John Minchillo/AP/File

Rioters supporting President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. The Supreme Court is very likely to have to decide whether the Constitution’s insurrection clause bars Mr. Trump from holding federal or state elective office.

First Colorado kicked former President Donald Trump off the state primary ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Then Maine did the same thing.

Meanwhile, California and some other states have declined to block Mr. Trump from running for president due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Now this contentious issue will almost certainly land in the Supreme Court’s robed lap. High court justices are likely to soon have to decide whether the former president is barred from another try at the White House under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who have “engaged in insurrection” from holding federal or state elective office.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s legal team asked the justices to overrule the Colorado Supreme Court and ensure he can appear on ballots across the United States.

Perhaps not since the Supreme Court’s 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, which effectively swung the presidency to George W. Bush, has the U.S. judicial branch faced such a politically momentous case. One of the lessons from 2000, say some legal experts, is that whichever way justices rule, it is important that they reach a decision quickly and that they avoid an arcane, complex ruling. 

We live in polarized times, and a decision either way will be challenged, but “if the reasoning is not thorough and clear and persuasive, it will give rise to questions of the legitimacy of the presidential election,” says Lawrence Solum, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

David Zalubowski/AP

Attorney Scott Gessler argues before the Colorado Supreme Court, Dec. 6, 2023. The state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that former President Donald Trump could not appear on the ballot, saying he had engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

What the 14th Amendment says

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868. It was drawn up in part to block former Confederates or Confederate sympathizers from regaining power through elective office.

Section 3 holds that no person shall be a senator or representative, or Electoral College elector for president, or hold any civil or military office under the federal government or any state, if they have sworn allegiance to the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection against the U.S.

In the years following the Civil War, Congress took the provisions seriously. The Senate refused to seat Philip Francis Thomas, a Maryland politician chosen as a senator by the state legislature, despite his generally pro-Union stance. His fault? He had given one of his sons $100 when the boy went off to join the Confederate army.

The amendment was rarely invoked after 1872, when Congress passed a general amnesty that restored political rights for former Confederates. But it remains the law of the land. Some constitutional scholars have promoted it as a means of dealing with a once and possibly future president they consider unfit for office.

Then on Dec. 19, the Colorado Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling held that Mr. Trump is not eligible to be on the state’s primary ballot. A little over a week later, Maine’s top election official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, did the same thing. 

“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Ms. Bellows wrote. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

Robert F. Bukaty/AP

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, shown in Augusta, Maine, has removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause.

Meanwhile, in December both California and Michigan kept Mr. Trump’s name on their primary ballots. Cases are still pending in numerous states.

On the Colorado ruling, Mr. Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court joined one already filed by the state’s Republican Party. Ultimately the high court seems almost certain to decide the matter. Mr. Trump has also appealed the Maine ruling to the state’s top trial court.

The case will require the high court to consider a number of hard questions, says Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. 

Some are purely legal, such as, is Mr. Trump covered by the Section 3 provision? After all, it states that it covers a number of elected offices, but does not explicitly mention the presidency.

Some are factual, such as, did Mr. Trump engage in insurrection? Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace found that Mr. Trump, by inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, had “engaged in insurrection.” But the former president’s defendants argue that he has not received the due process of a jury trial. 

Some are procedural, such as, who can resolve these questions? Does Congress have to pass a law laying out how enforcement of Section 3 should work?

“As this case makes its way to the Supreme Court, Trump has the advantage in that he only has to prevail on one of those [questions] ... in order to remain on the ballot,” says Professor Hasen.

Justices could take a number of paths to assemble a majority. They could rule narrowly on procedural grounds, or broadly address all the merits of the case, including the insurrection charge. For Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long been concerned about the Supreme Court’s institutional standing, one of the most important considerations may be to simply keep the court from dividing along strictly partisan lines.

It is important that the justices wrap up the issue as soon as possible, for both the political stability of the U.S. and the protection of the rights of Republican primary voters, according to Professor Hasen.

“They deserve to know whether the candidate they’re considering supporting is actually eligible to run for office,” he says.

Politics versus the law

Arcing over the legal questions regarding the 14th Amendment is a practical, political one: Is this effort an undemocratic way to attempt to protect democracy?

Spokespersons for the Trump campaign have called the Colorado and Maine decisions “partisan election interference” and “a hostile attack on American democracy.”

