A pop-up museum inspires people to take climate action
In New York’s Soho neighborhood, a small museum hopes to stimulate dialogue and spur the public to push for change across the globe. A...
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Decoder: Can the world see China as the top peace broker?
Even as the U.S. and China stare each other down, China is bridging conflicts in regions the U.S. once dominated. Are we looking at a new world...
Read MoreSome experts say that the world is entering a period of a renewed Cold War. This Decoder from ND correspondent Jim Wolf dives into the role China plays as new allegiances are formed and countries take ideological stands on democracy versus autocracy. Help your students draw the connection between past and present with this classroom article.
Exercise: After reading the article as a class, have students create a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting what the article describes as a potential “new world order” and the first Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. For both past and present, students should consider: major world powers, alliances (including non-aligned nations), proxy conflicts/Cold War “hotspots”, effectiveness of diplomacy, ideological conflicts, etc.
Decoder: Confronting the consequence of slavery
The legacy of slavery still haunts the descendants of both perpetrators and victims. Some say reparations are long overdue. Protester calls for...
Read MoreHistorically, reparations are nothing new (i.e. Treaty of Versailles after World War I, 1988 Civil Liberties Act in the United States etc.). Correspondent Harvey Morris links past and present in an article about the contemporary consequences of slavery, and how some are trying to right past wrongs.
Exercise: After reading the article, have students imagine that your country is adopting a slavery reparations bill. Divide students into groups of four. In each group, have them discuss and write out the text for this bill. Each group should address: Who gets reparations? How are they funded? How much should be given and how often? (When) does the bill expire?
Decoder: The most effective tool bolstering Ukrainian unity
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends its first year, the Kremlin might like to reflect on what this has done for Ukrainian national identity. ...
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Decoder: With Artemis, US aims to return humans to the Moon
It’s been 50 years since humans walked on the Moon. Now, the U.S. is launching a costly program to return there and possibly pave the way to...
Read MoreFive decades after humans walked on the Moon, the U.S. space agency NASA is leading an international endeavor to return there at a cost of $93 billion. Correspondent Natasha Comeau decodes the Artemis project, a series of missions to build a long-term human presence on the Moon. The 21 nations that have signed the Artemis Accords for space exploration reflect today’s political divisions. Missing from the collaboration are China and Russia, which plan to build a lunar station of their own. It was competition with the then Soviet Union in the 1960s that spurred the first space race and resulted in the historic 1969 moon landing. Now, a host of private corporations are funding their own space initiatives.
Exercise: In teams, have students form their own private space exploration company. Were they able to successfully build their own rocket that could take people into space, what would be their mission? What would they hope to get out of their space exploration ventures? Have each team come up with three things they think space missions could accomplish.
Decoder: Armenia in a bind as Ukraine war resets global order
A conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is heating up as the war in Ukraine prompts geopolitical realignments, with implications for outside...
Read More“It is easy to pay little attention or to even ignore regional conflicts, but they can hold the key to understanding larger political currents in the world.” Correspondent Bryson Hull’s words remind us of why a simmering conflict in the Caucuses between Armenia and Azerbaijan has potential implications for all of us. News Decoder is premised on the notion that young people know a great deal, through headlines on their screens, about what is happening in the world but, because they are young, can have difficulty connecting the dots and understanding why far-away events matter to them. Hull offers a clear explanation of why fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh appears periodically in those headlines, and then disappears, only to reappear some day, like so many other intractable conflicts in distant places.
Exercise: Ask your students to identify a regional conflict that became a proxy for armed competition involving stronger powers.
U.S. democracy recovered from Nixon. Will it survive Trump?
A half century ago, I watched Richard Nixon plunge the U.S. into a constitutional crisis. Now I wonder if American democracy will survive Donald...
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At-home learning offers glimmer of hope to Afghan girls
The Taliban have barred girls from schools in Afghanistan. So some of them gather secretly in homes in Kabul, drawn together by a former teacher....
Read MoreThe Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan means millions of girls cannot attend school. Many young people outside of the country know this, but it is difficult for them to conceive just what this means for a young Afghan girl their age. In his story, Jalal Nazari, an Afghan now living in Canada where he is a Global Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, takes us inside Kabul homes, where about 30 teenage girls meet secretly twice a month to improve their reading and writing skills. To hear the girls and their teacher speak adds a highly personal dimension to a conflict that for many young people remains distant and abstract. The courage they show in the face of Taliban strictures is a reminder to young people everywhere that education is a privilege not to be taken lightly.
Exercise: Ask your students to interview their parents, asking them why education is important, and then to write an essay quoting their parents and adding their own thoughts.
Decoder: With war in Ukraine, spectre of nuclear war returns
Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revived dormant fears of a catastrophic nuclear war....
