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Recent Posts
- In praise of ‘low value’ subjects. February 27, 2023
- Frigga Haug and the mystery of learning December 6, 2022
- Debating Growth. November 29, 2022
- Code red for human survival November 8, 2022
- The politics of silence. September 4, 2022
- Posts on Corsican themes. August 10, 2022
- When Corsica welcomed thousands of Serb refugees (1916) August 9, 2022
- Climate justice, heat justice and the politics of resilience August 5, 2022
- Nancy Fraser’s eco-socialist common sense. August 3, 2022
- Education, social justice and survival in a time of crisis. July 18, 2022
- A political education. May 10, 2022
- Redistribution and recognition should go hand in hand. April 17, 2022
- French presidential election: could Mélenchon make it? April 10, 2022
- Owning our crises March 26, 2022
- French elections 2022 January 29, 2022
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Author Archives: Eddie Playfair
Zola’s ‘Money’
Rougon-Macquart #18 A powerful anti-capitalist novel. Emile Zola’s wonderful 1890 novel ‘L’Argent’ (‘Money’) is set in the world of finance and share-speculation in 1860’s Paris. It is still fresh and relevant and should be on any reading list of anti-capitalist … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Politics, Reviews
Tagged capitalism, economy, Emile Zola, France, investment, money, Napoleon III, Paris, Second Empire, socialism, speculation, Yanis Varoufakis
1 Comment
Finding our voice in a crisis.
Blogging in the 2020s. It can be hard to write in a time of crisis. What can we possibly say that could be of any use to anyone? But when things are this bad, it’s also hard not to write. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Philosophy, Reviews
Tagged 2020s, Alternatives, blogging, complexity, crisis, Education, hope, Social change, utopianism
1 Comment
Stupid gene.
Simplex and Sapiens are discussing human stupidity. Simplex: We agree that people can do some pretty stupid things, yes? Sapiens: Of course. Simplex: And that some people have a tendency to do stupid things more often… Sapiens: I guess… Simplex: … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Teaching and learning
Tagged behavioural genetics, determinism, Education, intelligence, IQ test, Sapiens, stupidity, teaching
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Learning from Utopia
What is the function of alternative political and economic systems, whether actually existing or imaginary? Is it to offer hope that change is possible, or at least to provide some perspective on our own way of life?
Draws on ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Alternatives, Anarcho-syndicalism, Anarres, dystopia, Education, Equality, Science fiction, Urras, Ursula Le Guin, utopia, utopianism
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Resisting classification
The way we use categories doesn’t do justice to the multi-layered complexity of the world. It’s often a short cut to sweeping assumptions and flawed policy. Continue reading
Posted in Education, Philosophy
Tagged agglomeration, categories, classification, complexity, disadvantage, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, inequality, Nick Sousanis, reality, reification, selection
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‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers
Bewilderment is an entirely rational response to what we are collectively doing to our planet. Confronted by the injustices, dysfunction and unsustainability of the world we’ve created, how can we not react with bewilderment? This wonderful novel is both an … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Biodiversity, climate emergency, Planet Earth, Richard Powers, Sustainability
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“You either bend the arc or it bends you”
‘Attack Surface’ by Cory Doctorow. ‘Attack Surface‘ (2020) is a gripping action-packed story of oppression and resistance with plenty of insights into the potential of new technologies and big data. It is also a powerful manifesto for the necessity of … Continue reading
A manifesto to end educational inequality?
The challenge We urgently need to address inequality and the human damage it causes, in education and across society. So, any programme with the aim of ‘eliminating educational inequality’ merits serious consideration. The eleven proposals in the Teach First ‘manifesto … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Education policy
Tagged Education, Education policy, education system, Equality, Funding, inequality, schools, Teach First, young people
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‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford
‘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
Reading bell hooks.
‘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
11 Comments
Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.
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
3 Comments
Freire for today
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
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Seven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education.
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
Learning, earning and the death of human capital.
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
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Eddie Playfair 