenomenon of bullying spreads, with harmful consequences on children's development, the need to know and apply strategies to combat it is becoming more pressing.

"School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to," conclude the authors of a guide to cultivating a passion for reading in children of all ages. It is clear that with good resources and role models, a child can become passionate about reading, but there are parents who wonder where they...

Roberto Badenas is a Seventh-day Adventist who specialises in Bible studies and is a New Testament teacher, with a theological leadership career that reflects his concern for people.

"What is the point of anger and where do you feel it in your body?" I was in my early 20s and looked at anger with wide eyes and few answers about emotions. I knew too little about the sensations it caused in my body, or how to identify and use them.

The young generations of women raised with the ideal of the family in which the man and the woman are team partners, equal both at home and outside it, discover that their expectations have taken precedence over the real course of society. The most surprised are, unpredictably, women who are highly educated.

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

Parents have a crucial role in managing their children's digital behaviour, as well as preventing and detecting addiction. Their success depends on their own relationship with digital devices.

Our children are forced to adapt to a world we did not want for them. As many mothers who attend coaching sessions say, the theme of war is one of the most difficult for them to address in discussions with their children, as they feel responsible for finding the balance between the child’s emotional security and their exposure to the reality around them.

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

For some people, suffering is temporary. For others, life itself can be a long series of painful blows. However, experience shows that recovery is possible even when people seem to be at the end of their tether.

The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the need for money cannot be subjected to a harsh moral judgment.