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.

  • 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 […]

  • The terrible names parents give their children

    What kind of parent calls their child ‘Storm’, ‘Beetroot’, or ‘Brussell Sprout’? Only the kind that hasn’t thought about the consequences for that child. I appeared on Woman’s Hour, with Dea Birkett, who had called her children ‘Storm’ and ‘Savannah’. I complained that called your child ‘Storm’ forces a personality, an attitude, a metaphor upon […]

  • Epic narratives in an alternative universe at the White Cube

  • London’s Dead

    Visited the exhibition of skeletons of London’s dead at the Wellcome Institute this morning and was blown away with thoughts of mortality, love, death, disease and ghostliness of the past living in the present. Laid out in cold clarity, underneath clear perspex cabinets, the jaws and eye sockets of London’s dead gaped and stared at […]

  • Would you intervene if you saw someone being beaten up?

    Andrew Jones was smashed in the head on a night out in Liverpool recently and died as a result. Plenty of people saw him being beaten up, but did nothing. His killers were caught but given only cursory justice. His father is now leading a campaign to punish them properly and to stop the sort […]

  • Appearance on Radio 5 Live Steve Nolan Show

    Appeared as a guest speaker on the Steve Nolan show, talking about the recent case where a seven-year-old child was put into a naughty room with his parents’ permission at his primary school. When the parents learnt what had happened, they went ballistic, complaining that the school had infringed upon their child’s rights and psychologically […]

  • Appearances on BBC News and Daily Politics

    Appeared on BBC News talking about Alan Steer’s new recommendations that teachers should have the right to search pupils for alcohol and drugs, as well as knives. I pointed out that it was sad that there had to be a law to enable teachers to do this: it was yet another indication that we’ve lost […]

  • Two Hour Guest Appearance On BBC World Service

    I was a guest on a two show that the BBC World Service Host in the evening to Africa and and the rest of the world in mid June. It was a discussion held in a Glasgow town hall where callers from all around the world and the eclectic guests in Glasgow gave their views […]

  • Metal detectors at Paddington Academy

    Very interesting to see that Paddington Academy is one of the few schools to bite the bullet — or pull the knife if you like — and introduce metal detectors to stop knife crimes in the school. Even more interesting to note, that it was the pupils who wanted it. As I argued previously on […]

  • The Road Home wins — and now perhaps Tremain will get the recognition she deserves

    Rose Tremain has deservedly won the Orange Prize for her brilliant, complex and beautifully written novel, The Road Home. Now perhaps, she will be viewed as the writer she is: I think she IS our major British novelist, putting the likes of others from her generation in the shade — Amis, McEwan, Barnes. Will she […]