I was delighted to see that the magnificent Daisy Christodoulou, who featured quite a lot in my recent mini-essay on the curriculum, contributed an article to last week’s Spectator. Her point that some of the trendiest education ideas are actually rather old hat was very well put: “…one popular buzzword at the moment is ‘21st-century …
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Roger Scruton on knowledge, the curriculum and the state’s contribution to education
In a recent BBC Point of View broadcast, intellectual heavyweight Roger Scruton gave a fascinating history of education since the nineteenth century. It is well worth a read. Having just written a mini-essay on the curriculum, I was especially struck by this thought: The state inherited well-funded, long established and dedicated institutions and a tried …
Making independent schools affordable
If there is one concern that privately-educated friends of mine with new-born children all share it is that they will not be able to afford the education that they themselves were lucky to receive. I predict that this topic will come to dominate UK boarding schools over the next decades. Andrew Adonis commented on the inflation …
Mini-Essay: The Curriculum
In almost a decade of answering questions from parents about boarding schools, I have never been asked about a school’s curriculum. And yet it is hard to think of a feature that has more of a bearing on a child’s education. This short essay makes a case for why the curriculum is quite so important, …
Emotional Resilience
This sort of thing is increasingly prevalent in the independent sector: Yesterday, it was announced that head teachers from 200 of the country’s leading independent schools will attend a conference next month to learn how to equip their pupils with emotional resilience, so that they can deal better with stress and failure. (Full article in …
Stillness – what’s wrong with chapel?
One of the mini-essays I’m planning is a profile on Anthony Seldon. Is he our generation’s Thomas Arnold? One thing is for certain: there is no man in independent education today who is better at dominating the headlines. Yesterday, he was promoting his Conference on Mindfulness by commenting on stillness in schools: He said that …
The Independent Curriculum
I have been following the Independent Curriculum (or, to give it its full title, the “IC Programmes for Learning”) for a number of years now. Its parent company, Galore Park, have done prep schools a good service by publishing traditional, knowledge-rich text books (including the 1905 Classic Our Island Story) written by excellent independent school …
Mini-Essay: The Abolition of Man
It is a frequent lament of liberal education enthusiasts in this country that they must so often turn to the United States for inspiration. So it was that, via the US education think-tank the ISI, I first came across C S Lewis’ slim, digestible book on education, The Abolition of Man. Few books have had …
Mindfulness – gathering momentum
I have been meaning to research Mindfulness in more detail this year. Like “Neuro-linguistic Programming” (NLP), the word has a rather synthetic quality – but I shall endeavour to read more before commenting. All I can say for now is that it is gathering momentum in many UK boarding schools. See this letter published in The …
Mini-Essay: What is Liberal Education?
One cannot be a modern “educationalist” without a pithy defence of what education is and what (or who) it is for.
Will Orr-Ewing 