We lack a definition of what psychological health looks like in today’s world. Following a recent talk to a group of business people, a man cornered me and said, “I work hard, I’m pretty successful, I have stable, second marriage and kids who are doing well…and yet I often feel unsatisfied with my life and
Education is a fundamental human right and the foundation upon which other rights are built on. Without education, an individual cannot realise their full potential. Basic education is one of the focus areas identified by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in order to fulfill its mandate of promoting, protecting and monitoring the realisation
A Viking colony in Greenland implies we are better at survival than supposed. The history of European explorers is replete with nasty stories of intelligent people failing to adapt to harsh new environments. One exception is the eleventh-century Vikings who settled in Greenland and prospered there for five centuries. Of course there are many stories
Kathrada, beloved by millions of South Africans, spent 26 years in jail, many of them alongside Nelson Mandela. Anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in jail – many of them alongside Nelson Mandela – for acts of sabotage against South Africa’s white minority government, died in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning at the age
Science and religion both offer origin stories of death. It is tempting to set up religion against science in any discussion of life, death, and purpose. But religion and science are different kinds of things and one can find spiritual truths in both of them. Why we die is a question for which both offer
Government policy interventions aimed at solving inequality would not produce results if the country’s dysfunctional education system wasn’t fixed. This was what Stellenbosch University economics professor Servaas van der Berg told delegates at a two-day conference in Pretoria organised by the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development in the presidency’s department of planning, monitoring and
Get your brain in shape with a little mental strength training. You have an estimated 70,000 thoughts per day. That’s 70,000 chances to build yourself up or tear yourself down. If you call yourself names, doubt your abilities, and second-guess your decisions, you’ll harm your performance (and most likely you’ll also be risking your physical
Broken system must be fixed, deputy minister tells PE event. If there is anything South Africa has failed at, it is education, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said at a gala dinner held at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) at the weekend. “Most of our problems, whether it’s unemployment, unemployability or the struggle of
There is a lot more to the human eye than just seeing. For example, research shows (white) blue-eyed children to be more behaviorally inhibited than their brown-eyed counterparts; among stuttering children, those with blue eyes are more severely disfluent in their speech; and there have been studies in the past which attempted to use eye-colour
The Higher Education National Convention was postponed indefinitely by the National Education Crisis Forum after students disrupted proceedings and would not allow the Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande to address the crowd. The National Education Crisis Forum is a civil society platform aiming at finding long-term solutions in the education sector. The convention was
