Students across the US are forging bonds in the face of brutal power structures. You might say they’ve already won

Teaching an undergraduate class on democracy at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs this semester has felt urgent and clarifying. In the classroom, we’ve been looking at backsliding and the slow corrosion of democratic norms in so-called democratic countries. Meanwhile, what’s been happening outside the classroom in more than 120 universities around the US and the world tells us a more ominous story about democracy .

For two weeks, we focused on the United States; there were lively discussions on political polarization, January 6 and the threat posed by supporters of Donald Trump, as well as how robust or fragile US democracy currently is. Looking at each democracy involved criticism of the state. In the class on Israel, we examined, among other areas, controversial proposed judicial reforms, as well as the incarceration of Palestinian minors held in administrative detention, as examples where democratic values might be defined as absent.

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Survey by NAHT union finds funding shortages mean pupils are losing out on vital support

Shortages and funding cuts are causing a “full-blown crisis” in special needs education for children and young people in England, according to school leaders who say they are struggling to give pupils the support they require.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union the NAHT, accused the government of treating schools as a “sideline” compared with headline-grabbing issues such as immigration.

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Consequences of sharing nude images and subsequent threat of blackmail can be devastating. Talk to your child, say experts

“I’m naked on cam now I’ll call you. Answer the call don’t be shy.”

The teenage boy did as he was told by the girl he had been chatting with over social media. The next message was chilling: “If you don’t want to get into trouble, you better listen. I’ve enough to destroy you.”

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Philip Morris International has supported non-smoking programmes around the world ‘to advance its own interests’, say health professionals

The tobacco company Philip Morris has sponsored courses for doctors in multiple countries, in what critics have called a “grotesque” strategy.

Medical education programmes on quitting smoking and harm reduction in South Africa, the Middle East and the US have been supported by Philip Morris International (PMI) or its regional subsidiaries, according to advertising material seen by the Guardian.

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Songwriting courses are exploding in popularity, with everyone from Mark Ronson to Alicia Keys as teachers. On a retreat in north Wales, our folk music critic tries to write her first song

Imagine you’ve spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting panic of my inner critic going: “Argh!”

It’s the final day of a four-day songwriting course at Literature Wales’s 16th-century HQ, Ty Newydd Writing Centre , led by Brian Briggs of folk band Stornoway and Welsh poet and songwriter Paul Henry . Tonight, I have to perform an original song with two relative strangers, in front of people I didn’t know four days earlier. This particular terror is the climax of a bigger endeavour on my part: to explore the growing popularity of songwriting courses, and to find out if they work.

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The pleasures of reading and books have been swapped for phonics and grammar. It’s time for change

Too much of what is valuable about studying English was lost in the educational reforms of the past 14 years. A sharp drop-off in the number of students in England taking the subject at A-level means fewer are taking English degrees . Teaching used to be a popular career choice for literature graduates, as Carole Atherton warmly describes in her new book, Reading Lessons . In it, Ms Atherton, a teacher in Lincolnshire, explains the pleasure she takes in teaching novels such as Jane Eyre that she first encountered herself as a teenage bookworm.

But lower numbers of English graduates mean teacher training courses are struggling to fill places for specialist secondary teaching jobs like hers, making entry less competitive. While trainee English teachers used to be plentiful, compared with subjects such as physics, now recruitment targets are routinely missed .

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The government wants to scrap England’s 50% cap on ‘faith admissions’. It will just lead to religious discrimination

To gain admission to the local church school near my home, parents were always advised to attend church. Otherwise, they were told, they should try elsewhere. The result was local antagonism: cars and buses filled with local children were ferried to more distant schools. It was a bad system in every sense.

In 2010, in an attempt to stem the growth of sectarian free schools, the Cameron government imposed a 50% cap on “faith admissions” where schools were oversubscribed. Now Rishi Sunak is proposing to end that cap . To encourage their creation, new faith-based schools – Anglican, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, whatever – can be as exclusive as they want. Since most faith schools tend to become socially selective and thus enjoy parental preference, the move has been welcomed by church leaders. They have something to sell. Anything will do to counter plummeting church attendance .

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Handwriting makes us better writers, free of the suggestions of spelling and grammar apps, and it represents something of our personalities

Recently, I found a letter my mum had written me years ago when she was on holidays in Vietnam. The paper is thin and ratty on the edges, but the handwriting and the turn of phrase is unforgettably hers. In looping, cursive black ink, she has described pages and pages of wondrous observations about her travels, immediately transporting me to another place and another time. If this had been sent as an email, it might have been lost in the endless updating of laptops and operating systems. But because it was a letter, I added it to a box in the cupboard some years ago, knowing I would want to read it again and again and again.

Letters like these become even more valuable after someone dies, when you go hunting for a record of their voice. And knowing that the person held a pen to write the words elevates the correspondence far beyond something sent via phone or computer. But it is not just the words they write or the expressions they use; it is also the very particular form their lettering takes. I can recognise the bulbous, slightly rounded N that my mum always used, remembering all those times I tried to forge her signature and failed dismally. Her handwriting, like that of my dad’s and of my grandparents, was distinctive, as much their signature as their name.

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Union of Jewish Students deplores ‘torrent of antisemitic hatred’ in British universities since start of Israel-Gaza war

The prime minister has backed a police crackdown on any outbreak of disorder on university campuses, as Jewish students warned that pro-Palestinian encampments are creating a “hostile and toxic atmosphere”.

In recent days, new encampments have been set up at the universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle, among others, after violent scenes on US campuses resulted in mass arrests of students and staff.

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