It is also a reason cited by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of the deep-blue state of California to justify his reluctance to embrace efforts to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot.

“In California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction,” he said last month.

It may indeed be an uncomfortable situation in this regard, say some legal experts. But the problem is, the 14th Amendment exists.

“Some will no doubt say that the voters should be the judges of Trump’s insurrection, but that is not what the Constitution says,” says Professor Solum.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is running for reelection in February – something unimaginable when he first took office in 2019.

As president, Mr. Bukele concentrated the power of nearly all political institutions into his party’s hands, clamped down on civil liberties, and sidestepped six articles in the constitution that explicitly ban presidential reelection in order to participate in the Feb. 4 race.

Yet despite nearly half of Salvadorans saying they believe Mr. Bukele broke the law with his reelection bid, he’s won widespread public approval for his leadership. A majority say they’ll vote for him.

The disconnect is explained on the streets. For 30 years, security has been the top challenge here. The homicide rate was above 70 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005, and 103 in 2015 – the highest in Latin America. During Mr. Bukele’s first year in office, homicides went down by almost 50%. The downward trend continues. The sense of security Salvadorans now enjoy is priceless, locals say, even if accompanied by a crackdown on rights.

“The situation was fatal,” says Lorena Fuentes, who lives just north of the capital. “In our hearts, we know who we are going to give [the vote] to,” she says of Mr. Bukele.

His success capitalizes on a sense that democracy previously failed to deliver on promises of stability and upward mobility. Salvadorans had fair, free elections and saw political parties alternating power since the country’s civil war ended in 1992. But violence skyrocketed, economic mobility was limited, and many people migrated to the United States.

The fact that Mr. Bukele is likely to clinch the presidency next month, despite his anti-democratic maneuvers, raises questions about the limits of democracy at a time when many global leaders are pushing them.

“People are clear that reelection has the appearance of being unconstitutional. ... But they don’t care,” says Marvin Aguilar, a political analyst and former member of Mr. Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party. “They will reelect him because they feel a change.”

Salvador Melendez/AP/File

Heavily armed police guard the streets after El Salvador's congress granted President Nayib Bukele's request to declare a state of emergency, amid a wave of gang-related killings, in downtown San Salvador, March 27, 2022. The exceptional powers still remain in effect, with some 75,000 people behind bars.

“Reinterpretations”

Mr. Bukele was elected in 2019 in a landslide victory deemed free and fair by international observers. But not even a year in office, he sent the army into the Legislative Assembly to pressure opposition representatives to approve funds for his security plans. In 2021, his party won a supermajority in the assembly, which allowed them to replace the Constitutional Court, which was supposed to be set until 2027, with loyalists. Some observers called it a coup.

Mr. Bukele’s allies went on to replace the attorney general, who was investigating corruption in his government, including covert negotiations with gangs.

Four months after the high court’s overhaul, the newly appointed justices issued a “reinterpretation” of the constitution that allowed an incumbent to seek reelection. They argued that the 1983 constitution didn’t answer to current needs and that voters shouldn’t be prevented from electing “the most convenient political option.” They also made a wordplay to declare the ban only applies when a president has already been in power for two periods, not just one.

“You can’t give a license to break the law,” urged opposition representative Claudia Ortiz of Mr. Bukele’s request for permission to run, which was granted in November.

“Institutionality exists formally, but not materially,” says Ruth López, a lawyer and constitutional expert. “There is no [independent] institution that works.”

Stepping down?

Mr. Bukele’s candidacy is supported by over 70% of the population, according to a November Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) poll. His overall approval hovers at 91%. Since he came to office, El Salvador has risen to the top of regional rankings on satisfaction with democracy – even if on paper it looks to be moving further away from it.

February’s vote is atypical beyond just the reelection bid. There are few billboards showcasing candidates or mass campaign events. The nongovernmental organization Acción Ciudadana found that 99% of all political ads between August and November came from the government or Mr. Bukele’s party.

“For 30 years, you saw how the big parties saturated [society] with propaganda, and you saw an important number of ads for medium and small parties,” says Eduardo Escobar, Acción Ciudadana’s executive director. “Now, it’s just the ruling party and practically nothing from the rest.” 

To secure permission to run for reelection, he had to step down, at least symbolically, from office for the six months before the new term. He assigned his private secretary to temporarily take his place and has kept his security detail, transportation, and presidential residency.

