May 2020

Strictly speaking, a pangram  is a sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet.  One I remember from learning to type is: "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog". This has the great virtue of making sense...

 Initially, I thought that this was an April Fool from the Department of Transport.  I mean, just who exactly thinks that skywriting adverts in a clear blue sky is a sign of social progress?  Is Chris Grayling back in charge?...

It's tough on the recycling front line.  Wiltshire Council, having now re-opened its household recycling centres, has a sensible policy of asking residents to go to them on specific days according to their postcodes.  For example, this week, I am...

Re-discovered more like.  I cannot really believe that George Monbiot (Stowe, Brasenose, & The Guardian) hasn't read Snow's two cultures exploration of how deep divisions in England about culture (and what it is to be cultured) continue to scar education...

I had one of those interestingly wayward meeting last week (zooming, of course).  I say wayward only in the sense that I found myself talking about unexpected things.  The best sort of meetings. The conversation turned, unexpectedly and unwontedly, to...

I've written a few times –  for example here and here – about why the DfE is reluctant to endorse the 6 asks of Teach the Future, particularly so when it comes to changing the curriculum so that school students can learn...

Finally, the text of the latest Scott / Vare book has been despatched to the publishers.  The title is Learning, Environment and Sustainable Development: a history of ideas. [*]  The formal is the same as our most recent publication: The...

Everyone reading this will know that the UK has made a legally binding commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.  Green-tinged government supporters make a lot of noise about this.  But did you know that this target excludes emissions associated...

This a re-working of a posting from a few weeks ago.  It's now posted on the Teach the Future blog. If you wanted to take a glass half-full view of how young people are being prepared for the challenges of...

Have you noticed how an urge to abolish single-use plastic has turned into a plea for more of it?  This single use plastic is "good use plastic", of course, as opposed to bad use plastic, because it's PPE – personal...