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Continue reading →: Should Catholics want more Catholic schools?
This article appeared on the Catholic Herald website in September 2016. Read it here. For all we are told about Theresa May’s cautious nature, her recent approach to education certainly has the air of the renegade about it. Forthcoming Tory plans for our schools have a little bit for everyone to be…
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Continue reading →: Feminists and working-class boysIf you are a working-class boy, there is every chance that most of the professionals you will come across in your formative years are women. If you are a working-class boy, there is every chance that most of the authority figures you come across in your formative years will be…
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Continue reading →: A Letter to (liberal) Labour
So you feel disenfranchised? Alienated? Like your party has been stolen from you? That you have no voice? That you are not welcome? Not valued? Feel that nobody is willing to listen, let alone talk about your concerns? That your political home has been taken over by those hostile to…
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Continue reading →: Changing the Conversation
As it is the summer holidays for us teachers, I’ve managed to catch up on some reading, and in particular some of the excellent stuff being produced by various think-tanks and their associated academics. Not all, I should add, but enough to be able to severely pare down my favourites…
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Continue reading →: For Us or Against UsIf you pride yourself on rejecting a wider culture, where do your benchmarks lie? If you boldly proclaim to be doing something different, to be rejecting the ‘blob’ of education culture which has failed children for decades, if your crusade consists of ‘cocking a snook‘ at ‘edufashion’ and ‘edubabble’, what compass…
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Continue reading →: Losing the Working Class
Re-posted from the Catholic Herald blog. The original can be read here. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Labour is the party of the working class. We weren’t supposed to end up despised by them. We weren’t supposed to end up despising them. But here we are. After decades…
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Continue reading →: #IVotedLeaveWhat follows was originally intended for publication on the TES website. Following concerns about the phrasing of a particular paragraph, specifically the comments of Ann Mroz at the TES Awards evening last night, this did not happen. Whilst taking on board those concerns, I have decided to publish here the final…
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Continue reading →: The Myth of Maximal EfficiencyOur education must be human first and data-driven second
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Continue reading →: Catholics, Academies, and Catholic Academies
Since academisation has taken on an air of inevitability, I thought I’d offer up a few thoughts about what this could mean for Catholic education. Whilst some are instinctively opposed to the changes, below I offer some reasons why this could present an important opportunity for us to improve our…
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Continue reading →: One for the Dads
Sometimes one hears recycled the kind of slogan that has become normative within political circles but which, on reflection, does not bear much critical reflection. One that has cropped up again over last few days is the suggestion that women have to make decisions about career and family from which…
Hello,
Welcome to Outside In, a blog first started back in 2009 and which has been revived to collect together the various things I have been involved with more recently. You’ll find some newer stuff that has generally appeared elsewhere, my old archive of work on education, politics, and culture, as well as a few other tidbits too. Take a look around!
“I am a Christian… so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory“
J.R.R. Tolkien
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