“The presidential delegate is a decorative figure,” says electoral expert Malcolm Cartagena of interim leader Claudia Juana Rodríguez. “It’s a formality.”

“Results that matter”

Far from the halls of politics, citizens shrug at what has unfolded.

Manuel Saavedra, an 80-year-old army veteran, lifts his shirt to show a scar. In 2013 he was stopped by three MS-13 gang members on the street who told him, “‘Don’t you know you have to pay for walking through here?’” he recalls. He says he used his backpack to hit one of the men before trying to run. He was shot twice.

Mr. Bukele’s “getting so much done. Just with having detained so many criminal gang members who have screwed up our lives,” Mr. Saavedra says.

The recent UCA poll concluded there’s a concern if Mr. Bukele doesn’t remain in power that his security strategy will be knocked off track.

“A large part of the population is willing to exempt disrespect of the Constitution to maintain security and a longing for development,” read the poll analysis.

“[Bukele] threatens democracy by showing how you can violate human rights and weaken rule of law if you give citizens results in things that matter to them,” Daniel Zovatto from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance told CNN.

But security has come at a steep price: A legal measure referred to as the “state of exception” has meant police can enter homes and make arrests without warrants. Some 75,000 people have been arrested since March 2022, and El Salvador has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

“The man is doing a good job,” says Mr. Saavedra. “How could I not vote for him?”

In a fifth grade classroom in central Harlem, chess coach Tommy Zhang is teaching a group of 10- and 11-year-olds an opening called the fried liver attack.  

These students are no beginners – they’ve been studying chess since kindergarten – and they catch on quickly. They eagerly direct Mr. Zhang’s moves on the hanging chess board at the front of the classroom. Then they pair off to practice.  

Weekly chess lessons aren’t part of most elementary grades’ schedules, but they’re not the only thing that sets apart Harlem Academy, a K-8 private school for gifted kids. Even more unusual, in the world of advanced education, are the school’s demographics: Close to three-quarters of students are low-income, and nearly all are students of color.   

For years, gifted programs and schools have been criticized for underrepresenting low-income students, and Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous students, in particular. Across the United States, just 2% of students from the lowest income quintile receive gifted services, compared with 13% of students from the highest quintile. 

Those gaps have been blamed on both a shortage of accelerated programs in high-poverty schools and problems with the way schools screen for talent. They have led some skeptics of gifted education – including former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio – to call for its elimination.  

Kelly Field

Vincent Dotoli, founder and head of school at Harlem Academy, stands in front of pennants showing colleges attended by graduates.

But gifted-education advocates say the solution is not to abolish advanced programs, but to open them up to more students. This approach has been embraced by New York’s current mayor, Eric Adams. He recently expanded the city’s Gifted & Talented program to all 32 districts, while permanently scrapping the use of a kindergarten screening test.

Other cities are also wrestling with the question of whether to end or to extend advanced education in elementary and middle school. In Boston, the fight pits proponents of separate classrooms for advanced students against those who prefer a schoolwide enrichment model. And in San Francisco, parents are pushing the district to overturn a decade-old decision to delay Algebra I until high school. The policy has hurt high-achieving students, they say, and has done little to close racial gaps in access to advanced math.  

Both sides of the debate over gifted education agree on one thing, though: The country would be in a better position, both socially and economically, if schools helped all students reach their highest potential. And that failing to do so squanders huge amounts of human capital. 

“Too many students start school with dreams and aspirations of what their future can look like, and very early on, they’re met with the reality of what it will be,” says Jonathan Davis, director of research for the Equity Research Cooperative. 

Space race origins

Gifted education got its start in a New York City classroom a century ago. But it took off during the Cold War, amid fears that the U.S. was falling behind Russia in the space race. In 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, setting aside funds for the testing and identification of talented students who might form an “elite generation” of scientists and engineers.  

A second wave of gifted programs came along in the 1970s, following the publication of the Marland Report, which established a federal definition of giftedness. 

But the field has long been dogged by concerns that its admissions practices discriminate against low-income students and contribute to segregation in the nation’s public schools.   

Until fairly recently, most gifted-education programs admitted students based on teacher and parent recommendations and scoring on a test. That approach tends to favor children whose parents have the social capital to advocate for their kids and the money to invest in tutoring and test prep. It is also susceptible to teacher bias, says Jonathan Plucker, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University. 

