A talk and slides about: ‘Making Meaning in the World’. A look at some of the themes in ‘Athena vs the Machine’ 1.Conversation of humankind (culture) the way we do things here vs (who are you calling we?) – experience.2.Culture: Developing taste, opinions, values – finding meaning… truth, beauty, care, relationship to things, others – … More Curriculum and Culture
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. – William Ralph Inge “The Training of the Reason” Do we know that torturing or killing a person for entertainment is wrong? Or is it that we just find it unpalatable? Is it merely guesswork on our part, is truth, outside of … More On A Knowledge-Rich Curriculum
The Guardian gushes: At a time when arts are squeezed in some schools, teachers are embracing them as a tool to teach the environment without realising it is this insidious belief that the arts are merely a pedagogical tool that is leading to a paucity of engagement with great art. The tragic figure of the starving … More Dumbing Down the Arts
Today’s identity politics has another interesting feature: it teaches students to think in a way antithetical to what a liberal arts education should do. When I was at Yale in the 1980s, I was given so many tools for understanding the world. By the time I graduated, I could think about things as a Utilitarian … More The Narrowing Curriculum
The Sutton Trust report ‘Life Lessons, Improving essential life skills for young people’ (Oct 2017) makes interesting reading. There is much to discuss within its pages. One of the things that stood out for me is the need to teach written and spoken communication ‘skills’* including debate, argument, speech and the art of conversation. When asked … More If Teachers Want Confident Pupils They Should Teach Them to Communicate Well
In her thoughtful essay ‘The Crisis in Education’, Hannah Arendt addresses the difficulty of teaching in the modern world. If you go into teaching with the sole purpose of making a real difference, changing the world one child at a time, you might end up doing nothing of the sort. A revolutionary or radical attitude … More The Need for a Progressive Attitude
Trying to fit a personalised curriculum around the desires of a child is a dangerous idea. If we only ever follow the extreme individualisation where the child’s own innate tastes are paramount we might never move out of McDonalds. The argument for personalisation goes hand in hand with the idea that much that is studied … More The Dangers of a Personalised Curriculum
A level results day is always a bittersweet day for me, school left me when I was sixteen and by the time many of my friends were getting their A level results I was working on a market stall selling, amongst other things, whoopee cushions and fart powder. Both products with clear results. But I … More A Level Results Day and the Polymathic Adventurer!
In these days of very little time or space on a timetable it is still heartening to know that some schools are trying to make a space where children can be taught in a way that celebrates education for its own sake. Paradoxically this approach might have benefits beyond education, as Stefan Collini puts it: … More History of Thought
Here are the slides in PDF format from my talk at the Telegraph Festival of Education at Wellington College on 22nd June 2017: You Can’t Teach The Best That Has Been Thought and Said
Trivium 21c 