Perform a Poem

This is a wonderful resourse for teachers and children. Download and up-load a poetry performance! When Michael Rosen was the Children's Laureate he had the idea of creating a safe site for children to up-load their own performances of their own poems and those of others. Find it here http://performapoem.lgfl.org.uk/

Ground Rules for Talk: The Acceptable Face of Prescription

I have been completing the proofs for an article on the 'Ground Rules perspective' for talk as constructed by Professor Neil Mercer and his colleagues. It will be published in the next edition of The Curriculum Journal. This article is my second piece on this subject in this journal. The first article, that can be found in Vol. 17 No.1 March 2006, was critiqued by Professor Mercer in his and Littleton's book Dialogue and the Development of Children's Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach (2007).
Professor Mercer can be seen in the picture on the left. Both of my articles critique aspects of Mercer's position on ground rules for talk. I hope it at least contributes to lively debate.

UKLA National Conference 30th March 2010

Tuesday 30th March 2010: The British Library, Euston Road, London 9.30 - 4pm

Choice and Voice: Reading and Writing for Pleasure and Independence

Richard Andrews (London, Institute of Education) 'How do we bring pleasure and independence to the development of writing?'

Prue Goodwin (Reading University) on 'The making of a reader'

Alan Gibbons (author) 'In defence of reading: the campaign for the book'

Choice of 5 workshops

Book on line www.ukla.org

Bears

In 1891 Oscar Wilde wrote:

"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism - are forced, indeed, so to spoil them....accordingly, with admirable, though mis-directed intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves the task of remedying the evils they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease...but this is not the solution; it is an aggravation of their difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life - educated men who live in the East End - coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises...It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair"

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Discuss

Furedi on Education

I have just bought this new book by Frank Furedi (Professor of Sociology at Kent University) on education. Frank's views are always worth reading.

I heard him speak at my University a while ago on the same subject. I suspect his opinions in this book will be both enlightening and extremely irritating.

However, a critique of education, as sculpted by governments over the last 25 years or so, is much needed. Looking forward to reading it.

Flu

I had forgotten how frustrating having flu can be. It's also hard work having to email and telephone people you are having to 'cancel' 'due to the flu'. People have been very understanding and kind.

Peter Greenham was great artist. This is an oil of his that is presently up for sale.

Good to see that the prospect of a poetry seminar series is back on the cards - time to start bidding.

Sublime to the...

Bolgona was great. Just right for a weekend. When can I go again.

I've been reading more on postmodernism for the next chapter in the book I'm writing. Sheehan's chapter in the Cambridge Companion to PM on philosophy starts with a description of postmodernist thinking on origins (a first cause or foundation) and ends - the end of authorial presence and ideology for example. For postmodernists, knowledge is deemed questionable and is no longer the job of philosphy to provide...