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Recent Posts
- 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
- Zola’s ‘Money’ January 23, 2022
- Overcoming the barriers to learning January 7, 2022
- Finding our voice in a crisis. January 1, 2022
- Stupid gene. December 30, 2021
- Learning from Utopia December 28, 2021
- Resisting classification December 23, 2021
- ‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers November 22, 2021
- “You either bend the arc or it bends you” September 12, 2021
- A manifesto to end educational inequality? September 9, 2021
- ‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford May 15, 2021
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Category Archives: Education
A political education.
Why political literacy? Politics is about power and change, how we live our lives and what kind of world we want. The political is not a separate sphere of life, it’s embedded in our everyday experience, as are the ideologies … Continue reading
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
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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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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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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
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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Why the comprehensive college?
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
Exam results – what just happened?
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
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Starting to rethink education.
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
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Knowledge and education for the future.
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
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England’s unexpected exam revolution.
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
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Eddie Playfair 