In a recent blog post Autumm Caines sketches a very brief, but telling, distinction between education and indoctrination: What is the difference between education and indoctrination?…What sets them apart from one another? Could it be the role of power, teacher, …
The apostles of #edtech – so quick to denounce their proudly Luddite critics as anachronistic – are themselves an anachronism. They collectively represent one of the last refuges of a centuries-old faith that has been losing ground for a long …
[Below is the full text of Hannah Arendt’s essay on the crisis in education, published in 1954. We put it online here in the firm belief that it remains – in the 21st century – required reading for all those …
The Bowie phenomenon is not without its implications for pedagogy – especially for a pedagogy that frames the teacher as the great threat to the spontaneous self-reliance of the child, whose instinct, were it not thwarted by those sages on …
“Whose side are you on?” asks the critical pedagogue as he declares emphatically that he is on the side of the students. It sounds as if something like a civil war has broken out in education – a pedagogic equivalent …
We rebels, so keen to see the old world toppled and the first light of the New Age break over the dark horizon, have a weakness for seeing false dawns. And it is a weakness that makes it so much …
1. Learning must be active, they say. The children must become what they are: Agents of their destiny. They are neither vassals to be ordered around, nor vessels that must wait to be filled. They are agents able to choose …
The reader who respects the right of the bomb victim not to have the graphic photo of his dismembered body displayed onscreen will forgive us for presenting a very selective account of our reasons for leaving the teaching profession. Confessions …
Tweetable abstract: In its current form, the promotion of freedom in education is, at the same time, the promotion of its opposite. Online pedagogic advice about promoting learner autonomy tends to be guided by a rather dubious contrast between a …
In promoting the value of critical thinking people too often forget that critical thinking is itself something that needs to be thought about critically. There is a risk that we, as teachers, organise activities which require students to do things …
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed remains an inspiring work. The banking model of education he set himself against is now being replaced by an online shopping model of education (learning as the active, personal acquisition of disposable stuff you …
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a meditation on monstrosity in various forms. Unspoken in the background is a monstrous tumult that includes the terror of the French Revolution, the bodies of Luddites swinging from scaffolds in England, and …
Sir Ken Robinson has something of the Luddite* about him. He refuses the industrial order, which the Luddites also refused back at the beginning of the 19th century, when they declared it to be a new form of tyranny. He …
When #edtech sceptics and technophiles start discussing their digital bone of contention the sceptics know that sooner or later someone from the latter camp will come out with: “But tech is just tools – neither bad nor good; what matters …
Are lessons in digital citizenship a good thing? Surely when it comes to digital citizenship there is something that even Luddite-sympathising, politically-minded #edtech sceptics can affirm. There is something here to be positive about, isn’t there? Well, yes and no. …
Tweet-length abstract: EFL teachers, who love the foreign, find themselves part of a process threatening it with extinction. Question for teachers of English as a foreign language: When we teach English what are we doing? We each have our personal …
Introduction 1. Sugata Mitra has been accused of being a neoliberal. Some of his supporters brush this off as bad-tempered mud-slinging by technophobes who are refusing the inevitability of change. Is it? We want to argue in this post that …
By some strange synergy, the rise of EdTech – that product of a supposedly post-industrial industry – has gone hand in hand with the rise of what might be called a horticultural model of education. This is the model explicity …
Looking at education-related tweets it would seem that the most vilified idea in education at the moment is the idea that the child is an empty vessel. If people who pride themselves on their progressive approach to education can agree …
According to 21st century pedagogic sagacity, there is one overriding imperative for teachers: Don’t be the sage on the stage; be instead the guide at the side of your pupils. Instead of towering over their students like Platonic philosopher kings …
At no time in history have people been so obsessed with their tools. The edtech discourse turns discussions of education into discussions about the new educational tools, and the discourse of the digital revolution assumes that the latest wave of …
We have been re-reading Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, and on page 136 the central character, Rubashov, makes some interesting remarks about the implications of technological development for education. A stark contrast immediately came to mind between this perception …
If Sugata Mitra thinks of himself as basically a humble scientist investigating the benefits of educational technology, he is deceiving himself. His appeal – the crucial factor explaining his rise to fame – lies not in the scientific rigor of …
What is “personalized education”? Some teachers hear in the term nothing more than a confirmation that they are right to pay so much attention to the needs, interests and motivation of the individual pupils in their classes. Other teachers join …
In his 2013 TED talk at Long Beach California, Sugata Mitra gave a bold political twist to his story of education by placing it in the context of a grander story about empire. The now familiar story of the hole …
A few people in Greece are beginning to call for the personalisation of education and, online at least, the talk is gaining some momentum. Now, the mere idea of personalising education has an obvious initial appeal in Greece, since what …
The RSA animation team came up with the following caricature of a teacher to illustrate Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about the need for a change of paradigm in education. In a different context such a depiction of a teacher would …
A disturbing number of people are still talking about personalising education – making it person-centred. Often, this talk about the student as person is little more than snappy advertising copy that is left deliberately vague so that it can mean …
In glowing reports of the new digital technology written by educationalists, one of the most prominent buzzwords is: autonomy. Digital technology is great for learner autonomy, we hear. But is it? Of course, there are a thousand and one new …
Anyone using Google on November the 2nd saw this: How many different ways can you read that? Surely it cannot simply be read as an honour paid by the largest internet corporation to a winner of a Nobel prize. Can …