Opinion

Here I comment on a wide range of issues from education to politics, the arts and more. I welcome lively and opinionated debate, so please leave your comments.

  • Life on a Refrigerator Door — the first post-it note novel

  • Are A-Levels still the gold standard they used to be?

    My answer is a resounding “No!” Several things have made it a lot easier to get an A grade: The Assessment Objectives: if pupils tick the right boxes, they’ll get a good grade Re-takes Less stringent marking. The old English A Level was a difficult exam to get an A grade in. Overwhelmingly, you had to write […]

  • The horrors of Ecstasy

    Very troubling article about Ecstasy in the Guardian today – it’s had a good day.

  • Dealing with grief

    An amazing article on a wife’s grief after the death of her husband for sixty years.

  • Are we the same as the war generation?

    Just finished reading One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, a rather wonderful short novel published just after the Second World War. The novel largely describes in lyrical, humorous and incisive detail one hot summer’s day in the life of a housewife living in a rural village just after the war. For me, the book was […]

  • Was Rousseau the first person to write about being alone?

    Reading Rousseau’s biography, in which it is stated that great philosopher was the first person in his autobiography to write about being ‘alone’, to explore the interior state of a child who felt lonely, isolated, alienated. In his Confessions, Rousseau describes feeling troubled and isolated as he ventured through a graveyard in the dark, hearing […]

  • What is ‘well-being’ and how do you measure it?

    Now that schools will have to report on student’s well-being and consider it more deeply than before, it prompts the questions:What is well-being?How do you measure it?How do you improve students’ well-being?Is well-being contradictory to raising standards?

  • Can computer games help children to learn to read?

    At Channel 4 tonight, there was a debate about this question, organised by

  • The dangers of wealth

    Adam Thorpe’s new novel, Between Each Breath, really explores the dangers of wealth; it is about a talented composer who marries an heiress who is an ecological worker and child of the privileged. The composer isn’t and, although loved by his wife, he becomes stultified, frozen, trapped in a mundane routine, rattling around his Hampstead […]

  • Should there be more male teachers?

    Definitely! We are a dying species in education at the moment and the few of us who are around tend to hide in our offices behind bits of paper. The problem is particularly acute in primary school where we are virtually extinct. I appeared on BBC Breakfast TV this Tuesday to talk about this: a […]

  • What are schools for?

    Increasingly beginning to think that schools have to think about child’s lives in their totality if they are going to give them a truly rounded education. I argued about this with Gaby Hinsliff, a political writer at the Observer; she argued that schools were there primarily to educate and that possibly things like providing children […]

  • Teenage pregnancy and sex education

    Attended a heated debate at Channel 4, which launched their sex education programmes this autumn. All the experts on the panel pointed out that British teenagers get the worst sex education in Europe: many parents don’t have conversations about sex with their children, many sex ed lessons in schools are patchy and ill-informed, and teenagers […]

  • Could mobile phones help learning in the classroom?

    A recent survey conducted by Nottingham University has shown that mobile phones can really help boost standards in the classroom if they are used wisely and imaginatively. Pupils can Bluetooth their work to each other, set deadlines on the digital diaries, research issues on the web, take videos of teachers explaining key points (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09/04/dlmobile104.xml) I […]

  • Vital moral question: should a teacher have pupils as friends on Facebook?

    I don’t really take Facebook seriously, but increasingly as I mindlessly click on people to be my friends, being confronted with some pupils I teach, I click them in thinking: friend’ on Facebook doesn’t mean ‘friend’ in real life. It’s just a label for someone you don’t mind snooping over your silly Facebook page. I […]

  • The Toilet Plunger — The Cheapest and Best Toy Ever

    My son and I have discovered the wonders of toilet plungers as toys. 1. They are far, far cheaper than any Dr Who toy.2. They break much less easily.3. They make great and formidable Daleks: the heft, weight and durability of a toilet plunger is great in a make-believe game of Dr Who.4. With two, […]

  • Is it OK for the host to drink beer at their own wine party?

    Suddenly I felt like a nice cool glass of beer at a wine party that I was host at: had this discussion with E, is this acceptable when I only have four cans of beer in the fridge? In other words, if anyone else wanted beer, they wouldn’t be able to have it. We decided […]

  • The lure of pre-war Berlin

    The lurid colours, the florescents greens and glowing pinks, the sickly yellows and shining blacks of Kirchner’s prostitutes grip you in the gallery, inviting you into their world of sensuality and sin, as slidy-eyed men glance at them askance with desire in the street. We are in pre-war Berlin, a place now that is a […]

  • What makes Coney Island more mythic than Southend?

  • Is New York The Greatest City To Walk In?

    With its vast canyons, its toppling arching skyscrapers, its mythic cinema appeal, its glorious brownstone houses and its Gotham gargoyles, its streaming traffic and the lushness of Central Park, I am increasingly thinking that I love the most to walk around Manhattan. It?s a much safer city now to walk around in than it was; […]

  • Who are the Riders in the Chariot?

    from Patrick White’s The Rider’s In The Chariot, page 25: Her father said:‘Who are the riders in the Chariot, eh, Mary? Who is ever going to know?’Who, indeed? Certainly she would not be expected to understand. Nor did she think she wanted to, just then. But they continued there, the sunset backed up against the […]