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Recent Posts
- Why the comprehensive college? September 20, 2020
- Exam results – what just happened? August 23, 2020
- Starting to rethink education. June 10, 2020
- Knowledge and education for the future. May 25, 2020
- England’s unexpected exam revolution. May 5, 2020
- Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’. May 3, 2020
- Rebecca Solnit on Hope. April 23, 2020
- In praise of lightness – Calvino’s Leggerezza. March 29, 2020
- An A-Z for a world which has to change. March 22, 2020
- Decarbonising education. March 15, 2020
- The mighty pencil November 2, 2019
- Knowledge-rich and skills-rich August 18, 2019
- ‘Unsheltered’ by Barbara Kingsolver August 11, 2019
- ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. March 10, 2019
- Familiale (Jacques Prévert) March 10, 2019
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Category Archives: Culture
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.
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
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The mighty pencil
The mighty pencil It’s just a pencil Making a mark in a specific place On a specific piece of paper On a specific day. It only takes a second or two, No time at all. Such a simple thing. But … Continue reading
‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.
Richard Powers is an extraordinary writer. If you’ve not yet discovered his novels, I strongly recommend them. He tackles big ideas which concern all of us while at the same time telling compelling stories about complex and conflicted characters who … Continue reading
Familiale (Jacques Prévert)
The mother is knitting The son is fighting She thinks it quite natural the mother And the father what is he doing the father? He’s doing business His wife is knitting His son is fighting He’s doing business He thinks … Continue reading
My islands – by Line Mariani Playfair
I have always had a strong affinity for atlases and islands. Whether a single volcanic rock or one likely to fragment or disappear underwater, each one seems to be calling me, speaking to my imagination. I was fascinated by Thor … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Guest blogs, History
Tagged Corsica, Dorothy Carrington, Line Mariani Playfair
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‘What if?’ – dystopias in fiction.
Fictional dystopias use the power of ‘what if?’ to change something or extrapolate particular social or technological trends and imagine the impact on people’s lives. The best ones are also good stories, well told, about people; their hopes, fears, feelings … Continue reading
The last Corsican.
“I’ve decided to keep this diary because I’m going to die in the next few days…I am condemned because, having refused to be evacuated with the others, I will be annihilated by the incendiary bombs which are systematically ravaging the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction
Tagged Corse Noire, Corsica, Jacques Mondoloni, Le Dernier Corse, The Last Corsican
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Matisse in Corsica.
The great artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was inspired to use colour in radical new ways during his first visit to Corsica. After their wedding in early 1898, Matisse and his wife Amélie Parayre spent their honeymoon first in London and … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History
Tagged Ajaccio, Amelie Parayre, Art, Corsica, culture, Fauvism, France, Henri Matisse, Hilary Spurling, painting
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Brecht’s radical Galileo
Brecht’s ‘Life of Galileo’ is a great piece of theatre with universal appeal. It’s also a particularly good one for science students because it brings the scientific method to life. Galileo’s struggle to get acceptance for the ‘Copernican’ heliocentric model … Continue reading
The Mathematics of Survival
Poetry gives our language the wings to fly and in difficult times we need strong wings. Starting with just the alphabet, the poetic form allows our ideas to soar. Just like those in our previous anthologies, the student poems in … Continue reading
Posted in NewVIc, Poetry
Tagged English PEN, Newham Sixth Form College, NewVIc, Poetry, student voice, The Mathematics of Survival
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More fictional dystopias
Reading Dystopias offered an introduction to the genre of dystopian fiction through 4 classic dystopian novels. Here are four more which are also well worth reading. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) [211 pages] Fahrenheit 451: The temperature at which … Continue reading
Abdellatif Laâbi: attesting against barbarism.
The brilliant Moroccan poet, novelist and playwright Abdellatif Laâbi is the epitome of the engaged writer. Born in Fez in 1942, he studied at the University of Rabat and was one of the founders of the literary magazine Souffles in … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Poetry
Tagged Abdellatif Laâbi, citizenship education, English PEN, France, hope, I attest, Morocco, Poetry, Solidarity, terrorism
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Theodore Zeldin on ‘what is worth knowing?’
What is worth knowing? It’s a good question, given how much there is to know and the impossibility of knowing more than a tiny fraction of the total. Theodore Zeldin’s latest collection of essays, ‘The hidden pleasures of life’ (Quercus, 2015) … Continue reading
