The Cottage

I was asked by a friend to give him a quick summary of Michael Gove’s policies. Here it is: Free Schools – most important – and other systemic changes Gove has made it possible for any primary or secondary school to become an academy. There has been HUGE take up, despite what the unions were [...]

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As soon as a friend or acquaintance becomes interested in education, it is not long before they send me Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? Accompanied with subject-lines like ‘Been kept up all night by this…’ or ‘SO TRUE!!’. Once a fellow believer, my short time in education has convinced me of [...]

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A great piece in Saturday’s Times from Matthew Parris on the speed and ease of communication – and its possible impact on liberty. Discussing the publication of the list of BNP members – and what bloggers have done with it: What has changed is not the principle of what may be done, but the effortlessness [...]

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Below provides some interesting empirical evidence for the elegant words of Ed Cooke, whose talk on using one’s memory for great feats can be seen here. For the Brain, Remembering Is Like RelivingBy BENEDICT CAREYExcerpts from The New York Times September 4, 2008 Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the [...]

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I went to St. John’s Wood for the first time in ages today, and was taken aback by how magnificent it is:

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Very evocative passage in Justin Cartwright’s The Promise of Happiness. Amidst the tired soul-searching on what defines Englishness, this’ll do for me: For Frances the church has very little to do with God; it’s more a shrine to Englishness: flowers, history, familiar – if meaningless – hymns, your own kneeler and a sort of bracing [...]

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Geoff Dyer: I spent my twenties labouring – more accurately, idling – under the misconception that women liked intellectuals. In Africa I am confronted by an elemental truth: they prefer rangers and pilots…

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