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.

Towards boundary crossing: primary and secondary school teachers teaching creative writing and its redrafting
This academic article, written by Professor Tom Dobson and I, explores the research we did looking at primary and secondary school teachers attitudes towards creative writing and redrafting. This is a rare piece of research which compares primary and secondary school teachers’ approaches to teaching creative writing. It shows that primary school teachers can be formulaic in the way they teach creative writing, using product approaches. However, in secondary schools the picture is different: teachers, particularly those, who are writers themselves, give students more agency in redrafting and shaping their writing. This indicates how professional development should involve primary and secondary school teachers in dialogue with one another to cross boundaries of practice.

The British Library, research and creative writing
Creative writing can be used to help people engage with the British Library and its collection. MA students led members of the public through the Library, inviting creative responses to its archive and exhibitions.
What can the opera ‘Carmen’ teach us about domestic violence?
A blog written for my publishers, Blue Door Press, which explores how and why the opera ‘Carmen’ can be seen as a critique of violence and masculinity.
Four reasons there is a Connected Curriculum at Goldsmiths
Why bring all the students at a university together to learn critical thinking and research skills?

Radio 5 Live with Richard Bacon

Spoke again about raising the leaving age for school leavers to 18. I was on air for forty minutes and was able to explain myself more clearly than the 30 seconds on BBC Breakfast: I talked about the problems of keeping students on in school when they’d already failed for eleven years to get a […]
BBC Breakfast, Monday Morning

Spoke on BBC Breakfast about the new legislation meaning that all students will have to be in some form of training until they are eighteen. I said it would be a nightmare for teachers, and explained that if a pupil hadn’t learnt to read and write properly by the time they were sixteen, what good […]
Simon Mayo Show

Appeared on the Simon Mayo show with a number of other teachers: a ex-soldier now teaching in Liverpool, a Deputy Head, Andy Bell, who won the Teacher Of The Year Award, and a Special Needs teacher. It was an hour long, civilised debate, where we all defended our holidays, explained the stresses and rewards of […]
The Man Who Went Into The West
Teen Rage with Channel 4 at the RSA

So how did it feel having most of the audience wanting to lynch you?’ an elderly member of the RSA asked me after the event. I had been invited to speak at a debate about Teen Rage at the RSA (http://www.rsa.org.uk/events/detail.asp?eventID=2407) with several notable guests. I had given a short talk on the history of […]
Leave Us Kids Alone — BBC Breakfast

Appeared on BBC Breakfast having watched Leave Us Kids Alone, a BBC3 Doc about teenagers who run their own shambolic school. I said I thought the teaching looked quite poor. I was speaking with Amy, one of the teenage teachers. She was the best thing on the show: she looked like the only organised teenager […]
On BBC News 24 October 12th 2007

Spoke on the Beeb’s news about the problems children suffer at school and home, commenting on an interesting report from the Howard League,
Media appearances in August

Appeared at midnight on the Anita Anand Radio 5 Live show on Thursday morning. It was great because I was allowed to talk more than usual, explaining why essay writing skills have disappeared in schools. Because teachers have to teach to the Assessment Objectives, they are much keener on shovelling content into pupils’ brains than […]
Free Food For Millionaires — book review
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster — a review

This is definitely the best Paul Auster I have read. I have always been intrigued by his novels but found that they start well but quickly fall to pieces: the City Of Glass, Mr Vertigo, the Music Of Chance being the ones I have tried. The Brooklyn Follies though engages throughout: it has the classic […]
Gang violence in Britain

Two fascinating pieces in the Guardian about gang culture, which appear to suggest it’s so much the break-up of the family that’s the problem with gang violence but that many youths get dragged into violence by their families. The older generation of yobs are inducting the younger ones into their ways. The report on the […]
Time further endorses the findings in ‘Yob Nation’

1. One of the major contentions in ‘Yob Nation’ was that Blair’s government was a yobbish government, motivated by an aggressive, theatrical desire to promote itself. The publication of Campbell’s diaries, countless commentators on Blair’s Iraq disaster, and the news that Brown is now cancelling classic ‘yob’ innovations such as gambling super-casinos, now show us […]
“You are an arrogant, young man”

It was the ‘young’ part I liked the best. Peregrine Worsthorne was not very happy with me. We were sitting around microphones in a Radio 4 studio, talking about ‘Knowing Your Place’ for the lunchtime Radio 4 programme ‘Off The Page’. I started being provocative because the debate was becoming rather cosy. I said that […]
Sky News — Britain is broken

Appeared with the Labour MP Frank Field on Sky News this morning. I was asked to argue the case that Britain is broken. I pointed out that we have the unhappiest children in the western world, that violent crime is soaring, that alcohol-related violence is being actively encouraged with the new licensing laws and that […]
Radio City Interview

Was interviewed for quite some time, twenty minutes, about parents being to blame for their children’s anti-social behaviour. Gave some grisly accounts and accidentally swore on air, recounting what I heard one parent say to their child. The programme felt pretty wild actually, one of those radio phone-in shows where people phone in and rant […]
Chris Woodhead, useless teachers and Radio 5 Live

Shelagh Fogarty interviewed me on Radio 5 Breakfast about the lack of subject specialists teaching in schools today. According to a new report supervised by Chris Woodhead for the think-tank politeia (
Gilbert in the Week

My article on violence in schools in the Times was selected by the Week (http://info.theweek.co.uk/?bbcam=adwds&bbkid=the+week&x=&jtid=172319&client_code=)as one of the best articles of the week: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1867904.ece‘
Big Day At The Beeb

Natasha Kaplinski, my interviewer on BBC News 24 I had a long day of interviews at the Beeb. All of them were about the new law that gives the right for teachers to search pupils for weapons. I was supportive of the law, having searched quite a few bags in my time. First up was […]
Marry Me — Great Novel

Finished Marry Me by John Updike today. The book tails off a bit in the last fifty pages, but generally it’s a total winner. Especially after reading the appalling Kiran Desai, Updike’s prose sings. The novel is about two couples having adulterous affairs with each other. It’s a lyrical but very funny book, and never […]
Channel 5 Stand-Down

So I am sitting in a Channel 5 Studio, make up on, mic trailing underneath my shirt, ready to talk with Jellyellie (yes, we met again today) about teenagers when we are asked to leave the studio before the cameras rolled. There was a more important news story, and we weren’t needed. I talked to […]