Kelly Field

Fifth graders at Harlem Academy raise their hands Nov. 27, 2023, to tell chess coach Tommy Zhang where to move the chess pieces on a hanging board.

“With kids of color, you’re dealing with stereotypes affecting how kids are seen in the classroom,” says Angel Gonzalez, head of school at De La Salle Academy, a private middle school for gifted, low-income kids in New York City. In some classrooms, outspoken boundary-pushers are viewed as defiant, rather than bright, he says. 

Dr. Plucker says that when he visits high-poverty schools, teachers often tell him they have no advanced students.   

“Even when they’re beating the odds and performing at high levels, they get overlooked,” Dr. Plucker says. “It’s this idea that ‘this is not what a bright kid looks like.’” 

Serving students better

In an effort to capture more of these students, New York City and a growing number of schools nationwide are shifting to universal screening for giftedness, an approach considered controversial even a decade ago, Dr. Plucker says. Some teacher preparation and professional development programs are devoting more time to training educators to recognize latent talent, too. 

But many programs still gloss over gifted education. The threshold for admission into advanced programs also remains out of reach for many low-income students, whose test scores often reflect their limited educational opportunities.   

Recognizing this, some advocates for advanced education are pushing gifted programs to adopt “local norms” for admitting students.  Comparing students with their peers, for example, instead of against a districtwide or national standard.  

“If you’ve got a kid scoring at the 80th percentile, and most of their peers are at the 20th, they’re way ahead,” says Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. His organization convened a bipartisan working group on advanced education, which in June 2023 released a report with dozens of recommendations on diversifying the pipeline. “We’ve got to come up with a way to serve that student better,” he says.  

At Harlem Academy, admission is based on a combination of test scores, grades, and an in-person, task-based assessment. Students enter with a median standardized test score in the 74th percentile – a level that would not make the cut for most gifted programs. They reach close to the 90th percentile by the time they finish eighth grade. Nearly all go on to selective high schools and four-year colleges. 

Vincent Dotoli, who started the school in a church basement 20 years ago, attributes its success to a focus on the fundamentals of reading, writing, and math. He also points to high staffing levels, which enable teachers to tailor instruction to individual students’ strengths and struggles. The school has 19 teachers and 170 students, a ratio of about 1-to-9. 

“The biggest thing is ensuring that every student feels challenged in a way that is appropriate for them,” Mr. Dotoli says.   

But differentiation can be difficult to do in high-poverty public schools with large classrooms. Overwhelmed teachers are focused on getting the weakest students to basic levels of literacy and numeracy, and advanced learners can be an afterthought. Nationally, almost a third of schools offer no gifted programming.

“A good support system”

New York City’s poorer neighborhoods have long had fewer options for gifted kids than its wealthier ones have had. Even with the mayor’s recent addition of 100 new kindergarten seats, there are still twice as many gifted programs per kindergartner in the wealthiest districts than in the lowest-income ones, an analysis by Mr. Dotoli found. 

While specialized schools like Harlem Academy can help fill some of that gap, its small size limits its impact. 

Still, the school is making a difference to students like eighth graders Kadin, who says he no longer has to pretend he doesn’t understand things to fit in, and Taylor, who says she’s never bored.   

“Your teachers force you to think deeper and find meanings below the surface,” says Kyoncee, another eighth grader. “But they’re a good support system and help guide you along the way.”   

Whitney Eulich

“A library to me is like a secular temple. You are safe. Everyone speaks your language.” – Rut Roman, founder of A Mano Manaba, a library and community center in Don Juan, Ecuador

It’s after 5 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, and Rut Roman interrupts a rowdy role-playing game among 14 teens to shoo them out the front gate. “Go home! We’ll see you tomorrow,” she calls after them. 

Since 2017, the community center and library at A Mano Manaba has become a space of refuge and learning for this tiny fishing community. Adults come for yoga and job training. Adolescents arrive looking for homework help or tranquillity in the long hours between school and bedtime.
Local teachers rely on it to supplement classroom instruction at an elementary school where children often “graduate” illiterate.

Ms. Roman and her husband, Esteban Ponce, first visited Don Juan, this beachfront town in the northern province of Manabí, in 2012. It was before the community got internet access or the highway connecting it to the nearest airport 100 miles away. They were home in Ecuador on summer break from a university in Virginia where they taught Latin American literature.

