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12 rules for schools – Rule 2 Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

2018-01-23T15:33:40+00:00January 22nd, 2018|Featured|

This is the second in a series of posts adapting Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules of Life to the context of eduction. You can find my thoughts on Rule 1 here. Please note, Peterson talks about a lot of other stuff - much of it religious - which I'm largely ignoring. This is just my partial take. According to this study, one third of every prescription a doctor writes goes unfilled, and, over half of those people who do collect their medication won't take it correctly. Why would this be? Why would some one who felt ill enough to visit their doctor not then [...]

12 Rules for schools – Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back

2018-02-26T11:36:05+00:00January 21st, 2018|Featured|

I've just finished the Canadian academic and controversialist, Jordan Peterson's book, 12 Rules of Life: An antidote to chaos and my over-riding impression is that it's an important, erudite and thoughtful addition to the library of anyone interested in philosophy, ethics, religion, literature, psychology and the history of thought. But it's an often challenging and occasionally irritating at times. I guarantee that Peterson will say things which will annoy you. Don't let tis put you off. His wisdom and compassion underlie even his most provocative and incendiary ideas. His 12 rules are as follows: Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders [...]

Can we develop a ‘love of learning’?

2022-04-02T15:29:13+01:00January 13th, 2018|Featured|

The scholar and the world! The endless strife, The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus Why are some people healthier than others? This might sound like a bit of silly question. The answer is surely obvious: some people eat better and exercise more than others. But is that all there is to it? Couldn't 'healthiness' be attributed, at least in part, to our genes? Might some of us be born with a greater capacity for health than others? We know that various physical traits - eye and hair colour, height, weight, certain specific genetic disorders - absolutely are inherited, so why not a general factor of healthiness? [...]

Teaching to make children cleverer: Part 1

2018-01-07T15:15:49+00:00January 5th, 2018|Featured|

I've argued previously that the aim of education ought to be to make children cleverer. If I'm right, then not only is it desirable, it's also possible to achieve this end. But before we can do so, we need to make sure we have a solid understanding of precisely which aspects of intelligence we might be able to boost. In What Is Intelligence? James Flynn suggests a number of factors that make up an individual's intelligence: Mental acuity - the ability to come up with solutions to problems about which we have no prior knowledge Habits of mind - the ways [...]

The best books I’ve read this year

2017-12-06T17:30:07+00:00December 6th, 2017|Featured, reading|

Here follows a list of the books that I've most enjoyed and which have most affected my thinking this year. I've presented them in alphabetical order so as not to have to make choices about which were best: if they're on the list then I think they're worth reading. I note, with some shame, that yet again I've gone mainly for books by white men. Please don't hold that against me or them. I never consciously make choices about what to read based on the physical characteristics of the writer, but am nevertheless aware that what we choose to read shapes [...]

Why I recommend self-report to audit teachers’ grammatical knowledge

2017-11-21T11:29:32+00:00November 21st, 2017|Featured|

The response to my recent post on supporting teachers' standards of literacy was overwhelmingly positive, although, as expected, there was also some criticism. Some of the criticism was directed at my suggested process and several people were unhappy about the use of self-report to audit teacher's current level of confidence. I acknowledge that self-report is a notoriously unreliable tool for determining what people think and believe - often respondents simply answer in the way that they think the questioners wants them to and they are at pains to present themselves in the best possible light. Additionally, some readers felt that many [...]

How can we support teachers' standards of literacy?

2017-11-18T10:55:54+00:00November 18th, 2017|Featured|

Recently, I've spent some time talking to school leaders about how to implement and evaluate effective literacy policies in schools. From these conversations it's clear that one of the main stumbling blocks is concern over some teachers' standards of literacy. If "every teacher in English is a teacher of English," unless teachers are familiar with some fairly basic knowledge of the English language they may, inadvertently, be passing on misinformation and bad habits to their students. This is likely to disproportionately affect the least advantaged children, disadvantaging them further. It therefore makes sense to hold teachers to account for the personal [...]

Fundamental British Values: What are they and how should we teach them?

2017-10-27T11:32:55+01:00October 27th, 2017|Featured|

The Department for Education is in the process of setting up an expert advisory group to look at how best to develop and resource a curriculum intended to instil fundamental British values in our young people. These values are defined by the DfE as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. While we might want to quibble about whether these are the right values (and whether of not they're especially British) this is what has been settled upon, and, however cynical you feel about government diktats about what schools need to [...]

Leading literacy in schools

2017-10-17T11:20:34+01:00October 17th, 2017|Featured|

Leading on literacy can be a thoroughly thankless task. It can often feel like you're working incredibly hard to produce resources and strategies which colleagues at best ignore and at worst resent. The problem is often that we're expending effort in the wrong place and trying to persuade teachers to do the wrong things. Frustratingly, there's very little guidance about how best to spend your precious and it can be hard to find clear information on what approaches are likely to be most successful. My advice is to minimise the amount of time spent on apostrophe worksheets and spelling posters. It's [...]

Are IQ tests biased or meaningless?

2017-09-15T17:34:44+01:00September 15th, 2017|Featured|

Since my last foray into the world of intelligence testing, I've done a lot of reading about the idea that a) IQ tests are culturally biased and b) that the entire concept of intelligence is culturally biased. I want to preface my conclusions by reiterating the following points: I do not believe we should ever use IQ tests in schools to classify students, or to predict their academic acheivement. I do not believe that any group of people is in any way superior to any other group. The fact that various studies show differences in the IQ scores of men and [...]

Is gaslighting a thing, or am I going mad?

2017-09-12T16:55:25+01:00September 12th, 2017|Featured|

In the 40s crime film, Gaslight, a murderous husband tries (and ultimately fails) to convince his wife she's going mad by hiding various of her possessions and then accusing her of having done it herself. He isolates her from anyone who might be able to corroborate her version of events, saying that she's not well and that she needs to rest. After a while, she begin to believe that she's going mad and that she shouldn't go out in public. Naturally, the wicked plot unravels and the evil husband is unveiled as the cad he really is. Whatever the film's merits, [...]

Why I’m grateful for black people talking to me about race

2017-09-05T17:05:17+01:00September 5th, 2017|Featured|

I've just finished reading Reni Eddo-Logde's Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race.* As a result I feel I need to update some of what I've recently written. Eddo-Lodge does an excellent job of articulating how 'whiteness' can - possibly should - be viewed as an ideological structure similar to patriarchy. She argues that being white conveys all sorts of advantages, some subtle, some obvious while not being white results in equal and opposite disadvantages, and, because being white comes along with all this good stuff, white people, wittingly or otherwise, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. [...]

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