Author Archives: Eddie Playfair

About Eddie Playfair

I am a Senior Policy Manager at the Association of Colleges (AoC) having previously been a college principal for 16 years and a teacher before that. I live in East London and I blog in a personal capacity about education and culture. I also tweet at @eddieplayfair

‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Light Perpetual’ is a wonderful celebration of life and love. It opens with some extraordinary time-stretching to describe the impact of a split-second destructive event in wartime. Then time is shrunk and stretched repeatedly in order to follow the ‘lost’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual | Leave a comment

Reading bell hooks.

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Teaching to Transgress’ ‘Teaching to Transgress’ is as fresh and powerful in 2021 as when it was first published in 1994. Its messages about teaching as discovery, resistance and liberation are as vital today as ever. Reading bell hooks is … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Philosophy, Reviews, Teaching and learning | Tagged bell hooks, Equality, passion, pedagogy, teaching, Teaching to Transgress | 6 Comments

Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Rougon-Macquart #2 Emile Zola’s ‘La Curée’ (1872), translated as ‘The Kill’, is an extraordinary novel of unbridled appetites, material and sexual, and of the moral decay and rottenness of unfettered capitalism. It shares a setting and many common themes with … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Brian Nelson, capitalism, corruption, desire, Emile Zola, Karl Marx, La Curée, modernity, Paris, Rougon-Macquart, speculation, The Kill | 2 Comments

Freire for today

Posted on March 6, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

What can we learn from reading Freire today? The work of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was rooted in his adult literacy teaching among dispossessed and disempowered communities in Latin America and elsewhere and was influenced by both Marxism … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Philosophy | Tagged banking model of education, bell hooks, Education, Gert Biesta, liberation, oppression, Paulo Freire, pedagogy, Pedagogy of Hope, Pedagogy of Oppression, philosophy, philosophy of education, reading the world, teaching, Teaching to Transgress, The Beautiful Risk of Education, transmission model of learning | Leave a comment

Seven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education.

Posted on February 27, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Seven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education – Philippe Meirieu. The French educationalist, Philippe Meirieu, in his 1996 book ‘Frankenstein Pedagogue’ reviews popular accounts of attempts to fashion a person to a maker’s design. Such fictional person-making often proves futile … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Education, Philosophy, Teaching and learning | Tagged autonomy, co-construction, co-production, Donna Haraway, Frankenstein, Frankenstein Pedagogue, Gert Biesta, learning, Mary Shelley, Philippe Meirieu, poiesis, praxis, sympoiesis, teaching | 2 Comments

Learning, earning and the death of human capital.

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Is there a clear predictive relationship between the amount of education ‘received’, as measured by qualifications achieved, and future earnings? The idea is strongly held by many policymakers and it plays a part in the public debate about investment in … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education policy, Reviews | Tagged Ann Pettifor, capital, earnings, Education, employment, Equality, Green New Deal, Guy Standing, Hugh Lauder, human capital, human capital theory, inequality, Phillip Brown, Sin Yi Cheng, Sustainability, sustainable development, The Death of Human Capital?, training | 1 Comment

‘Listen to this’.

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

There’s something to be said for being told to ‘listen to this’, ‘look at this’ or ‘read this’. An important aspect of any educational programme is presenting learners with something new or re-presenting something familiar in a new context. And … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, music | Tagged 'Listen to this', Alex Ross, classical music, Clemency Burton-Hill, culture, music, music education, Year of wonder | Leave a comment

‘The Ministry of the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

Fiction can change the world and the didactic approach or the ‘novel of ideas’ can be compatible with good storytelling. Like any work of art, a work of fiction can change us as individuals and, through us, help to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Politics, Reviews | Tagged Archaeologies of the Future, climate change, climate emergency, COP26, Fredric Jameson, Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, Thinking Global, utopianism | 2 Comments

Why the comprehensive college?

Posted on September 20, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

When we talk about education, we are talking about both the personal and the social – the ‘small’ and the ‘big’. As individuals, what we know and can do goes to the very heart of our identity. We are engaged … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education policy, NewVIc | Tagged College, comprehensive college, comprehensive education, Horace Mann, Jane Addams, John Dewey, Newham, Newham Sixth Form College, selection, Waltham Forest | Leave a comment

Exam results – what just happened?

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

Most years, the national drama of A Level and GCSE results days in England plays out in two distinct but related acts one week apart, focusing on the performance of the education system and the young people navigating their way … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education policy | Tagged A levels, Assessment, Centre assessed grades, complexity, Covid-19, Education, Education policy, England, exam results, Exams, GCSE | Leave a comment

Starting to rethink education.

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

There are different ways to think about life after a crisis. One is: ‘let’s try to get back to things as they were as quickly as possible’, another is: ‘we can’t go back to things as they were, this is … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education Futures, Politics | Tagged ASCL Blueprint for a fairer education, Commission on the College of the Future, crisis, Education, Education policy, future, future education, hope, Hope in the Dark, politics, Rebecca Solnit, Thinking Global, transformation, UNESCO, UNESCO Futures of Education | 5 Comments

Knowledge and education for the future.

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

Edgar Morin’s seven lessons for the future. When the French sociologist Edgar Morin was asked by UNESCO for his thoughts on education for the future, he organised his proposals around seven key aspects of human knowledge and understanding. In his … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education Futures | Tagged climate emergency, crisis, Edgar Morin, Education, emergence, error, ethics, future education, global citizenship, human condition, Human rights, purpose of education, reductionism, Science, Seven lessons for the future, Solidarity, UN, uncertainty, UNESCO | 1 Comment

England’s unexpected exam revolution.

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

One consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we are embarking on an extraordinary national experiment in the way young people achieve their exam grades in England; switching from a heavy reliance on externally set and marked written exams towards … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Education policy, Teaching and learning | Tagged A levels, Assessment, Centre assessed grades, Colleges, Covid-19, Exams, GCSE, GCSE English, GCSE Maths, GCSE retakes, Ranking | Leave a comment

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

The personal is political, and this wonderful book is both entirely personal and deeply political. Nervous Conditions (1988) is the story of Tambudzai, a young woman growing up in rural Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) in the late 1960’s, told … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews | Tagged Africa, colonialism, Equality, inequality, liberation, Nervous Conditions, Race equality, racism, sexism, subjugation, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zimbabwe | Leave a comment

Rebecca Solnit on Hope.

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

In a crisis, it is easy to despair. ‘Don’t mourn, organise!’ is a good mantra in such situations. Mourning has its place, but our response should be neither blind despair nor blind hope. We need to understand the objective reality … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Reviews | Tagged Coronavirus pandemic, crisis, hope, Hope in the Dark, learning, optimism, pessimism, Rebecca Solnit, Thinking Global, utopianism | 2 Comments

	karlaveens on Reading bell hooks.
	Eddie Playfair on Reading bell hooks.
	Eddie Playfair on Reading bell hooks.
	karlaveens on Reading bell hooks.
	Eddie Playfair on Reading bell hooks.