The village – and the children they found thirsting for stories and education there – would bring them back home to Ecuador permanently. Books and libraries in many forms drove each step of their journey. 

“A library to me is like a secular temple,” Ms. Roman says. “You are safe. Everyone speaks your language.” 

Building self-confidence

Visitors take off their sandy shoes before stepping into the bamboo building with two-story-high ceilings. On weekday afternoons, kids are expected to read silently for 15 minutes. Then they have the chance to work on homework, pick out a new story from the 7,000 mostly donated books, take language classes with visiting volunteers, or, on Fridays, select games from the high shelf running above the windows. 

“This library has been a really positive change for the community,” says Adriana Vaca, who joined the A Mano Manaba team in 2021. She grew up here and says that in a town of 300 families, where most women her age already have three children, she’s an “odd bug.” But the library has given her a space where she can be herself. She’s studying online to become a teacher.   

“The learning children do here gives them more self-confidence and security. It empowers them,” she says, standing in a back room that’s filled floor to ceiling with cataloged books. 

As the afternoon wears on, the library fills with community: Several children look over an open encyclopedia, giggling and sprawled out on cushions on the floor, while a mother sits at a table out front reading through library magazines. 

Whitney Eulich

Esteban Ponce and his wife, Rut Roman, quit their jobs in the United States to continue to help nurture that love of reading – and the local community.

Ms. Roman is in the back of the library, talking quietly with two recently arrived volunteers from Germany. They’ll be here for a year, teaching weekly English classes at the nearby elementary school, and tutoring kids and some adults in German or English in the afternoons. Volunteers pass through for a few weeks or months at a time, sometimes trading their skills – like mural painting – for room and board.

Trueques, or barters, combined with small donations are Ms. Roman’s preferred form of funding. Most donations come from the website GlobalGiving. “If we get a $500,000 grant ... we’d become administrators and lose out on the beauty of time reading with the children or building this community,” she says. 

Beyond providing educational supports, the library teaches gender equality and respect. A few years ago, some kids discussed corporal punishment taking place at the local elementary school, Mr. Ponce recalls. He and Ms. Roman met with school officials to talk about laws prohibiting such practices. 

“You treat these children in a different way, and their expectations change,” says Mr. Ponce of the knock-on effects of the library’s culture of taking responsibility for one’s actions. 

There are weekly visits from the elementary school, a 15-minute walk away. The library organizes supplemental materials for class lessons, and some students are given one-on-one remedial reading and writing support. Armenia Ramirez, who has taught at the school for 34 years, says the library has been a boon. 

“They help us beyond measure,” Ms. Ramirez says from her fourth grade classroom that overlooks the dusty schoolyard. There are 11 students in her grade who can’t read or write, she says. “Not all parents can help [with homework]. But if the child goes to the library? There they get support.”

From biblioburro to library

The first summer Ms. Roman and Mr. Ponce spent here, they befriended a young man from the United States who would sometimes read aloud to children at his home after school. When he left town one week, he gave Ms. Roman keys and asked her to fill in for story time. 

“By the time we arrived, there was a line of kids waiting to get in.” She says she asked Mr. Ponce why they were dedicating themselves to trying to convince privileged students in the U.S. to care about Latin American literature when here, in their home country, there were children literally lining up to hear stories.

They quit their U.S. teaching jobs the next year and moved to the Ecuadorian coast as university instructors. In March 2016 they started building a home in the hillsides of Don Juan. One month later, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated the province. Many survivors moved into tents across the street from the quake-damaged home where kids used to line up to hear stories. Ms. Roman and Mr. Ponce’s home was destroyed, too. 

Whitney Eulich

The A Mano Manaba library in Don Juan, Ecuador, was inspired by a young foreigner who would read to local children at his home after school.

Friends arrived almost immediately to help the couple rebuild, and many brought donations. One evening, Ms. Roman loaded up her donkey, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, with the gifts. When kids heard the donkey’s bell ringing, they ran out to the street, where Ms. Roman read several books aloud. 

“I had planned on giving everything away, but I changed my mind and kept the books. We started coming down every day with our biblioburro [library mule], and that’s how we began,” she says.

“The truth is that it cured us of a deep depression,” she adds. “It also inaugurated a safe space where we could gather with children who had no school to attend, no home to go to.” 

