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Recent Posts
- Zola : a political reading. August 13, 2023
- Hotter than July? August 5, 2023
- Rethinking work July 30, 2023
- Educating for political literacy in an age of crisis. July 21, 2023
- Savoirs et valeurs : pratiquer et conjuguer July 21, 2023
- ‘Transformative Teaching and Learning in Further Education – Pedagogies of Hope and Social Justice’ July 18, 2023
- Dilemmas of Growth June 14, 2023
- A broader view of skills? June 7, 2023
- 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
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Category Archives: Reviews
Educating for political literacy in an age of crisis.
“Who’s Afraid of Political Education?” The Challenge to Teach Civic Competence and Democratic Participation. Edited by Henry Tam. Policy Press, 2023 One of the key purposes of education is to help people acquire the knowledge and skills to participate and … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Education policy, Politics, Reviews, Teaching and learning
Tagged agonism, Bernard Crick, capitalism, Chantal Mouffe, citizenship education, climate emergency, co-active, co-construction, Colleges, crisis, criticality, curriculum, Democracy, Diane Reay, Education, Equality, further education, global citizenship, human capital theory, John Dewey, Neoliberalism, Paulo Freire, political education, political literacy, politics, populism, schools, social justice, systemic crisis
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‘Transformative Teaching and Learning in Further Education – Pedagogies of Hope and Social Justice’
Professor Vicky Duckworth and Professor Rob Smith From a conversation the authors had with Eddie Playfair as part of the Association of Colleges Quality, Teaching and Learning conference in December 2022. Eddie Playfair: I’m delighted to welcome Vicky and Rob … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Education policy, Reviews, Teaching and learning
Tagged Adult education, AoC, Association of Colleges, class, Colleges, critical education, criticality, dialogic education, Education, Funding Accountability and Performance regime, further education, hope, inclusion, inequality, knowledge, literacies, neuroscience, pedagogy, Rob Smith, skills, social justice, Social mobility, transformative teaching and learning, Transforming Lives, UCU, Vicky Duckworth, widening participation, working class
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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
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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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‘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
‘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
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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‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
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
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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Rebecca Solnit on Hope.
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
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Eddie Playfair 