The problem with the word ‘creativity’ is that it conjures up such a wide range of possible interpretations that it ends up serving no-one except those who wish to peddle it as a pedagogical aim and charge thousands of pounds for their talks in Dubai or Davos, or a school hall near you on an … More Schools Should Ditch Creativity
I felt sorry for Theresa May. Coughing, spluttering, losing your voice whilst trying to retain a semblance of dignity during a speech must have been quite a trial. It is a trial many teachers have been through and will go through. A teacher’s voice is the most important tool in his or her armoury, lose … More Voice Protection and Projection for Teachers (and for Theresa)…
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
Late last year I had a long conversation with Peter Hyman in which we looked at areas of agreement in our education philosophies and areas where we disagree. This conversation took place within the walls of Windsor Castle, a most un-revolutionary backdrop, steeped in history, a place beautifully unencumbered by 21st Century thinking, unless you count the aeroplanes … More School 21, A ‘Conversation’ With Peter Hyman.
Mortimer J Adler’s and Charles Van Doren’s How to Read a Book sets out to assist readers who want to read well. Our subject, then, is the art of reading good books when understanding is the aim you have in view In order to help the reader to do this the authors compare teaching to reading. When … More Discovery Learning and the Art of Reading
Think how useless a teacher’s greatest labours are now, when he tries to lead one single student back to the infinitely distant and elusive Hellenic world, the true homeland of our culture, and an hour later that same student reaches for a newspaper or popular novel or one of those scholarly books whose style bears … More Pokémon Go! Must We be Servants of the Present Moment?
It seems some classrooms have embraced Brexit fully, these classrooms can be spotted easily because you need a passport to enter them and sometimes a boarding pass too. On exiting these classrooms you may have to line up at the departure gate with your departure card and undergo some rigorous, yet ultimately futile, bureaucratic exercise … More Avoid the Brexit Classrooms
In her Essay on the Banality of Evil Hannah Arendt wrote that: The nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. Now, I’m not meaning to imply that bureaucrats are evil, but looking at this quote, away from its context, … More The Banality of Character Education
Yes, you can. I could finish this blog there. But, excuse me going on a bit, I want to look at how you might teach it by exploring the relationship between knowledge and doing. I suppose, for some, this is a chicken and egg issue, what comes first creativity or domain knowledge? Others argue you … More Can You Teach Creativity?
“I’ve always cited who my influences are. I felt it was important for people to be able to see how things are put together at any given stage. I let people know what’s going through my head. I’ve been quite vocal about that through the years… I’ve always loved the process – to see how things … More Bowie, my Gatekeeper, RiP
Trivium 21c 