The foreigner who had read aloud to local children donated his land to Ms. Roman and Mr. Ponce, which soon became A Mano Manaba.

Today, the program has a presence across town, including the blockslong mural that the center organized near the beach depicting Don Juan’s history and annual celebrations, and flyers advertising upcoming activities. 

“Some people tell us the library isn’t doing enough,” says Emma Tränkner, a young volunteer from Germany who got an earful at a beach party the weekend before. “Education and community change are a long game.”

Walking through town before lunch on an overcast afternoon, Ms. Roman can’t make it 5 feet before someone stops her to say hello. 

There are kisses, waves, and hugs. An older woman asks when the next painting course will take place. A shopkeeper gushes about his son’s progress. A little boy rides by and calls out hello. 

“Thank you for the shrimp,” Ms. Roman calls after him, explaining that the day before he “literally threw” her a single crustacean. It sounds silly, she acknowledges, but it was “the ultimate act of love.” 

It’s not every day that your fixer is a rock star. So when I asked Sina Hasan, lead vocalist of Bangla Five and local reporting partner extraordinaire, where we could do a quick overnight during a Monitor reporting trip in Bangladesh and he recommended Kushtia, I didn’t question it.

I’d never heard of Kushtia, but that’s not saying much. Bangladesh is barely on the tourist map. And for the travelers who do come here, they tend to tread a well-worn path to Cox’s Bazar, the longest uninterrupted beach in the world; the pretty tea estates of Sylhet; or the Sundarbans mangrove forest, home of the endangered Bengal tiger.

“It’s my favorite place in all of Bangladesh,” Sina told photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman and me, “because it’s the heart of Bengali culture.” Home to the mystic and musician Lalon Shah, whose spiritualist movement brought Sina here in the first place while he was doing his master’s degree, Kushtia brims with music, creativity, tolerance, and peace.

Courtesy of Sina Hasan

Fixer Sina Hasan, lead vocalist of Bangla Five and local reporting partner extraordinaire, poses for a photo with the reporter and photographer in Sundarban National Park, Bangladesh, on Sept. 23, 2023.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Artisan Mahela Khatun works on handmade terra-cotta pottery at the SM Handicraft factory, Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh.

It was exactly what we needed after a reporting trip in September that tested our tolerance for heat and included harrowing driving across the world’s largest delta. And we had everything to learn about the art, literature, and music of Bangladesh.

We started with the artists. Our first morning we stopped at the home of Krishna Kanta Das, who 40 years ago began SM Handicraft, a cottage shop that makes decorative tiles made of terra cotta. On this morning, an elderly woman used a bamboo stick to carve the image of an Indian folk dancer into a block. Sometimes the tiles are tiny, fitted onto homemade frames made out of gamari wood.

“If we stopped doing this no one else would,” says Mr. Das, as his wife and daughter serve chai and cookies on terra cotta saucers. “We see a role in saving this art form.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A man soaks jute sticks used for building fences, Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh. Other parts of jute are used for making rope.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Shahadul Islam works on a hand loom making a traditional towel, on Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh. He can make 4 or 5 a day this way – but the electric looms can make 15 a day. He and his family run a textile business out of their homes.

We visited pottery makers and weavers making lungis, a cloth sarong popular in the countryside. Everywhere it seemed, in sun-dappled studios, artisans were hard at work.

Our next stop was in the nearby community of Shilaidaha, where Bangladesh’s most famous author spent time creating some of his most influential works. On our way to the residence of Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, as we passed by jute cultivation at various stages, Sina told us that to him, Mr. Tagore is the “God of Bengali art and music.” He is the man who “transformed music and literature into modern practice,” he says.

But when we arrived at the residence, it was closed. So instead we looked through the gates at the gardens, hearing from Sina about the impromptu music sessions that take place when it’s open. We tried kulfi, an ice cream typical of this region made from milk film, cinnamon, and other spices. When we left, we were asked to pose for a series of selfies, something Melanie and I were asked to do dozens of times by very friendly strangers across the country.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Men sell ice cream, called kulfi, at the gate in front of Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore’s home, Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh. The ice cream is made from milk film, sugar, cinnamon, and other spices.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Mohammad Mamun makes his famous tea in his stall by the Gorai River, Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh.

