Tag: education

Keeping the flame alive: The demise of the Socratic idea of learning?

December 16, 2025

According to Socrates, at least as adherents of his definition of learning argue, learning is only tangentially about the acquisition of objects of learning – call them what you will, but here ‘skills and lessons‘ – that are the emergent by-products of a process that is never completed. Hence we ‘kindle the flame of learning’, … More Keeping the flame alive: The demise of the Socratic idea of learning?

The role of expert and intellectual in the politics of social change and trust in the concept of a leadership that achieves the sense of stability conducive to effective change.

October 9, 2025

The role of expert and intellectual in the politics of social change and trust in the concept of a leadership that achieves the sense of stability conducive to effective change. As I opined about Elon Musk yesterday, I  wondered whether I was oversimplifying the phenomenon he represented  – a man keen to assert his origins … More The role of expert and intellectual in the politics of social change and trust in the concept of a leadership that achieves the sense of stability conducive to effective change.

Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one.

September 10, 2025

Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one. As so often, this question attracted me not because I have anything substantial to say about it in answer but because so much of its terminology has had importance to me in … More Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one.

The influential teachers point out the multiplicity of ways forward not point their finger at you to absorb, from them as your authority, the ONLY answer they know.

March 17, 2025

Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher in Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ , in the depiction made by Harry Furniss as frontispiece to the novel. A man who uses his fingers to point – did Furniss intend to capture the early etymology of the word ‘teach’. ‘Now, what I want is, Facts.  Teach these boys and girls nothing but … More The influential teachers point out the multiplicity of ways forward not point their finger at you to absorb, from them as your authority, the ONLY answer they know.

‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

February 22, 2025

Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Or do they?

February 5, 2025

There are good reasons for avoiding this question. I am 70, but though there is roughly a 21 year gap between my birth date and that of my parents, that gap matters so little now they are gone. At 70, they were though still doing line-dancing and facing the world in retirement. Yet, as I … More “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Or do they?

Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

December 21, 2024

This prompt ties itself up in knots. It is the nature of WordPress prompts, so to do, in order perhaps to draw ouf variants in response, or, in the worst case scenario, because they rely on assumptions about commonsense definitions of complex words. First of all, they nearly always invoke indeterminate categories, such as ‘impact,’ … More Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

Why reading matters more than just hearing stories. With the help of Father Ong, Rita Carter and, more than the rest, Jobo (Joanne).

December 10, 2024

Father Walter J. Ong shook my world in 1982 with his book Orality and Literacy, wherein he tried to show us why we, seeped in literacy (even if we cannot or will not read because the characters to be read would still surround us and puzzle us, with either their potential to polysemous mystery or … More Why reading matters more than just hearing stories. With the help of Father Ong, Rita Carter and, more than the rest, Jobo (Joanne).