News and Updates

JH Plumb quotes (p.159) the following advert from the Liverpool Chronicle (15 December 1768) in his England in the Eighteenth Century: a study of the development of English society (Pelican Books): “To be SOLD, A FINE NEGRO BOY, of about 4 feet...

I attended the online launch of OCR’s consultation into creating a Natural History GCSE.  There were live inputs from Mary Colwell, whose idea it was, and from OCR's Jill Duffy and Tim Oates.   There was also a string of...

I see that the NAEE update recently drew attention to a Spectator podcast on the ethics and politics of carbon off-setting.  It had a contribution from Shell which clearly paid for the whole thing. Dear me; the Spectator and Shell!...

I'm keeping an eye on what Teach the Future has been doing recently – making good use of the covid-19 crisis to re-organise itself by the look of it.  It's now got a core (or should that be cadre?) of...

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...

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...