Missing the Magic School Bus

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Incredibly vibrant portraits of 1930s High Society by Madame Yevonde, a forgotten master of her trade.

This old black and white photograph pops out at me every now and again on the internet, and it just about sums up my feelings on what my education should have looked like. The photograph was taken in 1957 in the Netherlands where open air schools were quite popular at the time. The idea of an al fresco classroom should be a very obvious one if the weather permits it, but unfortunately, most traditional western schools these days don’t put much emphasis on the benefits of learning outside of four walls.

I came across these curious photographs from the French National library, dated to 1932 and labelled, “École d’aviation sur le toit des Galeries Lafayette” – Aviation school on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette. A rooftop flight school above one of Paris’ most famous department stores, smack in the middle of the city’s busiest shopping district? I had to know more….

I imagine that the school janitor of La Sorbonne University doesn't have it so bad. When school is out and all the students and teachers have left, imagine roaming these halls and polishing the blackboards in classrooms that taught Voltaire, Balzac, Jean Paul Sartre, Marie Curie and T.S Eliot. 

Tiny trinkets and more

They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses and moustache above?), and “he was a huge deal in his day, even though he’s not very well known [now],” explained Robert Beachy in a 2017 Undiscovered podcast, which explains why he was so high-up on Hitler’s hit-list. Today, we’re retracing the highs and lows of his career, from a, eherm, “self-pleasure bicycle” to his revolutionary strides in gender reassignment surgery…

Perhaps the last thing you want to do on holiday is "go back to school", but I can assure you, this little schoolhouse nestled in the picturesque province of Vicenza, a 90 minute drive from Venice, is nothing like the school days you remember.

Summer is nearly over. The angry clouds over Nôtre Dame make it look too sinister, Sunday strolls in Montmartre are more melancholy in dreary weather and the rain-soaked gravel in the Tuileries does no favours for your shoes. It's not exactly the makings of a picture perfect Paris.

As night fell on Cambridge University in the 1930s, a dapper gang of undergraduate students regularly met in secret to climb up historical buildings, illegally exploring their campus via its rooftops and façades. They were known as the "Night Climbers of Cambridge", immortalised in a cult guide book.

You may be used to seeing the big yellow buses that bring kids back and forth before & after school everyday, but in India the daily commute to school has its own unique little mode of transport.

No matter how many years have past since I graduated, when September 1st rolls around, it always feels like the first day back to school again. Today has been a struggle settling back into the office so I thought I'd ease myself back in, stick to my comfort zone and dive into the good old Life Magaz

A few things to fill up your social calendar with this season...