Jenny Anderson

After testing 125,000 kids in 52 countries and regions around the world, the OECD came to a somewhat obvious conclusion: girls are better than boys at working together to solve problems. Not only that, but in the first-ever PISA assessment of collaborative problem solving, girls scored higher in every region tested, by an average of 29 points, worth about half a year of schooling. 1

More than 200 people gathered in London this week to talk about strategies for getting back to work after a career break. “You have so much to offer,” Julianne Miles, co-founder of Women Returners, told the crowd. Her UK-based group is dedicated to helping employers structure “returnships,” or paid internships that train people coming back to work after time away, often to raise children.

In an effort to tackle gender identity-related bullying, the Church of England issued new rules this week saying that kids should be able to “play with the many cloaks of identity.”

Palo Alto, California

WeWork, a co-working company valued at $20 billion, started by creating hip co-working spaces to allow entrepreneurs to flourish in a community setting. Now, it’s trying to transfer that philosophy to education, opening a “conscious, entrepreneurial” private elementary school inside its Chelsea, New York City headquarters in September 2018. It will be called WeGrow.

Kids hate it when parents fight. We are their world, and when we fight, their world feels scary. Kids who witness angry, scorched-earth battles between their parents are at a higher risk of aggression and delinquency, not to mention anxiety and depression.

In a recent standardized science test given to 15-year-olds in 72 countries, there was almost no gap in the scores between boys and girls. The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test administered by the OECD every three years to more than half a million students, found that boys scored 4 points, or less than 1%, better than girls in science. In the assessment, in 2015, boys outperformed girls in 24 places, with the biggest gaps in Austria, Costa Rica, and Italy. Girls outperformed boys in 22, with Finland, Qatar and Jordan among those with the biggest gaps favoring girls.

Joe Lawrence started his first day of high school in east London with his head down the toilet. It was 1969 and the initiation ceremony— called “ducking”—frightened him. But he took comfort in knowing the same thing was going to happen to his entire freshman class.

More than 95% of US households own a smartphone. If that makes you shrug, this will not: daily mobile media usage among kids under eight is nearly 10 times higher than it was in 2011, according to Common Sense’s most recent kids’ media usage survey.

There are few people on planet Earth who profess to like high-stakes exams. Teachers say they sap the joy out of learning, parents hate them for the stress they exact on kids and students dread them.

Tech companies get a lot of credit for being evolved about supporting working parents. Maternity leave has morphed into parental leave to accommodate both sexes. Mark Zuckerberg’s two-month paternity leave is now practically industry standard.

To many, increasing automation and the unprecedented pace of technological changes mean kids need more than just academic skills to succeed. They need confidence and motivation to tackle problems, interpersonal skills to work with others and the resilience to stay on task when things fall apart.

There is a long-standing, red-hot debate in educational circles about the most effective way to teach kids. Some favor more traditional teacher-directed methods, with the teacher presenting materials and responding to questions about it. Others advocate for inquiry-based learning—where students drive their own learning (pdf) through discovery and exploration, working with peers and developing their own ideas—arguing it results in deeper, and more meaningful learning.

A new report from the OECD about gender equality includes some good news: Roughly two-thirds of OECD countries have introduced new policies on pay equality since 2013, and more countries are also implementing paid paternity leave. But the research also highlights some less good news: the median female worker still earns almost 15% less than her male counterpart (on average, across the OECD) and that’s barely budged since 2010.

Becoming a parent is overwhelming. Babies require endless care and attention, and moms end up taking on a lot more of it, from feeding them to soothing them to playing with them. As babies become toddlers, mothers still tend to do more than fathers, but the gap is much smaller.

Violence in movies is on the rise. As much as we’d like to believe that it doesn’t matter much, when it comes to our kids, it does.

Being a teen isn’t what it used to be. According to a huge new study, adolescents in the 2010s were less likely date, drink alcohol, go out without their parents, and have sex than teens in every generation since the 1970s. Fewer of them have paying jobs or drive.

London

Updated at 3:00pm in London

When Lenora Chu, a Chinese-American, enrolled her son in an elite public school in Shanghai, she was in for a few surprises. Her son was force-fed eggs, a food he hated. When Chu questioned the teacher about her methods, she was roundly reprimanded for questioning a teacher’s authority. Her child was taught that there was a “right” way to draw rain. And the school refused to administer his asthma medicine because his condition did not warrant such individual attention. In Chinese schools, it is the group, not the child, which is paramount.

Education pays.

Ben Terris, a Washington Post political reporter, is about to become a dad. In preparation, he did what most good reporters would do and asked everyone he knew for input, including former US president Bill Clinton and former Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Then he wrote a story about it.

Stress can be debilitating, paralyzing, and generally bad for our health.

When it comes to raising a family abroad, the US fares so-so: 26th out of 45 countries, according to an annual survey of globe-trotting expats.