Thoughts on education
In Episode 6 of my Education podcast, I interview the famous Summer Fields Headmaster Nigel Talbot Rice. Listen on Soundcloud – Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Or on YouTube – Part 1 here (and below) or Part 2 here. Or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Nigel joined prep school teaching upon leaving Oxford. He started his …
Continue reading “Episode # 6 – Nigel Talbot Rice, Headmaster of Summer Fields (1975-1997)”
Listened yesterday to a tremendous edition of the Charlotte Mason Poetry Podcast, which featured a speech by Horace West Household, the Director of Education for Gloucestershire at the North of England Education Conference in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1929. Can you imagine a Regional Schools Commissioner in 2018 using the same beautiful language or whose vision of a …
I listened to a great episode of the Charlotte Mason Poetry podcast on a run yesterday. It featured a letter, written by CM herself, explaining how her differed from that of Maria Montessori’s. The whole letter, which is very short, is really worth reading or listening to – is there any educationalist alive today who writes …
In this interview, I talk with Jason Fletcher, founding Headmaster of Heritage School in Cambridge. Heritage is the only school I am aware of that is committed to (and actively promotes) a Charlotte Mason education in the UK. In our conversation, Jason explains its unique pertinence to the educational priorities of our times. Listen on …
Continue reading “Episode #5 – Jason Fletcher, founding Headmaster of Heritage School Cambridge”
“The wise man sees a different tree from the fool.” William Blake When you look at a tree, what do you see? Imagine that we ask this question to a class of teenagers as they near the end of their schooling. What would they say? Would Blake say that they had answered “wisely” or “foolishly”? …
Who was Charlotte Mason? Charlotte Mason (1842 – 1923) was a teacher and educational writer who lived and worked all over the UK. Orphaned at 16, she taught both as a governess and as a classroom teacher. Despite suffering ill health for much of her life, she founded a teacher training college at Ambleside for …
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(First published on the Keystone blog here.) Parents today take a more active interest in their children’s education than the generation or two that preceded them, so that it’s not unusual for those of us working in education to be asked our views on a “growth mindset” one day or the “outdatedness of the 19th …
In Episode 3 of my History of Prep Education project, I interview Mark Johnson. Mark (known to all his pupils as MRJ) attended prep boarding school himself aged 6 (!). As a teacher, he taught at Summer Fields for 17 years, becoming Deputy Headmaster, before becoming Headmaster of Cheam in 1998 – a post he …
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Given the criticism that the school has received from many quarters (such that staff have even received death threats), I was fortunate enough to be allowed to visit Michaela at the end of the summer term. I spent a remarkable few hours there, and sent the following email to the headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh afterwards: Dear …
Continue reading “My visit to Michaela Community School (MCS Brent)”
Last week I began a part-time project to interview retired prep school teachers about their teaching methods. My first subject was Rhidian Llewellyn. Rhidian began his teaching career at Heatherdown. From 1980-1984 he was Head of History and English at Arnold House School in St John’s Wood, London. In 1986 he became Senior Housemaster at …
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Will Orr-Ewing 