Camilla Cavendish

Friday

Camilla Cavendish

Are we failing the next generation? – with Camilla Cavendish & Gloria de Piero

From our UK edition

52 min listen

For this week’s Edition, William Moore is joined by the Spectator’s commissioning editor Lara Brown, Financial Times columnist and peer Camilla Cavendish and broadcaster and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero. This week: are screens creating a new education divide? Lara examines the growing backlash against technology in schools. What began as an attempt to create a generation of ‘digital natives’ has left children as young as four doing reading and maths on gamified apps – despite little evidence that they improve learning. State schools are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on 'EdTech', while some of Britain’s leading private schools are moving back towards books, handwriting and screen-free classrooms.

Are we failing the next generation? – with Camilla Cavendish & Gloria de Piero

Sunday

Camilla Cavendish

Why are a woman’s eggs worth $220,000?

Jade, 27, shows me the email she’s just received, offering to buy her eggs ‘to help an Asian couple build their dream family’. As a Harvard student who helps me with research, Jade fits the criteria: healthy, attractive, and at a top US or Chinese university. ‘How much?’ I ask. She’s staring at the screen. ‘$220,000.’ Whoah. That’s a staggering amount of money, even if you find the whole thing icky. Eggs are becoming a valuable commodity in a world where couples are postponing children. Almost a quarter of first-time mothers in the UK are now over 35, an age when our fertility can start to wane. For women scared of missing the boat, many employers are now offering egg freezing: the latest being Chelsea Football Club.

Thursday

Camilla Cavendish

Mind games | 9 May 2019

From our UK edition

‘Beep!’ This is one of the most maddening computer games I’ve ever played. I’m tracking a flock of birds, and when I hit the right one, it explodes with a satisfying ‘phutt’. But as I get better at spotting them, the birds scatter ever more wildly across the screen, and I hear that unforgiving ‘beep’: you missed. Frankly, I feel like giving up. But many players don’t dare. For this is HawkEye, a brain-training programme that claims it can sharpen my brain beyond simply getting faster at mouse-clicking. Trials have found that older people who play enough hours of this particular kind of game have fewer car crashes — and even, apparently, a lower risk of dementia.