THE most important lesson in life is to always travel in hope rather than expectation. That way the almost inevitable disappointment that follows isn’t quite as crushing. A cheery thought for these troubled times.

Speak to anyone involved in Scottish football and they'll tell you that the current crop of Under-16 players coming through the academy systems are among the best they've seen.

SO, is it a smoking gun after all? Or is it just a damp water pistol?

IT’S almost time for the last supper. Though not quite. Another 24 hours will have to pass before the concluding morsel is munched, the final nibble on the edge of no more. After that, a little part of Scotland’s living history will die.

IT’S been an up and down sort of day for Imran Akhtar. And in a much too literal sense, as far as he’s concerned. First, he had to clamber on top of the roof of the Ottoman Coffee House on Glasgow’s Berkeley Street, to make sure the temporary tarpaulin was still in place and keeping out the wind, rain, hail and snow. (It’s been one of those typical Scottish afternoons, with the weather behaving like a plump maiden aunt’s two-layered chocolate box. In other words, way too many delights

For a limited time, the 7-inch Fire 7 Kids Edition is $40 off while the 8- and 10-inch models are both $50 off. These tablets make a great gift for 3-to-12-year olds.

The 10.2-inch Apple iPad with 128GB of storage is $100 off, a 65-inch Vizio 4K TV is $500 off and includes a $250 Dell gift card, and you can score the first discount on Echo Buds.

In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.

In this country, where the dank, grim days of winter are as short as a resigned sigh, the onset of some decent, dry spring weather doesn’t half raise the morale. Well, it would if the coronavirus wasn’t lurking all over the parish.

THE Open Championship will not take place at all this year.

Scottish Golf today revealed that no date has been set for the sport in this country to restart and stressed that lockdown restrictions will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Karen Betts explains why she thinks the Scottish 'water of life' is so special.

CHRISTMAS is coming, the goose is getting fat and there's no wine as flexible with the varied foods of the season than rioja, so let’s take a seasonal look at our favourite Spaniard.

With the Six Nations rugby in full flow (come on, Scotland – I’m forever the optimist) now is a great time to look at amazing beverages from all the nations competing.

Construction work on the NHS Louisa Jourdan will conclude today with the hospital standing operationally ready to treat patients from tomorrow.

SNP MP Steven Bonnar has apologised after a heated altercation with a neighbour.

YOU could call it state-sponsored sanctimony. In times of crisis or national emergency we’re all urged to pull in the same direction and put partisan politics behind us. How dare you talk about inequality and the plight of the disadvantaged at a time like this? Those who tend to be loudest in rebuking these social pariahs are often those who stand to benefit most from any suspension of scrutiny.

Dumbarton police station has temporarily closed after a member of staff showed symptoms of Covid-19.

The Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PennTAP) at Penn State is looking for undergraduate entrepreneurs from any Penn State campus to compete in the 2020 Inc.U Competition. Six finalist teams will earn a spot on “The Investment,” a production of WPSU-TV, giving them a chance to pitch their company for a share of $30,000 in funding. The 2020 Inc.U Competition submission deadline is Feb. 7.

Following the University-wide commencement ceremony on May 9, Penn State Shenango will host a virtual celebration for the Class of 2020.

PLANS for league reconstruction have been scrapped after Ladbrokes Premiership clubs indicated there isn't enough support for the proposed changes at this time.

IN April 2004, the Victoria & Albert museum in London staged an exhibition of the work of Vivienne Westwood. The show was a celebration and a culmination of the fashion designer’s move from the margins of the industry in the 1970s, where she was creating clothes for the punks who hung around the King’s Road, to her 21st-century incarnation as first among equals in British haute couture.

A FEW weeks ago, Wendy James was trending on Twitter. It’s been happening quite often over the last few months, a result of BBC Four’s repeats of Top of the Pops reaching 1988 and 1989, the years in which a pink-lipsticked, bra-flaunting James launched herself on the public consciousness as the brash, blonde frontwoman of Transvision Vamp.

At first glance, it could seem that teenagers just really, really hate high school. But Yale researchers found deeper student engagement issues.

Sharing moments of levity and hope from the education world amid the mass disruption of schooling and life from the coronavirus.

The Meadowbank Stadium was one of the shabbier landmarks in east Edinburgh until it was knocked down last year. A new one is rising from the ashes, looking like one of those massive cruise liners that appear in the Forth.

Writers have been ransacking the Brainy Quotes website looking for inspiration for their coronavirus think pieces. But there is really only one that matters: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Franklin D Roosevelt’s epigram is appropriate because it is as disingenuous as it is paradoxical.

Schools need help from the federal government to prepare millions of U.S. students for remote learning this fall and beyond.

The director of teaching and learning for a Minnesota district talks about putting e-learning days into action under difficult circumstances.

The top technology official for Virginia's Fairfax County schools resigned after the district struggled to handle some major technical glitches in its e-learning platforms.

Many parents are having to take on a variety of new roles, from playing IT help desk to becoming makeshift teaching assistants to supervising recess.

As millions of students nationwide start to settle into virtual learning programs to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a massive new research analysis sounds another note of caution about the effects of exposing significantly more screen time.

K-12 teachers are faced with a question many likely thought they'd never have to ask: How often during the school day do my students need to see me and when?

THE teacher had four pupils yesterday. Just four pupils out of a class of 33 took part in virtual online lockdown lessons.

FIVE new nursery extensions being built at schools across Edinburgh have been thrown into doubt after the company building the facilities entered administration.

One particularly tense staff meeting helped educator Robert Parker rethink how his school celebrated Black History Month.

With more than 40 million unique visitors a year, GreatSchools.org is a wildly popular source of information on K-12 schools. Though the site has added more factors and nuance to how it rates schools, researchers argue that it’s exacerbating already existing patterns of segregation.

Quiz yourself: What do census statistics reveal about school enrollment, classroom diversity, and education outcomes, and how could the 2020 Census impact school services?

A pair of new studies find that, when given a choice, white parents tend to send their children to schools that are predominantly white.

When schools reduce racial segregation between schools, racial isolation within the classes inside those schools goes up, according to an analysis of 20 years of North Carolina data.

Here are five takeaways on the teaching profession from the newly released 2017-18 National Teacher and Principal Survey.

The staff union for the National Education Association is threatening to strike over contract negotiations.

Blaming teachers unions for all the ills afflicting public schools does not stand up to scrutiny.

To the Editor: Education Week Teacher blogger Nancy Flanagan recently wrote about how some states require a higher score on state certification tests for teacher-licensing exams—which makes it "unreasonably difficult" to get into teaching—while others eliminate licensing requirements to fill classr.

In the face of well-funded opposition to organized labor, teachers will not be silenced, writes NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

Within days of the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish union fees for nonmembers, conservative groups—including ones with ties to Ed. Secretary Betsy DeVos—launched email, social media, and billboard campaigns to try to convince teachers not to join their unions.

As teacher take the lead in protests over pay, unions face an uncertain future, writes Berkeley sociologist Bruce Fuller.

In the aftermath of this spring's teacher protests, more educators are running for state office—and the National Education Association is seizing on the political moment.

"This lawsuit will enable teachers like me to recover the agency fees that we were wrongly forced to pay against our will," said one of the plaintiffs.

In the wake of the 'Janus' Supreme Court case, teachers' unions are facing more than a dozen legal challenges backed by right-leaning groups that could further dampen their membership numbers and finances.