After lunch at a vegetarian Indian restaurant, we visited a tea stall along the Gorai River – where orange and hibiscus-flavored teas are brewed and sipped along the quay – and then we arrived where most start on a trip to Kushtia: the onion-shaped temple of mystic and musician Lalon Shah.

His mysterious beginnings – documented in a tiny museum near the temple – started in the late 18th century in undivided Bengal, then an epicenter of the burgeoning Indian freedom movement against British rule. Here, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sufi traditions co-existed tolerantly and inspired Lalon Shah’s music and thought until he died, according to legend, at 116 years old.

The Bauls, or mystic entertainers, live on another century later. That evening we joined some of them, gathered at sundown, each taking a kernel of rice and swallowing it without it touching the teeth, as tradition guides. We then went to the lakeside where they, sitting in a circle under a pavilion, played their music late into the evening. Each year thousands arrive in Kushtia for an annual festival paying homage to Lalon Shah’s music and mysticism. “This music is in our blood, it’s who we are,” says Sina.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Tourists and locals visit the Lalon Shrine, tomb of the mystic musician Lalon Shah, Sept. 24, 2023, in Kushtia, Bangladesh.

I’m thinking of his words right now as I listen on Spotify to Bangla Five – specifically their song “Lukao,” a melodic track that speaks of solitude. To the casual visitor, Kushtia itself doesn’t look so very different from any other mid-sized city in Bangladesh. But it’s the meaning of Kushtia that matters to those who love it.

Last month, Sina returned to Kushtia for his 40th time, but this time with his band invited to play at an outdoor concert drawing a crowd of 4,000. “Every art practitioner in Bangladesh has a dream to visit Kushtia at least for once in life,” he says. “It’s very prestigious to be invited to Kushtia, and we feel so honored.”

Michael Knief/AP Content for Services for Global Partnership for Education

Girls in class at a war refugee camp in Chad in December 2023. Across Africa, demands for public services like education underscore citizen expectations for better governance.

How does a democracy become more honest? The question is worth asking in light of the most recent measure of public attitudes about corruption across Africa.

In the last 20 years, all but five African countries have ratified a joint convention to “prevent, detect, punish and eradicate corruption and related offences in the public and private sectors.” Yet across 39 countries, 2 in 3 Africans say their government is failing to curb corruption, according to an Afrobarometer survey published at the end of 2023. Just 1 in 4 say they can report corruption without fear of retaliation, while 58% say corruption has increased “somewhat” or “a lot” during the preceding year.

Rather than cause for pessimism, however, those views may reflect how the continent’s shared aspirations for more integrity have elevated public demand for it, expressed through citizen engagement. Sierra Leone provides a useful example.

Not without controversy, the West African country has made some of the most consistent progress in global corruption rankings in recent years among African states. It has climbed 20 rungs on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in the past six years. The Millennium Challenge Corp., an initiative to support good governance created by the U.S. Congress, gave it a score of 76% for “control of corruption” - a high mark it has consistently achieved during the same interval.

Sierra Leone’s bid to uproot corruption is part of the country’s gradual restoration of democracy after a civil war during the 1990s. The country sought to heal its wounds through a traditional form of transitional justice. It has now had two consecutive peaceful transfers of power – still an exception in Africa. It now has a 98% completion rate in primary school, with girls outnumbering boys.

To counter corruption, the government has sought a balance between aggressive law enforcement and the protection of individual rights. A constitutional anti-corruption commission has the power to conduct raids without warrants. But it also carries out cooperative audits with government agencies meant to identify and fix irregularities. Whistleblowers are empowered. Public services like hospitals and police stations are required to provide information about how citizens can file complaints.

Critics claim the government targets its political opponents and harasses journalists, but its focus on corruption has also encouraged public participation. Last August, for example, 40 civil society organizations held a summit to coordinate their own anti-corruption initiatives – including holding the government in check. That had never happened before.

In the Afrobarometer survey, just 11% of Africans listed corruption as their top concern. Their priorities included unemployment, management of the economy, health care, clean water, and education – all of which require honest and accountable governance. “On a continent where governments struggle to raise revenues to provide for citizens’ basic needs,” the survey concluded, “most Africans see [corruption] as worsening and their leaders’ anti-corruption efforts as inadequate.”

That lament carries a message reaching across Africa – that encouraging an expectation of honest governance becomes a catalyst for it.