Read MoreThe world’s optimists thought the era of Mutually Assured Destruction was over with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stirred fears of nuclear war – anxieties that many young people around the world have never experienced. Harvey Morris takes a horrific topic – what he calls “a suicide pact between the superpowers” – and examines the irony of the nuclear age: that to ensure there would be no nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union both had to have weapons of mass destruction. He offers a highly readable introduction to the harsh realities of the nuclear age – realities that all generations are compelled to live with.
Exercise: Ask your students to debate the resolution: “The best way to ensure there will never be nuclear war is to ensure adversaries have recourse to nuclear weapons.”
Decoder: What was the Soviet Union? Why does Putin miss it?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. What was the USSR, and what does Putin really want?...
Read MoreIt’s next to impossible to fathom why Russia might have invaded Ukraine without understanding the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s attachment to the notion of an empire led by Moscow. Few are better placed than Julian Nundy, whose links to Ukraine go back more than half a century, to explain the complex relationship between Russia and its western neighbor. In his decoder, Nundy takes the reader from the upheaval of the Russian revolution to the collapse of the USSR and, with it, Russia’s loss of buffer states – for Putin, an intolerable affront.
Exercise: Ask your students to choose a revolution – if their country had a revolution, then that should be their focus – and to assess the good that may have come out of it, and the bad.
Why we all need to care about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
We asked News Decoder correspondents why young people should care about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here’s what they said. An...
Read MoreRussia’s invasion of Ukraine dominates the news. With so much changing so rapidly, it can be difficult to get a big picture view of the context, implications and side effects of the attacks. When you live far away from the conflict, it can be difficult to know why you should care, with all the other problems in the world, and what — and who — to believe.
In this compilation, News Decoder correspondents offer different perspectives to consider about the war in Ukraine and potential consequences around the globe — and even in space. They bring decades of experience covering politics, foreign affairs and conflict — many having been based in Russia and Eastern Europe — to help place the invasion in a larger context. Their commentary provides a launching point for discussion.
Exercise: Ask students what questions they have about Ukraine and how the conflict might have an impact on your country.
Decoder: Why do countries impose sanctions?
Sanctions have been a foreign policy tool since ancient Greece. Nations are increasingly using sanctions, even if they fail more than they succeed....
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Hasty evacuation of Afghan refugees poses special challenges
After Kabul fell to the Taliban, the hurried evacuation of Afghans and COVID-19 have complicated efforts to find the refugees new homes overseas. A...
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In the U.S., a slow, steady march towards racial tolerance
In 1958, 4% of Americans approved of marriages between Blacks and whites. Now 94% approve. Data shows increasing racial tolerance in the U.S....
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Is the U.S. superpower decaying as the Roman Empire did?
Primitive tribes helped topple the powerful Roman Empire. Did attacks on the U.S. by Islamist extremists 20 years ago augur the end of a superpower?...
Read MoreWe often hear that history repeats itself. A core tenet of News Decoder’s mission is to help students place current events in a broader historical context. Correspondent Gene Gibbons looks beyond today’s headlines all the way back to ancient Rome to show how pride, corruption, strategic overreach and other political mistakes have contributed to the decline of superpowers, then and now.
Exercise: Ask students to debate the question in the headline, providing evidence for their position.
Does our modern world need kings and queens any more?
Britain’s Queen has turned 95 and her husband has died. Do we need kings and queens? Or will the world always revere splendour and...
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As an election observer, I help build trust in democracy
Since 2007, I’ve been an official election observer. It’s grueling work but strengthens trust in democracy and keeps a lid on electoral...
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Like other empires, U.S. faces hard choices in Afghanistan
The U.S. wants to end its longest war and withdraw from Afghanistan—called by some the graveyard of empires. But a May 1 deadline looks uncertain....
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Yemen war snuffs out fleeting hope for change
A civil war in Yemen marked by foreign meddling has created an unparalleled humanitarian disaster with no end in sight, even if a truce were agreed...
Read MoreNews Decoder is backed by dozens of veteran correspondents who have covered many of the world’s biggest and most complicated stories of the past half-century. Mentors to students in our partner schools, the correspondents are experts in their own right in many of the world’s most intractable and consequential issues. Cutbacks in spending on foreign news means some big stories don’t receive the attention they deserve in mainstream Western media. But Alistair Lyon, a former Middle Eastern diplomatic correspondent for Reuters, won’t let News Decoder readers forget the humanitarian disaster underway in Yemen. Have your students read this article to learn about the complex conflict gripping Yemen and ask them to identify other ongoing humanitarian crises that are not grabbing headlines.
Trump’s “Big Lie” stirs a revolt and mars U.S. standing
Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” — that Joe Biden stole the U.S. presidential election — has stoked a domestic revolt and tarnished...
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